Leigh Bardugo has built one of the most beloved catalogues in modern fantasy, from the Shadow and Bone trilogy to Ninth House. Now, with the release of the “Dregs” anniversary editions of the Six of Crows duology, readers have the chance to return to Ketterdam and rediscover why her work has left such a mark.

What makes Bardugo’s stories endure isn’t just the magic or the monsters, but the characters. They aren’t chosen by prophecy or bloodline, but carve their own destinies. In this short interview, Bardugo reflects on the non-fantasy influences that shaped her voice, the through-lines she notices (in hindsight), and the simple reading practices that keep her connected to the written word.

Subscribe now

In my newsletter, I often explore how reading across genres and eras deepens our own relationship with books. What are the “non-fantasy” or “non-genre” authors who have most shaped your work, and how do they sneak into your pages?

Louise Erdrich has been a huge influence on me since I was first assigned one of her short stories to read as a kid. She was my introduction to magical realism and the way she builds connections among characters and across generations still blows my mind—these subtle touchpoints that you don’t even realize are building to something explosive.

Agatha Christie obviously knew her way around a twist, but she was also so funny. My favorite thing about her is the way she can establish a character in just a few highly judgmental sentences. I don’t know if either Erdrich or Christie sneak into my work, but I wish they would.

Are there authors within your genre(s) you especially look up to?

Tricky question. I’ve always been more interested in the work than the author. I remember reading the Foundation series and then discovering back matter Asimov had written that I found profoundly obnoxious. I instantly thought, “I wish I hadn’t read that,” because it shifted my relationship to his books and I developed a habit of skipping forwards or notes from the author. I don’t even like to see an author’s photo on a jacket. So, I think I admire the work rather than the author?

Throat clearing aside, only respect for anyone with a long career—Robin Hobb and Diana Wynne Jones come to mind. Stephen King, of course. Then there are the characters and worlds that somehow really enter our culture in a permanent way. I don’t know if Pennywise and Lestat will have the longevity of Hamlet, but to me that seems distinctly possible. That kind of impact doesn’t feel like something you can really aspire to, but I certainly envy it.

You’ve explored various sub-forms within fantasy and written a number of different series + standalones. Is there a through-line across your writing—a theme or two that you’re always thinking about when you’re diving into a new story?

It’s only when I look back that I see a pattern of survivors. Alina, Alex, Luzia, Inej—they’re all women who people consider expendable. They don’t have royal bloodlines. Their fates aren’t wrapped up in prophecy. They have to carve out futures for themselves. But no, I never start a book with a message in mind. I’m writing a novel, not a sermon. I usually discover what my characters are really trying to tell me somewhere in that first draft.

Many of my readers wrestle with how to fit reading into their busy lives. As a busy and very productive author, do you have your own reading practice that helps you sustain your relationship to the written word?

This isn’t romantic but my best advice is to take social media apps off your phone. I know I’m not creatively sustained or inspired by scrolling. I don’t believe anyone is. If you’re the exception, I congratulate you. But most of us close these apps feeling depleted and less focused. So, I made the conscious choice to ditch those apps and to sit with the discomfort of feeling restless or bored. The detox was miserable. But guess what? I started reading more.

I also try to stay connected to poetry and short fiction. That’s where I find some of the most exciting and surprising language. Plus it’s less of a commitment so I get to sample lots of new things and take more risks. It’s a tapas situation. Or maybe it’s like wandering through Costco and saying yes to all the free samples. Either way it re-engages the “why not?” impulse.

Subscribe now

is the intrepid leader of the various group reads happening over at . As a fellow book guide, I felt compelled to ask him a few questions about books, the beauty of reading in a group, and his favorite authors. Enjoy!

Subscribe now

When I started The Big Read, my initial impulse was pretty simple: During the 2020 stay-at-home orders, I finished my first read of War and Peace, loved it, and knew I wanted to read it again — preferably with some other people that I could talk with about it. What led to your creation of Footnotes and Tangents?

I began on Instagram around five years ago. Something about the way we talk about books online didn’t correspond with my experience of reading. We emphasise quantity over quality, and star ratings over a slow and shifting relationship with a novel. But books consume us, transform us, inspire us. I wanted to write about that.

So instead of reviewing books, I wrote tangents inspired by my reading. Footnotes and Tangents began as a hodgepodge of flash fiction, gentle pastiche, the odd poem or imaginary footnote. The novel is always being reinvented, so why not rethink how we read and how we write about books?

In 2022, I came across someone reading my favourite novel, War and Peace, a chapter a day. I put up a post on Instagram to see if anyone wanted to join me. I expected maybe a dozen would get involved. By New Year’s Day, we were over a thousand readers ready to start.

I’d never been part of a book club before. Accidentally, I was now running a huge group and having a lot of fun doing it. This year, I moved the group to Substack and started the newsletter, re-running War and Peace alongside Hilary Mantel’s Cromwell trilogy.

Why do you think reading in groups is so powerful? Even when it happens online, there seems to be particular magic in reading something with other people. Which aspects have stood out to you while running Footnotes and Tangents?

There is something beautiful about everyone being on the same page. And there is a sense of wonder that all over the world, in all kinds of places, people are running their fingers over the same words and taking the characters through their day and into their dreams.

The magic starts when we come together and discover that we've all brought something different to the reading. We read differently and we take something unique away. A community forms around the book and we get to know each other as we live through the ups and downs of the story.

If you are confused by the text, other readers can help. And if you are convinced about something, they will challenge you too. With all those eyes on the page, you notice more and think more about what you read. The result is something bigger, broader, and richer that lasts longer than if you were reading alone. 

Like me, you were drawn to War and Peace. What is it about that big, beautiful book that captivated you enough to lead others on that particular reading journey? 

I first read War and Peace in my twenties. I went backpacking in South America and took the biggest book I could find. People mistook it for a bible, which is ironic because I discovered that War and Peace is not just a great book. It is a good book. A deeply humane novel about our struggle to find peace amid war, internal and external.

Tolstoy drops you in the middle of a soirée in nineteenth-century St Petersburg, a party packed with truly awful people. You think to yourself: Surely I have nothing in common with these rich Russian aristocrats from another era. There’s no way I will want to spend a year in their company!

But then Tolstoy does something remarkable. This strange world starts to feel very familiar. We recognise the characters in ourselves and in people we know. Our first impressions give way to a greater understanding and we start to care about these people, as though they were friends and family.

People expect this book to be difficult. And it can be a challenge. But it is also a joy, and reading it can be an empowering experience. Readers have told me the slow read helped them through hard times, changed their lives, gave them the confidence to do things they had thought impossible. The daily habit, the mindful reading, the sense of community and the engrossing story has a profound effect on people’s lives.

This response to the read-along compelled me to run it for a second year. And in 2025, I’ll put it on again for one last time. As you say, it is a big and beautiful book, and I think everyone should give it a go.

I’ve DNFed Wolf Hall a couple of times. I don’t exactly know why, other than that it just hasn’t clicked with me yet. Make the case for Hilary Mantel and why I need to give her another shot. 

The Cromwell books can be a challenge: the unusual narrative voice (“He, Cromwell”), the 14 Thomases, the slow pace and the historical context. I designed my Wolf Crawl read-along to help readers overcome these initial obstacles with historical background and character summaries.

And it is worth it. These are astonishing books, written by one of the greatest writers of a generation. Hilary Mantel combined meticulous attention to historical detail with an eerie ability to pin down on the page our phantom selves.

With the Cromwell books, you embody a historical character in a way that feels immediate and uncomfortably intimate. Through some slippery use of pronouns, we become Henry VIII’s chief minister. We forget ourselves and take up residence behind his eyes, under his skin, stuck in his stomach.

Each book in the trilogy has its own texture. Wolf Hall is about public masks and private selves, power and ambition. Bring Up the Bodies is a psychological thriller, a lethal contest between Thomas Cromwell and Anne Boleyn. The Mirror and the Light is a monster story, where Cromwell is trapped between his beastly memories and his murderous king.

Ben Miles brilliantly narrates the audiobooks and performed as Thomas Cromwell in the stage adaptation. I always recommend his narration to anyone struggling to get into the story. Miles said these books made him understand his own Englishness. We live on a haunted island, and Mantel knew how to summon its ghosts and make them speak.

Next year, I’ll take another group through the trilogy, from Putney cobblestones to Tower Hill scaffold. I cannot recommend it enough. Just hold on to your head.

Besides the titles we’ve already talked about, do you have other all-time favorites that you’d love to someday guide readers through? 

Alan Garner's magnificent book Treacle Walker was shortlisted for the Booker Prize a few years ago. It was the first novel I purposefully slow read and I'd love to go back and explore more of his books. He turned 90 this year and takes years to finish slim and wise novellas that deserve careful attention. 

Kazuo Ishiguro. His eight novels are all variations on the same theme: what makes us human? They are each written in a different genre, but are tonally so similar and speak to each other in interesting ways. I’d like to read them chronologically and let them talk.

And I'm itching to re-visit Mervyn Peake's fantasy series, Titus Groan, Gormenghast, and Titus Alone. Peake did something startling with words to make a beautiful world that was also ridiculous and grotesque. They are the finest fantasy books I've ever read, and I'd love to introduce them to more readers.

But right now I'm sticking to historical fiction. More Mantel next year with another of my favourites, A Place of Greater Safety, sandwiched between three books she admired: The Siege of Krishnapur, Things Fall Apart, and The Blue Flower. That should keep me busy!

Thanks so much, Simon!

Subscribe now

Hello readers,

It’s been a while since I’ve published an author interview, but Chris Harding Thornton’s Little Underworld was so fun and interesting that I felt compelled to ask her a few bookish questions.

Check out my review of the book, published last Friday, and find her novels anywhere books are sold.

Subscribe now

Little Underworld is set in 1930s Omaha. It’s a gritty, corrupt place where nobody is innocent—from barmen to politicians and everyone between. Omaha, though, isn’t exactly broadly known for its sordid history. How did you come across it? Was it something you knew from growing up in Nebraska or did you have to dig?

It was a combination of both. When I was growing up right outside Omaha, I lived with my maternal grandparents for about seven years and my great-grandparents, my grandma's parents, lived next door, and they were all born and raised in Omaha. Little hints and allusions about the city were dropped, which always made me curious. And then in high school, I dated someone whose father had been, if not a gangster, at least gangster-adjacent, so I heard whispers about that sort of thing. 

Later, I got into genealogy, and Little Underworld really sprang from two of my great-grandpa's uncles. They (sort of) became Jim and Ward. My uncle Jim was a private investigator, and Ward was loosely based on my uncle Jess, whose father-in-law had a bar during Prohibition. 

In reading newspaper articles about these uncles and other members of the family, I was consistently stunned by the seediness. Omaha was pretty dang terrifying. I mean, that's what newspapers tend to report, of course—the terrifying, grisly stuff. But what really struck me was the totally brazen corruption of county and city officials. I mean, I guess they were sketchy way before and well after the period in the book. 

And then, as I was getting ready to write the novel, I reread a book by a poli-sci professor (River City Empire: Tom Dennison's Omaha, by Dr. Orville D. Menard) that kind of provides a history of the city. Menard's book was a poli-sci thesis and wasn't meant to be a history book, but it's been taken as one. Something I'd read about Uncle Jim led me to spot a statement in the book that I knew wasn't true, and that took me down a rabbit hole of fact-checking. There are true things in River City Empire, for sure, but there's a lot that isn't supported by reliable evidence. A major primary source is the papers of a mayor who wound up embroiled in corruption scandals, and his closest ally had a habit of making things up.

So that had my brain spinning while I was writing the novel—that the actual history of Omaha seems to have been a lot more sordid than the traditionally accepted sordid narrative. 

One of the things I especially love in the book is the sense of place you created. Why is it that a strong sense of place seems to play a particularly important role in crime novels? The atmosphere—how real it feels—can really make or break that kind of story. 

Well, first off, thank you for that. I usually decide what to write by thinking, “Where would I like to go, inside my head, for the next few years?” So place is really central to me.

That's a great point, too, about crime novels. I suspect one reason why setting is so important is just how setting works in any piece of fiction (or how it can)—it immerses readers into the world of the story, and it characterizes the people dealing with the realities of that world. 

More specifically, though, I think a lot of crime novels are about how sticky and complex navigating the world can be from an ethical perspective. And the realities characters have to navigate are really specific to both their individualities and the physical places they're in. 

How do you think writing a historical crime novel different than one set in the modern day? There were a few times I thought, “It’s handy that the perps don’t have to deal with GPS tracking or DNA testing.” 

It really was handy. I wonder if I'm daunted by the idea of writing a novel set in the current era. 

You know, though, I think a lot of crime fiction set in the here and now departs from reality—it's kind of created an alternate universe. Take homicides. The reality is that most homicide cases still go unsolved in the US (when they're even deemed homicides), but that doesn't always make for a compelling storyline. I also think a lot of cases that are “cleared” are only cleared because that's the job—someone needs to get a file off a desk, so here comes Occam's Razor: “Person A, the victim's spouse, has motive, means, and no alibi, so Person A did it.” (I often wonder how many spouses are wrongfully convicted solely because we have this ongoing assumption about spouses.) 

And DNA evidence is compelling to a jury, but it's really not commonly used in homicide prosecutions. If an assailant has even left any DNA, there's the expense of processing it, which municipalities often aren't willing to pony up for, and if the assailant is unknown, ID-ing them relies on the DNA being in CODIS. And all of this—even whether or not crime scene investigators are available—really depends on geography and resources and class and all kinds of factors. 

So, I guess that I think the landscape of crime and criminal convictions in 2024 isn't as different from 1930 as Dateline and CSI would have us believe, and even though writing fiction means you can make things up, I'm not super into writing alternate-reality stuff. I mean, you're always creating a kind of alternate reality in a novel (the world isn't made of words or of a narrative coming from one character's perspective; it's made of physical matter and, I'm pretty sure, abides by chaos theory). But I tend to write in the realities I'm more familiar with for some reason. There's that pressure in writing about crime in the current age to CSI it up, but I worry a little about how that affects the legal system.

There are plenty of crime novels in which the characters are one-dimensionally sarcastic, with no soft edges whatsoever. Little Underworld definitely has some of that, but offers much more depth. I’m curious about how you balanced classic noir wit/sarcasm with the earnestness and even tenderness we see in Jim, Ward, and Frank. Was that a tough line to toe? 

