Please, recommend me a GREAT book 📚

(I'll recommend you some too)

Hi! It’s me, Tim, again! This is the time in the month when I email you some book recommendations from my recent reading. (And I do have some recs, I’ll slip them at the bottom of this newsletter.)

My last three recommendations (Jean-Dominique Bauby’s The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, Ray Bradbury’s Dandelion Wine, and Seneca’s letter Of The Shortness of Life) are books I would swear by. Seriously, if you haven’t read any of them, you can skip this month’s newsletter & just try one of those!

But for some reason, nothing I’ve read this past month has me THAT excited to write to you. I’ve been reading a lot, but I don’t feel like I’ve found anything truly incredible that is worth recommending to everybody.

I don’t know why I haven’t struck gold with my reading lately. Lots of silver. No gold.

And here’s where you come in — if you are willing — thank you!!

Help me find my new favorite book!!

Can you play matchmaker for me? (Please? I really would appreciate it.) I’ll describe my preferences, and you check your bookshelves to see if you can find me a date.

These aren’t hard-and-fast rules, just things I’ve noticed I like in books. And of course there are big exceptions. So if you’ve been reading this newsletter or watching the channel for a little while & you think you have a book I’d love, but it doesn’t match this list, send it anyway! That’s how I learn to love new things!

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Where I’m headed once I get your recommendations. (This one’s actually a small shop called City Lights Bookstore in Sylva, NC.)

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So here’s my ‘general preferences’ list:

1. Older > brand-new. I like my books vetted by time.

2. Fiction > non-fiction. I could really use a good story now.

3. Short books > long books. Novellas to short novels. (But again, I loved The Brothers Karamazov, so take this with a grain of salt.)

4. Something to think about. It doesn’t need to have a profound philosophical argument, I just want to be thinking by the end.

5. And finally, here’s a list of nouns that I’ve found I tend to enjoy in books for one reason or another. The book DOES NOT NEED to have any or all of these nouns (but both The Wind and the Willows and The Count of Monte Cristo check every box, surprisingly).

   1. food/picnics/coffee

   2. wooden boats (bonus if there’s a shipwreck)

   3. treasure/valuables

   4. prisons/jailbreaks

   5. animals (not really pets usually)

   6. rain

   7. cold weather and snow

   8. underground houses/shelters

   9. crime committed by moonlight

I love a lot of books that don’t match this list at all, so don’t be scared to veer away from it! Please, and thank you, send me a recommendation by leaving a comment on this post or by emailing me here. I’d like to find this year’s East of Eden or Walden. Thank you, literary friends!!

And for you: Yes, I still have some recommendations :)

I do still have some recommendations for you. And they’re great books! Truly! They’re just not from my recent reading, or have some other reason I might not recommend them to a general audience. Here they are:

1. Anything by Wendell Berry. Berry is one of the authors whose work and ideas sits most prominently in my mind. He touches on community, purpose, agriculture, and dealing with technology and the changing of the times. I referenced a short story of his in this video on FOMO, but all of his work I’ve read has been fantastic — short stories, novels, essays, poems. Do a little digging online and see what avenue of his you might want to go down. (Someday soon, Wendell, when I read another book of yours, you’ll get your own newsletter.)

2. If you’re interested at all in writing, especially fiction, I can wholeheartedly recommend two books from this year’s reading:

   1. Zen in the Art of Writing by Ray Bradbury. Bradbury writes writing advice like he writes his stories — brilliant imagery, punchy-fresh sentence structure, overwhelming joy. The book is mostly encouraging and inspiring rather than a how-to manual (although it does have some practical tips). I underlined and bracketed most pages and revisit it whenever I need a boost. Highly highly recommend.

   2. A Swim in a Pond in the Rain by George Saunders. Saunders teaches a class at Syracuse on the Russian short story, and this book is a distillation of that class. It’s got seven Russian short stories inside, and after each is Saunders’ helpful breakdown of “why does this story work? what keeps us reading?” Really helpful for me as I try and write more fiction. Might be helpful for you too! (Plus, it introduced me to more Russian literature.)

3. And finally, the Remembrance of Earth’s Past trilogy by Liu Cixin (The Three-Body Problem, The Dark Forest, and Death’s End). Chinese sci-fi. Mesmerizing exploration of what humanity would do in the face of a someday-coming-alien-invasion. Heavy on science (but a normal person like me can still read and enjoy). I’m actually LOVING this trilogy right now, and they may be the subject of next month’s newsletter, but I just haven’t finished it yet, so I didn’t want to full send recommend it. I’m on the last book, Death’s End. The first two were truly wild and actually amazing. I’ll let you know when I finish.

Cheers & happy reading!

-Tim

Me, waiting for you to send me some bangin’ recommendations.