1. The Country Bunny And The Little Gold Shoes by Du Bose Heyward. It’s almost Easter! And if you want a perfect Easter book for children of all ages I have just the book for you. Or, rather, my wife Leslie does. Since Leslie completely nailed the interview with Brené Brown I’ve been getting many notes about her. Most are of the vein of “Can you hire Leslie to replace you as host of 3 Books? She is much better than you.” To which I reply “I’ve asked her and it’s a hard no.” But! We decided to introduce a new section to Neil’s Monthly Book Club. Now, without further ado, here is the very first ever LESLIE’S PICK. Enter Leslie: “Have you ever wondered why the story goes that Mrs. Claus just stays home and bakes cookies while Santa travels the world delivering all the presents and getting all the credit? I have. If you have too, you absolutely have to read this book. Written in 1934 (!!!), The Country Bunny is a must have for every family’s book collection (whether you celebrate Easter or not), a tribute to mothers everywhere, feminism at its finest, and an amazing way to celebrate the often thankless, always demanding, and incredibly meaningful work of raising children.”
Neil Pasricha's Monthly Book Club - February 2021
Neil's Monthly Book Club is my oldest and most popular email newsletter. Click here to subscribe.
Hey everyone,
The beat rolls on.
How’s your pandemic life?
Here in Toronto they’ve just reopened schools after another multi-month shutdown but everything else (including our beloved bookstores) remain closed.
One thing that’s been helping me is my daily #pandemicawesome which I’ve now written for 320 straight days. Feel kind of like tick marks on some crumbling prison wall but give me a sense of movement. It’s been harder to come up with awesome things lately so if you have a suggestion, just reply and let me know. You can get them on email or the dreaded socials.
Thanks as always for the love and notes. I really do read and (try my best!) to reply to each one. If someone forwarded you this email, welcome! This is a community dedicated to intentional living. It’s great to have you with us. You can sign up right here.
Shall we get to this month's book recommendations?
To the pages!
Neil
1. Team Human by Douglas Rushkoff. Fiery, unblinking, culture-shifting manifesto imploring us – Team Human! – to come together in the face of autonomous technologies, runaway markets, and weaponized media. My mind was set ablaze reading this magnificent book beautifully organized into 100 short, powerful essays, each of which feels like it’s been simmered down into its most flavorful parts like a pot of all-day spaghetti sauce. Douglas Rushkoff is founder of the Laboratory for Digital Humanism at CUNY/Queens, where he is professor of media theory and digital economics and known for coining terms like ‘viral media’, ‘digital native’, and ‘social currency.’ So many of you have told me you loved The Social Dilemma. Well, if you liked that, you’ll love this. I found it higher level, more informed, and a lot farther ahead on what’s really happening and what we can do about it. All backed by well-sourced Notes that constantly sent me scurrying to look up some study or article. As the sub-headline says: “Our technologies, markets, and cultural institutions – once forces for human connection and expression – now isolate and repress us. It’s time to remake society together, not as individual players but as the team we actually are: TEAM HUMAN.” This book implores us to 'find the others.' So that's what I'm doing. I can’t recommend it enough!
2. The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin. Did you like Ready Player One? This book feels like the 1978 Newbery Medal-winning YA precursor. Samuel Westing is dead! The millionaire tycoon’s last will and testament lays out a strange game to a roomful of seeming strangers on how they can win his vast fortune. Despite the fact this book is written for “Age 10 and up”, I confess I needed to read the Wikipedia entry a couple times to understand it. Lots of hidden characters and missing links. There’s a wonderful little cultural portrait of the book by Jia Tolentino (author of Trick Mirror) in The New Yorker right here. And, finally: This is one of rockstar professor Adam Grant’s 3 most formative books. Listen to Chapter 72 of 3 Books with Adam Grant on Apple or Spotify.
3. Fauja Singh Keeps Going: The True Story of the Oldest Person to Ever Run A Marathon by Simran Jeet Singh. I’ve always felt there was a weird gap somewhere between fiction and non-fiction picture books. On one hand: Fiction! So much fiction! Saying goodnight moon from the great green room and running around with thing one and thing two. But on the other hand? Non-fiction. But really nonny-non-fiction, you know? That’s not a word but I mean it’s mostly in the vein of Wikipedia Lite with books like The Milky Way or Ants or Mother Theresa: A Nun's Life. A blow-by-blow of how something scientific works or a biography of someone famous. I often find myself more interested in the Everyman – the Vishwas the Uber Drivers and Robin the Bartenders and Shirley the Nurses of the world. Well, enter Fauja Singh! Fauja is currently 109 years old and is the oldest person to ever run a marathon. Did he train all his life? No, he began running only a few decades ago in his 80s! A wonderful true story about a skinny boy growing up in Punjab with weak legs and a strong spirit. Also doubles as a nice introduction to Sikhism which the book calls the fifth largest religion. (Wikipedia says ninth but who's counting?) A truly wonderful picture book that I highly recommend. (PS. The book doesn’t say whether author and subject are related but I suppose either way they need this T-shirt from Humble the Poet. My chat with Humble just dropped on this morning’s Snow Moon. Listen on Apple or Spotify.)
4. From The Mixed-Up Files Of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler by E.L. Konigsburg. Here comes another Newbury Prize-winning YA book with a twisting plot from over 40 years ago. Clearly I am on some bizarre kick! As a sidenote, for the discerning young reader in your house, I recommend bookmarking this list of Newbery Medal and Honor books from 1922 up to today. That’s a nice long HTML page and this PDF is a treasure trove. The plot of this one is two pre-teens running away from their home in Greenwich, Connecticut to hide out for a week amongst the mummies and mastodons at The Met. They do this just as a potentially-real-potentially-fake Michelangelo statue is attracting big crowds to the museum and then attempt to crack the case themselves. The writing is spare and realist and if you’re missing museums and art galleries this is a great way to visit. I will say that the title of this book makes no sense until the final act of the book so hang in there!
5. It’s Okay to Laugh (Crying is Cool Too) by Nora McInerny. In the span of six weeks Nora McInerny had a miscarriage, lost her father to lymphoma, and then lost her 35-year-old husband Aaron to brain cancer. After her blog My Husband’s Tumor and especially the Spider-Man themed obituary they penned together went viral she was approached by publishers to recount her experiences in a memoir once she had the benefit of looking back from the future. Well, she didn’t want to pacify readers with a peanut-butter-smooth story from yonder so she wrote the memoir in the six months following the series of brutal losses. While it sounds like a recipe for a tough read -- and sure, parts are -- Nora has such a sharp wit and empathetic ability to make you feel like you’re chatting about easy stuff when you’re talking about tough stuff. No wonder she hosts the award-winning podcast Terrible, Thanks For Asking (I was a guest last year) and gave the wonderful TED Talk “We don’t move on from grief. We move forward with it.” Nora is a voice I will be listening to for years. And, she even has a special book-only Instagram account, too!
6. Hadji Murad by Leo Tolstoy. I read this book while prepping to interview George Saunders for 3 Books. He said he loves it because it’s short (a 149-page novella compared to his War and Peace and Anna Karenina phone books) and yet showcases the same dazzling style of zooming way above a scene, deep down into a little detail, all while dancing in and out of minds of endless characters, many of whom appear once to corkscrew a plotline before disappearing forever. This was the first Tolstoy I have ever read (No book guilt, no book shame) and I really enjoyed it. It’s almost non-fiction, too: Tolstoy enlisted in the Russian army in 1851 and became privy to the story of Hadji Murád, a great warrior who broke with the Chechen leader Shamil and fled to the Russians for safety, thereby entering a byzantine saga of tense meetings, extravagant balls, political blunderings, and a final fatal battle. He would have had to make up a lot of scenes and what-happeneds but the story is steeped in a rich broth of truth.
7. The Very Persistent Gappers of Frip by George Saunders. Speaking of George Saunders, did you know he wrote a kids book? It’s worth watching this 2015 interview on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert where they discuss the book as well as sing a wonderful (and wonderfully surprising) duet. The book tells the story of small, orange, sponge-like annoyances called gappers who crawl out of the sea every night and attach themselves to the goats of the Town of Frip before being brushed off by the children every morning. What follows is a story about empathy and kindness as neighbors react differently when the gappers leave them alone and attack their neighbors. Pairs nicely with George’s 2013 Commencement Address on kindness, too.
8. Think Again by Adam Grant. I had trouble interviewing Adam Grant because my armchair expert jibber-jabbery style was – properly! accurately! – questioned by Adam at every turn. “What data are we talking about?,” he’d say, and then I’d slip into realizing I had no idea what data I was talking about. And then I realized: Wait, this entire experience is a metaphor for his book. How do you know what you don’t know? How do you examine your opinions and shoehorn yourself out of deep mental grooves? Enter Think Again by Adam Grant. As Brené Brown says on the back: “THIS. This is the book for right now.”
Interested in more of my reviews? Read my monthly book clubs or visit my Goodreads page.
Click here to join the Book Club email list.
Neil Pasricha's Monthly Book Club - January 2021
Neil's Monthly Book Club is my oldest and most popular email newsletter. Click here to subscribe.
Hey everyone,
Updates, updates, I’ve got updates.
First off, every January I like to remind you guys I have four mailing lists. Four! Why? I have no idea. They grew like untamed hedges. The annual reminder is so you can adjust your Neil Dosage accordingly. (I can be a bit much.) Here are the four lists; feel free to adjust.
Also, sommmmmmebody in your inbox currently has the Most Popular article on all of Harvard Business Review. Here’s the article. And here are all my HBR pieces over the years. Still feels like a dream to be published there.
Lastly, I’ve been very lucky to have Roxane Gay, Brené Brown, and Cheryl Strayed on 3 Books over the past few weeks (!). Subscribe to 3 Books on Apple or Spotify.
And now, without further ado, here are this month’s books,
Neil
1. The Practice: Shipping Creative Work by Seth Godin. I cold-emailed Seth six years ago while struggling with the cover of The Happiness Equation. He replied (he replied!) a couple hours later, with a bunch of cover designs he’d personally whipped up in Photoshop. The man is a Gift Giving Machine. Whether it’s through his popular altMBA, podcasting workshop, or daily emails, so many receive counsel, guidance, and wisdom from Seth. (Here’s a big dollop of wisdom he gave me.) I have long made it a Life Rule to read any new Seth Godin book. The Practice is a wonderful contribution to his massive catalog. Read it when you need a little nudge, big nudge, or giant shove to do it. What it? Your it. That’s the deal: You choose your it and this book lights the path. It’s impossible to read The Practice and not shift your work into a higher gear. (PS. If you haven’t read any Seth Godin books, I suggest starting with Linchpin. And, I think one of his most underrated books is What To Do When It’s Your Turn.)
2. The Mountains of Mumbai by Labanya Ghosh and Pallavi Jain. Do you feel like jumping on a plane and taking your kids to Mumbai? Or just want to go yourself? Can you already smell the frying paneer? Well, this picture book is a wonderful way to visit. Doma is a young girl new to the city and misses the mountains of her home in Ladakh. Her friend Veda takes her on a thrilling tour of Mumbai’s busy markets, crowded streets, and scenic rooftops. Busy, vivid, colorful illustrations throughout. (The book trailer shows some inside images.) Winner of the Neev Book Awards which aims to recognize outstanding Indian children’s literature. Thank you to Book Club reader Rasil Ahuja for sharing the festival with me. Are you connected to any other kids book festivals around the world? I love learning about new ones. Just reply and let me know.
3. How Venture Capitalists are Deforming Capitalism by Charles Duhigg. Do you have that skin-scratchy feeling the system is rigged and you can’t do anything about it? So do I, so do a lot of us. I love pieces squeaking open the giant democratic capitalism hood to help us understand why one rusted-out piece of metal is gumming up the system. (Roger Martin’s Why More Is Not Better is a great look at the entire engine.) Charles Duhigg is a Pulitzer prize-winning journalist and author of The Power of Habit. In a recent issue of The New Yorker he laid the smack down on the venture capitalist industry. Insightful, alarming, highly recommended. Full piece here.
4. Farewell, Ghosts by Nadia Terranova. (Translated from Italian from Ann Goldstein.) I saw this book propped up on display at Type Bookstores (open for curbside pickup, Torontonians!) and bought it because I liked the premise and felt like hanging out in Sicily. Take me to Sicily! The premise: “Ida was thirteen when her adored father rose out of bed in their home in Messina, Sicily, and simply disappeared for good. Now, twenty-three years later, Ida is married, living with her husband in Rome, when her mother calls her home, and a mundane visit becomes a reckoning.” Pretty good, right? I guess the issue for me is that the reckoning is really of the mental variety. An inner reckoning. Not so much plot based. Dad doesn’t suddenly show up covered in seaweed with a tale of being trapped in a chest at the bottom of the Mediterranean or anything. I want to give that caveat up front in case you’re itchy for action like I was. Still, I did get to hang out in Sicily and the warm salty air magically comes through the pages. Worth reading for that alone. (Here are some pics of Messina, Sicily to warm you up.)
5. Solutions and Other Problems by Allie Brosch. Have you been up the CN Tower? It was the tallest building in the world for 32 years until Dubai built that dang Burj Khalifa a decade back. Well, I was 1465 feet up in the CN Tower’s SkyPod with Sarah Andersen of Sarah’s Scribbles back in Chapter 8. That’s where Sarah and I talked about the formative superpowers of Hyperbole and a Half by Allie Brosch. (Coming in at #980!) No, not even loveable egghead Bill Gates could resist the braiding of crude Microsoft Paint drawings with deep observations of life’s rawest-edged emotions such as suicide ideation and deep depression. Makes sense that Allie’s fans were worried when she followed up her massive debut by … disappearing from the Internet for seven years. But now, finally, phewfully, we get the sequel. Thankfully Allie is alive and well but she has been through huge devastation including the death of her younger sister, a life-threatening medical condition, and the loss of her marriage. Allie knits that darkness into the pages of this memoir between absurd coming of age stories like this one. It is heavy and at times nihilistic. (I refuse to add #perfectfor2020 or some such phrase because I just don’t see it that way.) I confess I didn’t love this book as much as the original which seemed to hang together a bit better. But the gems in here really do sparkle. I hope you check it out.
6. Pastoralia by George Saunders. Guys, I have big news. I’m in love! I don’t mean to gush but … I haven’t felt this way in a long time. Soooooooo. His name is George. No, I have no idea how old he is. No, we’ve never met. Wait, what are you trying to say? I’m telling you the fireworks are real, baby! I heard about George for years but the sparks really started flying when I read his Man Booker-prize winning novel Lincoln In the Bardo back in 2017 and it squeezed my heart. I can still feel the electricity from that book when I think about it now. I got to know George better by combing through a number of old interviews including this gem one from 2004 in The Believer where he says “I believe in efficiency, action, clarity, velocity.” Those seven short words sum up the power of the off-kilter, brain-pinching short stories (and one novella!) in Pastoralia. Suffering from Pandemic Listlessness? This book is your smelling salts. A fast-paced series of incredible stories (most seemingly based in some kind of Shelbyville contra-planet) just begging to be read faster and faster and faster and faster. I’m telling you that you must read George Saunders. You must! Just please don’t ask him to prom before me. (PS. George also has a brand new book which I am about 100 pages into and just loving. I'll share a full review here when I’m done.)
7. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain. When I wrote the Values of 3 Books I made sure to put “No book shame, no book guilt!” right up front. Why? Because I have experienced book shame and I have experienced book guilt. I don’t like when someone says “Oh, have you read so and so?” and then when you say “No” they’re like “What!? You haven’t read so and so!? How have you not read so and so!? I can't believe you haven't read so and so!” I hate that. The reason nobody has read anything in the grand scheme of things is because a million new books are published a year so anytime we pick up a book we are really choosing a needle out of an exponentially expanding haystack that reaches up to the moon. Don’t fault yourself if you’ve never read some big classic everyone says you have to read. Forget them! Read whatever you want. And, yes, this is exactly what I kept telling myself as I travelled down the Mississippi River essentially as thirteen year old Huckleberry Finn two hundred years ago in the Antebellum (aka slavery-based) Southern United States. Should I have read this book earlier? No! No shoulding. I am just glad I read it today because it is magnificent. Yes, the time period feels beyond grotesque in many ways but the sheer vividness of this rousing coming-of-age adventure featuring endless popping characters sits on a mantel all its own. Ernest Hemingway said "All modern literature stems from this one book." Me and Ernie highly recommend it.