You know, it really wasn't. My only opinion on humanity is that people are lovely and people are garbage. We are all complete turds capable of great acts of beauty. I suspect that view just winds its way into what I write. 

Who are some noir authors you’ve taken inspiration from? 

Dashiell Hammett is probably the biggest one for me. Red Harvest definitely informed Little Underworld. I love Gary Phillips' work—I think One-Shot Harry is his best book yet. Patricia Highsmith is way up there. Honestly, a lot of the people who blurbed the book write great noir or noir-leaning work that impacts my writing: Erin Flanagan, Stephen Mack Jones, Chris Offutt, Steve Weddle, David Heska Wanbli Weiden, Laura McHugh, and Gabino Iglesias. My friend John Woods has a great book called Lady Chevy that no doubt inspired me while I was writing. Another friend, Jason Allison, is one to watch for. He's let me read a work-in-progress that's great.

You are a proud Nebraskan. Besides Willa Cather (because she’s the greatest), are there any other Nebraskan authors/books you like to recommend?

Well, I can't really be proud about being Nebraskan—being born here was just luck. But there are a ton of great Nebraska writers. There are so many, I'm going to leave a bunch out and feel really bad about it, but where to start...

At the top of my list would be Wright Morris, whose book The Home Place is my personal favorite (it's no one else's favorite Morris book, but it stuns me). I think it captures the region's existentialism perfectly. 

Bill Kloefkorn's memoirs, any of Ted Kooser's poetry, John Neihardt's The River and I. Ted Wheeler's Kings of Broken Things offers another view of Omaha a little before the period I wrote about, and everyone I know is reading his latest, The War Begins in Paris. Carson Vaughn's journalism is fantastic, and his book Zoo Nebraska is incredible. Pretty much anything Roxane Gay writes is worth reading. Sean Doolittle, Rebecca Rotert, Loren Eiseley, Timothy Schaffert, Joe Starita, Roger Welsch—there are so many more writers in Nebraska. I say just read all of them. 

Thanks so much for reading! Who else would you like to see me interview? Drop your ideas in the comments below.

Leave a comment

Finally, though it’s always free, Read More Books is a reader-supported publication. Consider upgrading to a paid subscription today to show your thanks.

-Jeremy

I first published this interview with in May 2020. Of all the interviews I’ve done, this one is among my favorite. I’ve added a lot of readers since then, so I thought it would be fun to re-share. Enjoy!

1) Your current work revolves around the idea of range — why being a generalist is better than being a specialist. What book(s) have most shaped your thinking in that realm of thought?

Philip Tetlock's Expert Political Judgment shaped my thinking in general well before I had an thought of writing about the topics in Range, but when I did eventually decide to write the book, I knew his work would be featured, as it is in chapter 10, "Fooled by Expertise." I should note that it's a dense book, written for people in his field. (Superforecasting is a very entertaining version of some of Tetlock's work written for a wider audience, but I think there are some advantages to Expert Political Judgment for those willing to work through it.) I can't even remember what turned me on to it in the first place, but it was truly eye-opening to me to learn that the experts I counted on for predictions on a daily basis—generally without even thinking about it, but just from watching or reading the news—not only had horrible track records, but failed to learn from failure. There's nothing wrong with failing, but there's definitely something wrong with chronically refusing to learn from it. At the same time, the book made me more critical of my own thinking, and impressed upon me the importance of clearly stating my own ideas and hypotheses so that I could eventually learn whether I had erred or not. If an idea or forecast is too vaguely stated, you don't even give yourself a chance to learn from it. And it led me to keep better track of my own thinking, which I think would lead just about everyone to realize they are wrong more often than they remember, we just tend to focus on when we were right. The book made a more thoughtful thinker about thinking! 

Secondly, when I was at ProPublica, I read a book called Ending Medical Reversal, about how many common medical practices have been implemented based on poor evidence, but persist even when better evidence shows they don't work. (That's what the authors mean be a "medical reversal.") That led me to write an article on the topic, titled, "When Evidence Says No, But Doctors Say Yes." You get the idea. In doing the reporting, I realized that a lot of the issues were byproducts of hyperspecialization combined with the devaluation of generalists, who keep a broad view. Specialization in medicine has been both inevitable and beneficial, no doubt, but it has also been a serious double-edged sword. 

2) Your work involves a lot of research — non-fiction and scientific papers, I imagine. So what do you read for pleasure when you’re off the clock?

A lot of fiction. I actually took an online beginner's fiction-writing class while writing Range, and it was a revelation. There was an exercise where we had to write a story with no dialogue, and, having been doing traditional investigative work for a few years before that, I was in dialogue heavy mode. (Your lawyers really want you to put things in other peoples' words in investigative pieces when possible, as you might imagine.) That sort of flicked on a lightbulb in my head that made me realize I was in autopilot with my writing style, and that I was using quotes to paper over things I didn't understand deeply enough, and which in turn the reader wouldn't understand. I went back a did a bunch more reporting and rewrote almost everything I had to be more clear and less quote heavy. I digress . . .

In a way I never consider myself off the clock as a writer, because in anything I read (or watch, or listen to) I'm thinking about two things: structure and transitions. Always looking for those. As soon as I finished the manuscript of Range, I went to a local bookstore with the intention of buying the largest interesting-seeming work of fiction I could find and reading that. So I came away with War and Peace, and 2666. I got obsessed with War and Peace. I thought it would be some ponderous Russian epic, but once you get the names down, man it's a barn burner. And I hadn't realized that it is Tolstoy's novel-form refutation of the so-called "Great Man Theory of History." It really does have its reputation for a reason. I ended dabbling in several different translations, which was also interesting. 2666 was a very difficult read at times, but I really valued reading it, and thought the last section was truly brilliant.

Recently, I read a bunch of Rachel Ingalls, a criminally under-recognized writer of short novels. She's a marvel of writing economy. One of her books, Mrs. Caliban, was named one of the 20 best American novels since WWII by the British Book Marketing Council, but few people have really read her. (If you liked Shape of Water, you might find some rather startling similarities in Mrs. Caliban, down to the fact that both have cornflakes jokes.)

Finally, two fiction writers I return to often are Martin McDonagh and Haruki Murakami. I have to say, both have written some of the best work I've ever read, and perhaps some of the worst. (Or maybe just relative to the bar I set for them?) I first saw McDonagh's play The Pillowman on Broadway, and it was one of the best experiences of art in any form I've ever had. I've read all of his plays, and that one several times. His most recent play, A Very Very Very Dark Matter, I thought was horrific. All of his normal shock value and word play and brutal events and language but none of the depth. With Murakami, I often find the transcendent and the tin-eared in the very same book; but even when I'm more on the bemusement side of my love/bemusement relationship with Murakami, I usually find something mesmerizing his mixture of the magical and the mundane Really, I think he's a master of the mundane, and the magical stuff just sets that in relief to make it stand out. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is my favorite work of his, but even that has passages or dialogue that I thought were just poorly done. But as some of the research in Range noted, breakthrough creators are very high variance. They have to create a lot, and they end up having higher relative variability in the quality of their work than their peers. If they weren't swinging and missing sometimes, I don't think their home runs would be as exceptional. Oh, lastly, I read American War by Omar El Akkad recently, and thought it was stunning. (Actually I listened to it. My first audiobook, and the narrator is great.) El Akkad is a Canadian journalist who reported in Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay, and I think the novel is an expression of what he learned about how extremism is incubated. 

3) What are you reading now? And what's next on your list?

I always have a bunch of books going at once. The works I'm actively reading right now, as in, I will read at least 20 pages of each this week: This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War, by Drew Gilpin Faust; Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind, by Hayao Miyazaki; This is How You Lose the Time War, by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone; Land of Wondrous Cold: The Race to Discover Antarctica and Unlock the Secrets of Its Ice, by Gillen Wood (since living in the Arctic as a grad student, I've remained fascinated with cold places). I just finished the forthcoming The Biggest Bluff, by Maria Konnikova, a psychologist and science writer whose work I love (it tracks her journey from not knowing how many cards are in a deck to poker pro in one year), and I'm eagerly awaiting the next installment of the Green Bone Saga by Fonda Lee, a former Nike corporate strategist turned novelist, who has black belts in karate and kung fu and an MBA from Stanford. I tore through the first two books, and while I'm waiting for the third, since I can't read it yet I decided to interview her to satiate myself in the meantime!  

4) What's a book you find yourself recommending over and over again or generally just talking or thinking a lot about?  

I frequently recommend Sebastian Junger's work. He's become a friend, and he's both one of my favorite writers and favorite people. I've recommended his book Tribe a lot recently. I think it's apt for the times, and it's a really short book, so can be read quickly. I used to recommend Bernd Heinrich's Why We Run a lot. It's basically Heinrich's account of studying endurance across the animal kingdom and applying what he learns to become the North American ultramarathon champion. Right now, though, I've probably most thought about The Decameron. It was written by Giovanni Boccaccio in the 14th century, during the Black Death, when something like half of Europe's population died in a plague. The book is a compilation of stories, but the context is that the stories are told by a group of young people who retreat from the decay and death around them to a cloistered garden where they tell stories. The stories of love and lust and treachery and heroism, and everything else. My interpretation is that they are removing themselves to this place where they can essentially preserve and restore to civil society all these features that have been stripped away or subsumed by the plague. So the act of storytelling is one of preservation and restoration. When I read, I like to think of it as a small version of that, slowing down and moving away from my other activities to a place of restoration. 

If there’s one book from the last few years that I wish more people would read, it’s Laurie Frankel’s This Is How It Always Is. It was an easy choice as one of my favorite reads of 2021 and I haven’t stopped thinking about this moving portrait of a loving family in the midst of a big change.

I also recently finished Frankel’s most recent novel, One Two Three, which is an incredibly unique look at how the teenaged Mitchell triplets confront a long-simmering local tragedy and do some growing up along the way.

The earnestness, empathy, and caring found in Frankel’s work is a breath of fresh air in a modern literary landscape full of sarcasm and cynicism.

I’m honored that she took the time to answer a few questions for me. I’ll be reading from these recommendations for a long time!

Let's start with an icebreaker! I read on your website that you make good soup. I'd love to know your favorite — both to consume and make. Is there a recipe you're comfortable sharing?

Ha! It’s so funny to me that that’s become part of my official bio and (therefore) one of the questions I get asked most often. I’ve been posting pics of my soups on Instagram as a result. I’m thinking of starting on salads too.

I can’t share a recipe, not because I’m not comfortable, but because I don’t have any. I feel like the beauty of soup is that you saute an onion and then just keep throwing whatever you’ve got on hand into a pot until it tastes good. This is also, as it happens, the way I write novels.

My most frequently made is probably lentil kale soup, in part because I always have the ingredients in my pantry/fridge, in part because I have a kid to feed and it’s sooo good for you, and in part because it’s easy and delicious.

Your books center on love and family. What are some of your favorite family-focused books?

I mean, there are so, so many, especially since I like to define (and write and read about) family pretty broadly and non-traditionally. Some favorites: We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves by Karen Joy Fowler, Beloved by Toni Morrison, Stranger Care by Sarah Sentilles, Arcadia by Lauren Groff, Black Swan Green by David Mitchell, Kantika by Elizabeth Graver, The Family Fang by Kevin Wilson, A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki, Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver, The English Understand Wool by Helen DeWitt, Foster by Claire Keegan. And Hamlet. Hamlet’s a goodie.

You show a lot of sensitivity and empathy in your work, particularly when it comes to voices that aren't often heard in fiction (transgender people, people with disabilities, etc). What are some of your favorite bookish examples of these under-represented communities? 

Thank you, I appreciate that. Some favorite books by/about trans people: Redefining Realness by Janet Mock, Stuck in the Middle With You by Jennifer Finney Boylan, Detransition, Baby by Torrey Peters, Frankissstein by Jeanette Winterson, The Ministry of Utmost Happiness by Arundhati Roy.

Some favorite books by/about disabled people: So Lucky by Nicola Griffith, Year of the Tiger by Alice Wong, If At Birth You Don’t Succeed by Zach Anner, Golem Girl by Riva Lehrer, Fearlessly Different by Mickey Rowe.

In a related vein, books/reading can be a form of advocacy and storytelling can be a protest. Are there any books you'd recommend for folks looking to be better allies and protesters on behalf of communities still fighting for their civil rights?

Honestly, any of them. As many as possible. I believe to the tips of my toes that writing and sharing stories, reading and telling and retelling them, engaging with other people’s stories in every way possible is the best advocacy, the best allyship there is.

So read widely, read constantly, read the ones that make you feel seen, read the ones that make you feel uncomfortable or invisible or confused or at sea, read the ones that comfort and the ones that discomfit. Read without worry about your agenda or the author’s. As long as you’re reading and thinking about what you’re reading, you’re making the world a better place. It’s such good work.

The audiobook version of One Two Three is incredible, featuring a different voice actor for each of the narrators, as well as an authentic speech device for Mirabel. Was this your vision for the audiobook from the get-go? It almost listens like a made-for-audio drama. 

Macmillan Audio did an incredible, incredible job, and I am so grateful. I don’t usually have much to do with the audiobook — it’s far outside my skill set — but in this case it was clear to me early on that the audiobook was going to have to overcome some significant challenges (not unlike the characters in the book).

One Two Three is narrated by three different girls, one of whom, Mirabel, uses three different voices. It was really important that the sisters sound different from one another (because they navigate the world so differently) but also that Mirabel’s three voices be very different from one another. As you say, one of Mirabel’s voices is a machine, and that needed to be authentic, but it was also a translation issue — that machine doesn’t sound weird to Mirabel or her sisters because they’re used to it, so it couldn’t sound too strange or jarring or foreign to the listener. I brought all these concerns to Macmillan Audio, and they figured out beautiful answers to all of them. They did a fantastic job.

Are there writers or books that have especially influenced your writing, whether on a stylistic level or simply as inspiration for your career? 

Also so, so many. So many. I am always reading. I read while I write — like literally while I write, so I have a book open on my lap and the laptop on the desk, a book on a pillow next to me while I’m typing on the sofa. I am not a particularly fast reader, but because I am always doing it, I usually read about a book a week. Because I am a novelist, I am almost always reading fiction, but within that, I read as widely and variously as I can. And I’m influenced by all of them, even when I don’t like something or don’t think it works — sometimes those are the books from which I learn the most.

