​The Reading List Email: June 2024​

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I am writing this month’s reading list as I recover from the launch of Right Thing Right Now. By recover, I mean from the week of media (it was pretty exciting and cool, if you want to see the behind-the-scenes vlogs of the tour, check it out on my YouTube channel) and I also mean from the certain virus picked up along the way (which is never going away…as one of my favorite books The Great Influenza about the 1919 flu reminds us). Thank you to everyone who supported the new book–it meant so much to me. I distinctly remember telling my publisher that I thought this one would be the hardest sell (a book about justice???) but I just got word on Wednesday that it debuted at #1 on the New York Times list!! The folks at The Painted Porch and our warehouse in Illinois (and my publisher) worked so hard to bring these orders to you guys around the world, I want to thank them too. You can still grab some order bonuses here. And if you have read it, it would mean a lot if you could leave a review on Amazon.

Also, when I was doing the TODAY show last week (watch here) they kept playing clips of those shark attacks down on the panhandle. Two attacks, on the same day? What are the chances?! Well, if you’ve been following this newsletter and my recommendation of Night of the Grizzlies–that question will sound hauntingly familiar! Life is crazier than fiction, isn’t it?

​Demon of Unrest by Erik Larson (Audiobook)

I said last month that I don’t preorder many books, but I found myself preordering this new one by Erik Larson. In fact, this broke another one of my informal rules which is “Ryan, you HAVE to stop reading books about the Civil War. Enough already!” I’m glad I made an exception because this book is fantastic. It’s a beat-by-beat in the style Larson does so wonderfully in The Splendid and the Vile, Dead Wake, In The Garden of Beasts, and The Devil in the White City–telling of those fateful days before the Fire Eaters plunged America into a devastating, terrible war they were never going to win. Larson manages, as always, to find a number of characters you wouldn’t expect to like but do. He also manages, I think, to capture Lincoln’s quick transformation from politician to leader. Look, the best way to understand the present is to study the past (thus books like The Great Influenza) and this book is a must-read to grasp the stakes of the abyss that we might stagger ourselves into. Also, much to be said here about what snowflakes slave owners were–and how a closed-loop, delusional culture (ahem, right-wing news ecosystem) can break people’s brains.

​Novelist as a Vocation by Haruki (Audiobook)

Weirdly, Murakami’s novels have never really done it for me, but his book What I Talk About When I Talk About Running is one of my all-time favorites. He applies the same pared-down style to this book (not as good of a title) on writing. To me, writing and running are very similar disciplines. It’s a race against the self. It’s a battle between the higher and the lower self. You gotta do it even when you don’t want to. You gotta push yourself further than you think you can go. You gotta realize that the real victory is getting to do the thing, and any results on top of that are extra. Anyway, great stuff here. I liked this book a lot.

​James by Percival Everett (Audiobook)

My wife grabbed this for me at First Lights Books in Austin, TX (I would say that other bookstores are our mortal enemies, but of course that’s not true. It’s the socialists over at the library that are the real enemies). I’d been meaning to read it ever since I saw the NYT review. What a wonderful idea for a novel–to tell the story of Huckleberry Finn and Jim from Jim’s perspective! That Everett is able to take this much darker and tragic perspective and still make it funny? That’s a task worthy of Mark Twain. It’s also deeply moving and I think an important look at how slavery actually was (Twelve Years a Slave is also an incredible book). I spent my birthday reading James and I consider that a great gift. Also, it reminded me of two other books I loved: Wicked River by Lee Sandlin (an absolutely incredible book about the history of the river) and Life on the Mississippi by Rinker Buck (about a guy who recently traveled it in his own raft, not too dissimilar to the one Huck and Jim were on). In Right Thing, Right Now I talk about the work of abolitionist Thomas Clarkson–again we want to study the past to figure out how to improve the present and Adam Hochschild’s book Bury the Chains is an inspiring look at how someone managed to see slavery as it was in the 18th century and do something about it.

​Get Honest or Die Lying: Why Small Talk Sucks by Charlamagne tha God (Audiobook)

My career changed several years ago. I was in a hotel room in Canada when I got a DM on Instagram. It was from Charlamagne Tha God–he told me he’d just read Ego is the Enemy and was going to post about it, so I should buckle up. He was right to warn me–his show The Breakfast Club is maybe the biggest, most important morning radio show in the country. Charlamagne talking about Stoicism has been huge (here’s a crazy New Yorker story about it that middle school me would not have believed). And as it happens, I became a big fan of his, too. His first book Black Privilege is awesome. His book Shook One is much more down my alley (it’s about dealing with your anxiety) and his new one is about being honest (it’s not really about small talk, as the subtitle suggests). When I was on The Breakfast Club last week, he and I talked about something from Marcus Aurelius–how annoying it is when people say, “I’m going to be straight with you here” (because it means they usually aren’t!). To me, that’s what this new book is about. I also thought Charlamangne’s interview for The Interview in the NYT was really good. You won’t always agree with him, but he’ll make you think and you know he’s gonna say what he thinks.

Misc.

I did my annual birthday post this week, so here at 37 (Or So) Lessons From A 37 Year Old. I also binge-watched the entirety of Netflix’s A Man In Full. I liked it (weird ending), but I hate to be the guy to say: Read the book. It’s so much better! But in this case, it is true. A Man In Full is an amazing book and one of the ones I point to when people ask for novels about Stoicism. The other is, of course, The Moviegoer. Both are probably impossible to capture fully on the screen but you couldn’t ask for someone better than David E. Kelly to try. I read Susan Quinn’s biography of Marie Curie, which was pretty good. I did my notecards on The Didion Files by Sara Davidson, which was incredible.

Kids

We picked up Ten Little Rabbits because I love Sendak and my youngest son loves bunnies. It’s a fun one for very little ones. We’ve been doing weekly story hours at The Painted Porch (come by if you’re in central Texas) every Thursday. Some of the popular ones from this month were The Truth About The Couch by my friend Adam Rubin (of course, his other classics are High Five, Dragons Love Tacos, and Dragons Love Tacos 2). The kids also loved 100 Mighty Dragons All Named Broccoli by David LaRochelle and Over and Under the Rainforest by Kate Messner. My oldest has been loving Squire & Knight.

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