8. Reality Is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better And How They Can Change the World by Jane McGonigal. This book changed my view of video games. I admit I was stuck thinking of gamers as slack-jawed teens sitting on stained couches in dark basements amongst piles of Ho Ho wrappers and Slurpee cups. Play more video games? No! Get outside! Run around! That’s what I’m preaching. Well, this book gave me a splash of cold water and nudged my parenting philosophy with my young children from “No video games!” to “Let me help you pick a good video game and play it with you!” Jane says some markers of healthy video game use include constantly picking new games (to invite challenge and the learned resilience involved in figuring it out), explaining how to play it to somebody else afterwards (to provoke learning and teaching and understanding), and, finally, inviting a discussion on what the game can help us do better in real life (to avoid replacing reality with games – but rather enhancing it). While I won’t abandon my beliefs that we all suffer from NDD I have felt my arguments against video games wilt in the face of this well-researched tour de force. Jane foresees games helping us feel thrilled to start our days, increasing career satisfaction, helping the elderly feel socially connected, and tackling global-scale problems like climate change and poverty. (Her TED Talk is a great overview.) She teaches us what a game is – they all have goals, rules, feedback system, and voluntary participation – and then shares how they can lead to more satisfying lives. I loved this book. (Note: Jane is a great follow on Twitter and in advance of the 10 year anniversary of this book she shared 10 things she got right and 10 things she got wrong.)
9. Facebook is a Doomsday Machine by Adrienne LaFrance. Yes, yes it is. If we met at one of my speeches then you’ve already heard my rants on cell phone and social media addiction. (If you haven’t, here’s one I did on Canadia Teevee.) Well, this long form article by the Executive Editor of The Atlantic takes my position and doubles down on it and then doubles down on it again. Read the full piece here.
Interested in more of my reviews? Read my monthly book clubs or visit my Goodreads page.
Click here to join the Book Club email list.
Neil Pasricha's Monthly Book Club - November 2020
Neil's Monthly Book Club is my oldest and most popular email newsletter. Click here to subscribe.
Hey everyone,
This is the four year anniversary of this newsletter!
For the past 48 months I’ve sent you book recommendations and I plan (hope!) to keep doing it for 48 (480!) more. I send all these emails from my personal account and read every note you send back. No tech giants between us algorithming us to death. The emails are one of my favorite things. Thank you so much for your love. You have my word they will remain free and advertising free forever. If you have friends who may enjoy them, they can sign up right here.
Now, are you in frozen wintery lockdown like me or somehow frolicking on beaches south of the equator as the weather warms? We are feeling this pandemic a million different ways right now. I have been pretty stressed about it lately. What’s been helping? Rose, Rose, Thorn, Bud at family dinners. The life changing magic of five-hour walks. Starting my day with two-minute mornings. Posting one #pandemicawesome thing every single day. And, of course, losing myself into good books.
Before we get to the books, I'll quickly mention Roxane Gay, Roger Martin, and Cheryl Strayed will be closing out 2020 on my podcast 3 Books. As always, new chapters drop on the exact minute of every new moon and full moon. (I don’t trust the Gregorian calendar.) Please subscribe on Apple or Spotify. And, if you're in a festive mood, please leave me a review. I read them all. Yes, even the two-star ones.
And now let's hit the books...
Hang in there everyone,
Neil
1. Voicing Change by Rich Roll & Guests. Put simply: This is the best self-help book I have read all year. I love Rich Roll and The Rich Roll Podcast and was lucky enough to have Rich on 3 Books where we recorded live from sunny Calabasas, California. This book hits another high bar in his string of endless high-quality art. Rich has somehow distilled the collective wisdom from nearly a decade interviewing the who’s who of global guides, mentors, and visionaries down into a very tight 300ish pages. Not sure you have time to listen to seven or eight years worth of the best self-improvement podcast around? But want to? Then get this. Most “pod to books” feel like somebody from a freelance farm copied and pasted a bunch of transcripts into Microsoft Word and sent it to the printers. This is the opposite. Rich’s thoughtful, articulate essays scratch and introduce a major theme on intentional living before you then flip and find the guest’s lengthy thoughts from the show worked down into a couple pages of first person wisdom. Surprising meringue peaks throughout including a whizbanger essay from Russell Brand, a guided meditation from Light Watkins, and two poems from IN-Q that will take your breath away. The book's not perfect. Some guests are on pedestals a bit too lofty and I would have liked a lot more diversity but, having said that, what’s most evident here is a deeply yearning soul trying, within every ounce of his ability, to create a piece of art to help illuminate the path forward. He absolutely pulls it off. This is an absolutely wonderful book. A great gift for the seekers in your life.
2. The Lives of Girls and Women by Alice Munro. There was a media circus in Canada fifteen years ago when native daughter Sarah Polley released the incredible film Away From Her. (94% RT!) At the time I read an interview with Sarah where she said the film was based on a short story in The New Yorker by Alice Munro. “What?” I remember thinking. “How can you make a full length movie from a short story? And who is this Alice Munro?” Well, I found the short story (here it is) and read it and was just like “Oh.” It reads like a giant epic somehow reduced down into twenty pages. I fell in love with Alice Munro after that and have several of her short story collections on my shelf. The Lives of Girls and Women was new to me and I learned it was published in 1973 and is Alice Munro’s only novel ever. So it's not as tight as her later writing but the spaciousness has a unique charm to it. The characters really live, slowly, pacefully, and the stories are told in a slow tableau. The book is a midcentury Bildungsroman (always wanted to use that word) sharing stories of the emotionally hyper-intelligent Del as she navigates life from small town Northern Ontario. Wonderful to read during this time of rising anxiety and faster paced everything. I recommend it highly.
3. Mario de Janeiro Testino by Mario Testino. I figured out a new way to travel! Find the most lush, sensuous, and immersive photo book of a place you want to visit (or revisit) and leave it on your coffee table for a few weeks. I did that with this incredible photo book about Rio de Janeiro which pulls off a three-way cross between Rio’s jaw-dropping natural beauty, its iconic arts and culture, and its deep sexual energy. The forward by Gisel Bündchen is skippable (sorry Gisel) but if you’ve been to Rio and felt the electricity of the beaches and nightlife then this book will send you back. I miss going… anywhere. Giant, immersive photo books are the new plane tickets! (Do you have a giant, immersive photo book you recommend? Please hit reply and let me know.)
4. Lord of the Flies by William Golding. I was forced to read this book by the state at age fifteen. Looking back, I was too young to absorb all the lessons on leadership, lack of leadership, and how precariously our thin little doily of civilization really is resting over the fires and chaos below. A gripping tale of a group of shipwrecked British boys and their slow descent into anarchy. PS. Did you know William Golding wrote seventeen books and this was his first? His first!? Yes, really. And it won the Pulitzer Prize. Talk about a tough act to follow. PPS. What would you add to this Twitter string of books you read… WAY too young? I saw some people said Lord of the Flies. Mine was The Dark Half by Stephen King in sixth or seventh grade. I can still feel now how scared I was then. Big mistake.
5. False Labor by Lena Dunham. Are you obsessed with the Harpers Index like I am? It’s an incredible curated brain scramble of facts and trivia arranged to make you go “Seriously!?” over and over again. I generally flip straight there but this month the cover blared Lena Dunham’s name so on the three second walk from the mailbox to the messy pile of papers on the front table, I flipped to the article and read the first sentence. Then the second. Then the third. And I did that thing where you stand completely frozen, barely breathing, for about twenty minutes just gobbling up an incredible piece of writing. False Labor is a brave, hilarious, and vulnerable essay describing Lena's battle with infertility. All salted so perfectly with her uniquely off-kilter wit. Click here to read the full piece.
6. Love You Forever by Robert Munsch. Children's books are so regional. Books or series that sell millions in one country are often unheard of in others. Why? Do we raise kids differently, hold different values close to the chest, or something simply lost in the translation? I would love to find a list of the single bestselling children's book in every country around the world. Love You Forever definitely tops the list in Canada with over 30 million sold. A few years ago on Canada's 150th birthday, the CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) even tracked down the 150 bestselling books of the past ten years. The Book of Awesome came in at #6 and The Book Of (Even More) Awesome came in at #95 (woot!) but both of those actually came out the previous decade. Love You Forever clocked in firmly at #1 overall despite coming out in ... 1986. A mom rocks her son to bed every night with a lullaby, "I'll love you forever / I'll like you for always / As long as I'm living / My baby you'll be." She does when he's a baby, a toddler, a teenager, and even rigs up a ladder to crawl into his bedroom across town when he's a grown man. And in the end when she's old and frail and dying? He drives across down, picks her up, and sings the song back to her. A tearjerker that never gets old. (PS. I know a lot of you live across Europe, Asia, South America, and whatever the continent with the non-island Australia in it is called. If you know the top selling children's book in your country, please reply and let me know! I'd love to order a few.)
7. Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom by bell hooks. Gloria Jean Watkins was born in a family of six kids in segregated Kentucky in 1952. Her father was a custodian. Her mother was a homemaker. Schools began segregated but became integrated when she was in elementary school. As she writes, under the pen name bell hooks: “School changed utterly with racial integration. Gone was the messianic zeal to transform our minds and beings, that had characterized teachers and their pedagogical practices in our all-black schools. Knowledge was suddenly about information only. It had no relation to how one lived, behaved. It was no longer connected to antiracist struggle. Bussed to white schools, we soon learned that obedience, and not a zealous will to learn, was what was expected of us. Too much eagerness to learn could easily be seen as a threat to white authority.” This 'before and after' view of what education was and what it could be informs this slim but powerful pedagogical guide to education as a practice of freedom. A must read for any teacher or leader seeking to help classrooms or teams transgress against racial, sexual, and class boundaries. (Spoiler Alert: This is one of Brené Brown’s three most formative books. Leslie and I just sat down with Brené and our chat will kick off 3 Books in 2021. Do you like how I’m trying to just drop that in there as a casual aside and pretend I wasn’t totally freaking out about interviewing her for like a year before it happened?)
8. The Gifts of Imperfection by Brené Brown. Speak of the devil! In my mind Brené Brown is perfect and therefore her book about imperfection is also perfect. Seriously though, this is one of Brené’s earliest books and it’s a power-packed 124 (!) pages introducing her ‘wholehearted living’ concept and 10 guideposts to getting there. Like for instance ‘Guidepost #4 Cultivating Gratitude and Joy: Letting Go of Scarcity and Fear of the Dark’ or ‘Guidepost #7 Cultivating Play and Rest: Letting Go of Exhaustion as a Status Symbol as Self-Worth’. The book was published in 2010 by Hazelden Publishing, a small publisher specializing in books about addiction recovery. Leslie had it on her bookshelf for years but I hadn’t read it until now. While her voice perhaps isn't quite as strong as her later books I found it to be a wonderful introduction to her work. I think I'll begin recommending it before her others. (She seems to agree.) It just came out in a new edition, too. Also, right over here you can find a free poster of her 10 Guideposts and her incredible Wholehearted Parenting Manifesto which Leslie printed out for our house long ago. We love it. I can’t quite say we live by it because parenting is always a work in progress, but it’s a bit of a north star for us.
9. The Trumpet of the Swan by E.B. White. As far as I can tell, over the course of celebrated author E.B. White’s life from 1899 to 1985, he wrote precisely three children’s books. Two are good. One is bad. This is the bad one. Stuart Little and especially Charlotte’s Web had charm, verve, and a certain je ne sais quoi. Didn’t they? I mean, who doesn’t love Charlotte’s Web? Unequivocally un-unloveable! But this book, written when White was in his 70s, decades after the other two, was just an incredibly syrupy slog. My oldest son and I somehow kept flipping pages despite the meandering story, occasional preachiness, and gaping plot holes. The long lost unrequited love of the protagonist swan literally falls out of the sky at one point. I say skip it and go back to Charlotte’s Web which is, if I haven't mentioned it already, un-unloveable.
Interested in more of my reviews? Read my monthly book clubs or visit my Goodreads page.
Click here to join the Book Club email list.
Neil Pasricha's Monthly Book Club - October 2020
Neil's Monthly Book Club is my oldest and most popular email newsletter. Click here to subscribe.
Hey everyone,
Hope you’re hanging in there. My reading slowed down this month. Is everything slowing down? Is time slowing down? Is time real? If you’re wading through mental molasses right now, I’m right there with you. Forgive yourself and aim to slowly steer yourself back on track. I know that’s what I’m trying to do.
Stay safe and hang in there,
Neil
1. When More Is Not Better: Overcoming America’s Obsession with Economic Efficiency by Roger L. Martin. Do you feel like the whole system is rigged? Like there’s nothing you can do to really get ahead or help affect true change? This is the book to read. It masterfully zooms up into the stratosphere of the entire democratic capitalist system we live in and pulls back the curtain on all the junky, rusted-out parts inside. Roger Martin was Dean of the Rotman School of Management for a good decade and a half and named the world’s #1 management thinker by Thinkers50. I’ve followed his strategy books over the years (Playing To Win, The Opposable Mind) but I think this is his absolute best work. A clear call-to-arms calling shenanigans on, well, nearly everything, and then outlining remarkably refreshing approaches on how to fix it, all filtered into ideas for business execs, political leaders, educators, and citizens. His suggestions feel so ridiculously obvious but (of course) none of them are really happening right now. For example, for educators: Temper the inclination to teach certainty, stop teaching reductionism as if it’s a good thing (his epic takedown of MBAs here is worth the price of admission alone), help students appreciate the power of directly observable data, and elevate the appreciation of qualities (over quantities). Each point is backed by numbers and tightly screwed into lean and logical prose. Incredible.
2. Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on love and life from Dear Sugar by Cheryl Strayed. Cheryl Strayed was the victim of severe abuse as a child, lost her mother in her early 20s, became addicted to heroin, and then walked alone up the Pacific Crest Trail for three months over more than a thousand miles. Somewhere along the way she developed the incredible superpower to see inside people’s souls and conjure up potions to heal their rawest wounds. She wielded this superpower in the form of writing a pro bono column called “Dear Sugar” for an online literary magazine called The Rumpus about a decade ago. This book is a collection of those columns and they will completely shatter you as she somehow manages to solve the question people didn’t ask her every single time. Here’s an example to give you a taste.
3. Is This Anything? by Jerry Seinfeld. No, sadly, it’s not. I feel awful saying that. I wish so badly this book was something. But it is missing a soul. Like a lot of people, I grew up with Jerry Seinfeld, watched the show religiously, quote it from memory with my friends. Even still to this day, after every speech someone comes up to me and says, “Anyone ever mention you sound a lot like Jerry Seinfeld?” What I’m saying is that Jerry lives somewhere in my bloodstream. I know I’ll own this book forever. I’ve been waiting for it for twenty-five years since his last one. And it does serve as the ultimate brick-like compendium of every single bit from one of the world’s most successful standup comedians of all time. But, that’s it. No memoir, no photos, no how the jokes were written, no lessons learned along the way, no introduction from Steve Martin or Larry David. Nothing! It’s literally just all the bits stapled together like some gigantic pile of bedside post-it notes. All climax, no foreplay, and a lingering sense of what could have been. For those who love Seinfeld so deeply, we may have to keep waiting for more.
4. The Common Good by Robert B. Reich. Are you reaching for little ways to ground and center yourself as the pandemic wears on? I know I’m eating foods I loved as a kid, starting old TV series again from the beginning (Six Feet Under), and rereading books that give a certain fine-tuned and predictable emotional reaction. Like this one. I read it a couple of years ago and loved its calm and clear voice in the middle of all the screeching talking heads. Robert Reich lays out exactly how we went from “we” to “me” over the past fifty years and how we can get back the common good that connects us all. I can’t recommend it enough.
5. Why We Write: 20 Acclaimed Authors On How And Why They Do What They Do. I’m always on the lookout for great books on writing and this one caught my eye simply because of all the big name writers plastered on the cover: Mary Karr, Terry McMillan, James Frey, Michael Lewis, Ann Patchett, Jennifer Egan, Jodi Picoult, Susan Orlean, and on and on and on. People magazine feature writer Meredith Maran does a great job organizing the mini-essays from each writer on their craft, habits, and rituals without inserting too much of herself along the way. What emerges is a wonderful little guidebook to give you motivation to wade through that painful inner writer agony that (evidently, thankfully) everyone else seems to experience, too.
6. Possessing the Secret of Joy by Alice Walker. This 1992 novel is related to Alice Walker’s earlier book The Color Purple in the sense that it features a few overlapping characters. But it’s really the story of an African woman named Tashi and her inner turmoil following the ritual female genital mutilation (FGM) she undergoes as a teen. The novel is told in a poetic though at times confusing cacophony of voices that alternate every chapter like a Babysitters Club Super Special. Over 200 million women across 30 countries have undergone FGM and if you know nothing about it (like me) this heartwarming and heartbreaking novel is an accessible way in. Highly recommended.