What kind of reading do you do in your free time? Any favorite genres or authors you return to?

All the reading I do is work. And all of it is also enjoyable. For fun I read plays. Shakespeare — which has to be pure fun because none of us can emulate Shakespeare — but other plays as well. Plays (with the admitted exception of Shakespeare) are pretty quick reads, so you can get through the whole thing in a sitting. And they’re doing what novels are doing — telling a story beginning to end carried by character — but with one hand tied behind their backs. So they teach you a lot too.

This might be covered in the above questions, but do you have any all-time favorite books that have had an outsized influence on your life? Books you think about and recommend on a regular basis?

It’s true I’ve listed lots of my very favorites in the questions above. Other favorites though: The Power by Naomi Alderman, The Trees by Percival Everett, A Spot of Bother (another great family story!) by Mark Haddon, My Year of Meats by Ruth Ozeki, The God of Small Things by Adundhati Roy (again, great family story) (apparently I really like family stories), The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov. Wow, this answer is pretty all over the place. Did I mention Hamlet?

Since 2020, Melissa Joulwan and David Humphreys have been hosting Strong Sense of Place — a podcast all about books and travel. In that time, they’ve introduced listeners to almost 50 locales and the books that go well with them. In Season 5, which starts on Monday, February 6, listeners will get the inside scoop on books set in Spain, Jamaica, New Orleans, Lebanon, and amusement parks. How fun!

Be sure to visit their website and subscribe to the show in your podcast player of choice! (Pocket Casts is my personal favorite.)

On to the interview. I added a lot of books that I haven’t even heard of to my TBR, which is always a delight.

1) Your podcast (and website) — Strong Sense of Place — is all about the importance of place in books. Briefly (because I know you could write a book about this!), why is a strong sense of place so important in books? What draws you, personally, to that bookish trait? 

There's something powerful about stories that are firmly grounded in their place and time. By getting very specific and intimate, they show us the universal. Like, family dynamics, for example. The distinct ways parents interact with their children in Vietnam and Russia and Mexico may differ from each other dramatically — and be very different from American families — but I think we can all relate to the desire to be loved by our families or to the pain of learning a family secret.

That applies to fun things, too. Food and music and art are specific to their cultures, but we all have favorite dishes or smells or images that remind us of home or friends. And then sometimes you learn something, like, kids in Iran ate Kentucky Fried Chicken in the '70s, and you think, “Hey! I ate KFC when I was a kid, too.”

My personal reason for loving books with a strong sense of place is simple: I'm nosy. I love the feeling of eavesdropping on conversations and peeking into lives that are very different from mine. Getting wrapped up in the atmosphere of another place — in my imagination and in real life — is one of my favorite things. When I read a book, and I'm IN it, when the place on the page feels just as real to me as the chair where I'm sitting, I am very, very happy.

2) What are some of your favorite books when it comes to place?

We only recommend books we love on the show, so this list could be about 130 books long — but I definitely have some favorites. I'm always a little intimidated when we cover destinations that don't show up on “top 10 places you should travel” lists, places like Nigeria and Iran and Afghanistan. But some of my favorite books come out of those episodes.

Butter Honey Pig Bread by Francesca Ekwuyasi was a pleasure to read and has stayed with me. It's set in Lagos, Nigeria, and food is a primary character, along with estranged twin sisters. One of them is a cook, and her food is an outward expression of her longing and loneliness for her family. The novel is an exploration of forgiveness and all types of love — romantic, sisterly, motherly, love of life. 

I'm particularly drawn to books that weave stories within stories, so there’s real-life history and folklore and family mythology all knitted together — bonus points if there's also a little bit of magic dust sprinkled throughout.

Disoriental by Négar Djavadi (Tina Kover, translator) is a sort of family saga mashed up with a coming-of-age story set in 1970s and '80s Iran. The Tiger's Wife by Téa Obreht does something similar in the Balkans. It's really rewarding to read those books together and see shared DNA, even though they're from vastly different parts of the world and were written in different languages.

For a straight-up good time, I loved Cinnamon and Gunpowder by Eli Brown. I read it for our episode about the sea. All of the books for that show are fantastic, but this one stands out because it tells the story of a swashbuckling lady pirate, Mad Hannah Mabbot. You can practically feel the wind and smell the salty air. The action kicks off when she bursts into a posh dinner party and kidnaps the chef. She's grown weary of her shipboard meals and promises to spare his life if he cooks for her every Sunday. Hijinks ensue, secrets are revealed, friendships are forged, and along the way to rip-roaring adventure, I got kicked right in the feelings in a very satisfying way. 

I love books that give me an unexpected or unusual peek at familiar places. The novel The Godmother by Hannelore Cayre (Stephanie Smee, translator) is a darkly funny crime novel set in the parts of Paris that tourists don't visit. The heroine is 53 years old, and watching a mature woman take charge of her life is a treat.

The anthology Haunted Voices is a collection of 27 Gothic stories from Scotland. It's available in print and ebook, but audio is the best way to enjoy it. The audiobook includes archival recordings and new stories by Scottish storytellers, performed by the writers. It's like the very best open mic night you've ever attended.

3) On your website you also mention the importance of empathy in books. I agree with you 100% there. One of the most important things reading does for us is increase our empathy. How do you think a strong sense of place contributes to a greater sense of empathy?

There's so much research in the last few years that shows reading fiction makes us better at understanding and sharing the feelings of others, including people who differ from us. In real life, even the people we know most intimately retain a bit of mystery and privacy in their thoughts. But fictional characters give us opportunities to see the world through their eyes. We can experience uncomfortable or joyous or frightening situations vicariously through them — and, even more importantly, feel the associated emotions in a safe way. It's like trying on different costumes, but instead of just fabric garments, they're complete, emotional characters. And once you've felt what it's like to be someone else, it's pretty tough to objectify or judge them. Reading about new-to-us places and people makes it easier to extend that empathy and internalize that we're all more similar than different.

4) Are there any books that pop to mind that have an especially powerful element of empathy?

One of my favorite books of all time is A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles. I found the hero, The Count, to be a moving example of a character who embodies empathy. He's in a lousy situation: He's been exiled to a cramped attic room at the Metropol Hotel in Moscow. But instead of whining about his situation or growing bitter, he quietly improves the lives of the people around him. He's sophisticated and charming and wise and unerringly kind.

A book I read recently that's infused with kindness and empathy — and a golden-hued setting in Florence, Italy — is Still Life by Sarah Winman. This is one of those books that I want to press into people's hands and say, 'Trust me, read this.' It burrowed its way into my heart. I had to take breaks while reading it to catch my breath and let the words settle because I was so deeply invested in the characters. It tells the story of a group of family and friends who relocate from London to Florence. But it's so much more than that. It explores joy and sorrow and jealousy, forgiveness, gratitude, and love in all of its different flavors. The hero Ulysses has a moment with his daughter late in the book that is the very definition of empathy, but compassion and understanding drive many characters in the story.

I have to mention The Woman Next Door by Yewande Omotoso because it's almost an anti-empathy story. It's a tragi-comic novel about two 80-something women who are neighbors in South Africa. One is white, and one is black, and thanks to fate, they're forced into a quasi-friendship. At one point, the white woman watches a few Black people she knows interacting with each other. And she realizes that she's never really seen them as before as people. Until that moment, it had never occurred to her to consider their internal monologues or the lives they led when they weren't in her presence. It was a profound moment for her as a character and for me as a reader. It was the first time it became clear to me what it's like inside the head of someone without empathy. What an amazing piece of writing!

5) Okay, taking those elements out of the picture, are there broad genres or subjects you're drawn to in your reading?

Manor house stories are like potato chips for me: I cannot resist them, and there is no such thing as too many. I love what happens to a group of characters when they're isolated together in an enclosed space, so by extension, I also love novels that bring people together and trap them somewhere. Snowstorms! Apartment buildings! Islands! Any genre in that setting works for me: mystery, thriller, literary, Gothic horror or romance — I'll take them all!

I also love fantasy that's based in our world with a bit of shimmer to it, like The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern or Spoonbenders by Daryl Gregory. I am also very attracted to long books, stories that feature libraries and archives, Gothic tropes, and epistolary novels. The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova and Plain Bad Heroines by Emily M. Danforth are two of my favorites that weave all of those things.

6) What were some highlights of your '22 reading? Did any themes emerge? Any big reading plans for '23?

When I went back and looked at my favorite books from our last podcast season, I realized I was drawn to stories that tackled serious emotional issues but tempered sadness with love, redemption, and a sense of hope. There was also a lot of dark humor. 

One of the standouts is a short story from the collection This is Paradise by Kristiana Kahakauwila. She's a hapa writer of native Hawaiian, German, and Norwegian descent, and her stories explore identity. My thoughts keep returning to “Thirty Nine Rules for Making a Hawaiian Funeral Into a Drinking Game.” It's worth the book's purchase price for this story alone. Told in the form of a bleakly funny, gut-wrenching list, it's a portrait of Hawaiian family and tradition set at a grandmother's funeral. It begins, “Take a drink each time the haole pastor says hell.” and then, later, “Take a drink for each male cousin you see cry for the first time.” The format is compelling, and the writing is spare but evocative and devastating but also, somehow, funny. 

I also found a new-to-me affection for books with non-human narrators. Who knew?! Flames by Robbie Arnott (set in Tasmania), Metropolitan Stories by Christine Coulson (set in the Met in NYC), and The Pages by Hugo Hamilton (set in Germany), all feature unusual narrators. I was afraid they might be gimmicky, but wow, are they well done. The Pages is narrated by a book that survived a 1930 Nazi book burning — so imaginative and moving and beautifully written. 

7) Are there books you find yourself referencing, thinking about, and/or recommending over and over again? Basically, do you have any all-time favorites that have shaped your life and your thinking?  

My favorite book of all time is Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë. Jane Eyre is a character for the ages. She defiantly makes her way through the world with a vise grip on her self-worth. I read it almost every year, and something new hits me every time. 

I've read and listened to the Wolf Hall trilogy by Hilary Mantel three times all the way through. These books are a reminder that history is about real people with the same grand and petty concerns we have today. Hilary Mantel had an extraordinary mind and was so eloquent while also being accessible and funny. I cried my face off when she died last September. My advice for anyone interested in the books but also a bit cowed by their length and density is to watch the BBC miniseries first. It's a fantastic way to get to know the characters. Then read the books and revel in the depth of detail and gorgeous language while picturing the amazing Mark Rylance as Thomas Cromwell and Claire Foy as Anne Boleyn.

I'm going to leave you with a final recommendation. When my husband David and I have a bad day, we pull a children's book off the shelf and read it out loud to each other. It's nearly impossible to stay in a bad mood while reading a delightful picture book; Dave's go-to is Hug Machine by Scott Campbell. If you want to revel in being grumpy instead, you can choose something like Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day by Judith Viorst or Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak (bonus: you can pair that last one with this Roasted Carrot Soup, inspired by Sendak’s classic).

I’m thrilled to introduce you to Neal Thompson, whose most recent book, The First Kennedys, was just named one of the best history books of 2022 by Amazon. I reviewed it when it was published back in the spring and have thoroughly enjoyed his newsletter since it was launched around the same time.

Given that it’s Black Friday week, I should be convincing you to buy something. Instead, Neal and I are giving away a copy of his book! Click below to enter the giveaway:

Enter the giveaway!

You have a week to enter — it closes on Monday the 28th at midnight Mountain Time. If you still feel the itch to buy something, be sure to check out all of Neal’s books.

Be prepared to add to your TBR after reading this interview.

1) At first blush, the subjects of your books are rather varied: an astronaut, car racing, football, fatherhood, Robert Ripley, and most recently, the Kennedy family. Is there a through-line that connects the things you write about?

Ah, the same question my agent asks every time I suggest a new book idea! He’s been very patient with me over the years. When I set out to break free from my job as a newspaper reporter and try writing books (20 years ago!), I decided to only pursue stories I really cared about, only those with real, complex, human, and interestingly flawed subjects. I’ve never veered from that.

But I do think the connective tissue, even if it may not be obvious, is chronicling eclectic and overlooked Americana. I try to tell stories about people, warts and all, striving to make it in a hard land, overcoming hurdles and hardships, aspiring to live big American lives. I also try to focus on a specific time and place, a world and a community — 1880s Boston; the 1960s space race; 1930s southern racing. 

2) Though your books are non-fiction, your newsletter, Blood & Whiskey, focuses on fiction, largely in the mystery/thriller category. Do you read novels as a break from all the (presumably) non-fiction reading you do for work?

I love novels and especially crime fiction. It’s my distraction reading, my dark and gritty escape from real life into make believe. For my nonfiction books, I’m often reading so much historical and archival research material that I find a murder mystery to be the perfect antidote.

At the same time, that reading serves another important role in my actual (non-fiction) writing life. I find crime-fiction writers to be some of the best writers, period. At its best, crime fiction gives us complicated characters, interesting locales, and human drama. And I love that more than a few came from a journalism background like myself (Laura Lippman, Ace Atkins, Dan Fesperman, Michael Connelly). I enjoy trying to figure out how they do what they do. Is that forensic reading?

3) What are some of your all-time favorites in that broad category of mysteries and thrillers?

Too many to list, and I know I’ll forget some, but a few favorites are: Megan Abbott, Dennis Lehane, Peter Heller, Louise Penny (a recent addition to the faves list), Attica Locke, Ace Atkins, Laura Lippman, George Pelecanos, Ivy Pochoda, Kem Nunn, Don Winslow, Joe Ide, Chris Offutt, Percival Everett, Daniel Silva . . .

And among the classics: Patricia Highsmith, George Simenon, Andrea Camilleri, Raymond Chandler, Ross MacDonald, Margaret Millar.

I wish I had a better habit of re-reading certain favorites, but I seem to be always looking for the next new book or author. For example, I’m very eager to dive into Everybody Knows, coming in January from Jordan Harper. 

4) Are there particular books or authors that have especially influenced your own approach to writing non-fiction?

When I was first considering the leap from daily journalism to non-fiction books, there were a few writers whose work inspired and awed me — Erik Larson, Laura Hillenbrand, Ben McIntyre, Buzz Bissinger, Tim Egan, and others who were writing nonfiction books that read like novels, even thrillers.

