This & That: March 14, 2023
Hi there readers!
In today’s newsletter, I have a couple quick thoughts on vacation reading, a fun list of unique pandemic novels, and, as always, some great links to peruse throughout your week.
Let’s get right to it!
Something I’m Thinking About: Vacation Reading
The Anderbergs are a week out from road-tripping to Utah for Spring Break, which means I’m anxiously trying to figure out what to read while we’re out of town.
Vacation reading carries a lot of pressure! It’s the most valuable reading time we have, being one of the few situations that’s expectation- and chore-free.
For me, picking the perfect vacation book means harnessing my psychic powers to choose a guaranteed 5-star read — or at least something close.
First, I look towards writers I know and love. Are there books from a favorite author that I haven’t gotten to yet? This tends to work quite well, like when I read Erik Larson’s The Splendid and the Vile last Spring Break.
Next, I assess the books that have been on my TBR for a looong time. That’s not a guarantee that I’ll like it, so then I often actually start a book or two before vacation — just a couple dozen pages — to try to gauge if it’ll hit the right notes for 5 stars.
My vacation reading philosophy is not an exact science, but I usually do pretty well. On my short list for this Spring Break are Brandon Sanderson’s Mistborn, Fredrik Backman’s Us Against You, Jojo Moyes’ Giver of Stars, and Amor Towles’ The Lincoln Highway.
Do you have a system for picking vacation reads? A genre or author you gravitate to again and again for those most precious hours? I’d love to hear!
The Mini List: Unique Fictional Pandemics
The world-ending pandemic has always been a prominent mechanism for the apocalypse in speculative and sci-fi novels. These three are especially unique with that sub-genre of apocalyptic fiction.
The Violence by Delilah Dawson — The “violence” is no ordinary flu. When you catch it, you become a potentially violent maniac, suffering through spells of attacking and killing the nearest living creature(s). This powerful story goes in some wild and fun directions.
Wanderers by Chuck Wendig — One of my favorite books of last year, the pandemic that Wendig dreamed up is unique more for its origins and possible solution than for the disease itself. Long, but well worth it.
The End of Men by Christina Sweeney-Baird — What would happen in a world ravaged by a disease that only killed men? It’s every bit as emotionally complex and memorable as you’d expect.
Miscellany
✔️ This profile of Cal Newport is catnip for me. I’m both drawn to and repelled by Bro Productivity Land, populated by the likes of Newport, Ryan Holiday, Chris Bailey, and numerous others. This piece gets to the person behind all that productivity.
📱 I’ve read a lot about social media and health — physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual. This stand-out essay by Melody Moezzi brings the perspective of someone who’s been down the rabbit hole of suffering from a serious mental illness, and then compares that experience to social media.
✍️ Looking for bite-sized, practical writing advice? Writing Excuses is a roundtable-style, ~15-minute weekly podcast that I’ve rather enjoyed going through for the last few months. It focuses on fiction, but I’ve found the tips to be applicable across all types of writing.
🚙 Our 2015 minivan doesn’t have the A/V package, meaning we’ll be relying on tablets for our 7-hour road trip next week. We haven't road-tested this between-the-seats tablet mount yet, but I’m hopeful it’ll keep the two younger kiddos occupied without too many tears.
📖 The Library of Short Stories is a fun resource for anyone who wants to explore short-form storytelling. It catalogues and sorts public domain stories from around the world into easily readable webpages or downloadable PDFs. The easy-to-navigate site also does some curating in the form of thematic and “Best of” lists by genre.
Thanks so much for the time and attention — I deeply appreciate it.
-Jeremy
Skip the Lincoln Highway.
For what I'm going to read while on vacation, I usually pick books that are set in the place I'm visiting or something from my TBR that I've been waiting for 'just the right time' to read.
However, I do have a firm 'rule' for the journey home, when I'm tired and perhaps a little sad that our holiday is over. For that, I almost always reach for a mystery novel by Dick Francis. They are the comfort food of British mysteries for me. They protagonist is always a Good Man, the mysteries are interesting but not too twisty, and the setting is usually the English countryside. Perfect escapism!