This & That: The Anderberg Family's Favorite Reads of July
Hello and happy Tuesday!
Today I’m excited to feature our household’s favorite books of July — it was a good month for everyone. And with the interviews and essays I’ve published, it’s been a while since I’ve featured some sharable, clickable, binge-able links. So today I’m sharing a bunch of ‘em that’ve been stacking up in my Notes app.
One more thing before jumping in: I’m thrilled to be on board with Chirp Books as an affiliate. Chirp is an a la carte audiobook retailer that I’ve been using for a couple of years, largely because their sales are incredible. So when they reached out about becoming a partner for Read More Books, I jumped at the chance. Along with Libby (for library audiobooks), Chirp has been a fantastic addition to my audiobook consumption.
When you sign up with my link, you’ll get your first book for just $2. I’ll also start linking to audiobooks whenever applicable; FYI, I get a small cut of any purchase. It goes a long way toward supporting this little newsletter that’s approaching 300 weeks of recommendations.
Questions? Comments? Let me know.
The Anderberg family’s July favorites
Jeremy — Oscar Wilde’s classic The Picture of Dorian Gray was stirring and thought-provoking, while Yellowface by R. F. Kuang was every bit as entertaining as I expected. (Check out the audiobook for Yellowface; I listened to it in about a week because I had a hard time putting my AirPods down.)
Jane — Abraham Verghese’s The Covenant of Water was an easy choice for Jane this month. It was epic, heartfelt, and uniquely memorable.
Graham (8 years old) — Graham’s pick this month was also easy: Scythe by Neal Shusterman. It’s not exactly age-appropriate, but we both loved it.
Willa (5 years old) — Our family has continued our journey through DK’s excellent children’s books. This month we’ve been exploring and enjoying The Book of Mythical Beasts and Magical Creatures.
Bo (2 years old) — Bo has finally started to somewhat enjoy the ritual of a read-aloud story before bed. More nights than not in July, the baby of the house picked First Book About the Orchestra, a fun and simple story with plenty of accompanying sounds.
[Chirp Audiobook links: Dorian Gray | Yellowface | Covenant of Water | Mythical Beasts]
A bunch of great links
My two most recent editor’s picks for Longreads focus on the tech industry: The first is a co-written article by Charlie Warzel and Ian Bogost — two of my favorite tech writers — about what Threads means for the social web. The second is a fantastic deep dive into why exactly AI-generated writing fails, dissecting its “efforts” on both a technical and philosophical level.
One more Ian Bogost piece I enjoyed recently: “What Did People Do Before Smartphones?” Though he tends to be cynical about shiny new internet objects, he hilariously makes the case here that pre-iPhone life was just boring — and not in a boredom-is-good-for-you way but in just a really boring way.
What’s important about Threads as a Twitter replacement is that it’s text-first. Tumblr is more visual, TikTok is all video, but text-based communication is always the best bet.
I loved this LitHub interview with Colson Whitehead. I haven’t read the two books in his Ray Carney series, but I always enjoy reading about how the sausage is made. Of particular note, to me, was his great answer to the question, “You’ve committed a big chunk of your professional life to [this series]. Why?”
“Because I like it. No other reason. I like it, so I’m doing it.”
Though I’ve dabbled in reading one book at a time, and have even enjoyed doing so in those moments, I always end up returning to reading 2-4 different titles at a time. Joel Miller, a fellow writer on the bookish web, unabashedly makes the case for reading a stack at a time in one of his newest articles. (Subscribe to his newsletter if you haven’t yet. It’s great.)
Bookforum, a fantastic bookish magazine, let readers know last December that it would no longer offer its print edition. Turned out to be a quick hiatus, because they recently announced a return to print. I subscribed right away; you should too!
Jane and I haven’t had a whole lot of time for TV lately, but Arnold was a great watch. Schwarzenegger is as unique a character as the world has ever produced. From bodybuilder to action movie star to politician — he’s a true self-made renaissance man. I highly recommend this three-part series.
Thanks for reading! I really appreciate it.
-Jeremy
That Ian Bogost piece in The Atlantic is mind-boggling. Here is a man who has so little imagination that he cannot *conceive* of what people did with their idle time before smart phones. It's telling that his limited examples include "pace, sulk, or stew" and never, for example, *talking* to the people around him, or reading a newspaper on the subway, or just letting yourself be bored for ten g-d- minutes. He says "I cannot overemphasize how little there was to do before we all had smartphones." And this is supposed to be a bad thing?
I've been reading the extensive research Jonathan Haidt has been offering on his Substack, and it is sobering: smart phones have played a disastrous role in affecting our mental health, attention spans, social cohesion, political comity and more. These are the effects of things smart phones enable us to "do" all the time, in lieu of boredom. That Bogost would subject us to all of that simply so that *he* doesn't have to ever be bored... what a horrible, tragically circumscribed worldview. To paraphrase Dr. Zoidberg, "His opinion is bad and he should feel bad."
Scythe sounds dope as hell.