I admire their ability to make the deep research required for a great non-fiction book to disappear beneath a propulsive, vivid story packed with great characters, dialogue, action — just like the best crime fiction.

I’m also inspired by more recent non-fiction faves (Candice Millard, Rebecca Skloot) and the consistent work of two friends and incredible writers, Karen Abbott and Denise Kiernan. 

5) You also write about whiskey and cocktails in your newsletter. What’s your go-to cocktail when you’re at a new bar? At home? 

Well, here’s a secret . . . I used to be a devout Manhattan guy. I mean, I loved the drink — it’s elegant, potent, adaptable, classic. But during the pandemic something got tweaked in my 50-something-year-old system and my favorite ingredients — whiskey, bourbon, rye — no longer sat comfortably in my gut.

So even though I write a newsletter called Blood & WHISKEY, lately I’ve tapered off the brown-liquor drinks and have been trying more gin and tequila drinks. Probably the favorite of the moment, which ranks right behind the Manhattan (and alongside its cousin, the Boulevardier) is the Negroni. Equal parts gin, Campari, vermouth. But I’ll add a shoutout to the French aperativ, pastis, which I discovered on a late-summer trip to Marseille, where I speed-read a trilogy by French crime writer Jean-Claude Izzo, whose effed-up ex-cop protagonist makes regular stops at Marseille bars for a pastis or three.     

6) What are you reading and enjoying right now? What’s next on your list?

As you know, the list is always long and ever-changing. 

Like you, I had contributed a newsletter post to the “Notes from Three Pines” homage to Louise Penny, so I’ve been tearing through the Inspector Gamache books. I recently got an advance copy of the next book in the series (#18), so I’m about to dive into that. I just  finished Now Is Not the Time to Panic, by Kevin Wilson, which was wonderful. I just started Properties of Thirst, by Marriane Wiggins, whom I’ve never read. It’s set in California just after the Pearl Harbor attack and it’s about water, land, L.A., and the creation of the infamous Japanese internment camp, Manzanar. Also coming up: Everybody Knows, by Jordan Harper and Exiles, by Jane Harper (no relation), both out in January. Also, I recently received a stack of George Simenon from Penguin and plan to chip away at those as the days get darker.

7) Are there books you find yourself referencing, thinking about, and/or recommending over and over again? Basically, do you have any all-time favorites that have shaped your life and your thinking?

One book I always have within arm’s reach is Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk, by Ben Fountain. I’ve recommended it, given it away, made my two sons read it. Ben’s next novel is coming in a few months and I can’t wait.

Non-fiction writers I admire and whose books I keep nearby for motivation: David Grann, Patrick Radden Keefe, Beth Macy (former newspaper colleague), Tim Egan, Candace Millard. Also Katherine Boo’s amazing Behind the Beautiful Forevers.

Since I’m constantly collecting new books I occasionally do a big purge and donate a pile to one of my many neighborhood Little Free Libraries. But there are of course those I can’t/won’t part with, including: So Much Blue by Percival Everett; the collected works of Margaret Millar (from my friends at Soho press); The Woman Who Lost Her Soul, by Bob Shacocchis, an amazing book that’s stuck with me; Life Among Giants, by Bill Roorbach; The Dog Stars, by Peter Heller. And there are a few writers whose books I’ll always buy, read, and keep: Megan Abbott, Colson Whitehead, Andre Dubus. I also love me some Irish: Kevin Barry, Colum McCann, Tana French, and Donal Ryan.

Don’t forget to enter the giveaway and thanks so much for reading! I deeply appreciate your time and inbox space.

-Jeremy

The Lager Queen of Minnesota was easily one of my favorite reads of the first half of the year. Given the numerous references to my hometown of Hastings, I had to know more about the author.

Turns out, J. Ryan Stradal also grew up in Hastings.

I immediately emailed him and basically said, “Ahhh! A fellow H-Townie!” and he responded, “You betcha!”

Well, it wasn’t exactly like that, but you get the idea.

J. Ryan graciously took the time to answer a few questions I had about the midwest, his latest book, and some literary influences. Enjoy!

1) What inspired the beer-y theme in The Lager Queen? Did you know much about brewing before diving into the writing?

I enjoyed beer, but I didn’t know the difference between a lager and an ale, to be honest. While I was touring the Midwest for my debut novel in 2015, I was blown away by the craft breweries I frequently encountered, some in towns much smaller than Hastings.

When I spoke with the owners of these craft breweries, and learned a bit about the brewing history of my home state and region, I felt that I wanted to tell this story, but from the perspective of unlikely narrators. I created a handful of characters who I introduce at a point in their lives where they know nothing about beer, so their education can take the reader on a journey and not merely be didactic.

2) There are a few great Minnesota breweries mentioned in the book. Do you have a personal favorite? Surly gets a lot of hype (deservedly), as well as Fulton, Bauhaus, Bent Paddle . . . the list goes on! 

Tough question — but I’d have to say BlackStack, who made (and canned) Blotz lager last summer. They’re great guys and their beer is consistently marvelous.

3) How 'bout your favorite pie?

Again, a tough one, but I’ll go with blueberry.

4) The sense of place and of culture is what I love most about The Lager Queen. It oozes midwest from literally the first page, which is not a setting you find very often in contemporary fiction. Do you have any favorite midwest novels? Midwestern authors?  

Too many to name! I’ll start with Louise Erdrich, Tim O’Brien, Christy Clancy, Gretchen Anthony, Peter Geye, Lorna Landvik, Nickolas Butler, Sarah Stonich, Beth Dooley, Kathleen Rooney, Andrew J. Graff, and, right now, Chuck Klosterman and Lillian Li.

5) The three women — Edith, Helen, and Diana — are the stars of The Lager Queen. Why focus on midwestern women, specifically? 

Originally, many of the male characters also had POV chapters, but their chapters weren’t strong enough to make the cut. These three women, meanwhile, were indispensable. There’s a lot of my mom in them. I write to keep her alive, which is why my primary characters are usually women.

6) You live in LA these days. What is it that brought you out to California, but keeps you writing about the midwest? 

I initially came out to the LA area as a career move — I worked in TV for a while until I could make a living as a writer — but my community of friends keeps me out here. 

I still write about the Midwest because I’m writing for the teenage kid in me who was starving for more representations of my home region in fiction. Minnesota forged me as a writer and a person, and not only do I want to converse with that history, I want to honor the people who helped me along the way. One way I attempt that is by representing them in my characters. Pat Prager and Edith Magnusson are two flagrant examples.

7) What would we find you reading on an average day? Fiction or non-fiction? Any particular sub-genres or topics you especially gravitate towards? 

A mix, but mostly contemporary literary fiction.

8) What are you reading and enjoying right now? What’s next on your list?

Right now I’m reading Lillian Li’s Number One Chinese Restaurant and Chuck Klosterman’s The Nineties. Not sure yet what’s next after that, but there are a few books I’ve been dying to read, including Brad Listi’s latest and Pete Hsu’s upcoming collection.

9) Are there books you find yourself referencing, thinking about, and/or recommending over and over again? Basically, do you have any all-time favorites that have shaped your life and your thinking?

Great question. The books that keep coming up for me in this regard are Denis Johnson’s Jesus’ Son, Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung by Lester Bangs, A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan, Julius Knipl: Real Estate Photographer Stories by Ben Katchor, and pretty much anything by Alice Munro. But my favorite novel of the last ten years is The Sellout by Paul Beatty.

Thanks so much for reading! If there’s someone you’d like to see an interview from, let me know!

-Jeremy

Elle Griffin is the Editor-in-Chief at Utah Business during the day, but her real passion lies at the intersection of literature and the modern creator landscape. As such, she’s running a newsletter about writing/creating, publishing a serial novel, and more.

She took some time to answer my questions about what she’s reading, the modern publishing world, and her all-time favorite books.

1. Your gothic novel, Obscurity, is being published one chapter at a time on Substack. Can you give us a brief definition of the gothic genre and a few examples of your favorite gothic works?

Gothic novels are slow, haunting novels with just the tiniest bit of creepiness. Mostly they are all about an aesthetic: 1700s era Europe, dark castles, secret histories, philosophical characters. Think: The Count of Monte Cristo, Dracula, Frankenstein, Phantom of the Opera, A Picture of Dorian Gray—which are all my absolute favorites. 

2. You also write about writing and the difficult work of making a living as a creator. Do you have any favorite books about writing, creating, etc. that have really stirred and motivated your own work? 

I hate books about writing because they change how I write and I don't want to limit my creativity to only what certain people have found worked for them. I've only read one such book: The famous Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott (who, funny story, used to be neighbor and I read it with her right next door and never told her about it because I was such a fangirl). The book outlines the most commonly followed book writing advice: write a crappy first draft, then go back and completely re-write it. I did that for a YA novel in my 20s and the book was so bad I didn't even want to give it a second draft. 

For my second attempt: I decided to write one perfect chapter then another perfect chapter then another perfect chapter so that by the time I reached the end, the book was completely done in one draft. This was much more my style and I'm doing that again for my second novel. This is why I can follow the Counter Craft newsletter without unsubscribing, because he writes the same way I do and thus reaffirms my own process rather than challenging it!

As far as inspiration that has motivated my own work: I turn to fiction and art. I make reading lists that are essentially studies in certain areas. For a long time I only read classic novels because I wanted to read all the greats and I wanted to write something like that. Similarly, I also went through an English literature/Jane Austen/Bronte phase.

Now I'm reading children's literature (including Alice in Wonderland, Peter Pan, the Narnia books, etc.) and all the surreal fiction (Kafka, The Anomaly, Island, etc.) I can get my hands on because I want to get my mind into a more imaginative state so I can write the surreal fantasy novel I have in my head. I'll actually be sending out my complete reading list (with every book I've read since 2017 and all of the books I'm going to read next) to my newsletter subscribers in the next month! (Subscribe here if you want to get it!)

3. I know you're a bit of a newsletter junkie—can you share a few of your favorites? 

Ah, yes I definitely am. I autodirect them to a newsletter folder in my inbox that I read every morning in the bathtub before I start my day. It's like my own personally curated magazine. My current favorites are:

• Your Big Read (because I am currently reading War & Peace).

• Absurdus and Feed Me are my favorite fiction newsletters. Both feature short stories that are insanely imaginative and surreal and I'm just eating that kind of thing up right now.

• Culture Study features deep dives on topics you never knew you were already emotionally invested in.

• Incense and Orris goes deep on the histories of perfumes and it is completely fascinating.

• Dearest is about all of the jewels going up for auction soon with pictures of them and why they are a big deal. These are very fun to browse. 

4. What do you read in your "off" time? Have you been reading gothic lit while writing your own book in that genre? Or do you need to read something totally different while you're in a season of writing?

I definitely read in the genre of what I'm writing. It's how I "stay in character." That being said, I also pick what books I want to write based on the world I want to live in while I'm writing it. After all, writing a book takes several years so I want it to be in an area that I will have fun exploring for several years. This is why my first book turned out gothic and my second book is turning out Utopian.

5. You're obviously bullish on the future of self-publishing and patron-sponsored creators. Why is that? What's gone wrong in the modern publishing industry? (I know this could be a long one; feel free to be brief!) 

No one reads books (you’re better off putting your content on social media or in video format).

As a result, books don’t sell (in 2020 only 268 books sold more than 100,000 copies in 2020 and 96 percent of books sold less than 1,000 copies).

If most books sell 1,000 copies, most authors are earning $2,250 if published traditionally or $4,200 if self-published (which is not a lot for several years of work).

And if a book has 1,000 fans, a better model would be to figure out how to get those 1,000 fans to subscribe to an author monthly, rather than to get them to pay $9.99 every three years when a book comes out.

Following the wisdom of the creator economy: it only takes 1,000 true fans spending $100/year for a creator to earn a salary of $100,000/year. Theoretically then, an author could release a new chapter every week, charge subscribers $8 or $9 a month, and earn $100,000 a year—from only 1,000 readers. This idea deeply appeals to me because some of my favorite novels were written as serials—including my beloved The Count of Monte Cristo—and they were wildly successful. Dumas earned about 10,000 francs ($65,743 today) per installment for his books.

I'm just curious if that could work again today—it's already working for some people.

6. What are you reading and enjoying right now? What’s next on your list?

THE ANOMALY IS SO GOOD—seriously one of the best books I read in years. Its surrealism meets philosophical complexity meets pure entertainment. Love books like this.

7. Are there books you find yourself referencing, thinking about, and/or recommending over and over again? Basically, do you have any all-time favorites that have shaped your life and your thinking?

Les Miserables. Nothing can top Jean Valjean's struggle for redemption in my book!

I so enjoyed this interview with Max that I wanted to send it as a separate email rather than just adding it onto the end of the Friday newsletter, something I’ll be doing more often here in 2022.

I’ve also made these author interviews a separate category on Substack. If you’re not interested in receiving emails about interviews, you can adjust the settings in your Substack account. Go to readmorebooks.substack.com, navigate to “My Account” at the top right, and check/uncheck “Email Notifications” as desired. (Here’s a screenshot of that page.)

On Friday, I reviewed Max Chafkin’s The Contrarian, the gripping, sometimes shocking story of Peter Thiel’s impact on Silicon Valley and the world at large. I highly recommend it for anyone interested in tech and modern politics/power. Make sure to follow Max on Twitter too.

1. Your book adds to the growing list of Silicon Valley founder/founding stories. It's a niche I'm somewhat obsessed with. In your opinion, what are a few of the essential Silicon Valley reads? The books that best encapsulate why those few square miles hold so much of the world's power?

This is maybe a self-serving observation, but I think that the story of how Silicon Valley went from being an economic sideshow to become the economic and cultural center of the world is arguably the most important one of our lifetime. So much about the way our lives are changing is explained by that story, and the world of tech has supplied journalists (readers too) with just an endless supply of narratives and big personalities.

A good starting point is Margaret O'Mara's The Code, a comprehensive history that will give outsiders a great overview of how we got here, but that is sophisticated enough to complicate an insider's understanding of what makes the Valley special. (O'Mara's provocative thesis is that libertarian, apolitical Silicon Valley is in many ways a creation of the U.S. government.)

Everyone should read Ashlee Vance's Elon Musk biography and Brad Stone's two books about Amazon. A lot of people probably have read Walter Isaacson's Steve Jobs, which is rightly beloved, but I'd argue that the best portrait of Silicon Valley's most famous founder is actually Lisa Brennan-Jobs's Small Fry, a memoir by Jobs's estranged daughter that doubles as a love letter to him—as well as a searing indictment.

