I read two books!

I read Harlem Shuffle by Colson Whitehead a while ago because Dave suggested it.  It was great so I read the sequel, Crook Manifesto, while on vacation.  It was great too, sometimes laugh-out-loud funny, other times chillingly evil.  Both books read like screenplays and Dave said Netflix should turn them into a series.  He's right.  We're currently figuring out who to cast but we agree on Eddie Murphy for the lead.

via GIPHY

I polished Crook Manifesto off in two days and followed it up with Underground Railroad, another SoD (and maybe OBXD) recommendation (from 2016, I need to keep up).  It was not at all laugh-out-loud funny but it was often chillingly evil.  I am not eager to write about literature given the much greater qualifications of the Daves on staff here.  However, I am comfortable opining that Underground Railroad is an incredible piece of writing.  Each chapter is either a new setting with a new vibe or an eight page backstory of a secondary character.  The main character rides the underground railroad (which in this novel is literally a railroad under the ground) to different destinations.  As the first stationmaster tells her, "The problem is that one destination may be more to our liking than another .... You won't know what waits above until you pull in."  Sometimes it reads like Brave New World, other times it's like Blood Meridian, there's a chapter like The Lottery through the eyes of Anne Frank, a smattering of Sula and maybe Beloved at the beginning, then it feels like Animal Farm for a few minutes and then it hits your stomach with a crowbar at the end.  But throughout it's a horror movie, just nonstop dystopian misery.  It's a must-read.

I Think Many of You Already Know This, but Pappyland is Fantastic and You Need to Read It

One benefit of my 35 days of sobriety (which ended Saturday night) was the ability to read every night with a clear head, even if I am now a full-time "readers glasses" guy, a new enough phenomenon to disappoint me and remind me of my own mortality. I have been happy to get back into the reading routine that I followed for the first 40 years of my life, which became more sporadic and less productive after 2-3 scotches over the last 5+ years. 

Around 10 PM each night, I head upstairs, put the electronics down, put my Warby Parkers on, and dig into a book. While I'm not eating books like Dave does, I have been chugging through them in 2021. I recently finished Zucked, written by veteran venture capitalist (and former Facebook investor) Roger McNamee in 2019. It is as timely today as when it came out. It describes how Facebook amplifies negative news and disinformation, allowing it to bounce around echo chambers because negative news holds peoples' attention more than positive news. Zuck and Sheryl Sandberg surely don't like the book, but the message matters. Worth a library rental.

But I'm here to recommend Pappyland. If my scotch-impaired brain serves me correct, a few of you have already promoted Wright Thompson's book in prior comments (Mark? Rob? Both? More?). I ordered it through my town's library, it arrived and I promptly devoured it. It's a simple read. It was ironic to me to read a book about the history of Kentucky bourbon and Pappy Van Winkle while abstaining from alcohol. It made me think about the full bottle of Johnny Walker Blue sitting on my bar more than once. 

The book is about the history of Pappy, but also about the dynamic of kids and their fathers - how kids deal with their father's legacy, how they communicate with their parents and how they pass on their values and legacy on to their children. 

Thank you to you gents who gave the written nudge for me to dive into this fine prose. I learned a lot about bourbon and a little about myself. For you guys and gals that haven't dug into it yet, I highly recommend you do. Wright Thompson is our type of dude. 

The Twelve Days of Gheorghemas: Day Seven

On the seventh day of Gheorghemas, Big Gheorghe gave to me:

Seven books for reading
6.9 Non Sequiturs
Six All-Star Nods
Five podcasts for listening
Four posts zman meant to write but never did
Three French Hens
Two in-state rivalries
And a dork with a split personal-ity

This is year three of my "seven books for reading" post, so now I've got some big data to evaluate. In 2013, I read approximately twenty-three books. In 2014, I read approximately forty-six books. This year I split the difference and read approximately thirty-three books. It's much easier for me to figure this out these days . . . thanks to T.J.'s gentle encouragement, I've finally learned to use the "labels" feature on Blogger.

It's always hard to choose the seven best, as all the books I finished were pretty damned good . . . that's why I finished them. I'm a finicky reader, and I start more books than I finish. Here are the seven most memorable.

1) Beyond Words: What Animals Think and Feel (Carl Safina)

The most significant and groundbreaking book on the list. Comprehensive, and a bit of a bear to get through (especially the first two sections, which focus on elephants and wolves) but I promise it will be worth it, and you'll never look at your dog in the same way again.