7. HUMANS by Brandon Stanton. Are you one of the millions of people who reads Humans of New York? I was very lucky to get a digital copy of Brandon Stanton's latest masterpiece before we recorded a chapter of 3 Books. The book is his usual textured mini-life portraits offering a much needed dose of empathy and human connection. It's beautiful and I know I'll be buying a stack for Christmas presents next month.
Interested in more of my reviews? Read my monthly book clubs or visit my Goodreads page.
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Neil Pasricha's Monthly Book Club - September 2020
Neil's Monthly Book Club is my oldest and most popular email newsletter. Click here to subscribe.
Hey everyone,
Life is not easy right now. I hope you're finding time to get into nature, talk to people you love, and savor simple pleasures. Keep takings days or weeks off the drugs of social media, news media, and the endless brain buffet of attention-grabbing apps, games, and headlines vying for our attention in order to pump us full of ads.
Keep zooming out and focusing on the things that matter,
Neil
1. Good Talk by Mira Jacob. I have seen my books filed in Reference, Humor, Well-Being, Motivation, Self-Help, Miscellaneous, and Books With Blue Covers sections of bookstores. Different bookstores, different sections. I never realized growing up that bookstore sections are completely made up by the bookstore. There are no sections! There is no system! Everyone is just pretending that the giant mental expanses filling books can somehow be filed into neatly cropped sections that purportedly help you, the potential book reader person, find the exact book you want. But nobody knows what they want! I don’t know what I want! We don’t know what we want! And reading too narrow leads to cognitive entrenchment anyway. I am declaring the whole thing a sham! As proof, I often find phenomenal books that just don't really fit ... anywhere. That’s what happened when I found this book by Mira Jacob in with the Cartoons. This is an emotional roller-coastering true memoir that begins when Mira’s half-Indian-half-Jewish six-year-old son begins asking questions about race in America and then traverses back in time to explore deep, almost-never-spoken-about racism, prejudice, and cultural issues seen through the double lens of marriage and raising children, all presented in a hypnotic artistic collage seemingly made by Lance Letscher using some bastardized software combining Industrial Light & Magic and Powerpoint 1.0. This book caught me by surprise, twanged many emotions, and kept me reading deeply into the night. An incredible work of art that cannot be neatly filed but must be neatly read. I absolutely loved it and can't recommend it enough. (PS. If you want keep talking about finding books with elusive genres, check out my conversation with the wild Kevin the Bookseller .)
2. Just Kids by Patti Smith. A poetic portrait of starving artists coming of age in the 60s and 70s. Before Patti Smith and Robert Mapplethorpe reached global fame they lived in poverty and occasional homelessness in the shadows of New York City. This is a book about following and following and following your dreams. Following them after your family tells you not to, following wherever they go, following them when you have nothing else, following them because you simply can’t not. A breathtaking memoir with an incredible musical pulse. I found a few moments of too much detail but the book as a whole was wonderful. (Sidenote: This is one of Brandon Stanton of Humans Of New York’s 3 most formative books. My conversation with Brandon drops on the full moon and his new book comes out next week.)
3. Mrs. Frisby and the Rates of NIMH by Robert C O’Brien. Mrs Frisby is a mouse with problems. She’s a recent widow after her husband was eaten by the cat. Her son Timothy is bedridden with a nasty chest cold. And the farmer is going to plough the field she lives on in two days which will destroy her home. Cue an epic 48-hour adventure involving flying crows, wise owls, dangerous cats, and genius rats. Completely absorbing and beautifully written. And how wonderfully rare is it for a single mother of four to be the star of the show? The back says it’s for ages 8-11 but I think we can easily stretch that up many more decades. I read this book at the suggestion of poet and activist Nikki Giovanni and while reading it I had no idea this book was turned into the movie The Secret of NIMH which I have very foggy memories of watching as a kid.
4. Trick Mirror: Notes on Self-Delusion by Jia Tolentino. This book has been following me around for the past year. Waving from bookstore windows, preening on top of big displays, I finally caved in and bought it after my friend Francesco said he loved it. Jia is a Staff Writer at The New Yorker and has an incredible knack for writing 30-page essays with more layers than baklava. She writes about the pressure to ‘always be optimizing’, about how the internet is deeply messing us all up, and about the fake history of the wedding industry. She comes across like some mix of the Oracle from The Matrix and the enlightened literate stoner ranting on a deck chair beside the pool at 3:00am after everyone else has left the party. Absorbing, entertaining, and highly recommended.
5. Devotions by Mary Oliver. Weird thing happened last month. While researching for my interview with David Mitchell I stumbled upon this great little interview he did in The Globe and Mail where he says “Next time you’re in a bookshop, see if they have any Mary Oliver. ‘Not liking poetry is like not liking ice cream.’ Mary Oliver is superlative ice cream.” I made a mental note to check out Mary Oliver later. And then I get home that same night and what should be lying on our bed? This giant book by Mary Oliver. Turns out my wife Leslie received the same recommendation a few days earlier from her friend Vicki Rivard (author of Brave New Mama). I have never been a poetry regular – finding a lot of what I stumble across too esoteric or abstract – but this book was the opposite. Nearly every poem feels like somebody is pouring clear and cold water on your heart. Simple, striking, literal language wrapped around much larger invisible emotions every time. The book is a compendium of all her best poems and offers deep reverence for nature, beauty, and life itself. A book to ground you when the media and internet swirl has you spinning way too high.
6. Meditations by Marcus Aurelius. Translated by Gregory Hays. Who’s translating your books? I bought the Penguin Classics edition of Meditations years ago and thought it was … fine. I know, I know, it’s the collected set of wisdom written by the most powerful person in the world a couple thousand years ago. But, yeah, fine. IT was fine! Well apparently I got the wrong one! Ryan Holiday, a bit of a Marcus Aurelius nut, told me the Gregory Hayes translation is the best. So I finally got it. And read it again. And now I see why. This set of lessons and directives to himself (never intended as a book or for publication) starts as a series of simple advice he’s trying to remember and soon evolves into an incredibly self-aware series of introspections that resonate as if no time has passed. Perfect to pair with On the Shortness of Life by Seneca which I mentioned a while back. Add it to your Enlightened Toilet Reading collection. Just make sure you get the Gregory Hays translation with the cover pictured above!
7. Your Cabin In the Woods by Conrad E. Meinecke. Do you feel like running away from it all? Here’s a perfect book to help. Back in the 1950s Conrad published two short, beautifully written books on how to build your own cabin. The pages are big, the writing is evocative, and you can let your mind fall into your invisible home away from home. Perfect coffee table / daydreaming book. This link shows you what the inside of the book looks like.
8. Hundred: What You Learn In A Lifetime by Heike Faller & Valerio Vidali. A whimsical page-by-page look at what you learn in a hundred years. I’m sure I bought this as another pandemic escape as it offers a nice zoom out on the good times and bad times. Age 1 1/2 has a painting of a baby in a high chair while her mother crawls under the kitchen table. “Your mother sometimes vanishes. But she always comes back again. This is called trust.” Age 8 has a painting of a girl tightroping on a tall wall. “You get braver with every step you take.” Age 64 an older woman sits on a park bench waving at kids walking by. “Something draws you back to where you came from.” Age 98 has two wrinkled hands holding a caterpillar. “Sometimes you feel like the child you once were.” Scroll to the bottom here for some of the wonderful images inside.
9. How To Shoplift Books by David Horvitz. A tiny, silly, weird art book listing about a hundred ways to steal books. One on every page. "Hide the book inside a fake rock", "Walk in the store holding a big mirror. The employees will be distracted looking at their own reflection. Hold the book behind the mirror."
Interested in more of my reviews? Read my monthly book clubs or visit my Goodreads page.
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Neil Pasricha's Monthly Book Club - August 2020
Neil's Monthly Book Club is my oldest and most popular email newsletter. Click here to subscribe.
Hey everyone,
I felt great when somebody told me that ESPN wrote a big feature today about how NHL rookie-of-the-year candidate Cale Maker is reading You Are Awesome in the playoffs bubble. I felt less awesome when I found out a serial killer in the Netflix show (Un)Well was spotted with The Happiness Equation on his bedside table.
Books for everyone!
Below are my recommendations this month.
Neil
1. Halfbreed by Maria Campbell. It is beyond shameful how little I learned in my formal education about Canada’s cultural genocide of indigenous people. Basically: nothing. When Leslie told me about residential schools a few years ago I had never heard of them. Nothing was mentioned in high school history classes and I clearly failed to do any self study. To say I feel like I have a lot of catching up to do is an understatement. I think the only books I’ve read that discuss the indigineous experience are There, There by Tommy Orange and Heart Berries by Terese Marie Mailhot. And now I have this astounding coming of age memoir by Maria Campbell to add to the mix. Published in 1973 with “missing pages” detailing her rape at the hands of the RCMP, this 2019 edition has been restored with the full script as well as an Afterword written by Maria Campbell last year. The book takes place through the 50s and 60s in Western Canada and includes a lot of first nations history told through memorable exchanges with Maria’s 104-year-old (!) Cree great-grandmother Cheechum. Braided with bleakness, horror, and revelation, it’s a story I haven't been able to stop thinking about since I finished.
2. The Invisible Pyramid by Loren Eiseley. Naturists, anthropologists, environmentalists, philosophers, and teachers, lend me your ears. This is the book for you! Loren Eiseley lived from 1907 to 1977 and is listed as all of those things in his online biography. Thankfully those diverse experiences come together wonderfully in this powerful series of essays originally delivered as a series of lecture at the University of Washington in 1969. Eiseley offers a wild sense of vertigo as he masterfully zooms us across spacetime to give us a sense of place in the cosmos. Did you ever read that “Pale Blue Dot” passage by Carl Sagan? If you liked that, you’ll love this book. I think this is the book I was always hoping to find whenever I picked up A Brief History Of Time by Stephen Hawking which I found difficult. Also great for folks who loved Sapiens or The Power of Myth.
3. Smithsonian Field Guide to Birds by Ted Floyd. I am falling deeper and deeper in love with birds. Like madly in love. Like making-them-a-mix-tape in love. Why? So many reasons! Their earth-dominating scale (50x our population!), their wild evolutionary histories, their gorgeous plumage, their majestic flying, their gonzo behaviors. Nevermind their collective nonchalance about the pandemic. That alone is worth something! A couple years ago in this book club I shared the National Geographic cover story Why Birds Matter by Jonathan Franzen and last year I shared the urban birding memoir Birds, Art, Love by Kyo Maclear. I know it’s a pandemic cliché but I just can’t stop looking at the birds. It’s why I wrote about them 1, 2, 3 times in my new 1000 Awesome Things. I love this guide because before every type of bird there’s a page or two about its history and behavior. Helps you get to know the birds you love better.
4. Bad Feminist: Essays by Roxane Gay. Roxane Gay’s writing flows like a river: calm, smooth, burbling, and then you hit the rocks. She offers accessible welcome mats into complex and thorny issues like her essay “What We Hunger For” on the emotional trauma of sexual abuse told through her love of The Hunger Games. (That full essay is online here.) The essays are short, easy to read, and have a huge range of topics as one moment you’re hearing what it feels like to be a typical first year professor and the next you’re discussing problematic issues in The Help or Django Unchained. Highly recommended. (PS. If you want to fall into a Roxane Gay rabbit hole I recommend following her on Twitter, reading this wonderful essay she wrote recently about her wife Debbie Millman, and checking out her reviews on Goodreads where she is the #4 (!) overall best reviewer on the whole site.) (PPS. If you’re wondering like I was how she can be so prolific, she answers here.)
5. Black Beauty by Anna Sewell. Anna Sewell wrote this book in the 1870s while lying in bed as an invalid. She died five months after it came out but was alive long enough to see the book take off. And take off it did! 50 million copies sold and counting. A wonderful first-horse view of life from the mid-1800s which includes simple but profound lessons about kindness, friendship, and animal rights. I read this to prepare for my interview with Temple Grandin which will be dropping on the exact minute of the full moon next week. (Click here to subscribe to 3 Books on Apple Podcasts)
6. Mean by Myriam Gurba. I mentioned Myriam’s sizzling essay on American Dirt last month and now I’ve read her poetic “true crime memoir.” A fiery, queer, brassy Latina coming of age in the world today.
7. The Common Loon by Terry Miller. I read this thin, road-atlas-sized book in one night and couldn’t shut up about loons for days. I sounded like this in my house. Did you know loons are the oldest flying birds in the world? (Been here 60 million years to our paltry 300,000!) Did you know they have bright red eyes to help filter out blue light so they can see prey below 15 feet underwater? Did you know due to their heavy bones and good-for-swimming-bad-for-everything-else feet they actually need a quarter mile of water just to take off? Did you know that as a result of this many loons unfortunately die each year during their fall migration to the Atlantic and Pacific oceans because they land on wet pavement slicks that look like water and then can’t take off again? Loons, loons, loons, everybody. Yes, I have gone crazy for bird books. (PS. Just for fun: This book appears to be completely out of print and isn’t even on GoodReads but I found a few copies left for five bucks each on ThriftBooks. Click fast or forever hold your peace.)
8. A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula Le Guin. In my interview with David Mitchell on 3 Books last month I introduced this book as “A Wizard of Earth-See-Ah” to which David interrupted and said “Earth-See, Neil, it’s pronounced Earth-See.” I read the entire book mispronouncing the most common word in the book and then proceeded to make a fool of myself in front of an author I was hoping to impress. Anyway, A Wizard of Earthsea is a wonderful book classified as “young adult fantasy” but actually is about dozens of other things such as how we shape our identity, the psychology of loneliness, and how we find purpose. Poetic, vivid, raw, and rugged. I loved it. (PS. Speaking of David Mitchell, he wrote this article in The Guardian about the book. I guarantee if you read this article you'll buy the book.)
9. Life Doesn’t Frighten Me by Maya Angelou and Jean-Michel Basquiat. My cousin-in-law got this book for our kids and I found it completely entrancing. Almost 30 years ago an editor named Sara Jane Boyers had the idea to marry Angelou’s famous poem “Life Doesn’t Frighten Me” with Basquiat’s spine tingling and soul penetrating art and the results are completely transfixing. Here’s the full text of Maya Angelou’s poem if you want to read the words first.
Interested in more of my reviews? Read my monthly book clubs or visit my Goodreads page.
Click here to join the Book Club email list.
Neil Pasricha's Monthly Book Club - July 2020
Neil's Monthly Book Club is my oldest and most popular email newsletter. Click here to subscribe.
Hey everyone,
Hope you're hanging in during the dog days.
I am deep into writing my new book now. I won't say much other than it's the most difficult book I have ever written and much, much different than my past books. Excited to share more next year.
And now, let's pull down the shades and escape our world for a little bit...
Here are my July 2020 book recommendations,
Neil
1. Utopia Avenue by David Mitchell. “Never touch your idols: the gilding will stick to your fingers.” Have you heard this Gustave Flaubert quote or one of its variations? I thought about it a lot before interviewing David Mitchell this month for 3 Books. I was beyond nervous. I have read all his novels since picking up his best known book Cloud Atlas back in 2012 (after learning of it through the criminally underrated Wachowski siblings film -- just read the comments on that trailer!). Five of David's past six books have been nominated for The Booker Prize, TIME declared him one of the world’s 100 Most Influential People, and Esquire called him "a genre leaping, mind bending, world-traveling, puzzle-making, literary magician." Well, both David himself and his brand new book Utopia Avenue do not disappoint. The book is a deeply woven tale of a psychedelic folk band emerging from the British music scene in the 1960s layered with vivid characters, twisting backstories, and an accelerating plot that crescendos onto a different plane by the end. And, amazing, fits with a snap into the evolving Mitchell Multiverse. I highly recommend it. And for my 3 Books conversation with the literary magician himself, click here. PS. To David Mitchell fans, I think this the longest interview with David available anywhere as well as his first podcast in five years. Nerd giggle.
2. The Twits by Roald Dahl. Have you ever had a palate cleanser? You know, some snooty waiter in tails with a pencil moustache brings you a frozen spoon of lemon sorbet to rinse out your mouth after the gooey pasta and before the oozing dessert? It's a real thing! And also: What a great idea! I feel like we need the same for books. After you finish some twisting, emotionally entangled epic you a have a Palate Cleanser Book. You can’t read another big book yet! No way. Too rich, too dense, too much. What you need is something like the 75-page The Twits by Roald Dahl. A dark, tightly coiled comic masterpiece with an average of 1 page of pictures for every 1 page of text. I have read this book probably three or four times and still can't figure out how Roald Dahl pulls off so much in so little. If you know Kevin The Bookseller, this was one of his 3 books.