Though the book is two decades old, I find myself coming back repeatedly to Michael Lewis's The New New Thing: A Silicon Valley Story. On some selfish and competitive level, I find it annoying that this slight book from 1999, which covers the efforts of a long forgotten Silicon Valley executive Jim Cark to create an awesome computerized yacht, is such an enduring portrait of both tech optimism and tech culture. But it is.

2. The Contrarian is your first book — congrats! Are there books/writers that have particularly influenced your own approach to journalism, writing, and storytelling?

It's a cliche to mention Michael Lewis, I guess, but it's pretty hard to be a business journalist and not be influenced by him. Moneyball and Liar's Poker were two of the first business books I read. What's great about Lewis, what he understood, is that the point of writing about business isn't to better understand business—it's to understand the world.

So you think you know something about baseball, and then you read Moneyball and realize that in fact, you were missing half the story—maybe more than half. And a lot of domains of life are like that. Money is mysterious, and a lot of Very Serious Writers find business beneath them; but money makes the world work and it's a domain for many of the great human dramas. That of course created an opportunity for Lewis and anybody else who writes seriously about the topic with empathy and curiosity.

I've been a magazine writer all my career and that style of writing has shaped me, probably more than anything. One thing about working in magazines is that they make you ruthlessly unsentimental about your words. I find myself gravitating especially to the work of writers who seem to self-consciously embrace this—writing unmannered prose that, in getting out of its own way, soars to emotional heights that even the showiest writers struggle with. Right now I'm particularly enamored of Patrick Radden Keefe, who I think is the master of this style (see especially this remarkable New Yorker piece about a mass shooting) and who has written two of my favorite non-fiction books of the past few years, Say Nothing and Empire of Pain. 

3. How did you decide to tackle the complicated story of Peter Thiel? It takes a lot of courage, frankly. This is a guy who obviously revels in revenge. There are a lot of other founders you could've written about — who haven't bankrupt journalists. 

Are there though? I mean, sure, I guess there are other people to write in tech about but the lack of a serious Thiel book seemed like a gaping hole in our understanding of tech and power--and of course an opportunity. I'd written about him a few times over the years, and sort of got serious about the idea of taking a close look at Thiel after covering his endorsement of Trump at the 2016 RNC. The book grew out of that story and a series of conversations with my agent, Ethan Bassoff.

The thing that originally drew me to Thiel were the personal contradictions: Here's a gay, futurist immigrant, backing a reactionary anti-immigrant presidential candidate; here's a guy who helped create Silicon Valley as it exists today, who, for some reason, had turned critic and was beginning to take on the same industry. I also found myself interested in the dueling narratives about Thiel. His fans consider him this Ayn Rand-style superhero; the left sees him as a right wing techno supervillain. There's truth in both of those narratives, but neither is true--and it occurred to me that would create an opportunity for me to complicate everyone's understanding of this man.

It's kind of odd to admit, but I didn't really think too much about about courage it would require to do a book on Thiel until after I started writing. But of course, at that point, I thought about it a lot. Thiel's takedown of Gawker, I think, was deliberately designed to create a chilling effect on both journalists and sources—and any reporter who tries to write about him will inevitably face additional scrutiny from editors (and newsroom lawyers) who on some level would rather not deal with the hassle of covering about a potentially litigious person.

So I worried: I have three young children, and didn't want to put my the financial security of my wife and kids at risk because I wanted to write a book about tech power. But ultimately I decided that, if the whole point of the Gawker takedown was to create a chilling effect, I could combat that by simply deciding not to be afraid, and second, by just approaching the subject with the same rigor and fairness I'd bring to any story. That may have been more of a coping mechanism, than a strategy, but I think it worked.

4. Beyond Thiel himself, your book is very much about modern America as a whole — how politics and technology and nationalism have become so intertwined. Are there books you'd recommend about how America got to where we are today? (I noticed a George Packer shoutout in your acknowledgments; his writing is just... *chef's kiss*.) 

I love Packer's work and I wanted to acknowledge him because he had written what I think had been the definitive portrait of Thiel (a New Yorker profile, that was adapted to be part of his book, The Unwinding). I don't agree with the entirety of Packer's analysis. Like many people who obviously admire Thiel, he seemed unwilling to really take a hard look at the extreme parts of Thiel's ideology—but the profile was exceedingly well done and it informed my understanding of Thiel. I'm also a huge fan of Rick Perlstein's books about the rise of the New Right; I especially loved Nixonland.

5. I assume most of your reading is in the non-fiction realm: interviews, background material, quarterly reports, etc. What do you read in your "off" hours (if those hours exist)? Any authors or subjects you can't resist?

Like many people, I suppose, I've been obsessed with the pandemic, and devour pretty much everything that is produced on Covid, vaccines, and viruses generally. I listen, semi-obsessively to a talky (and super nerdy) podcast, This Week In Virology, in which a group of academic virologists talk about the latest research. Most everyone to whom I've recommended it finds it deadly boring. I love it.

The book I've recommended the most to people in light of all this actually isn't about Covid; it's David France's How to Survive a Plague. France covers both the activism that ultimately led to the discovery of treatments for HIV—and tells a beautiful, heartbreaking story about the young men who confronted the AIDS epidemic, and who somehow, miraculously survived it. It's not science journalism, really, and yet it’s one of the best things I've ever read about medicine and drug development. I found it mind-expanding in so many ways, and also, just unbelievably hopeful, especially over the past two years.

6. What are you reading and enjoying right now? What’s next on your list?

One amazing thing about having children is having a reasonable excuse to read children's literature that you somehow missed. We just read Charlotte's Web, and then immediately started reading it again. It is such a perfect little book.

I just read American Prometheus, the biography of Robert Oppenheimer, which is wonderful and also kind of a cool sideways look at the history of technology.

Right now I'm reading The Firm, which is Duff McDonald's history of McKinsey, the management consultancy. That maybe sounds dull, but I've found it to be a totally engrossing and hilarious look at one of the strangest institutions that has shaped American power. McDonald presents the firm as this modern day priesthood—complete with sacred texts and special clothing (no argyle socks!)—which I think gets at why McKinsey has been so successful and influential, but also hints at its essentially shallow quality. They are, on some level, gigantic phonies.

7. Are there books you find yourself referencing, thinking about, and/or recommending over and over again? Basically, do you have any all-time favorites that have shaped your life and your thinking?

I read a lot of Russian literature in college, and I still go back to War and Peace. Tolstoy is such a master of human emotion, and the book probably tells you everything you need to know about love, loss, ambition, and history.

I think about The Great Gatsby a lot too—partly because I go running a few times a week in the wonderful park that was the dump that Fitzgerald called the "Valley of Ashes," and partly because I see parallels between Thiel and Gatsby.  Thiel is, like Gatsby, this quintessentially American hero: He is self-created in every sense, mysterious, and, of course, fabulously rich--and yet there's always a question of what is below that irresistible exterior. Is there anything?

I'm going to continue to be utterly predictable and mention Robert Caro's The Power Broker. If you grew up in or around New York City, like I did, the book has a special resonance, but it's also just a remarkable character study that doubles as the definitive study of power itself. While I drive over the Triborough Bridge, I feel Robert Moses's presence—that is such an achievement, both on Moses's part and Caro's.

Leave a comment

Thanks so much for reading!

-Jeremy

I’ve said quite a lot about Four Thousand Weeks recently, so it doesn’t even feel like Mr. Burkeman needs an introduction here. He writes about productivity, happiness, and time management for a number of outlets and across a number of books. This week, I had the pleasure of asking him a few questions about books, reading, and writing.

Check out his website (and sign up for his amazing newsletter) and give him a follow on Twitter too.

A Few Bookish Questions With Oliver Burkeman

1. You're best known for your writing on happiness and productivity, with some philosophy thrown in too. Were there books or particular ideas that kickstarted your own interest in that topic?

On some level, I think I've been interested in these topics since before I was reading the kind of books that addressed them directly — which is not to say that I was a deeply reflective child, so much as that my tendency toward anxiety, and my neurotic concern with “getting more done,” started early! Being raised as a Quaker probably helped inculcate a certain interest in philosophical and spiritual topics. After that, milestone books along the way included Scott Peck's The Road Less Traveled, which famously starts with the observation that “life is difficult,” but that once you accept this truth, it's no longer a problem; Pema Chödrön's When Things Fall Apart, Alan Watts's many books, including The Wisdom of Insecurity, and of course the canonical modern book on productivity, Getting Things Done by David Allen.

2. Maybe it's just me, but most of the books I read about time management and productivity fall flat. Yours, however, stuck out. What makes Four Thousand Weeks different from a "standard" self-improvement book?

Well, I can talk about how I think it has a different kind of message — that I'm trying, in a way, to guide readers to experience a shift in perspective about time that involves a form of surrender, an admission of defeat, a recognition that there's a completely unresolvable mismatch between our capacity to *want* to do an infinite amount with our lives, or to feel an infinite number of obligations, versus our utterly finite capacities to actually do things.

My argument is that accepting this defeat is unexpectedly empowering, because it's precisely when you give up (or at least partially give up) the struggle to evade the non-negotiable facts of being a finite human that you can relax into a life spent focusing on a few things you genuinely care about.

I suppose I'd also want to say that I wrote it (and I hope I'm transparent about this in the book) as an exploration of the advice I myself needed to hear, not from the point of view of someone who's got everything figured out and is now generously passing on his perfect insight to others. I think this is probably always the case with books of advice — but I don't think authors are always honest about acknowledging it.

3. Which authors and/or books have influenced your approach to writing?

In terms of nonfiction prose style, Janet Malcolm is the master. I wouldn't have the audacity to claim that my writing bears any resemblance to hers, but I don't think anyone working at the intersection of journalism and philosophy can afford not to read, say, Psychoanalysis: The Impossible Profession or The Journalist and the Murderer.

In a different vein, the "comic sociology" of David Brooks's book Bobos In Paradise made a big impression on me, in its vivid exploration of abstract ideas in a funny way.

In terms of the daily practice of writing: Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird, of course; and also an old and hard-to-obtain book about the psychology of writing, How Writers Journey to Comfort and Fluency by Robert Boice, which is about the importance of not turning writing into a huge and therefore intimidating centerpiece of your life, but working in regular, non-intimidatingly small chunks instead.

4. What are the top few must-read time management/productivity/happiness books that you recommend (besides yours!)?

David Allen's Getting Things Done (see above) is one of those books that contributed certain ideas to the field that are now so universal he probably doesn't get sufficient credit for them anymore; it's well worth returning to the source. Cal Newport's Deep Work is incredibly worthwhile too.

In a more introspective and psychotherapeutic vein, Finding Meaning in the Second Half of Life by James Hollis made a huge impression on me; the work of the spiritual teacher Joan Tollifson, above all Death: The End of Self-Improvement has been transformative as well.

5. I imagine that most of what you read is non-fiction. Is that accurate? Do you have other genres/subjects you gravitate towards for entertainment, comfort, and pure enjoyment?

Yes, it's accurate. There are *huge* gaps in my reading of literature, especially contemporary literature, of which I am definitely not proud. I tend to read a lot of non-fiction in connection with work, and then I want to relax in bed or in the bath with pure escapism, so then I revert all the way back to Sherlock Holmes, literally, or to these vast low-cost Kindle compendiums called Megapacks that collect vast quantities of short detective fiction from Victorian-era magazines. I know at least one of my close friends is appalled at the quality of prose I'll tolerate in that sort of context. But this squeezes out the time for fiction that poses any kind of a challenge at all — which I suspect most of the best fiction does.

6. What are you reading and enjoying right now? What’s next on your list?

I recently finished two books that in very different ways do a tremendous job of conveying the spirit and outlook of Zen Buddhism — John Tarrant's Bring Me The Rhinoceros, about Zen koans, and Being-Time, a commentary on the work of the ancient Zen scholar Dogen by the contemporary Buddhist teacher Shinshu Roberts. I love the sense of my perspective shifting in real time as I read books like this. Meanwhile after stumbling repeatedly on important-seeming snippets from the work of the “recovering environmentalist” and essayist Paul Kingsnorth, I bought a couple of his books, so they're waiting for me next.

7. Are there books you find yourself referencing, thinking about, and/or recommending over and over again? Basically, do you have any all-time favorites that have shaped your life and your thinking?

I fear I've probably mentioned several of them above already: Getting Things Done; Finding Meaning in the Second Half of Life; anything Janet Malcolm ever wrote. Charles Eisenstein's book The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know is Possible is another one — one of those books that somehow gets underneath the most basic assumptions about how we live, and thus allows you to glimpse the alternative ways in which it could be lived, right now, like pushing at the door of your cell to find that it was never locked to begin with.

Garrett Graff’s books and other journalistic projects have been some of my favorite pieces of media from the last few years. The Only Plane in the Sky was one of my favorite reads last year, his WIRED article about March 11, 2020 is as memorable a piece on the pandemic as I’ve read, and Long Shadow (a podcast) explored the nuances of 9/11 in ways I hadn’t previously considered. It was real treat to interview him and find out about some of the books and authors that have influenced him.

1. Your new book deals with speculation, paranoia, government secrets, and terrorism. Which is really what most of your writing has been about. How did you land on that particular constellation of subjects?

You're right that much of my writing is what I call "conspiracy adjacent," but that's less because of my own interest in conspiracy theories and more because of the types of subjects that interest me. Most of my daily journalism—for WIRED, POLITICO Magazine, and elsewhere—as well as my books have always focused at the intersection of technology and national security. There's a common theme among a lot of my writing in how technology changes institutions. My FBI history, The Threat Matrix, is really the story of how globalization transformed a domestic law enforcement agency into an international intelligence agency, and my Doomsday history, Raven Rock, is the story of how a new technology—nuclear weapons and, specifically, ICBMs—compressed time and space and forced the presidency to change. My next book Watergate is also about the presidency and media in a huge moment of transition. And this new Scribd Original, Dragonfire, is about how the danger of trickle-down technology—the idea that a transnational terrorist group could possess technology that until the 1990s had only been the province of superpowers.