2) Savage Harvest: A Tale of Cannibals, Colonialism, and Michael Rockefeller's Tragic Quest for Primitive Art (Carl Hoffman)

The title says it all. Rich kids and cannibals mix like oil and water.

3) Dreamland: The True Tale of America's Opiate Epidemic (Sam Quinones)

Astounding journalism. America does a lot of drugs. Mexico produces a lot of drugs. God is in the details. The book inspired this song.

4) The Cartel (Don Winslow)

I can't get enough of Don Winslow, and I can't get enough of the Mexican drug trade. Part fact and part fiction, the sequel to The Power of the Dog, and a perfect companion to the previous book.

5) Big Little Lies (Liane Moriarty)

The Australian version of Mean Girls . . . except with mean moms.

6) Dancing With the Devil in the City of God: Rio de Janeiro on the Brink (Juliana Barbassa)

An honest and dynamic portrait of Rio . . . if you've seen City of God, you'll love this book.

7) City of Bones (Michael Connelly)

I'm choosing this particular Michael Connelly novel over all the other ones I have read only because it features the La Brea Tar Pits. I've read a number of his Harry Bosch crime procedurals and they're all fantastic (I'm in the middle of Trunk Music right now).

Before my list of all the books I finished, I'll give you something more interesting and less annoying: here are a few of the books I didn't finish . . .

1) Walter R. Borneman's 1812: The War That Forged a Nation

I really wanted to finish this book and become an expert on the War of 1812, but I couldn't read more than two paragraphs in a row before falling into a very deep sleep.

2) The Witches: Salem, 1692 (Stacy Schiff)

I was really excited to read this book, and I've never been so disappointed. After a beautifully written start, about how alienated and lonesome the Puritans were, strangers in a strange land, living in small dark smoky houses, describing events as if they were on a "low grade acid trip," this book devolves into fragmented declarative sentences of historical minutia, with no overarching structure or theme. I think Schiff's research possessed her soul and destroyed it.

3) Purity (Jonathan Franzen)

Another one I was excited about, but I'll never read Jonathan Franzen again. His characters are wooden, repetitive and despicable, and while he writes great sentences, I'm not sure he knows shit about human nature. I'd rather spend my time reading well-researched non-fiction.

4) Sy Montgomery's book The Soul of an Octopus: A Surprising Exploration into the Wonder of Consciousness

Well-written and fascinating, but just too much octopus.

Here's the list of the books I finished in 2015:

Savage Harvest: A Tale of Cannibals, Colonialism, and Michael Rockefeller's Tragic Quest for Primitive Art (Carl Hoffman)

Big Little Lies (Liane Moriarty)

The Best American Science and Nature Writing (2014 Edition)

The Happiest People in the World (Brock Clark)

Building a Better Teacher: How Teaching Works (and How to Teach It to Everyone) (Elizabeth Green)

The Fifth Witness (Michael Connelly)

City of Bones (Michael Connelly)

The Drop (Michael Connelly)

The Black Ice (Michael Connelly)

The Concrete Blonde (Michael Connelly)

The Last Coyote (Michael Connelly)

Skeleton Road (Val McDermid)

Why Does the World Exist? An Existential Detective Story (Jim Holt)

When to Rob a Bank and 131 More Warped Suggestions and Well-intentioned Rants (Levitt and Dubner)

The Husband's Secret (Liane Moriarty)

Dreamland: The True Tale of America's Opiate Epidemic (Sam Quinones)

How We Learn: The Surprising Truth About When, Where and Why It Happens (Benedict Carey)

The Next Species: The Future of Evolution in the Aftermath of Man (Michael Tennesen)

The Son (Jo Nesbo)

The Cartel (Don Winslow)

What Alice Forgot (Liane Moriarty)

Breakfast of Champions (Kurt Vonnegut)

Joyland (Stephen King)

Tell No One (Harlan Coben)

Dancing With the Devil in the City of God: Rio de Janeiro on the Brink (Juliana Barbassa)

Finders Keepers (Stephen King)

The Hand That Feeds You (Amy Hempel and Jill Ciment)

Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus (Rick Perlstein)

The Captive Condition (Kevin P. Keating)

Beyond Words: What Animals Think and Feel (Carl Safina)

The Dick Gibson Show (Stanley Elkin)

A Doll's House (Henrik Ibsen)

Overwhelmed: Work, Love and Play When No one Has the Time (Brigid Schulte)