3. Heart Berries by Terese Marie Mailhot. Okay, palate cleansed? Then you’re ready for your mind to be stretched out again like taffy. Heart Berries is a memoir from self-identified Canadian-American Indian Terese Marie Mailhot which doubles as a letter written from a mental institution to her on-again-off-again boyfriend and father of the child she’s currently carrying. The writing will pull and swish you around like a river. Trigger warnings: emotional and physical abuse as well as the trauma of losing a child. (No spoilers, that's all in the first few pages.) It all adds up to an enlightening portrait of the indigenous experience. Pairs well with There, There by Tommy Orange, who Therese also lists in the Acknowledgements.
4. Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence by Esther Perel. A couple years ago I was sitting in one of those football-field sized conference rooms at a hotel in downtown LA with Esther Perel speaking from a circle stage in the center like a rock star. I couldn’t believe it but Esther built enough trust with the audience that people were getting up to the mic and, in front of a thousand strangers, asking deeply personal questions about their sex lives. I mean, I guess it was LA, but still. I was also surprised at the answers from the stage: equal parts compassionate, sassy, and full of a-has. There was a mass scribbling of quotes. It took me a few years but I finally followed up that speech by poking into her first book. A well-researched exploration of what she refers to as the paradox of lust and domesticity.
5. What Makes A Baby by Cory Silverberg. A friend of mine had a surrogate. She had health issues. They used her egg and her partner’s sperm. They now have two beautiful children. Another friend has a child. Her wife carried the baby. They didn’t know the entire pregnancy whether the baby was from her egg or her partner’s egg. Another friend and her husband have two children. The first is from an egg donor and sperm donor. The second is from an egg donor and the husband’s sperm. What’s my point? My point is we all have stories like this. More today than yesterday, too. Yet how are we teaching kids about how babies are made? Most have moved past the way I learned it in the 80s. “When a man and a woman love each other very much…” But I doubt most of us are as articulate and enlightened as the snappy Cory Silverberg. Cory was raised by a children’s librarian and a sex therapist (great combo) and so, today, he is a children's librarian sex therapist. No, just kidding, he identifies as a queer sex educator. This picture book tells the story of how babies are made at the microscopic level, with smiling purple sperms and eggs, and using the wonderful metaphor of them working together to collect and share stories. Here's a video that shows you inside.
6. The Ballad of the Sad Café by Carson McCullers. A few months ago there was a literary uproar around the launch of the brand new Oprah book club pick American Dirt. Did you hear about it? Part of the chatter was around culture appropriation and it was kicked off by an essay by Myriam Gurba titled "Pendeja, You Ain't Steinbeck: My Bronca With Fake-Ass Social Justice Literature." I remember reading it during the firestorm. A month or two later I sent this tweet asking you guys for activists to interview on 3 Books and a number of you recommended Myriam Gurba (@lesbrains). I reached out, we started chatting, and now I'm reading her formative books. This is one of them. And it completely blew me away. Written in 1951, it’s a very sparse, slow boiling novella about a small country town in the south presided over by a hardworking, tough-as-nails woman who had a mysterious 10-day marriage years ago. When her long lost hunchbacked cousin shows up a set of dominos begins tipping over in slow motion. Absolute perfect suspense.
?. Window-Swap.com. Here it is! The surprise question mark entry! Comes about as often as Lightning in Super Mario Kart. My friend Michael Bungay-Stanier shared with me this little website that lets you peek outside somebody else's window on the other side of the world. Perfect for some brief escape. (PS. Give it a minute to load. It's worth it.)
7. Both Flesh and Not by David Foster Wallace. Whenever somebody asks me “What is one of the books you gift most often?” I often mention this one. It’s a posthumously published collection of non-fiction essays that David Foster Wallace wrote for places like The New York Times Magazine and Harper’s. It opens with this spectacular essay on Roger Federer which may give you the vertiginous effect of forever changing how you look tennis. And, it features my favorite essay on creativity called “The Nature of the Fun.” This essay has spawned much of how I think about what to work on and why every book I've written for the past sevenish years -- businessy memoir, self-helpy letter to my unborn son, interactive picture book on meditation, etc -- hasn't been super connected to the last one. I won’t ruin all the twists or turns but if you have experienced any form of commercial success with craft in your life and are thinking about what to do next, then this is mandatory reading. The essay isn’t available online but here’s a Brainpickings.org post with a meaty chunk of it. (PS. How often have you heard the phrase 'posthumously published'? This is a little Wikipedia rabbit hole of posthumously published books.)
8. Dreyer’s English by Benjamin Dreyer. Would you like to be screamed at about your terrible grammar for a few hours? If so, have I got the book for you! Benjamin Dreyer is the slightly sneering Copy Chief at Random House and he will chop you to bits ... but you'll laugh the whole time. You can look forward to discovering all the spelling, grammar, and writing mistakes you've been blindly making for years.
9. There’s Treasure Everywhere by Bill Watterson. One gigantic benefit of getting to do what I do is that I often have the feeling of having smart, interesting friends all over the world. Like Bo Boswell from Nashville, Tennesse. He listens to 3 Books, leaves voicemails at 1-833-READ-A-LOT, sends thoughtful feedback on my books, and, most recently, emailed me after listening to “Cultivating calm during coronavirus chaos” to share that he's been finding calm during these times in Calvin & Hobbes. Well, I tried his prescription and now I heartily recommend it. Yes, I feel like there is something about Calvin & Hobbes right now. It was always an enlightenedly cynical / eruditely accessible comic strip, but something about now makes it work on a deeper level. Perhaps it's because the strip touches themes on the importance of free-thinking over herd mentality, the downsides of bathing our brains in endless marketing, the dangers of selling our souls for instant pleasures, and, especially, what really matters in our tiny, short lives. To that last point, this book is called “There’s Treasure Everywhere!” with Calvin holding a worm after digging a hole. Sound like a good quarantine activity? It was followed up by the last collection (tear emoji) called “It’s a Magical World!” with the cover showing Calvin and Hobbes going tobogganing. Beautiful and soul satisfying.
10. The Anxious Child and the Crisis of Modern Parenting by Kate Julian. I have long gone on the record as saying “Cancel newspapers! Cancel magazines! Read books!" But I've just changed my tune. It's been a few years since my Mass Mailbox Cancellation and I'm starting to miss magazines. So I just subscribed to The Atlantic and Harper's (which is worth it for the Harper’s Index alone.) It feels good supporting long form journalism and this cover story was a gripping, freshly researched, parenting-nugget-filled look at how to raise children without the debilitating anxiety so common right now.
Interested in more of my reviews? Read my monthly book clubs or visit my Goodreads page.
Click here to join the Book Club email list.
Neil Pasricha's Monthly Book Club - June 2020
Neil's Monthly Book Club is my oldest and most popular email newsletter. Click here to subscribe.
Hey everyone,
How are you holding up between screeching halts and face-rippling accelerations? Has your work and life merged into one low-grade buzz at this point? Getting oriented in a disorienting world is tough. Books can help. Snap the addictive wafer in your pocket, kick the TV downstairs like a Slinky, and dive into a good book.
Below are my recommendations this month.
Hang in there,
Neil
1. Unleashed: The Unapologetic Leader's Guide to Empowering Everyone Around You by Frances Frei and Anne Morriss. I sat in Frances Frei’s office at Harvard Business School fifteen years ago telling her about the person I was in love with. She returned the favor telling me about Anne Morriss. She then pulled a sleeve of Starbucks cups off her bookshelf and handed me one with a quote from Anne that Starbucks deemed worthy of mass printing. It became one of my all-time favorite quotes and I still think about it often. (Photo below). My love didn’t last but Frances’s did. She and Anne now have two sons and are an ambitious, trailblazing force on the world stage in the field of modern, empathetic leadership. Frances has parachuted into Uber, Riot Games, and WeWork to address leadership, gender, and culture issues. She’s given an extremely popular TED Talk on building trust. And out this month is the book I’ve been waiting for since that day in her office years ago. Why? Because it comes with that same insightful, growing pain, stomachy tingly feeling I got sitting in her classroom. There’s a wonderful activist twang here and the book will force you to confront the darker and harder to mould sides of your leadership profile. A wonderful book. (PS. Chapter 2 of the book was published as a recent HBR feature story here.)
2. Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston. Have you seen the current non-fiction New York Times bestseller list? To say it’s a reflection of our time would be an understatement. But fiction has just as much to teach us and that list hasn't really changed. What does it really feel like to live in another conscience? I revisited this incredible book published in 1937 which shares the story of a Black American woman born from a rape and raised by her grandmother. Here’s a flavor from Page 19: “You know, honey, us colored folks is branches without roots and that makes thing come round in queer ways…Ah was born back due in slavery so it wasn’t for me to fulfill my dreams of whut a woman oughta be and to do. Dat’s one of de hold-backs of slavery. But nothing can’t stop you from wishin’. You can’t beat nobody down so low till you can rob ‘em of they will. Ah didn’t want to be used for a work-ox and a brood-sow and Ah didn’t want mah daughter used dat way neither. It sho wasn’t mah will for things to happen lak they did. Ah even hated de way you was born. But, all de same Ah said thank God, Ah got another chance. Ah wanted to preach a great sermon about colored women sittin’ on high, but they wasn’t no pulpit for me. Freedom found me wid a baby daughter in mah arms, so Ah said Ah’d take a broom and a cook-pot and throw up a highway through de wilderness for her.”
3. Nine Stories by J.D. Salinger. According to his daughter’s memoir, J.D. Salinger drank his own urine, spoke in tongues, and forcefully adopted new religions every season. True? Not true? Hard to say. He notoriously vanished from the literary scene in a puff of smoke and reputedly wrote many books that were never published. So what remains are works like The Catcher in the Rye, Franny and Zoey, and this stunning collection of nine short stories, many of which ran in The New Yorker before The Catcher in the Rye was published. How was the book? Well, three of these stories (this one, this one, and this one) left me staring frozen at my ceiling for fifteen minutes afterwards. I am still thinking about them weeks later. Others didn't catch me at all. But, the ones that did were absolutely gripping, twisting, unbelievable experiences of prying my mind from its wet cave, levitating it up, working it around like pizza dough, then dropping it back in. As David Sedaris says: “A good short story would take me out of myself and then stuff me back in, outsized now, and uneasy with the fit.”
4. Rosa by Nikki Giovanni. A wonderful award-winning children’s book aimed at 4-8 year olds sharing the story of Rosa Parks and her role of quiet, determined strength in the Civil Rights movement. It’s hard to tell from the cover above but the images on this book just exude the stress and heat of the moment so well. Illustrator Bryan Collier writes: “When I arrived in Alabama, the first thing I noticed was the heat. That is why my paintings for this book have a yellow, sometimes dark, hue. I wanted the reader to feel in that heat a foreshadowing, an uneasy quiet before the storm.”
5. How Humanity Released a Flood of New Diseases by Ferris Jabr. On coronavirus, it’s so hard to get deeper than the surface skim the news endlessly offers. As Ryan Holiday told us on 3 Books: “MSNBC’s goal is to glue you to a screen and sell you Subarus.” How do you get deeper? Find and treasure trusted voices. (Anyone else falling in love with Nassim Taleb or Ed Yong these days?) Here’s a great deeper looking piece from The New York Times Magazine on the issues around the chain reaction between our global species expansion, loss of global biodiversity, and the resulting havoc.
6. The Duel by Anton Chekov. If you haven’t read much classic Russian literature (ditto) then this isn’t a bad way in. It’s short at 92 pages, available free online at Project Gutenberg, and has a slowly building crescendo that will keep you flipping if you can make it through the opening dizziness. It tells the tale of a lazy Russian aristocrat who’s run off to a seaside town with a married woman and is trying to figure out how to extricate himself from the relationship just as he gets a letter informing him that her husband has died. Chaos ensues.
7. The Body: A Guide For Occupants by Bill Bryson. “In a world deluged by irrelevant information, clarity is power,” says historian and philosopher Yuval Noah Harari, author of Sapiens. I kept thinking about that while reading this top to bottom look at our fleshy homes. (Sidenote: I feel this is the perfect companion book to Sapiens, too. If that's “Where did we come from?” then this is “Wait, what are we?”) The early chapters on “The Brain” and “The Head” alone are worth the price of admission. From the back: “Don’t forget that your genes come from ancestors who most of the time weren’t even human. Some of them were fish. Lots more were tiny and furry and lived in burrows…. We would all be a lot better off if we could just start fresh and give ourselves bodies build for our particular Homo sapiens needs – to walk upright without wrecking our knees and backs, to swallow without heightened risk of choking, to dispense babies as if from a vending machine. But we weren’t built for that. We began our journey through history as unicellular blobs floating about in warm, shallow seas.” And it goes from there. A fascinating trip.
8. Cannabis: The Illegalization of Weed in America by Box Brown. I fell in love with Box Brown when I read his graphic novel Tetris a couple years back. That was an exquisite origin story of the famous video game that read like a John Le Carré spy novel. (Cheers to Malcolm Gladwell for adding John Le Carré to our Top 1000) This is his newest on the history of cannabis and it reads a bit like a paint-by-numbers story from a super long Wikipedia article. And, like a long Wikipedia article, it’s just not quite deep enough on a few fronts. I kept wanting to know more about cannabis from a social, psychological, or cultural perspective, and it doesn’t really get into any of that. If you’re interested in the general history of cannabis then this is a great primer and some fun bits of trivia. But, if you’re looking for immersive graphic novel to get lost in, I’d recommend Tetris or the absolutely exquisite (yes I’m going to recommend it a third time) Berlin by Jason Lutes.
9. Gilead by Marilynne Robinson. “First you find purpose, then you find style, then you find beauty,” Mitch Albom, author of Tuesdays with Morrie, told me that high in the Fisher Building in downtown Detroit before scrambling late into the recording studio for his Mitch Album Show. I flew down for a quickie twenty minute interview of 3 Books and that phrase formed the spinal column of his picks. “First you find purpose” was The Royal Road to Romance which lead him off the beaten path. “Then you find style” was The Right Stuff by Tom Wolfe which married his musicality and writing. “Then you find beauty” was this gem which he holds as a beacon towards where he's heading today. There’s a reason Gilead is one of Barack Obama’s favorite books. Set in a small Iowa town named (yes) Gilead in the 1950s it’s a letter from a septuagenarian pastor to his first and only child, a young boy, with everything he wishes he’d be around to tell him when he got older. Sound tearjerking already? Just wait. There are layers beyond layers here and yet they’re all baked into a pastry that somehow feels light as a feather. I already feel like I need to read it again. Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award, Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, and Pleasantly Featured in Neil's June 2020 Book Club.
10. Birds of Ontario by Andy Bezener. Birding has suddenly gone from fringe hobby to cliché. Do you have the Merlin App on your phone? Are you registered on eBird? What warblers have you spotted during the spring migration? You need a good bird book for the backyard. Birds of Ontario isn’t exactly a global resource but you gotta bird where you gotta bird right now. We like using the technique from my wife's grandmother: Keep a good pen in the book at all times (Pilot V5 Hi-Tecpoint Rollerballs, if possible) and write down the date and location of the bird you saw right beside the picture. Turn that bird book into a weathered bird journal that adds character to your shelves.
Interested in more of my reviews? Read my monthly book clubs or visit my Goodreads page.
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Neil Pasricha's Monthly Book Club - May 2020
Neil's Monthly Book Club is my oldest and most popular email newsletter. Click here to subscribe.
Hey everyone,
I hope you’re surprising yourself with how much you’re able to do just as often as you’re forgiving yourself when you’re not able to do much.
If you’re looking to put your mind elsewhere, the past two chapters of my award-winning podcast 3 Books share the story of a Korean twin adoptee searching for a sense of self in a white community across the world (listen here) and a trans artist exploring how masculinity was imposed on her as a boy and continues to haunt her as a girl while discussing the evolution of gender (listen here).
And, I also wrote 7 ways to calm your mind and sleep better.
Hang in there everyone,
Neil
1. In Praise of Slowness: Challenging the Cult of Speed by Carl Honoré. I bought this book years ago and never found time to read it. Quelle surprise! (The most common reply I get to this book club is “How do you find time to read?” My answer in HBR articles here and here.) I believe this book is the balm or mirror we all need right now. If you’re feeling slow or sluggish already this book will smile at you warmly, pat you on the back, and help you settle deeper into that slower, wiser, more meandering self. In fact, you’ll feel positively virtuous for doing so! And if you’re the opposite, if you feel like the treadmill you’re on was just cranked to 10, then this book will offer you a little reflection to encourage you to pause and take pulse. Chock full of research and wonderfully narrated by Carl Honoré in that “sitting beside you on the bus” vein of Quiet or So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed, I felt like this was the book I have needed for years. “There’s only us, there’s only this, forget regret, or life is yours to miss.” Yes! Forget regret. There’s only this. Slow it down. And read this wonderful book.