2. Besides your own books, what are a couple must-reads about our government and modern era?

Most government and political memoirs are a waste of time, in my opinion. They're self-serving and disappear in relevance almost immediately. Plus they're mostly pretty poorly written; I've slogged through probably hundreds of terrible memoirs by former spies, FBI agents, politicians, and White House aides over the years. There are two, though, that I really recommend to people interested in understanding the grand sweep of modern history: Robert Gates, long before he became Bush and Obama's defense secretary, wrote a memoir about the end of the Cold War called From the Shadows that explains the Cold War better than almost anything I've ever read. More recently, James Clapper—the nation's longest-serving Director of National Intelligence, who oddly became something of a #Resistance hero in the Trump era—wrote a memoir called Facts and Fears that was an amazing history of the rise and maturation of US intelligence. For anyone seeking to understand the brokenness of American foreign policy right now, I recommend Rosa Brooks' How Everything Became War and the Military Became Everything. She's one of my favorite thinkers on modern government. 

3. You have a new book coming next winter about Watergate. I have Nixon's memoirs on my shelf; worth reading? I've heard it's a surprisingly good, albeit self-serving, read.

Nixon's memoir actually is pretty readable—it's just a doorstop of epic proportions. I spend a lot of time in my forthcoming book Watergate mining the mind of Richard Nixon, and it's important to understand that the White House taping system he installed really came about because he was afraid he wasn't going to get credit for all he was doing as president. His presidency is this incredible mix of hubris, accomplishment, and paranoia. Given that, it's not really a surprise that his memoir clocked in at a gazillion pages with particularly dense type. He actually wrote a lot of it with a team that included a young Diane Sawyer, who was a press aide, and there are some actually pretty entertaining books written about him writing the memoirs, like Robert Sam Anson's Exile. I recommend flipping through Nixon's memoirs and reading the parts and moments that interest you; I'll confess that I didn't even read the whole thing while I was researching Watergate.

4. Your writing style is incredibly readable. Are there writers who have especially influenced your own style and approach to the craft?

That's incredibly kind of you to say; I've always tried to write for a very general reader, so that if you come to my articles or books without much background you can still enjoy them, while sprinkling in enough detail and depth that if you do know something about it, you'll still get a kick out of it. I grew up in the height of Tom Clancy fame, so his way of writing so colloquially with such a heavy sprinkle of insider secrets definitely rubbed off on me, but the writers I'd most like to be when I grow up are folks like Doris Kearns Goodwin, James Fallows, and Evan Thomas, amazing analytical journalists who are deeply steeped in history.

5. I imagine most of your reading is non-fiction. Reports, histories, memos, etc. What do you read for fun (when you have the chance)? Do you read much fiction?

Part of the issue of being a writer is that it turns a great pastime, reading, into one long busman's holiday. When I'm writing a book, I'll generally read 100 to 150 other books for reference and research, so I read fiction really only in spurts on vacations or in between book projects of my own. I'm generally pretty author-focused. Graham Greene and Evelyn Waugh are probably my favorite authors, and I read a lot of espionage thriller authors like John Le Carre, Gerald Seymour, and Alan Furst. But for "fun" I really just read other random history — probably the three best books I've read in recent years are Patrick Radden Keefe's Say Nothing, Casey Cep's Furious Hours, and Adam Higginbotham's Midnight in Chernobyl. I just stand in awe of those three as writers.

6. What are you reading and enjoying now? What's next on your list?

The technical answer to your specific question is that I'm reading John McPhee's Alaska book, Coming Into the Country, but that's because I'm exhausted from parenting and the pandemic and have been in desperate need of a book that didn't feel like work. The broader answer is that I — like many American readers I think — have spent a lot of the last two years reading this incredible wave of American history books reckoning with the much more complex realities of our history and particularly our racial history than the story we've been typically taught over the years.

Stories like Jia Lynn Yang's One Mighty and Irresistible Tide, about America's history of racist anti-Asian immigration policies, and Heather McGhee's The Sum of Us or Clint Smith's How the Word Is Passed, both of which force you to rethink a lot of what we've been led to believe about how benevolent and munificent America has been and even is today.

Writers like Heather Cox Richardson, with How the South Won the Civil War, or Megan Kate Nelson's The Three-Cornered War are rewriting our understanding of how race was at the center of westward expansion.

I'm also reading Adam Cohen's Supreme Inequality, about how the Supreme Court, which supposedly has this grand history of pushing American rights and liberties forward, actually has spent the last half-century retrenching power for the white elite.

I think a lot about how historian Eric Foner said, “This history we were taught could not have produced the present we were living in,” and it's awesome to see so many authors right now having a moment to reframe our understanding of ourselves. The work that Ibram X. Kendi and Nikole Hannah-Jones are doing right now is just so fascinating and admirable.  

7. Any all-time favorite books that have especially stuck with you and/or shaped your thinking over the years? Books that you think about a lot? Fiction, non-fiction, whatever it is.

I feel like I quote Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird more than almost anything; it's packed with wisdom about writing, life, and the uncertainty of both. When I was a magazine editor, I literally kept a shelf of a dozen or so copies in my office that I would hand out to writers passing through my office struggling with one question or another. There's a passage about how writing a book is like driving at night — you can only see to the end of your headlights but you can make the whole journey that way. When people ask how I write a book, I explain that there's never a moment you sit down and write a "book" — you sit down and write scenes and moments and thoughts, which grow into chapters, which grow into a book. You write a book page by page, bird by bird.

A quick note: To my free subscribers—happy Tuesday! This is a special day for my friend Brad Stulberg, so I wanted to share this interview with as many people as possible. To get more bookish emails from me like this one, subscribe here:

Subscribe now

Not only is Brad Stulberg a great thinker and writer, but also just a really wonderful human. I got to know him a handful of years ago through the Art of Manliness podcast and we’ve since developed an online friendship. (Be sure to check out my first interview with him!)

Today, he has a new book out! Before this, he’s co-written books about burnout and passion—now, in his most meaningful work yet, he’s tackling groundedness. I’m happy to affirm that Brad practices what he preaches, and the preaching here in The Practice of Groundedness is as good as it gets.

So today, on his book launch day, I wanted to give all my newsletter readers a special interview with Brad. Buy (or borrow!) the book, read the book, and most importantly, implement the ideas contained within.

One last thing: Brad’s publisher generously provided a copy of the new book for me to give away to one of my readers! To enter, simply leave a comment on the post here and tell me what you do to stay grounded. I’ll pick a winner in 48 hours!

1. The Practice of Groundedness talks about performance in terms that you don't usually see in this type of book—particularly the idea of fulfillment. Why is this piece—our own fulfillment—often missing from this subject area? Why is it so important?

My hypothesis is that it's missing because the current ethos is completely obsessed with outward achievement and one-upsmanship, against both self and others. I call this heroic individualism. Much of consumerism—particularly in the area of so-called wellness and self-help—preys upon this mentality and solidifies it. You are not enough until you get a promotion. You are not enough until you buy that bigger house, nicer car, fancier watch. You are not enough until you lose the weight, win the medal, and so on. The problem is that even when you get where you think you want to go, you still don't feel fulfilled. The system is designed for this. It keeps you craving the next thing. You can't outwardly achieve or earn your way to fulfillment. It is an inside game. So there's that to start.

Fulfillment is so important to performance, success, and true well-being because we tend to do our best and feel our best from a place of being solid, confident, and whole. It is this big paradox, but it becomes so clear in the research and across history: being solid and whole and grounded and wanting to get better can go hand-in-hand and bolster one another. People tend to perform their best not when they are doing it from a place of fragility and compulsion, but rather when they are doing whatever it is they are doing from a place of being enough right now and from being firmly situated where they are. It is good to be hungry for improvement in certain areas of your life, but you've got to have a solid foundation to launch from. Otherwise, the whole enterprise is shaky. 

And then there's this: what is the point of striving for something if you feel kind of empty along the way? We are obsessed with outcomes but outcomes are fleeting. You stand on the podium for two minutes. You read the promotion email for one minute. You feel the thrill of having a bestseller for maybe 30 minutes. The process on the way to those goals, however, makes up 99.9 percent of your life. So it is important to find fulfillment in the process. There are two ways to the peak of a mountain: one is spending nearly every step worrying about and occupied with whether or not you'll make it; the other is being grounded where you are and having fun and growing along the way. This book explores how to cultivate and practice the latter. You can still strive, but the texture of your striving becomes more wholesome and fulfilling, and thus sustainable. Hopefully that helps show the connection between fulfillment and performance, at least of the sustainable, long-term variety.

2. You write near the end of the book that "the type of conventional success we spend so much time and energy chasing—money, fame, relevance, busyness, followers—isn’t all it is cracked up to be." So when it comes to your writing and this book, what does success look like? 

Success looks like the book itself. I poured my heart into it and gave it my all, and learned so much and met interesting people and grew along the way. So I've already arrived as far as this project goes. If readers enjoy the book and wrestle with the ideas in it, and this book helps change the culture, even if only a bit, that's all extra. Don't get me wrong, I hope people read the book, because I believe deeply in it and I think it can help so many people in so many important ways. But I can't control that. I executed on what I could control and overcame missteps and now it's done—so whatever happens next, this book is already a success. Ironically, it is this kind of definition of success that I want to help readers cultivate. 

The above is what I consider the infinite game kind of success. But there is also very acute success, finite, and perhaps even superficial success, which is commercial performance. Why? Because I love to write and I don't have endless money and this is a business. If this book sells lots of copies I'll be able to keep doing this thing I love. Both kinds of success can be true at once. But without the former kind of success, then all of our pursuits become ridden with angst, compulsion, and exhaustion. It's no wonder so many people are feeling burnt out!

3. Your extended reading list includes a lot of titles you wouldn't necessarily expect as source material for a self-improvement book—particularly novels, memoirs, and poetry. (So-called "hustle twitter" hates this stuff! Ha!) How can these other genres complement standard self-improvement reading? What can they teach us about being human?

Well, I've been told by people whom I deeply respect that The Practice of Groundedness is like the anti self-improvement self-improvement book. It goes completely against the grain of "hacks" and quick fixes and overnight successes and work-’til-you-die culture. Why? Because that stuff is bullshit. Not only will it make you miserable—because it perpetuates the cycle of never enough, heroic individualism, and a fragile sense of self—but it's also not a sustainable route to performance.  

If you read what everyone else is reading you are going to think what everyone else is thinking. So it is not surprising that my book is so different from traditional self-improvement books. Because I'm reading completely different material than most self-improvement authors. Novels, memoirs, and poetry are all just different ways to get at the truth. In my writing and work, rather than focus on a narrow genre I strive to incorporate truly diverse thinking and writing, along with the latest science, to try and get to truth with a capital T.

On this project, what everything points toward is groundedness, which is a way of being and doing that comes from practicing acceptance, presence, patience, vulnerability, and deep community. I support this argument by showing the patterns across all kinds of works. I think it's what makes it powerful.  And it is what gives me confidence that groundedness is the real deal. 

4. There are obviously a lot of books mentioned in The Practice of Groundedness. Are there a few at the top that most influenced the ideas found within?

Oh man. This is an impossible question. It was hard enough to narrow the reading list down to the 50 or so books I included in the recommended reading section at the end of The Practice of Groundedness. I know this is a cop-out answer but the thing about top books is it is never just about the book—it is about the right book, the right person, at the right time. So what I'd tell readers is that if you pick up The Practice of Groundedness and certain parts of it really resonate with you, then read deeper on those topics. This is why I organized the recommended reading at the back of the book by topic. One of my favorite parts of being a reader is that one book always leads to the next. I think this is the best way to grow your mind and develop associative thinking.

5. Okay, so groundedness is a practice. What's one thing my newsletter  readers can do this weekend to begin implementing and start feeling more grounded?

Get a copy of the book! Ha! In addition to that, of course, one of my favorite practices in the book is around core values work. What are your core values? The things that you aspire toward. The things that make you who you are? Pick no less than three and no more than five. Next, define each value. What does each one mean to you? Get really concrete. Finally, come up with a few practices for each value. How do you actually live this value, day-to-day?

For example, one of my core values is love. I define love as full presence for the people and pursuits I care about. A few ways I practice love are turning off my phone at 7:00 PM and putting it in another room; blocking out 90 minutes a few times a week for deep focus writing work; never multitasking during phone or video-calls with people whom I care about; never yelling at my young son unless he is in physical danger and I need to get his attention; and a regular meditation practice, which connects me to something larger than myself and works the muscles I need for the aforementioned practices.

This is just one example, but hopefully you can see how you get from lofty core values all the way down to where the rubber meets the road. Many books help you to know the importance of this stuff. I am trying to help people know and do. The former is necessary but the latter makes it real. 

Thanks so much for reading! To get even more Read More Books to your inbox, subscribe below:

Subscribe now

-Jeremy

Since 2017, Erik has been conducting a public reading project called Books of Titans. From his about page:

“I continue to set a yearly reading list in advance and move through the list one book at a time. I’ve completed books I’ve wanted to read for many years and have been amazed at what I’ve discovered.

This project is my experiment to figure out the best ways to read more and retain what I learn. I try different approaches to find out what works best for me. I’m flexible on the methods but always want to challenge myself to read and learn more. I find such delight in reading and making connections between a variety of types of books.”

I don’t remember how I found Erik, but it seems that readers always find readers. He was kind enough to answer a few bookish questions for me.

1. On your website you mention rediscovering your love of reading during college. What were a few books that you sucked you in and made you realize that reading could be fun again and not just a school assignment? 

Right before college, I read a book that stated the reason the Hero’s Journey was found across so many cultures, myths, and stories was because it pointed to one true story. The other stories were all derivatives. That idea intrigued me enough to want to begin reading these “derivative” works of literature to discover the connection points to the true story.

I took that task to heart and started reading Crime and Punishment. I expected it to be boring and tedious, but instead it was thrilling and addictive. I then moved on to The Scarlet Letter and Moby-Dick and couldn’t put them down. Those were really the foundational books that made me realize reading could be fun again.

2. The following quote from Alan Jacobs' The Pleasures of Reading is one of my favorites on the philosophy of reading: 

“Read what gives you delight—at least most of the time—and do so without shame. And even if you are that rare sort of person who is delighted chiefly by what some people call Great Books, don’t make them your steady intellectual diet, any more than you would eat at the most elegant of restaurants every day. It would be too much. Great books are great in part because of what they ask of their readers: they are not readily encountered, easily assessed.”