2. The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho. Do you read horoscopes? I remember skimming them in my hometown paper when I was a kid. I couldn’t understand how a couple pithy sentences might apply on any given day to one twelfth of all people. Then I realized that, of course, they’re just super vague. “Trouble is brewing at home. A wander helps focus the path ahead.” Yes! That’s me! They nailed it! Why do I mention this? Because this entire book is written something like that. What happens? Well, as Paulo Coelho writes in the introduction: “A man sets out on a journey, dreaming of a beautiful or magical place, in pursuit of some unknown treasure.” Does that sound like you? I bet it will as you read it. I don’t mean to sound sarcastic. It is an astounding feat to pull this off in the form of a 200 page parable. While reading it you’ll fall right into a wonderfully first person journey like I did. Perfect before bed book.
3. Sparkle Stories –Audio Stories for Children. Have your kids completely merged into the Netflix algorithm by now? I think we’re all there! Sparkle Stories offers a wonderful reprieve in the form of gentle, slowly narrated stories feeding kindness, respect, and wonder for our world. It works through a freemium model that we have just properly bought into after years of listening for free. Our kids love the stories and it’s actually a bit mind-blowing that this small, virtual mom and pop shop has quietly put together a library of 1300 (!) stories for kids aged 3 – 12. Highly recommended. (Sidenote: I get paid nothing for telling you about Sparkle Stories or any book ever on my list. As I like to say, nobody can buy their way on and nobody can buy their way off.)
4. The Old Man by Sarah V & Claude K. Dubois. When schools were still open my son went to the shelter with his class. They made food, brought it there, and talked about the experience. My wife Leslie went looking for some children’s books to open up the conversation at home about homelessness. She found this! A simple tale, with many wordless pages, of a day in the life of a man living on the street and how his day is changed through a simple kindness from a little girl. Fantastic way to open up the conversation.
5. The Stopwatch Gang by Greg Weston. Have you ever dreamed of robbing a bank? It’s okay. You can tell me. I’m pretty sure most of us have at least thought about it! Don’t pretend it’s just me. Well, in Ottawa, Canada, in 1980, three seemingly well-adjusted, gregarious everyday guys hatched a plan to really pull it off. So began one of the most electric bank robbing sprees in history. The Stopwatch Gang, as they came to be known, moved around the US for a decade, and this book is a step by step account of what happened written by a veteran true crime journalist. Thank you to Shane Parrish of Farnam Street for this book. (Check out my chat with Shane on his podcast The Knowledge Project here.)
6. Bill Peet: An Autobiography by Bill Peet. Critics uniformly predicted that Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs would be a bomb. Makes sense! It was 1937 and was the first feature-length animated film ever. Who would really sit through a cartoon that long? Well, behind the scenes at the small outfit Walt Disney was a guy named Bill Peet, a plucky young art student who got the job through a newspaper ad and worked for decades on films like Fantasia, Cinderella, and The Jungle Book. He also wrote a litany of children’s books “on the side” so this autobiography is created in the fashion of one. The best part in this quick read is the up close view into Walt Disney himself and what it looked like on the inside of Disney through the middle of the twentieth century. (For a fun romp check out BillPeet.net. I love old websites like this so much. Shoutout to GeoCities!)
7. Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith & Art by Madeleine L’Engle. I admit whenever I hear a book described as “a meditation on…” I sort of hear it as “a bunch of loose, semi-coherent rambles on…” How myopic of me! Because this book is indeed a meditation on faith and art and it is the furthest thing from loose and semi-coherent. With the powerful highbeamed mind of Madeleine L’Engle it dives down into the deeper, colder, darker waters far below other well-structured or well-researched or well-organized books to explore, to really meaningfully explore, the murky depths underpinning the massive overlapping circles of faith and art. As you read the book you’ll feel connected to a wise, patient, enlightened guide calmly showing you the meaning of all things. Absolutely mandatory reading for anyone creating art in any way. So, most people! Closest book I can compare it to would be The War of Art by Steven Pressfield but this gets a lot deeper in my view. Good book to pair with Chapter 43 of 3 Books with the wild Lisa Labute.
8. Becoming Better Grownups by Brad Montague. Do you remember the viral Kid President videos? They were created by Brad Montague. He has a butterfly soul of warmth, creativity, and kindness. Years ago when I was working at Walmart it was popular for the executives to go on listening tours. We’d pile into the company jet, which was essentially a rusty Dodge Caravan with wings, and then fly to remote towns to sit in the back of Walmart after Walmart and simply listen. Listen to who? Everyone! A group of cashiers. A group of assistant managers. A group of maintenance workers. “Tell us what’s on your mind”, “What’s frustrating about your job?”, “What isn’t working from the head office?” For the largest company in the world this was a remarkably nimble way to feed the top dogs with front line feedback. Why do I mention this? Because that’s exactly what Brad did to feed this book. He went on a 50-state listening tour to elementary school classrooms and asked them what they wanted from grownups. He then did the same with elders. And he compiled the lessons into this wonderfully written, beautifully illustrated guide to being a better grownup. Written in his whimsical, evocative style, it’s a great read full of life lessons and stories. Perfect gift for any new parent-to-be, too. (Sidenote: Check out Brad’s Instagram for daily inspiration.)
Interested in more of my reviews? Read my monthly book clubs or visit my Goodreads page.
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Neil Pasricha's Monthly Book Club - April 2020
Neil's Monthly Book Club is my oldest and most popular email newsletter. Click here to subscribe.
Hey everyone,
How you holding up?
Does it feel like your tank is draining just as this thing shifts into a higher gear? I can relate.
Want to take a breath together before chatting this month? Let's do it. Okay. Big breath in! Let your stomach push out and really fill your lungs as much as you can. And now hold for 5 ... 4 ... 3 ... 2 ... 1. And now let it all back out... slowly.
I’ve started writing a brand new 1000 awesome things during the pandemic. I post them on Instagram or you can sign up here to get one at 12:01am each day over email.
I also released a live courageous coronavirus Q&A with questions like: “How do I manage my struggling teenager at home?” “How do I get through this by myself?”, “How do I manage the guilt of not being fully there for my child or my work?” The group was incredibly vulnerable so this is a very emotional offering. It’s here if you need it like I did. Here’s the link.
Let’s continue to let books be a safe space and salvation for us all right now. Please share this email and the links above with anyone you think it could benefit. As always, just hit 'reply' anytime and let me know your feedback.
And now pull up a chair (or toilet) and let's get into the books,
Neil
1. The Boy & The Bindi by Vivek Shraya. I was listening to an interview with Vivek the other day and the host asked which words she uses to identify herself. It was a long list! Artist, trans, queer, bi, person of color, brown. I first found Vivek when her book I’m Afraid of Men jumped out to me at a bookstore. I found it brave, challenging, and mind-expanding on a lot of levels and put it in this book club (and this Publisher’s Weekly article.) This children’s book is a beautiful rhyming story of a young boy who takes interest in his mom’s bindi. It’s an activist and gender creative book that doesn’t slip into the trappings of trying to argue gender norms but simply allows a young boy’s curiosity towards a traditionally female-sporting dot to ferment into love. Pairs well with I Love My Purse by Belle Demont. (PS. Vivek will be my guest on Chapter 53 of 3 Books on the Flower Moon next week.)
2. The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison. I can’t recall a book this emotionally and racially charged since I read To Kill A Mockingbird when I was 15 years old. And I liked this one better. Toni Morrison died last summer at 88 after winning a Pulitzer Prize, Nobel Prize, and slew of other awards. This is her very first book, published in 1970, and she didn’t become well known for a while afterwards. I loved imagining that when I read it. Her first book! Released without fanfare! It takes place in Northern Ohio in the years after the Great Depression and tells the story of a young black girl in an abusive family told from the view of another girl in her class. Some reviewers say the book could be triggering for people who have suffered physical abuse so I’ll leave you with that warning. (It has been banned a lot.) But if you are up for an enchanting book to set your mind firmly somewhere else and tell a briskly paced story with an unbelievably poetic voice … I highly recommend this. Oprah agrees, of course.
3. Boy Wonders by Cathal Kelly. Want to grow up poor and black in Northern Ohio in the 1930s? Read The Bluest Eye. Want to grow up in a family of Irish immigrants in the Toronto suburbs in the 70s and 80s? Read this one. With chapter titles like Star Wars, Porno, and Dungeons & Dragons, you know what you’re in for. Or maybe you don’t. Because every chapter has a deeper point of gritty wisdom below the surface and sometimes even a point below that. I should mention that Cathal Kelly is my favorite sports columnist. He writes for The Globe & Mail and his worldview is like a street smart philosopher who jabs with the fist and the tongue in equal measure. (Check out his obituary of Kobe Bryant to get a flavor.) If you’re a fan of funny, first-person narratives that seem about the mundane but eventually crescendo into gripping and nearly fantastical stories then you’ll love this book. Winner of the Stephen Leacock Medal for Canadian Humour. Perfect for fans of David Sedaris.
4. Poor Charlie’s Almanack: The Wit & Wisdom of Charles T. Munger. Edited by Peter E. Kaufman. On one hand I sort of groaned when I flipped open this book. Seriously? The uber billionaire and longtime partner of Warren Buffet compiles a giant 500 page trophy to his accomplishments? But then I opened it and couldn’t stop flipping around. It’s chock full of wonderful commencement speeches, book recommendations, and mental models. It is one of the densest compendiums of wisdom you’ll find. If you’re even a bit intrigued on Charlie Munger, this is a good place to start before grabbing this book.
5. Two-Minute Mornings by Neil Pasricha. Yes, I'm using my own journal to get through this time. Mark Manson, my guest in Chapter 28 of 3 Books, wrote recently "From today until this is over, you have a new God, and his name is 'routine.'" I believe that and I think grounding and centering ourselves each morning right now is incredibly important. (Here's my take on it.)
6. Human Kind: Changing the world one small act at a time by Brad Aronson. I remember my eleventh grade teacher Ms. King telling us, “Jolt Cola, the hypercaffeinated sugary cola, with the slogan 'all the sugar, twice the caffeine', got popular in response to the new sea of diet and sugar free colas.” The whiplash effect! The Book of Awesome got popular partly because of the whiplash effect as it came out in a gloomy moment like this one. What are some coronavirus whiplashes? Well, one of them certainly appears to be kindness. Have you been watching Jon Krashinski’s SomeGoodNews? It’s wonderful. Brad Aronson’s book is smaller than Jon’s offering but in my mind it has a lot more utility. Human Kind is perfect for anyone feeling the weight of the world, itching to make a difference, and not sure which direction to baby step towards because the blankets of fog feel so thick. This book is a flashlight of well-written inspiring stories, simple lessons on kindness, and specific ways to help.
7. Deeper Thoughts by Jack Handey. Do you remember Deep Thoughts from Saturday Night Live? Someone put together a playlist of 57 of them in case you feel like killing half an hour. Or! You could grab this book. He’s written many others, too. And, for the super treasure trove, check out Jack Handey’s Shouts&Murmurs archive in The New Yorker. (Yes, he’s a real person.)
8. I Was Their American Dream: A Graphic Memoir by Malaka Gharib. On my book tour for You Are Awesome last fall I spent three days in New York. I think I went to The Strand all three days. (PS. The Strand is shipping online!) I met bookseller and Floor Manager Sophia Nehlawi there who proudly showed me a table she’d set up featuring graphic novels by women. Wow, I miss going to bookstores. Where else can you find a curated display like that? I picked up this book from the table and it’s a fun autobiographical coming-of-age story from an Egyptian-Filipino first-generation millennial who grows up with her Catholic mom in suburban Los Angeles and spends summers with her Muslim dad in Egypt. I loved the little window into both cultures but found it on the lighter side overall although that may be because my body is still reverberating from the incredible layered complexity of Berlin last month. I still can’t stop thinking about Berlin. You must read Berlin!
9. Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie. Speaking of New York, my friend Brian took me to The Mysterious Bookshop. It’s the oldest mystery bookstore in the US. (Also taking online orders!) I walked in and said “I don’t know anything about mysteries. Gimme a gateway drug!” and the bookseller passed me this book. Really? I thought. Agatha Christie? Well, she’s sold two billion books for a reason. (Want to guess where she is on the all-time list of bestselling fiction authors? Okay, guess, then click here to find out.) After a slow start of about fifty pages of mood and landscape setting this book took off like a cork out of champagne. I stayed up late a few nights in a row and it left me breathless by the end. The gates are open.
10. Walking by Henry David Thoreau. I know I put this in my "25 of the best books to read during coronavirus" article, too. But I really feel we all need to reread this phenomenal essay written in 1862 to help us adjust and embrace some elements of social distancing. My latest medicine for feeling overwhelmed? The super long, super late night walk.
Interested in more of my reviews? Read my monthly book clubs or visit my Goodreads page.
Click here to join the Book Club email list.
Neil Pasricha's Monthly Book Club - March 2020
Neil's Monthly Book Club is my oldest and most popular email newsletter. Click here to subscribe.
Hey everyone,
It feels like a decade has passed since my February Book Club. I hope you are finding comfort in simple things and staying connected with loved ones.
I wrote 49 things to do if you’re home due to coronavirus and 25 of the best books to read during Coronavirus and will keep sharing monthly book clubs, new articles on Neil.blog, and new chapters of 3 Books on every new moon and full moon.
One day at a time.
Hang in there,
Neil
1. Walkable City: How downtown can save America, one step at a time by Jeff Speck. Suddenly the whole world is grounded. Whether you’re a hero working the front lines or quarantining yourself for the greater good, I’m guessing your primary method of transportation has suddenly become your feet. I’m a big fan of long walks and in non-quarantined times I try and spend a day or two a week going untouchable and bringing out my inner flâneur. I absolutely loved this book about walkability and its power to completely transform our health, our planet, our economies, and our communities. Jeff Speck presents The General Theory of Walkability which explains how, ‘to be favored, a walk has to satisfy four main conditions: it must be useful, safe, comfortable, and interesting’ and calls pedestrians ‘an extremely fragile species, the canary in the coal mine of urban liveability.’ I can’t recommend this punchy, well-researched, and witty book enough. The world is changing and can’t help but feel like Jeff Speck’s ideas will be a big part of where we’re heading.
2. Berlin by Jason Lutes. I remembering visiting my friend Chris Kim at his Boston apartment years ago when he passed me his copy of Maus by Art Spiegelman. That OG graphic novel about the holocaust completely blew me away. I sadly never had a chance to return it so it sits on my shelf today and has since been joined by incredible work by artists like Alison Bechdel (Fun Home), Adrian Tomine (Killing & Dying), and Marjane Satrapi (Persepolis). However, I am pretty sure I have never read a graphic novel with the level of layered emotional, character, and plot complexity of this nearly 600-page wonder. I am not surprised Jason Lutes spent 22 years writing and illustrating it. If you’re like me, the graphic novel will take 50-100 pages to get into as new people and storylines keep popping out of nowhere but once you get a loose grasp on the dozens of characters you will absolutely get lost in it. Berlin was the progressive center of Europe during the Weimar Republic of 1918-1933 where ‘creativity, political thought, and sexual liberty burned bright before being snuffed out under the bootheel of fascism.’ This is a story of that time. If you have a craving right now to walk onto the Holodeck, press a button, and live somewhere else for a while, this is the book for you. Highly recommended.
3. What Is Hinduism? by Mahatma Gandhi. I felt bad for Gandhi the other day. This book was sitting in the dollar bin outside a used bookstore and I picked it up thinking he deserved better than that. What is Hinduism? I’m glad you asked. This thin book is a series of short, clear essays he contributed to magazines throughout the 1920s with titles like “What is Hinduism?”, “Equality of Religions”, “Non-Violence”, and “God and Congress.” Considering how much I’ve seen and read about Gandhi it seemed high time I read some of his own words. I think in general if I notice myself reading about someone (or resonating with quotes from someone) over and over I should pick up one of their own books. New Life Policy.
4. Matilda by Roald Dahl. Which Roald Dahl book should a child read as their very first? Kevin the Bookseller told me in Chapter 44 of 3 Books that he’d suggest Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, James and the Giant Peach, or Matilda. I agreed with the first two but had never read Matilda. So I bought it. And now I have. What do I think? Well, while it finishes with a flourish I found it mostly An Unfortunate Series of Sadistic Events starring Matilda’s school principal. Sorry Kevin, but I gotta round out my Top 3 with The BFG instead. (Note: Kevin did add the first Roald Dahl book to The Top 1000 and it was, strangely, none of these three.)
5. Think Like A Rocket Scientist: Simple Strategies You Can Use to Make Giant Leaps in Work and Life by Ozan Varol. I love Ozan Varol. He’s a rocket scientist turned award-winning professor, author, and podcaster. (I just did a rare AMA on his wonderful Famous Failures podcast.) More than that he’s a brilliant mind, a warm and kind heart, and the exact type of spirit we need putting resilient vibes into the world right now. I don’t envy anyone launching a book right now with so many festivals and bookstores closed but I am hoping this book picks up steam. I think it will and it absolutely deserves to because there’s just an endless series of brain nuggets chapter by chapter. There’s a reason Adam Grant put it as #1 on his list of 20 leadership books to read in 2020.
6. The Nuclear Family Was a Mistake by David Brooks. This cover story from the March issue of The Atlantic is a history of how we live together (that almost reads like a chapter excerpt from Sapiens) as well as an incredibly well-argued push to broaden and deepen our community connections today. Are you feeling the neighborly love through Coronavirus everything? This is a push to lean into that drawn from the simple fact that we always used to. From the article: “Americans are hungering to live in extended and forged families, in ways that are new and ancient at the same time. This is a significant opportunity, a chance to thicken and broaden family relationships, a chance to allow more adults and children to live and grow under the loving gaze of a dozen pairs of eyes, and be caught, when they fall, by a dozen pairs of arms. For decades we have been eating at smaller and smaller tables, with fewer and fewer kin. It’s time to find ways to bring back the big tables.”
7. Lie With Me by Philippe Besson. Translated from French by Molly Ringwald. “Yes, that Molly Ringwald,” read the handwritten cue card on the Staff Picks wall at Toronto indie bookstore Type Books. (PS. Toronto folks -- call Type! They're taking phone orders and delivering.) That’s where I first discovered this gem about a hidden love affair between two teenage boys in rural France in 1984 which timewarps from the past to today told as a first-person memory by the author. That summary means nothing, though. Put it this way: This book will twist and squeeze your heart in so many ways all leading up maybe the most emotionally exquisite final page of any novel I’ve ever read. André Aciman, author of Call Me By Your Name, says “Two young men find each other, always fearing that life itself might be the villain standing in their way. A stunning and heart-gripping tale.” This book is a true masterpiece.
8. The Wallcreeper by Nell Zink. Do you ever have a friend come visit you from out of town and then you take them to one of your favorite local bookstores to browse for a while and you end up buying each other one of your favorite books and you feel like it’s a super fun thing to do because it’ll give you both a memory of the trip and of your friendship forever but then after they leave and you actually open up and read the book you find you like parts of it but you don’t totally love it in fact you don’t really love it at all and you don’t really know what to make of it but you don’t want to insult your friend who has told you it meant so much to them so you sort of plod through it so you can definitely say you read it if they ever ask but just sort of never really mention it again? Me too. Sorry Rob.
9. For The Love Of Books: Designing and Curating a Home Library by Thatcher Wine & Elizabeth Lane. Do you have a lot of time on your hands right now? Time to finally organize all your bookshelves! I suggest grabbing this wonderful book to help. My friend Joey Coleman sent me this book and I am so grateful he did as it widened my understanding of the value of a home library. Beautiful prose on book history complements incredible photos throughout.
10. Mister Rogers Neighborhood. I felt the need to interrupt the book list by mentioning that five free (and commercial free) Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood episodes are posted on MisterRogers.org every other Monday.
11. The Dog of the South by Charles Portis. Charles Portis is a writer’s writer. People like Donna Tartt, Stephen King, and Roald Dahl line up to praise him. His voice is a completely original deadpan bonkers. Dave Barry first told me about him and he picked this book as one of his most formative. Portis wrote only five novels total until his death last month including True Grit, his most famous. But this book seems like a good one to start with. In it, Ray Midge is attempting to track down his wife Norma who has run off to Belize with her first husband which leads into a mad caper through the Southern US and Mexico with a band of wild characters.
Interested in more of my reviews? Read my monthly book clubs or visit my Goodreads page.
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Neil Pasricha's Monthly Book Club - February 2020
Neil's Monthly Book Club is my oldest and most popular email newsletter. Click here to subscribe.
Hey everybody,
How’s your sleep been lately? Mine’s been pretty shot. Stress, I think, built up from a number of things. Three months promoting You Are Awesome. (Thank you so much.) Way too much late night cell phone use. A few people close to me going through challenges.
When I find my sleep suffering I know it’s time to get back into self care. Going to the gym. Lots of long walks. Shutting off the phone early. Getting ready for bed early. And, of course, flipping open a book before bed so I can just slip away into another conscience.
Here are some consciences I slipped into this month,
Neil
1. Quiet by Susan Cain. We need a word to describe that feeling when you feel for years like you’ve already read a certain book but then when you start reading it you suddenly realize you haven’t. That feeling. You know the viral TED Talk, you’ve flipped through the book in airports, you’ve read articles from the author, and maybe you’ve even talked about some key points from the book a dozen times. Maybe even acted like you’ve read it! But you haven’t. You haven’t read the book. What’s that called? A dummy book? An almost book? A placebo book? Do you have something better? If not I’m going with Placebo Book. Well, Quiet was a Placebo Book for me. I thought I had read it! Turns out I hadn’t. And that’s too bad because it’s a wonderful journey. And it is a journey, too. You are basically sitting beside Susan Cain on her six year (!) global quest to understand introverts -- from Tony Robbins seminars to Harvard Business School cafeterias to even Truth and Consequences, New Mexico to speak to the woman played by Michelle Pfeiffer in Dangerous Minds. It’s a helluva journey. And the wanderings, curios, and insights that jump out of the jungle along the way are incredible … all puzzle-pieced together by Susan’s stunningly brilliant mind. You will miss Susan at the end because this book is an incredible joy. Must, must, must read.
2. Election by Tom Perrotta. I absolutely loved the 1999 Reese Witherspoon / Matthew Broderick movie Election and I don’t think I realized it was based on a book. Guess what? It is! And it’s a great one. A super fast paced dark comedy that will briefly pluck you out of your brain and drop you right in the midst of a volatile high school student council election. Somehow light and dark at the same time.
3. Charlotte’s Web by E.B. White. I can’t think of a more beautiful way to slowly introduce a child to deeper issues around death and friendship than Charlotte’s Web. Do you remember Charlotte’s Web? When I picked it up both Leslie and I thought we did … but we didn’t. “Doesn’t the pig die at the end?” “Yes, yes, of course. Charlotte the Pig.” No! That’s not what happens! Take a trip back to your childhood and read (or reread) this wonderful magically realistic tale. (Sidenote: I did not realize that E.B. White was a famous New Yorker writer for more than fifty years and he wrote several children's books including Stuart Little and The Trumpet of the Swan.) (Sidenote sidenote: Did you know Conan O'Brien and E.B. White exchanged letters??)
4. Martin Luther King: The Peaceful Warrior by Ed Clayton. Do you remember Denzel Washington’s character in Philadelphia always saying “Can you explain this to me like I’m a six year old”? I’ve always loved that idea and it’s similar to how a CEO I used to work for at Walmart would ask me if the slides I wrote up would pass “The Grandma Test” or basically be simple enough that somebody’s grandmother, who knew nothing about Walmart, could understand them. I have a deep love for material that aims wide, clear, and simple enough that it appeals to a wider audience. (It’s a lot harder to be simple than fancy!) Personally, I’m starting to even feel that phrases like Young Adult, when it comes to book categories, are bizarrely ageist. Like who’s to say how old you should be to read Peter Pan or The Fault In Your Stars, you know? This Young Adult book by Ed Clayton is a great example. Martin Luther King Jr. personally hired Ed Clayton as a PR man for the civil rights movement. One of his tasks was introducing MLK Jr. to a wider audience so he wrote this straightforward biography about his upbringing and his work. It is a perfect way to go from 0/10 to like 5/10 on MLK Jr knowledge very quickly. I want to spend a month reading a book like this about every important person in history. Do you have any similar ones you recommend? (Sidenote: Anyone else feel like watching a great Denzel scene from Philadelphia? I couldn't find the six-year-old clip.)
5. The Essential Rumi. Translated by Coleman Barks. If you’re like me you’ve been seeing Rumi quotes floating around the Internet forever. And, if you’re like me, you had no real idea who Rumi actually is or was. Well, here’s the quick rundown: 1) He’s a he! Let’s start there. I always thought he was a she, 2) He was a 13th century Persian poet originally from Greater Khorasan, fled invading Mongol armies, and settled in Konya, Turkey, 3) He met Shams-e Tabrizi and thought of him as a spiritual sounding board and wrote a ton of incredible epic poems about soulful expression, love verses filled with yearning and desire, anecdotes, life lessons, moral stories, and even satirical tales. This is a book of his work and, if you’re like me, some poems will bounce off your tin can shell making zero impact and others will penetrate your heart deeper than you ever thought possible.
6. Professor at Large: The Cornell Years by John Cleese. A few years ago I was researching the idea of “creating space” for The Happiness Equation and I came across an incredible speech by John Cleese talking about your brain in open mode and closed mode. Turns out that was one of many speeches Cleese gave while serving as a Professor At Large (PAL is what they call him) at Cornell University. This book is published by Cornell University and is a great collection of speeches and conversations he’s held at the school. Thank you to Kevin Marusic (aka Kevin The Bookseller) for this recommendation. (Check out my chat with Kevin in Chapter 44 of 3 Books.)
7. David Foster Wallace: The Last Interview and Other Conversations. Edited by David Streitfeld. I just discovered this book series called The Last Interview. Do you know it? They have one with Hunter S. Thompson and one with Ernest Hemingway and one with Ursula K. Le Guin and one with (yes) David Foster Wallace. David Foster Wallace has such a beautifully complex mind and yet he’s able to explain big gargantuan ideas in such clear and simple language. One of my favorite answers in this book is when he’s asked by his Amherst Alumni Magazine “How would you describe the impact of your work? ... And how do you measure the success of your work?” Here’s a tweet I sent out with his reply. (If you like this, you will find plenty of other gems in the book.)
8. Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata. Last year I recommended the book Totto-Chan: The Girl At The Window by Tetsuko Kuroyanagi which was, a bit surprisingly I think it’s fair to say, one of Ryan Holiday’s most formative books. Nearly twenty years ago I spent a couple weeks in Japan and fell in love with the culture and Totto-Chan was a tiny window back in. Then the other day I was browsing the Staff Picks wall of a local indie bookstore and saw this Japanese novel was newly translated into english and slathered in awards I was like “Ooooo, gimme, gimme, gimme!” Perfectly satisfied my craving for another Japanese slice-of-life book. This time the slice of life is that of a middle-aged woman working in a convenience store in a downtown city. Want to hang out there for a few hours? Then this is a perfect conscience for you.
Interested in more of my reviews? Read my monthly book clubs or visit my Goodreads page.
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Neil Pasricha's Monthly Book Club - January 2020
Neil's Monthly Book Club is my oldest and most popular email newsletter. Click here to subscribe.
Hey everybody,
Happy January and welcome to the best reading year of your life! Turn off the news and delete social media because it’s time to crack into a good book.
Before the recos! Quick reminder: I have three email lists including this monthly book club, my bi-weekly article on intentional living, and my two-line “postcards” whenever I drop a new chapter of 3 Books. Visit this link to make sure you’re on all the lists you want. All are 100% ad free, spam free, commercial free, and I never share your email with anyone.
Thanks for reading and onto the picks…
Neil
1. Dibs in Search of Self by Virginia M. Axline. I stayed up late, night after night, reading this completely absorbing non-fiction recount of an emotionally lost little boy named Dibs as he’s slowly coached back from the brink by gifted therapist Virginia M. Axline. Have you ever had a therapy appointment and wondered what they were writing about you afterwards? Me too! Well, this book feels exactly like you’re reading a therapist’s personal notes. The book opens with Dibs about to be shipped off to a mental institution by his exasperated parents and teachers. Why? Because he never talks, hides under desks at school all day, seems totally non-responsive, and screams and scratches anyone who comes near him. The book was published in 1964 and the cover screams “The Child Therapy Classic!” There are wonderfully insightful gems here for anybody looking to become a better parent, coach, or leader. (Nicely pairs with a lot of lessons from The Coaching Habit, actually!) I learned a lot of language and communication techniques to help children search and find their true self. A brilliant book I can’t recommend enough!
2. The Story of Ferdinand by Munro Leaf. At the very back of Quiet by Susan Cain there is a little two-page extra called “Recommended Reading: Introverts in Literature” and the very first book recommended … is this one. A wonderful 30-page pen-and-ink drawn children’s book from 1936 (1936!) about a bull named Ferdinand who prefers sitting alone and smelling the flowers while all the other bulls like to fight. Good news? His mother understands him! The matadors are sad but they get it and ship him back home! The story ends with him quietly sniffing flowers. Too bad all introverts aren’t so lucky. Perfect for the quieter child in your life…
3. Claudine at School by Colette. Back in the late 1800s a young French woman named Colette was locked in her room and ordered to write books by her much older husband Willy. He took authorship of her books which became giant bestsellers in France. She eventually broke free of the marriage and continued to write nearly eighty (!?) published works up to 1954 when she died and was given a state funeral and mourned as a national treasure. Claudine at School (or Claudine A L’École) is her very first book and, according to the introduction, it invented the century’s first teenage girl: “rebellious, secretive, erotically reckless and disturbed, determined to be an individual in her own right, but confused about how….” This book is sometimes considered the first ever queer YA novel and is absolutely hypnotic. It’s assumed to be based on Colette’s own boarding school experiences in France in the 1880s and reads like a deeply personal diary. Deeply escapist. (PS. I haven’t seen it but there’s a recent film about Colette starring Keira Knightley. Check out the trailer.)
4. Peaceful Parent, Happy Kids: How To Stop Yelling and Start Connecting by Dr. Laura Markham. Do you yell at your kids? I do. And then I feel terrible afterwards. It’s embarrassing. What am I doing? How do I let my buttons get pushed by a three year old refusing to put on his shoes? Enter this book. Dr. Laura Markham’s work is deeply empathetic, connected, and loving and her simple advice will have you thinking “Yes, yes, yes, totally” but (of course) the hard part is doing it. I can confidently say this book has turned me into a better father by offering a simple three-step approach to be a more peaceful parent. Step 1. Regulating Yourself, Step 2. Fostering Connection, and Step 3. Coaching not Controlling. She says that discipline never (never!) works and offers many solutions using games and connection to coach behavior instead. I just got back from interviewing Dr. Laura Markham in Brooklyn and am eager to share our chat in the very next chapter of 3 Books. (PS. If you’re intrigued by Dr. Laura Markham’s work but don’t want to jump into a book, then start with her fantastic newsletter. Link at bottom left of the page.)
5. Books for Living: Some Thoughts on Reading, Reflecting, and Embracing Life by Will Schwalbe. Did you ever have a librarian sit on a rocking chair in the corner of the library share a stack of books with your entire second grade class sitting on an old green carpet? And the librarian had like big excited eyes behind thick glasses? And all the books had like crinkly plastic coverings and Dewey Decimal stickers on the spines? And then everyone got all excited to read them all and people literally ran to sign out James And The Giant Peach or whatever afterwards? I feel like I have the memory of that happening to me but maybe I just saw it in the movies. Why do I mention it? Because this book feels like that exact scene. Starring Will Schwalbe as The Librarian. Will has lead a rich and diverse life and he loves books, reads a ton, and takes you, the eager second grader, on a welcoming and warmhearted journey through a series of great books to help you with the lofty goal of living. From Stuart Little to Wonder to The Little Prince to dozens of others it’s a beautiful way to cattle-prod your reading or help open your eyes to books far outside your field of vision. I loved it.
6. How YouTube Gives Us Love Without The Messiness by Michael Harris. Did you see Her by Spike Jonze and starring Joaquin Phoenix? That was one of my Seatglue Movies. What’s a Seatglue Movie? Any movie that has you glued to your seat in theaters until the end credits have completely rolled and the guy cleaning up the garbage asks your to leave and (even then) you have a hard time getting up because you are so emotionally stunned by what you’ve just seen. You are glued to your seat. You cannot move. What’s your Seatglue movie? It’s fun to talk about. Anyway, longtime readers of this newsletter will remember how obsessed I was with Solitude by Michael Harris a couple years ago. I loved it and hung out with Michael in Vancouver to interview him for 3 Books! I love his writing and his lens exploring how we live. What does that have to do with Her? Well, Michael’s brand new article in The Walrus takes a closer look at where “dating a computer” is today. Turns out we are closer to the world of Her than I thought!