Any immediate thoughts on what Jacobs says here? Do you find your brain overwhelmed and craving fluff now and then?

One of the biggest surprises for my reading project is that I’m not overwhelmed. In 2017, I decided to start reading 52 books a year, or roughly one a week. My expectation was that I would be completely overwhelmed, but what happened instead is that I started seeing similar ideas across a wide variety of genres, styles, and time periods in the books I was reading. It helped hone my thinking and identify the truly important ideas instead of inundating my brain.

Another reason for not being overwhelmed is that I only read one book at a time. In the past, I would read 4 or 5 simultaneously, but I found that I couldn’t recall what idea came from what book, especially when they were along similar topics. When I’m reading a book now, I’m solely focused on that book.

As for Jacob’s quote, I agree that one of the most important practices for new readers is to “read what gives you delight” instead of what others say you should read. As for the Great Books, next year I will be transitioning my reading project into a project to read 200 of the Great Books by the year 2030. I will no longer stick to reading 52 books a year but will have enough margin to add “fluff” if the intellectual load gets too demanding. But the focus will be on the Great Books.

3. One of my regular questions is “What are you reading now and what's next on your list?” That's moot since you post your reading list online! Do you make any room for reading at whim? Are there things you're reading that aren't documented in your project? 

This is one of the most common questions I get about the reading project. I have a practice of setting my reading list a year in advance. I actually already have my 2022 reading list chosen and announced. But I’ve been thinking about these books for a year or more, so by the time they make it to my list, they have been thoroughly vetted. As a result, there have been very few books I’ve wanted to quit. I also try to stick to my reading list and the set order as best as I can.

With that said, I have made a few changes to my reading list this year (so I do allow for a few changes). For starters, this year is my year to read through book series. So, on my list are Narnia, Caro’s LBJ series, the Lord of the Rings, Shelby Foote’s Civil War series, Harry Potter, and others. When I make my yearly reading list, I divide the total number of pages by 365 days to find out how many pages I need to read per day to get through my list. I’ve been ahead for most of this year, so I’ve added four other books to my original list and also changed the order due to the release date on some of the books.

In general, if there is a book I want to read, I’ll add it to a future year’s reading list. I find this to be a good practice as it gives a book some time to age. Many of the new books are marketed very well but don’t last past the year. By pushing new books out at least a year, I avoid a lot of those books that I probably wouldn’t enjoy.

There are a few books each year I’ll read for work that I won’t document as part of the reading project.

4. What have been the most surprising books or authors you've discovered in this journey? Maybe something you weren't looking forward to and really enjoyed (or perhaps the opposite of that!).

Two come to mind.

I read Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy in 2017, my first year of this reading project. I absolutely hated it and wished I had never read it. Then, in 2020, I decided to give it a second try. It was a completely different experience and the book amazed me. It surprised me to have such a different reaction to a book.

In 2020, I also read The Great Gatsby for the second time in my life. The first time was during high school and I hated it. My second reading was a much different experience, mostly because of life experience. So, I guess this was more of a rediscovery.

5. Do you have any all-time favorite books that have particularly shaped your life and thinking? Books you think about a lot and/or return to again and again?

The Bible has been foundational in my life and in this reading project. I’m trying to find Truth in the world’s best books. I consider Man’s Search for Meaning to be the best and most important book I’ve read for this project. The Gulag Archipelago has also been foundational. Frederick Douglass absolutely fascinates me, whether books by him or about him. And Robert Caro impacted me so much that I read every single one of his books this year after just planning on reading the LBJ series.

Bradley Garrett’s Bunker is truly one of my favorite reads of the year so far. It’s partly a niche cultural tour (which I always love), partly an easy-reading philosophical exploration, and a little bit of a revealing, beautifully written memoir about what happens when you spend too much time living with the end of the world always in mind. He was kind enough to take some time to answer a handful of bookish questions. Enjoy!

1. You seem to read a lot of philosophy. Any favorites in that broad category? 

As an ethnographer and geographer, I spend most of my time thinking about how culture and society shape our relationships to the landscapes around us, and in how we are affected by being in particular places. So, in that vein, I enjoy reading spatially-inspired theory by philosophers like Edward Relph, Kathleen Stewart, Keith Basso, and Doreen Massey. I knew Massey when I was working on my PhD and she was a beam of light. I did my doctoral research on urban exploration and spent a lot of time jumping fences to sneak into places. The first time I met her, she told me “you know, fences also can protect the vulnerable, so I wouldn’t vault them all.” Doreen died just before I started working on Bunker, which is a shame, because I think she would have found it comical that I ended up writing a book about the most sheltered spaces on the planet.  

I have a penchant for philosophy in the existentialist tradition — particularly Jean-Paul Sartre, who people find depressing, but I find enlivening. However, my primary existential muse in doing research for Bunker was Søren Kierkegaard. His writings on dread and anxiety were something I kept revisiting over the three years I worked on the book. In fact, I think I carried The Concept of Dread with me everywhere I went, alongside E. M. Cioran’s grim and furious philosophical pessimism, which could snap my out of writer’s block in an instant.   

2. Which books were particularly helpful in your exploration of the underground and of apocalypse culture? (I saw Rob Macfarlane and Mark O'Connell mentioned in the acknowledgements; I've read their most recent books and loved 'em both!) 

There really hasn’t been much work done on prepper and survivalist culture, but it did manage to find a copy of Richard G. Mitchell’s Dancing at Armageddon from 2001, which was extremely enlightening. Mitchell spent ten years doing embedded research with survivalists for the book, even attending some unnerving para-military training camps with them. In light of the January 6th insurrection at the U.S. Capitol by survivalists and militia, that book took on an eery weight.

In terms of doomsday scenarios, Bryan Walsh’s book End Times and Toby Ord’s The Precipice reinforced, through empirical research, what preppers were telling me every day. Peter Brennan’s The Ends of the World was useful in seeing past human hubris and into geological deep time. Central to the latter text is the classic conundrum: if we did indeed vanish, perhaps by our own hand, would the Earth care? Garrett Graff’s book Raven Rock, about the U.S. government’s “underground Pentagon” buried in the mountains of Pennsylvania, is a masterclass in research.  

And, as it turns out, I was working on Bunker at the same time Robert Macfarlane was writing Underland (which I feature in as a character, weirdly!) and while Mark O’Connell was writing Notes from an Apocalypse. Mark and I ended up visiting some of the same locations, which we realised over a coffee in Dublin just before our respective books were published. Were both a bit shocked and by the revelation, but it seems dread was in the air in the years leading up the pandemic. Somehow, all three of us had a sense that we would be hunkering down in the future, in the literal and metaphorical underground.

3. Do you read much fiction? Any favorites?  

Though I’m probably not supposed to admit this, as a university professor, I read more fiction that non-fiction. I used to tear through multi-book fantasy epics like Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time series but lately I’ve turned to science fiction. While I was writing Bunker I read Orson Scott-Card’s Ender’s Game Trilogy and a lot of Ursula K. Le Guin — The Left Hand of Darkness being one of my favorite books of all time. As many of your readers will know, Le Guin’s parents were rather famous anthropologists, and I think that influence helped shape her imagination of extra-terrestrial ethnographic encounters, which I sort of felt like I was having hanging out in people’s bunker for weeks on end mulling over conspiracy theories. 

4. What are the books and/or authors that have particularly shaped your writing style? 

A geographer named Tim Edensor, who wrote a fantastic book called Industrial Ruins, is one of my favorite academic writers. He ended up serving as the external examiner curing my PhD defence. I recall in the leadup to that defence desperately wanting him to see that I might reach his level of writing one day. I’m still hoping! I enjoy reading Robert Macfarlane, but also find it a bit depressing, knowing I’ll never in my life be that lyrical or precise with language. 

The best non-fiction writing I’ve ever encountered, however, was by a journalist named Matthew Power. He never wrote a book, but often contributed to Harper’s Magazine, which I’ve read religiously for two decades. There was a story published there in 2008 called “Mississippi Drift,” about Matt hanging out with some vagabonds who built a raft out of garbage that they tried to float down the Mississippi River. It’s a masterpiece. I pinned it up above my computer while I was writing my first book, Explore Everything, as inspiration. In another strange twist of fate, Matthew ended up flying to London and living with me for two weeks to write an article for GQ about urban exploration. We became good friends, and he promised to teach me the longform craft in Brooklyn when I finished my PhD. I ended up doing a post-doc at Oxford, and not returning quickly enough — Matt died on assignment in Uganda in 2014. I’ve never known someone as inspiring and encouraging as Matt and I will, one day, I hope, contribute a piece of longform to the world that he would have been proud of.     

5. What are you reading and enjoying right now? What's next on your list? 

I found that one of the glaring gaps in prepper practices related to personal health — both mental and physical wellbeing. It became clear during the pandemic that health is as important, if not more, than stockpiling supplies and skill-building, and so I’ve been doing my best to get my head around what we can do to extend survivability through means available to all of us: diet, exercise, meditation, etc. So, I also have a stack of non-fiction centered around human longevity and biohacking that I’m working through, which includes Extra Life by Steven Johnson, On Not Dying by Abou Farman, and Ageless by Andrew Steele. All three are fantastic books and give me tangible hope that, barring unexpected catastrophe, many of us might live well past 100. After thinking about a pending apocalypse for so many years, it’s a salve to read positive speculation.  

Summer is of course the season for escapism, so I’ve also been saturating myself in the Culture novels by Iain M. Banks and re-read Edward Abbey’s Desert Solitaire after spending my 40th birthday hiking canyons around Moab. Damn I love that book. I expanded that trip into the Greater Southwest using Willa Cather as a guide.   

6. Do you have any all-time favorite books that have shaped your life and thinking? Books you think about a lot and/or return to again and again? (Some of this may have been answered in the above questions.) 

One rises above all other immediately: Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian, which feels to me like the closest thing we have to a secular sacred text. I’ve read every word he’s ever written, and it will come as little surprise that The Road provided, in my imagination, one answer to a central theme I tackle in Bunker: what world do you find when you emerge from it?

I will never forget reading Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro, Donna Tartt’s A Secret History and Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov. I remember reading delicate passages in all three books, marvelling, and then re-reading them, soaking in them. I even recall where I was when I read them all. I think the experience of having the imagination flooded by literature that good seared my surrounding at the time — sights, smells, temperature, background noise — into my brain. Which of course, as a geographer, I find totally fascinating. Which brings us full circle back to spatial theory: senses of place are shaped by experience. Space, literature, and perception are inexorably intertwined.  

Bradley Garrett’s book Bunker: What it Takes to Survive the Apocalypse, will be published in paperback by Scribner on August 3rd.

Bonnie Tsui is a woman who is irrevocably drawn to water. As a journalist, she wanted to uncover why. Tsui explored the question not only for herself, but for those people throughout all of time who have been entranced by bodies of water. Why are we attracted to it? Why do we propel ourselves through this blue-hued liquid? Why We Swim is not only a journalistic account, but also a warm and inviting personal inquiry. Naturally, Tsui is also a reader! I was thrilled to be able to ask her some questions about her reading and the books that have impacted her.

1. An obvious one to start with: do you have favorite books set on or heavily featuring the sea/water?

I just started reading Fathoms, by Rebecca Giggs, a beautifully written cultural examination of whales — her description of a whale fall is stunning. Another recent read is Swimming Back to Trout River, a novel by Linda Rui Feng, which I really enjoyed. And an old favorite is Waterlog, by Roger Deakin — it's a British nature writing classic that has just been published for the first time in the U.S. I love it so much I wrote the introduction.

2. What would we find you reading in your off hours (if those exist!)? Do you have a favorite genre or author?

When it comes to books, I almost exclusively read fiction unless I'm researching something. I'm not picky on genre — as long as it's a good yarn, I'll read it. Recent favorites include My Year Abroad, by Chang-rae Lee; These Women, by Ivy Pochoda; Outlawed, by Anna North; and Libertie, by Kaitlyn Greenidge. So good.

3. Are there authors/journalists who have particularly influenced your writing — in terms of structure, style, etc. 

Isabel Wilkerson, for scenic detail and unbelievable depth of research. Taffy Brodesser-Akner, who makes every topic lively. Katherine Boo, whose epic Behind the Beautiful Forevers floored me. I didn't know journalism could be that novelistic.

4. You recently published a fantastic children's book, and you wrote a thoughtful piece on reading Charlotte's Web with your son. Can you share some children's books that have stuck with you? Your kids' favorites? Those that you're excited to share with them?

Thank you! I loved writing Sarah and the Big Wave, and I also loved writing that essay about reading Charlotte's Web with Teddy. Children's books can really change us, even when we're grown. I loved Beverly Cleary and Judy Blume when I was growing up. When it comes to the classics, my kids love Roald Dahl, especially The Witches, and Shel Silverstein's poetry, and Frog and Toad. Newer books they love include the Wild Robot books — but really anything by Peter Brown is terrific. Jerry Craft, Jon Klassen, and Gene Luen Yang, too. 

5. What are you reading and enjoying now? What's next on your list? (I did see your recent tweet about your continued aquatic reading!) 

I just read Donna Freitas' The Nine Lives of Rose Napolitano — it's a great read, thought-provoking and absorbing. I'm thinking I might like a good, transporting thriller or sci-fi novel next. 

6. Do you have any all-time favorite books that have especially stuck with you and/or shaped your thinking over the years? Books that you think about a lot? Fiction, non-fiction, whatever it is. 

Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse has stuck with me since high school. Her writing does so much to elucidate our inner lives, and what it is to think about things. Stephen King's On Writing is a steadfast companion. And Atul Gawande's Complications — his writing is intelligent, clear, curious, compassionate. I will read anything he writes the moment it is published.

Be sure to subscribe to get the full Read More Books experience:

Subscribe now

Thanks so much for reading!

-Jeremy

I’m knee-deep into William Manchester’s big trilogy on Churchill, so I was thrilled be to able to ask Josh Ireland some questions about Churchillian books, among other things. Ireland’s Churchill & Son was recently published and provides a superb and unique portrait on Winston as son and father himself. The questions below are a fun window into Josh’s reading life and the books that have influenced him over the years.