7. 1000+ Little Things Happy Successful People Do Differently by Marc & Angel Chernoff. One of the best parts of my book tour for You Are Awesome was reconnecting with old friends. Way, way back in the early days of 1000 Awesome Things I developed a friendship with Marc and Angel who were putting out great self-help content on their blog “Marc and Angel Hack Life.” That was over a decade ago! Well, they are still at it and have grown their community by leaps and bounds. They sent me a copy of their latest book and I think it’s perfect for our Enlightened Bathroom Reading series. A deeply accessible 300-page pack of listicles like 10 Habits You Must Quit To Be Happy, 12 Relationship Truths We Often Forget, and (my favorite) 12 Things My Grandmother Told Me Before She Died.
8. Inherit The Wind by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee. Almost a hundred years ago, way back in 1925, a schoolteacher in Dayton, Tennessee was put on trial for teaching evolution. The trial was covered around the country and considered one of the biggest legal wars of the century. Thirty years later in 1955 this play was written which is fictionalized but does use some actual quotes from the 1925 courtroom transcript. The play last ran in New York just over a decade ago starring Christopher Plummer and the script reads incredible fresh today. A wonderful quick read.
9. The Pearl by John Steinbeck. Do you ever fantasize about winning the lottery? I wrote about it a while back and wondered if I’d choose the tall, snooty butler with a pencil moustache or the short, bumbling one with a heart of gold. I wondered whether I’d get a pool or a tennis court or maybe skip both for a helipad so my new rich friends would have a place to park when they came over for polo. Well, this tightly written dystopian parable by John Steinbeck crashes those illusions down hard. When poor Kino and his wife find a giant pearl they dream of a new life for themselves. I won’t ruin what happens next but let’s just say no butlers are involved. Thin, tight, terse, and tense, if you liked The Road by Cormac McCarthy you’ll love this book.
Interested in more of my reviews? Read my monthly book clubs or visit my Goodreads page.
Click here to join the Book Club email list.
Neil Pasricha's Monthly Book Club - November 2019
Neil's Monthly Book Club is my oldest and most popular email newsletter. Click here to subscribe.
Hey everyone,
This month has flowwwwwwwn.
You Are Awesome dropped November 5th and became a #1 international bestseller in its first week and has so far made six bestseller lists in the US and Canada alone. (Thank you!)
A dozen TV and radio interviews, half a dozen podcasts, four bookstore events, and three keynote speeches … between today and Saturday alone. Fun! Beautiful! Amazing! I am not complaining. I know how lucky I am. But it's simultaneously energizing and draining. And I couldn’t be doing any of this without Leslie, my family, and all of your endless support.
I got a couple emails from people saying I am sending too many notes about my new book. So I thought I’d share: The reason I am able to make the decision to avoid putting ads on anything I make – my 3 Books podcast, 1000 Awesome Things, GlobalHappiness.org, Neil.blog, all my email newsletters, this monthly book club, all my social media, etc -- is 100% because of the support you have given me on my books. Every few years I will ask you to buy one! (Buy one!) I hope you feel it’s a fair trade. I appreciate your support a ton. And I will never put ads on my stuff.
Sincerely yours, a burnt out, tired, grateful, and book launch crazy,
Neil
–
1. Chasing The Scream: The First And Last Day of the War on Drugs by Johann Hari. Do you think drugs should be illegal? Which ones? Why? What happens when they’re not? What happened when they weren’t? Who made them illegal? Why did they do that? And what happened when they did? It turns out that precisely zero of the answers to these questions are obvious. This is a massively illuminating and mind expanding exploration of our relationship with drugs. Everyone should read it. It is at once a detailed history of the drug war, a buddy-beside-you-on-a-bus account of one man’s obsessive across-the-world multi-year exploration into the abyss of the war on drugs, and a series of hopeful stories full of compassion and love that will honestly surprise you so much you might cry. I did. I absolutely cannot recommend it enough. This could be the best book I have read in 2019. It will definitely be on my Best Of 2019 list which comes out in a couple weeks.
2. The Great Mental Models: General Thinking Concepts by Shane Parrish. Do you read the Farnam Street blog? You should! Shane Parrish and his team are putting out some of the highest quality content on the internet and it’s all clean, thoughtful prose about how we think. They summarize big books, share mental models, and help people master the best of what other people have already figured out. It’s no wonder The New York Times profiled Shane under the headline “How A Former Canadian Spy Helps Wall Street Mavens Think Smarter.” Shane and his team pick at big issues and this book is a neatly packaged exploration of mental models that can be used to strengthen your thinking again and again. As a sidenote: I also recommended BrainFood in my list of 9 of the world’s best email newsletters.
3. The Vagina Bible by Dr. Jen Gunter. Yes, I have the Vagina Bible on my bookshelf. When gynecologist Dr. Jen Gunter gave birth to preemies a number of years ago she was stunned how difficult it was to sift through the misinformation about learning how to take care of them. So she wrote a book! For herself and others. Called The Preemie Primer. Since then she’s become a medical crusader. People call her Twitter’s OB / GYN because she posts epic takedowns of bizarro natural products with big claims (i.e., jade eggs, anyone?) using deep research and fact-checking. As Jen says: “Medicine has been rooted in mansplaining since the beginning.” Why? Most (all) doctors were men and they couldn’t / wouldn’t do autopsies on female cadavers. So the research has been rapidly playing catchup. Enter Jen and her new book The Vagina Bible which, as the title says, serves as a definitive resource for all things vulva and vagina. Now, can someone please write The Penis Bible? (PS. Jen was my guest on Chapter 41 of 3 Books (listen to her!) and here she is on Twitter Jensplaining, as she puts it.)
4. Commute: An Illustrated Memoir of Female Shame by Erin Williams. Have you ever spent an afternoon walking around The Strand in NYC? They claim there are 18 miles of books in there so you really can get lost. While wandering around a couple weeks ago I met an incredible bookseller named Sofia who showed me the new “Women in Comics” display she’d put together featuring graphic novels by women. (Sidenote: I love when bookstores have super unique or strange sub-categories. Shoutout to “Plotless Fiction” at Type Books in Toronto!) I picked up this graphic novel from there and it … kind of shocked me. I recommend it but it is a painful read. It is billed as “An intimate, clever, and ultimately gut-wrenching graphic memoir about the daily decision women must make between being sexualized or being invisible.”
5. The best ever indie bookstore bookmark. Not a book! A bookmark. See, I love indie bookstores. Did I mention I love indie bookstores? (#indielove!) I did Chapter 4 and Chapter 21 of 3 Books in indie bookstores. And, I am also a sucker for indie bookstore bookmarks. I love them. They are always unique. Super thin and hard! Super wide and flappy! Covered in nerdy Shakespeare or Tolkien quotes! I leave them in the books I buy from the bookstore forever as a souvenir of the store and my experience there. (This strategy pairs well with my Life Rule to never leave an indie bookstore without buying something. Will you join me in observing it?) Over the past few weeks I’ve got bookmarks from The Strand in NYC, Anderson’s Bookshop in Chicago, Black Bond Books in Vancouver, and Mable’s Fables in Toronto, amongst many others. But one stands out! Check out this epic bookmark from Book City! Read the whole thing. (Link just goes to a pic of the bookmark I tweeted.)
6. Don’t Keep Your Day Job by Cathy Heller. One of the most fun parts about my book launch has been doing podcasts. I feel like I’m always walking into a glorious invisible mental room within some fascinating mind. Some go beautifully all over the place like Sickboy. Some focus deeply on a core issue like parenting like my chat with Jason at mindbodygreen or Anna at Authentic Parenting. Some go deep into the book’s research and takeaways like The Jordan Harbinger Show. Some are great catchups with friends like The Learning Leader Show or The Ziglar Show. Some are super specific premises like answering complex reader questions at Dear HBR. Some are playing with giant minds like The Knowledge Project, Terrible Thanks For Asking, and Chase Jarvis Live (excited to share these when they air). And then some turn into a deep soul connection out of nowhere. Like my chat with Cathy on her great podcast Don’t Keep Your Day Job. I love Cathy! I love the energy she’s putting out into the world. Her community has completely buried me in notes for the past three weeks. But that’s okay! That's all right. Because they are my kind of people. Explorers. Seekers. Artists. This book is full of wisdom from Cathy herself and people she’s chatted with like Gretchen Rubin and Jen Sincero.
7. Molly’s Game by Molly Bloom. Molly grew up in rural Colorado in an extremely super achieving family. Like Harvard surgeon and Olympian athlete type super achieving. After being a top ranked national skier she left to go to LA for brighter pastures and ended up – as one does – running one of the world’s highest stakes poker games with millions getting swapped at the table every night. And then? She was busted by the feds. Don’t worry. Not a spoiler. That’s the opening scene. This is a gripping page-turning memoir which, of course, was turned into the Oscar-nominated film by Aaron Sorkin. If you’re curious what is below this story and what happened after Molly’s Game ends … then listen in to my recent conversation with Molly on 3 Books. (Okay, is it a spoiler if I tell you one of her books is a series written in the second-person...?)
8. The Awesome Music Project Canada: Songs of Hope and Happiness by Terry Stuart and Robert Carli. I have a thing for super gigantic passion projects that are insanely hard to pull off but of course are going to be pulled off because the Jupiter-sized heart of the person leading the thing. Things like the insanely delicious sushi restaurant with the freshest fish in the city who only take one reservation every half hour to serve them well. Things like the bartender who wants you to mix your drink through a detailed examination of your mood. Things like Frank Warren spending over a decade collecting, curating, and publishing a thoughtful examination of the human condition through anonymous postcards every single Sunday. And things like The Awesome Music Project. Terry and Robert spent years assembling personal, heartfelt stories of how music touched people’s lives (including one from me) and sewed them into this beautiful hardcover book with all proceeds going to support music and mental health charities. A gift.
Interested in more of my reviews? Read my monthly book clubs or visit my Goodreads page.
Click here to join the Book Club email list.
Neil Pasricha's Monthly Book Club - October 2019
Neil's Monthly Book Club is my oldest and most popular email newsletter. Click here to subscribe.
Hey everyone,
Hope you’re having a great October.
I’m going on book tour for You Are Awesome in less than two weeks and hope to see some of you in Toronto, New York, Vancouver, Chicago, or Calgary. (All ticket and event details are here.)
And now ... to the books!
Neil
–
1. The Catcher In The Rye by J.D. Salinger. I remember reading an old interview with famed editor Amy Einhorn (The Help, Big Little Lies, Let’s Pretend This Never Happened, The Book of Awesome) where she was asked how she found her books and she said something like “I just look for voice.” What? That’s it? Just voice? Yes, just voice. Not genre, trends, platform size, celebrity. Just voice. How rare! How refreshing! And likely a huge part of her success. Well, I kept thinking about that when I finally read The Catcher in the Rye because (frankly) I thought the plot was boring. Holden Caufield gets kicked out of high school and bums around New York for a few days. The end! Yet the voice was so magnetic that I felt myself drawn to the book as it sat on my bedside table. I kept walking over to it and reading a few more pages. Then I’d walk away and walk back again. Then I’d walk away and walk back again. I couldn’t stop hanging out with this guy. He felt like an old friend. He trusted me. I trusted him. I felt a deep connection. This book is 75 years old! But listen how fresh it still sounds from the opening sentence: “If you really want to hear about, the first thing you’ll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don’t feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth.” A true study in reader seduction. Go back and read it if you haven’t!
2. Ask Me About Polyamory by Tikva Wolf. I had no idea what the phrase “I’m poly” meant until maybe a year ago. Since then I’ve heard a dozen or so people share that they’re poly including 3 Books guest Juniper Fitzgerald (How Mamas Love Their Babies) and Jeremie Saunders (Sickboy, Turn Me On). What is poly? According to Wikipedia polyamory is ‘characterized by or involved in the practice of engaging in multiple sexual relationships with the consent of all people involved.’ This book broadens and deepens that definition, though. It is a collection of comics that serve as an incredibly accessible, warm, funny, enlightening, and welcoming introduction to a huge variety of polyamory, queer, and genderqueer issues. I loved it. (PS. Here’s the online home of Tikva’s comics.)
3. Stories That Stick by Kindra Hall. I met Kindra Hall when we were accidentally wedged together in the back of a car on the way to the Los Angeles airport. We had both just finished speaking for the YMCA and were frantically pushing buttons on our cell phones (ugh) before racing to catch flights. At some point in the middle of the drive we managed to actually turn to each other and say hello. And the conversation took off because Kindra is (you guessed it) an incredible storyteller. You can’t stop listening to her! That’s kind of her thing. She gave me an early copy of her new book and I opened it and couldn’t stop listening to it, either. Just came out last month and debuted on a bunch of bestseller lists. I’m not surprised because her stories keep you flipping and the book forces a nice, healthy mental chiropractic adjustment of what you’re telling the world … and how. What is your Value Story? (Why do people need what you provide?) What is your Founder Story? (Why should people invest in you?) What is your Purpose Story? (How do you inspire employees?) Although it is purportedly a ‘business book’ and for those who really need to nail their elevator speech or pitch I think the book applies much more broadly. I took a lot away from it.
4. David Sedaris Diaries: A Visual Compendium edited by Jeffrey Jenkins. I was listening to an episode of Dax Sheppard where he introduced David Sedaris as ‘a national treasure.’ Tall praise! But he’s right. Because how many people could publish a big, heavy, full-color, 250-page coffee table book of their diaries and sell it? Not many people who aren’t national treasures. Since 1977 David Sedaris has kept roughly four diaries a year. He told me last year that ‘I write on Christmas, I write on my birthday.’ So on top of his New Yorker essays and books are over 150 (so far) diaries that he arranges in a tall bookshelf with a big skull on it. (There’s a picture of the shelf in here.) The diaries are full of glued in bits and pieces that he found or came across, head-trippy collages that he painstakingly arranged, and endless wry and pithy observations about the world. Jeffrey Jenkins clearly went to great lengths to mimic those diaries in this book. There are little cardboard popouts. There’s a plastic envelope in the back with random ephemera. And there is a great intro from Sedaris himself. Perfect for Sedaris completists.
5. Terrible, Thanks For Asking by Nora McInerny. How often do you meet someone and then wonder how you didn’t know them before? That happened with me and Nora McInerny earlier this year. Nora’s life was upended a few years ago when in the span of a few weeks she had a miscarriage, lost her dad to cancer, and then lost her husband to a brain tumor. Over the years she has channeled the insights from those experiences into a remarkable body of work and art that is equal parts poignant and truly and deeply hilarious. If you don’t know her, catch up! Step 1: Watch her TED Talk “We don’t ‘move on’ from grief. We move forward with it.” Step 2: Subscribe to her podcast Terrible, Thanks for Asking. Step 3: Check out her books. (I’m on Step 3 right now). I love what Nora McInerny is putting out into the world. In this age of rising loneliness, separation, and disconnection, we need people like her working to emotionally connect us with their full and true hearts.
6. This Is Water by David Foster Wallace. I found a big stack of these small and tiny hardcovers in the remainder bin of my local used bookstore so after my eyes did that Looney Tunes popout thing I bought a big pile. Sure, I had watched the video of this commencement speech before (which Time somewhat puffily calls “The Last Lecture for intellectuals.”), I had read the text online multiple times, but now I own it and it lives with me in my house and feels different. An incredible speech about living an intentional life and about constantly trying to see the water you’re swimming in and navigating forward from a place of empathy, humility, and compassion. (PS. For David Foster Wallace nerds only: While digging around on the Internet I came across this hilarious and incredible 2005 course syllabus from a class he taught at Pomona College...)
7. Ernest Hemingway on Writing by Larry W. Phillips. This is the best book on writing I have ever read. Yes, I said it. I honestly liked it better than the (much more popular) Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott or On Writing by Stephen King. Those books are (very) good. This book is (very) great. Ernest Hemingway thought it was bad luck to talk about writing. So he didn’t! Or he thought he didn’t. But twenty-five years after he died journalist Larry W. Phillips combed through Hemingway’s personal letters to friends, editors, fellow writers, and critics, as well as interviews he conducted over his career, and pulled out the many wise and remarkable thoughts Hemingway shared on writing over his life. He then sort of shaped and sculpted them together by theme (“Working Habits”, “The Writer’s Life”, “Characters”, etc) to produce this slender 140-page volume of endless gold nuggets. I circled so many quotes and made so many notes in the margins that I just ended up leaving it on my bedside table when I was done in the hopes that it will slowly merge into my subconscious. A gem for anyone that writes and wants to write better. Highly recommended.