1. There's obviously a lot of literature on Churchill. Do you have a personal favorite? 

I think maybe the William Manchester trilogy. The single-volume biographies, like Roy Jenkins and Andrew Roberts books are amazing feats of compression — but inevitably one loses a certain amount in the process. Manchester can give his subject more space, and that allows a more complete portrait of him to emerge. I think he was also very good at situating Churchill in time and place — showing how this creature of the high Victorian age who was still alive when the Beatles took over the world, changed and was changed by external events.

2. Any recommendations for an under-the-radar Churchill book that might appeal to the masses? 

Lord Moran’s diaries are controversial. The family were horrified by the mere fact of their publication, and even more enraged by their contents. And there’s uncertainty about what within them was recorded at the time, and what was recreated from memory (not to mention the self-aggrandising role he gives himself). But they also offer a visceral sense of what Churchill was really like. You get a feel for how he spoke and acted away from the podium — the odd rhythms of his sentences. And they convey the warping magnetism of his charisma. It’s also a heartbreaking account of his slow, agonising decline. 

3. I'm well-versed in American history and in fact recently wrapped up a personal project of reading a biography of every president. (You can see my list here!) I'm a bit lacking in my UK history, though. Do you have any recommendations for a particularly well-done bio of a PM or for general British history?

I’m not sure we have quite the same tradition of political biography as you do in the United States. There’s no equivalent of Robert Caro (perhaps because we have no equivalent of Robert Moses or LBJ). I think generally the most revealing and interesting books about the last fifty-odd years of British politics and history are ones that seem to come at the subject a bit elliptically. Something like A Very British Scandal, by John Preston, which is about the Liberal leader Jeremy Thorpe’s involvement in a plot to murder his homosexual lover, actually tells you a great deal about the seediness and decay that was so much a part of British culture in the late seventies. Ben Macintyre’s Kim Philby book, A Spy Amongst Friends, is a great atmospheric guide to the beginning of the end of the establishment’s grip on British civil life. And for something more contemporary, Andrew Rawnsley (Servants of the People, The End of the Party) and Tim Shipman (All Out War, Fall Out) have written revelatory, gossipy accounts of, respectively, New Labour and Brexit. They’re good guides to where Britain is now, and why. 

In terms of more traditional accounts that have come out recently, Citizen Clem, John Bew’s biography of the Labour leader Clement Attlee, is very good. Attlee was unassuming, modest and quiet, yet he beat Churchill in the 1945 election and then led perhaps the most transformative government of the last hundred years.

4. I imagine that the large majority of your reading is non-fiction — histories, biographies, papers, letters, etc. What do you read in your "off" hours for fun/entertainment? Do you read much fiction? 

I used to read a lot more fiction, but I think a combination of the pandemic and having a child has left me too tired for anything too challenging. Most literature demands more from me than I’m currently capable of giving, so I’m more likely to turn to detective stories or something like Jilly Cooper (I have no idea if she’s at all famous in America. She’s almost impossible to explain). Also P.G. Wodehouse. I am however re-reading Nancy Mitford’s novels at the moment, and remembering how prodigious a talent she was. And I loved Jenny Ofill’s Weather. I think her experiments with form are so perfect, and so moving.

5. Are there particular history books or authors that have shaped your own writing style and approach to narrative? 

I’d say that reading books like Orlando Figes’ A People’s Tragedy, Simon Sebag Montefiore’s Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar and Antony Beevor’s Stalingrad when I was in my late teens/early twenties had a very significant impact on me. It showed me that (unlike the textbooks we were given at school) history writing could be more than a delivery mechanism for facts. It could have the same emotional and narrative heft as the best novels.

6. What are you reading and enjoying right now? What's next on your list? 

I’m reading Patrick Raden Keefe’s Empire of Pain for pleasure (if you can call it that) and Yuri Slezkine’s House of Government, for a mixture of business and pleasure (my next book is partly about Russia after the revolution, and this gives an incredible portrait of the men and women who ran the Soviet Union). I’m really looking forward to starting Black Spartacus, Sudhir Hazareesingh’s biography of Toussaint Louverture.  

7. Do you have any all-time favorite books that have especially stuck with you and/or shaped your thinking over the years? Books that you think about a lot? Fiction, non-fiction, whatever it is. 

I’m reasonably wary of the idea that literature should have a moral function, but I do think it can enlarge one’s capacity for empathy. George Eliot’s Middlemarch did that for me. As did Ford Madox Ford’s The Good Soldier. All of W.G. Sebald’s work has changed the way I understand our relationship with the past, but The Emigrants had an almost shattering emotional impact on me the first time I read it.

Benjamin Spall is the co-author of a wonderful little book called My Morning Routine. It features the routines and habits of successful people, as well as plenty of tips for creating a morning routine that works for you. The website, mymorningroutine.com, carries ongoing interviews with folks, myself included! Benjamin, a writer and thinker, spends a lot of time reading and it was my pleasure to interview him for this newsletter.

1. Are there any books or authors that kickstarted your love for reading (particularly as an adult)? 

I started keeping a reading list in the form of a Google Sheet in 2015, and I backdated it (using online receipts, my bookshelf, and my memory as a guide) to 2008. I can see from this list that Malcolm Gladwell's The Tipping Point was a tipping point, you could say, for my renewed love of reading after college.

2. You write a lot about business, productivity, meaning, etc. That's a lot of non-fiction, to be sure. Do you read much fiction? What do you read for fun/entertainment?

I don't read a great deal of fiction. Looking at my reading list over the last few years, only about five percent of what I read is fiction. That's on me; I would like to read more of it. For fun, I read narrative non-fiction. Rich Cohen, Patrick Radden Keefe, Maria Konnikova . . . I read Sarah Frier's No Filter: The Inside Story of Instagram last year and loved it.

3. Has the last year changed your reading habits at all? You did some writing about quarantine and routine; I'm wondering if your reading factored into that at all. 

It did. For the first month or so of the pandemic I didn't read anything at all. I can't remember what I was reading at the time, but every time I picked it up I felt an utter sense of hopelessness and promptly set it down. I soon got back into the swing of reading, and now (as before the beginning of the pandemic) I make myself read for half an hour every day, though I do allow myself to kick my daily reading quota down the road each day. So, if I miss one day, the next day I need to read for one hour. That kind of thing. I do this so not to let me off the hook. To be clear, I love to read—I give myself a daily reading quota because of my love of reading, not in spite of it.

4. Are there any books or authors that have especially shaped your writing style? Anyone you try to mimic? 

I could never begin to mimic him, but Rich Cohen's writing style is so good. Alain du Botton, Anne Lamott, and Cheryl Strayed are exceptional writers that can tear at your very core.

5. What are you reading and enjoying right now? What's next on your list? 

I recently adopted a six-month old puppy, so I just finished reading Cesar's Way and Short Guide to a Happy Dog by Cesar Millan. Prior to that I read and loved The American Presidency by Alan Brinkley and Davis Dyer, which is a short biography of each president from George Washington to George W. Bush. Prior to that I read The Future We Choose: Surviving the Climate Crisis by Christiana Figueres and Tom Rivett-Carnac, which was equal parts terrifying and hopeful. Next on my list is David McCullough's John Adams biography, and Edward Rutherfurd's new historical fiction work on China.

6. Do you have any all-time favorite books that have particularly shaped your life and thinking? Books you think about a lot and/or return to again and again? 

Alain du Botton's The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work I've come back to a number of times, and I think about its ideas frequently. The Slight Edge by Jeff Olson has shaped my thinking, as has Deep Work by Cal Newport. When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi is devastating.

It’s fair to say that Daniel James Brown’s The Indifferent Stars Above changed my relationship to reading for all time. I was in college and the cover caught my eye at the library. I had always been a reader, but mostly novels, memoirs, and self-help. I was sucked in Brown’s narrative about the Donner party from page one and didn’t look back until I flipped the final page. I had no idea that a history book could be so engaging. I then read Under a Flaming Sky, followed by The Boys in the Boat as soon as it came out. To say I’m excited to have been able to ask Daniel some questions about his reading is an understatement. It’s my great pleasure to present a few bookish questions with Daniel James Brown.

1. It's clear from your books that you love a great story—no matter the era or topic. Are there books or authors that particularly jump-started your own love for history and for telling forgotten stories?

Yes. Absolutely. I’m all about story. I was an English major and have always been a big reader but what really got me interested in doing the particular kind of writing I do—narrative nonfiction—was reading people like Laura Hillenbrand, Timothy Egan, and Erik Larson. All of them know how to take something from history and bring it to life by introducing us to interesting personalities who lived through it. When a good story is based strictly on actual events from history, and populated by compelling characters, that adds a great deal of value for me. 

2. I'm sure most of your reading, especially when you're in a season of writing, is non-fiction: histories, first-hand materials, documents, etc. What do you read for fun/entertainment in your off hours? 

True. During the three to five years that I’m working on a book I seldom have time to read anything that isn’t related to what I’m writing. I enjoy that, though. It gives me an opportunity to really learn a lot about things I might otherwise never have encountered. Sometime those are very obscure things like the dynamics of how wildfires develop or what starvation does to the human body. It’s not always light reading but I have a pretty voracious appetite for many different kinds of information so it suits me.

3. I grew up in Minnesota and had never heard of the Hinckley fire until I read Under a Flaming Sky. How did you stumble on that story and how did it become your first book?

My mother’s father lived through the fire, though his father, my great-grandfather perished in it. As I was growing up I heard stories about it and I always wondered how it was that hundreds of people could die in a forest fire. I mean why didn’t they just get out of its way? My mother had a box of old newspaper clippings and letters and books related to the fire and I dug into that and discovered that it was a really interesting event with lots of acts of incredible heroism. So I just decided to see if I could put it in book form, more or less as a hobby, and that—to my surprise—eventually wound up being published, though on a pretty small scale at first. But it turned out to be a pretty successful book and that led to the books that have followed.

4. I think Facing the Mountain is your most important book to date. Are there any related works, either histories or firsthand accounts, that you'd recommend to modern readers? Any favorite WWII reads? I'm always interested in source material! 

There are dozens of books about the incarceration of the Japanese Americans, and at least several about the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, but there are very few that pull these together into a larger story seen through the eyes of a small number of real-life characters as I’ve tried to do in Facing the Mountain. But as for source material I relied heavily on the first-hand accounts of people who lived through the experiences I write about. The greatest single collection of those is the Densho archives, which holds the video-taped oral histories of several hundred Japanese Americans. It’s freely available for anyone to view online at Densho.org and it’s a great way to immerse yourself in the history I’m writing about in Facing the Mountain.

5. What are you reading and enjoying now that your book is out in the world and you can relax a little bit? What's next on your list?

I’m back to reading more narrative non-fiction. I’ve recently really enjoyed Mitchell Zuckoff’s Lost in Shangri-La and Hampton Sides’ In the Kingdom of Ice.

6. Any all-time favorite books that have especially stuck with you and/or shaped your thinking over the years? Books that you think about a lot? Fiction, non-fiction, whatever it is.

In non-fiction it would have to be Laura Hillenbrand’s Seabiscut. Again, that’s mostly a craft thing, though I think it also sheds a lot of light on human nature and vividly illuminates the history of America during the Great Depression. In terms of fiction, I am a huge admirer of both Anthony Doerr’s All the Light We Cannot See and Charles Frazier’s Cold Mountain, both of which—aside from being the two most well written modern novels I know of—teach us an enormous amount about the nature of war, human fragility, and human strength in the face of adversity. 

Katy Milkman is one of my favorite thinkers and researchers working today. I’ve long enjoyed her papers on the practical science of behavior change. Her new book, How to Change, is wonderful (review coming in a couple weeks) and she was kind enough to take the time to answer questions about her favorite books.

1. You study human behavior—especially behavioral change. What are the classic/great books on that subject that you refer back to you a lot or that have particularly shaped your own research and line of work? 

The two classic books in my area that I refer to over and over again are Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth and Happiness by Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein and Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert Cialdini.  Their titles give a pretty good summary of the material they cover!

2. Are there any dark horse books from your field that the average modern reader may not have heard about, but is worth their attention?

Ah, that’s an easy one!  I’ll go with The Winner’s Curse: Paradoxes and Anomalies of Economic Life by Richard Thaler. It’s a book that most people haven’t read, but it’s brilliant. It’s actually the book that convinced me to become behavioral scientist.  

3. You mentioned in our Art of Manliness interview that James Patterson's Alex Cross series is a guilty pleasure for you. Can you pinpoint what you enjoy about that series? Any others that you feel like divulging? 

Admittedly, the Alex Cross series is a bit formulaic, but it’s also reliably exciting. I love listening to books while I exercise, and the right book to pair with an intense workout needs to fit a certain profile. It needs enough action and suspense to hold my attention, but it can’t be too complicated—if there are a lot of different threads to keep track of, I get lost while I’m pushing myself at the gym. Some of the books I found particularly well-suited to enjoying during exercise include anything by Dan Brown, The Hunger Games books, the Sookie Stackhouse series (best known as the basis for the HBO show True Blood), and the Harry Potter novels.

4. What else do you read outside of "work" reading (which I imagine is mostly psychology, research, etc.)? Any authors or other genres you really like?

I’m a fiction lover. I adore Haruki Murakami, Elena Ferrante, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Leo Tolstoy, Jane Austen, and Jeffrey Eugenides. My first research project ever, actually, which I did as a college senior, was a statistical analysis of a decade of New Yorker fiction (you can read about it here), and I discovered Eugenides on that adventure. 

5. What are you reading and enjoying right now? What's next on your list? 

I just finished Big Summer by Jennifer Weiner, which was a fun escape (and I enjoyed that it was written by a Philadelphia author). Next on my list is First Person Singular: Stories by Haruki Murakami.

6. Any all-time favorite books that have especially stuck with you and/or shaped your thinking over the years? Books that you think about a lot? Fiction, non-fiction, whatever it is. 

What a great question. There are so many books I want to list, but I’ll try to refrain from going on forever. Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides is one. The Neopolitan Novels by Elena Ferrante were also amazing and haunting. A couple of non-fiction books that I think about often are The Nine by Jeffrey Toobin and The Hot Zone by Richard Preston. My favorite book as a teenager was A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith, and I’m looking forward to re-reading it with my son when he’s old enough. Typical American by Gish Jen really made an impression on me, as did Call Me If You Need Me by Raymond Carver. And then there’s Bossypants by Tina Fey—a book that made me laugh so hard I cried (I still sometimes find myself thinking about it and giggle spontaneously). Finally, Open by Andre Agassi is simply incredible.