8. Don’t Touch my Hair! by Sharee Miller. How do you teach children about boundaries? Read them this book. A wonderful story about a girl named Aria who has big, bouncy, curly hair that everybody wants to touch. After she has a big scream one day (“Don’t touch my hair!”) she learns that people need to ask permission to touch her hair and that she can feel confident saying yes or saying no.
As always, thank you so much for reading. Reply any time with your own thoughts and suggestions. I get my best book recommendations from the readers of this list...
Interested in more of my reviews? Read my monthly book clubs or visit my Goodreads page.
Click here to join the Book Club email list.
Neil Pasricha's Monthly Book Club - September 2019
Neil's Monthly Book Club is my oldest and most popular email newsletter. Click here to subscribe.
Hey everyone,
My new book You Are Awesome: How to Navigate Change, Wrestle With Failure, and Live an Intentional Life is available to preorder now. Click here to learn more.
And now ... onto the books,
Neil
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1. Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng. Last year I flew down to Key West, Florida to visit Judy Blume in her bookstore for 3 Books. Life highlight! And when I was there she shook this book in her hand and said, “Oh, we love Celeste Ng here.” I had never heard of Celeste Ng. But now I love Celeste Ng here. Because this book is a screamer. I know it was just last month when I said Less was probably the best novel I’d read this year but Little Fires Everywhere is suddenly knocking on that same door. A picture-perfect family in Shaker Heights, Ohio is slowly peeled back to reveal all sorts of spaghetti-noodle machinations on the inside. You will feel love, you will feel pain, and (best of all) you will feel yourself rubbing up against bigger ethical questions that will make you stop and wonder “What would I do in that situation?” This book will bubble in your blood. Highly, highly recommended! (PS. I hear Reese Witherspoon is making the mini-series so grab it before they ruin the cover!)
2. Flying Creatures Paper Airplane Book: 69 Mini Planes to Fold and Fly by Jeff Lammers. Have you ever folded a paper airplane specifically so it would barrel roll or do a loop-de-loop? I never had until my son begged me to buy this book for him. (Life Rule: Whenever a kid begs for a book, say yes.) There’s a little bit of preamble on paper airplanes and then the rest of this book is an incredibly detailed pile of perforated paper plane perfection. (I always allow alliteration.) You rip one out, follow the instructions, and suddenly the Dragon or Stingray you just built is zooming around the room. Hours of entertainment.
3. Moth Smoke by Mohsin Hamid. Do you ever feel like you owe an artist your money? I feel this a lot. Like, you love their debut album so you buy their next one before hearing a single song. You’ve been watching their TV show for years so you race out to buy their new book. Or maybe you did what I did with Mohsin Hamid which was read all his other novels over the past few years – The Reluctant Fundamentalist, How To Get Filthy Rich In Rising Asia, and Exit West – and then, slowly, finally, steady my gaze on this one. I didn’t want to read it! I kept thinking two conflicting thoughts: 1) If I read it I will have no more Mohsin Hamid novels to read. Sad emoji with tear. And 2) I knew it was his first book and seemed less popular so I was worried I wouldn't love it and he'd slip a few notches from the pedestal I’d placed him on. But I got over those fears! Because I owed him. His others novels were incredible. And now that I’ve read it? It is very good, too. I mean, I see why it’s not as popular! It is super layered (demanding), told from a slew of different viewpoints (confusing), and the protagonist is a Pakistani banker who slowly falls into a painful ruin (sad). Yet we get incredible class and cultural tensions mixed together with the sort of human and business insight I love from Mohsin Hamid. A solid read for Hamid completists. If you are new to him I would recommend The Reluctant Fundamentalist first and How To Get Filthy Rich second.
4. Talking To Strangers by Malcolm Gladwell. Malcolm Gladwell has stated that his career goal is “to be left alone.” When I went down to the West Village to interview him for 3 Books his lovely assistant Camille mentioned in passing that he sometimes sits and reads all day. (Jelly!) Our interview took place in a room with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves on all walls. “These are a fraction of my books, I should say,” he said. And when I asked him why hardcovers, why only hardcovers, he said paperbacks seem so … “impermanent.” I am crazy about this crazy man. He is a huge nerd hero! And in his lifestyle design I see a pattern emerging in the most successful people I know. What is it? Gigantic patches of silence. Huge unplugs. Lots of Untouchable Days. And, since he’s had a bit of success (*cough* The Tipping Point, Blink, Outliers) he doesn’t need to rush. Indeed he told me that the best advice for writers is to “let it germinate.” So after six years of germination comes his brand new book Talking To Strangers. He got interested in the fact that tons of people are wrongly prosecuted and convicted because of our biases and poor judgement and, him being him, he dug deeper and deeper into the data until he pulled out big themes that help us understand how we make sense of the unfamiliar and why we're bad at judging people.
5. Stillness Is The Key by Ryan Holiday. Speaking of patches of silence, here comes Ryan Holiday with a book about stillness. This book is the completion of his Stoic philosophy trilogy that begins with The Obstacle Is the Way and middles with Ego Is The Enemy. Ryan defines stillness as “Kennedy in the Cuban Missile Crisis, it’s Marcus Aurelius with his journals, it’s Tom Brady down 28-3 in the Super Bowl, it’s Martin Luther under interrogation...” and he, as always, leverages lessons from history and philosophy to make his case. You feel smarter after reading Ryan’s books because he’s put in the thousands of hours of research to give you so many never-heard-em-before nuggets of wisdom. I flew down to Austin to interview Ryan for 3 Books and he’ll be my next guest on September 28th at 2:26pm EST, the exact minute of the new Super Moon. (As an aside, for anyone who wants to be a bestselling author, and I get lots of people asking me how to do it, I'll tell you straight up: follow Ryan’s model. It goes like this: give, give, give, give, give, give, ask. Here it is with links to some of the things he's giving: give, give, give, give, give, give, ask.)
6. Howard Stern Comes Again by Howard Stern. I love TED Talks but don’t watch many. Why? Because I always read the transcript instead. So instead of an 18-minute talk I get like a 2-minute read and when my brain is in whale-sucking-up-plankton mode I can learn from nine TED Talks in the time it takes to watch one. I know, I know, life isn’t a race, but it’s so tempting because we read so much faster than we watch or listen. And that’s partly the beauty of this book which was recommended to me by Mel Robbins. (Do I get to say TV sensation Mel Robbins yet??) Howard Stern has essentially taken his forty years of hosting a daily morning show, chiseled away 99.99% of his interviews, and shaped the remaining few dozen into this exquisitely beautiful carving. Jerry Seinfeld, Amy Poehler, Ellen DeGeneres, Jon Stewart, Chris Rock, and so many others let their guard down, ditch all talking points, and let the conversation bloom into vulnerable, revealing, and hugely insightful discussions offering an endless platter of illuminating insights on motivation, artistry, habits, and relationships. And, I’ll just add, if you’re interested in learning how to be a better interviewer (as a leader, presenter, podcast host, whatever) then you’ll gain a ton here, too. Howard sounds like a guy chilling with you at a bar but in this book he reveals his incredible preparation method and you get to watch it in action. This book blew me away. I believe it's easily worth many, many times what it costs.
7. Bust Magazine. Did you know that Bust is the largest feminist magazine in the world? Or that it’s one of the few magazines that boasts a stable circulation in this era of declining print everything? I know the mag is purportedly for “women with something to get off their chests” but when I see it on newsstands I often grab one because I find it an incredibly clear-voiced glimpse at the world from a beautiful angle. (And maybe because it reminds me of flipping through my sisters's YMs when I was a kid. Who remembers "Say Anything"? Okay, I am saying too much.) I was lucky to sit down with Debbie Stoller, founder and editor, and she gave me a hard and fast lesson on all things feminist. While most magazines have been watered down into Wikipedia style writing this one retains a fresh and fist-forward voice that’s always a great breather from the patriarchy.
Interested in more of my reviews? Read my monthly book clubs or visit my Goodreads page.
Click here to join the Book Club email list.
Neil Pasricha's Monthly Book Club - August 2019
Neil's Monthly Book Club is my oldest and most popular email newsletter. Click here to subscribe.
Hey everyone,
I’ve got something big simmering and I am so pumped to send you an exciting note soon. In the mean time I hope you’re enjoying the end of your summer (or winter, for my many Falkland Island readers) and you’re making time for books always.
Friends and lovers come and go.
Books are here for you always.
Here are my recos this month,
Neil
1. Less by Andrew Sean Greer. My friend Alec told me to read this book. I said I would. Then I didn’t. The next time I saw him he asked if I read this book. I told him no but I would. Then I didn’t. The next time I saw him he had actually bought me a copy, put it into my hand, and said again, with cold penetrating eyes, “Read this book.” Perseverance. I like that! To be honest I was a bit intimidated by the Pulitzer Prize sticker on the front. But I finally cracked it open and fell into it like a big warm pond. What a story! When writer Arthur Less gets an invitation to his ex-boyfriend’s wedding he decides to accept a slew of half-baked authorly invitations around the world rather than shamefacedly attend the wedding as the awkward dateless former lover. What follows is an incredibly hilarious and woven tale through distant countries. I absolutely loved it. First off, it feels like you are visiting everywhere he goes. How does he pull this off so well? You’re in Morocco, you’re in India, you’re in Japan. You’re traveling. You’re right there. Second, it’s hilarious. Laugh-out-loud funny. If you liked books like Barney’s Version or A Fraction of the Whole or Catch-22 I think you’ll love this. And, finally, the finishing move: the entire book is written by an eloquent first-person-floating-over-the-scene narrator whose identity isn’t revealed until the final pages. Best novel I’ve read all year. Highly recommended!
2. Go Ahead In The Rain: Notes To A Tribe Called Quest by Hanif Abdurraqib. Last year I went on and on about They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us by Hanif Abdurraqib, a collection of essays on music and life and politics and justice and what it’s like growing up black in the US today. I loved that book! And here is his follow-up. It came out from a small university publisher and immediately smacked onto The New York Times bestseller list. I think a lot of people feel like Hanif Abdurraqib is becoming one of the most exciting writers around. Now, if you know anything about A Tribe Called Quest, great, but if you don’t, well, great as well. Once again you get exquisite writing featuring hip-hop history and culture woven into reflections on race, family, and politics. A loving portrait.
3. Art Matters by Neil Gaiman. A nice zippy illustrated collection of four Neil Gaiman essays on art including his famous Make Good Art commencement speech. The other three essays are Credo, Making A Chair, and On Libraries. A nice little push for the aspiring artists in your life… or the aspiring artist inside you.
4. The Algebra of Happiness by Scott Galloway. The original working title for my book The Happiness Equation was actually Truly Rich. I wrote the book as a letter to my unborn child and was hoping to redefine rich into this more all-encompassing term. But then we made the eleventh hour decision to change the title to The Happiness Equation because there was an underlying formula in the book (Want Nothing + Do Anything = Have Everything) as well as a ton of sort of mathy equations and scribbles. After I released it in 2016 I’ve found a couple great books on this same theme of distilling happiness into simpler language. One is Solve For Happy by Mo Gawdat. The other is this book. Both veer much more into personal memoir and both offer unique nuggets on happiness. Scott is a professor at NYU and his YouTube videos are super popular if you want to check him out there. (Sidenote: I discovered this book through this video by Scott Adams, creator of Dilbert, where he discusses it as well as The Happiness Equation.)
5. Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World by David Epstein. I think one of the ugliest things in the world today is the polished resume. Polished everything! Too much polish. I am not a fan of LinkedIn. It is full of polished resumes. Everyone sounds perfect! I like blemishes. Blemishes are interesting. Weird jobs, strange hobbies, gap years. Have you read Jordan Peterson’s bio? Regardless of what you think of the dude, talk about an interesting resume. When I interviewed candidates at Walmart I was always most interested in those gaps and rough edges and the stuff painted outside the lines. Because that’s where the person had come from, how they grew, how they had developed. The crucible moments where their character was forged. I think the increasing specialization of our world, at younger and younger ages, results in far too much fragility. Being really great at one thing often means you’re pretty bad at lots of things. But the jack of all trades is the next king of the world. This book is a powerful refutation of the famed 10,000 hour rule (and was originally spawned when David Epstein was asked to debate Malcolm Gladwell over that exact point). A powerful book for those feeling wobbly in their career, wondering what’s next, or for anyone thinking all the tiny things they’ve done don’t amount to much. Actually, they amount to a lot. And this powerful book shows you why.
6. HBR Guide To Your Professional Growth. Okay, I included this book to show the power of this email list. When I started sending you guys book recos a few years ago the most common question you sent back was “How do you read so many books?” So I wrote an article for HBR in response called “8 Ways To Read (A Lot) More Books This Year” which became the Most Popular article on their site for something like six months. Now that very article has been immortalized for eternity in this new HBR book. They mailed me a few copies and I found the whole book pretty good. Good gift for co-workers. (P.S., No, I don’t get royalties. You are feeding into the impoverished Harvard endowment. Please give generously.) (P.P.S., I wrote a follow-up to that article called "8 More Ways To Read (A Lot) More Books" on my blog).
7. Minding The Store: A Big Story About A Small Business by Julie Gaines. I love graphic novels but so many are something like “one person’s tale of battling awkwardness through high school” or similar. Good story! But a bit of a tired story. Yet the medium is so powerful so I’m always looking for it to explore new territory. That’s why I loved Tetris by Box Brown. It’s why I just bought Amazing Decisions by Dan Ariely. And it’s why I picked up this non-fiction graphic novel about the famous Fishs Edy store in New York City. (Do you know those Manhattan skyline dinner plates? Those came from here.) It’s a fun family and small business told by the store’s co-owner and drawn by her son.
8. Turtles All The Way Down by John Green. Do you like blue cheese? Some do. Many don’t! It’s an acquired taste. Or a never-acquired taste. Smaller market. But those who love it, love it a lot. Well, this is John Green’s blue cheese book. I’m glad he wrote it. He went somewhere new. But it’s definitely an acquired taste. Many characters are not easy to love. The protagonist has mental illness and since it’s told in first person you live inside that brain. I skipped a lot of the pages filled with anxiety-ridden thoughts because they became too much. (I’m sure that’s the point.) Good for John Green superfans or those craving a young adult look inside the many tougher-to-answer questions around mental illness today. Green’s writing remains so confident and thick-globbed and powerful. I’m excited to see what he does next.
9. Where’d You Go, Bernadette? THE MOVIE. What is a movie doing on this book club? Well, Where’d You Go Bernadette was literally #2 overall on my list of The Very Best Books I Read in 2018. #2! I read over 100 books last year and it was #2. So I didn’t want to see the movie and ruin it in my head. I didn’t even want to picture the characters! (That’s why I’ve never watched the Harry Potters and why I am upset Daniel Radcliffe has mentally replaced Harry in the books for me.) Plus, the movie is 48% on RottenTomatoes. 48%? What a death blow! But Leslie and I had a super rare movie night, and she wanted to see it … so we went. I confessed my hesitation to her just before it started and we debated leaving the theater. But we stayed. And were both blown away. There were so many emotional layers in it. I surprise-cried through like three different scenes. If you have any form of “mental illness plus love” in your family I think it will hit you hard. It was true to the book (Maria Semple was an Executive Producer), directed by Richard Linklater (Boyhood, Before Midnight), and Cate Blanchett just nails the title role. I highly, highly recommend the book! This is a book email! Buy the book! Read the book! But then, for the purists out there, trust me that the movie really does hold up.
10. The Floor Is Lava: And 99 More Games for Everyone, Everywhere by Ivan Brett. Did you play that game when you were a kid where you pretended the floor was lava and you had to jump between all the couches and coffee tables to avoid melting into the Earth’s molten core? Well, I never really thought about it but what was most beautiful about that game is that you didn’t need … anything. Nothing! You didn’t need a thing. This book is a collection of games like that. Fun games you can play around a dinner table or on a long car ride. My wife Leslie loves it and we’ve successfully introduced a few good ones to the kids.
Interested in more of my reviews? Read my monthly book clubs or visit my Goodreads page.
Click here to join the Book Club email list.
Neil Pasricha's Monthly Book Club - July 2019
Neil's Monthly Book Club is my oldest and most popular email newsletter. Click here to subscribe.
Hey everyone,
Hope you're having a great month.
In somewhat strange news, my journal Two-Minute Mornings has been going crazy lately and ranking in Amazon's Top 100 for a couple weeks. Each page in the journal lists the three simple prompts I fill out to start my day: I will let go of..., I am grateful for..., and I will focus on.... Here's a TV clip where I explain where it came from.
And now, the books!
Neil
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