5 Titles To Add To Your Pile
If you’re like me, you’ve read 15 more books than you’ve obtained this year. Yes, I’ve been counting.
What this means is, despite what my wife thinks, the piles of books organized in their sequestered corner of the house have actually gotten smaller. As I often do at this time of year, I’d like to recommend 5 titles that disappeared from those stacks that I think would be worth your time. These aren’t all new releases, simply books I found time for over the past year.
The Southern Book Club’s Guide To Slaying Vampires by Grady Hendrix. I kept seeing this book in advertisements and finally relented. It’s one of the few occasions in which giving in to advertisements works for the better. It has a well-constructed plot, believable characters, social commentary, and a grounded world, which makes the titular vampires all the more dynamic. A book club of mothers in 1990s suburban Charleston is formed to focus on true-crime stories. It all seems like harmless, if trashy fun, until some local children go missing. The book club investigates and has to decide how much of the case is real and how much is influenced by the stories they read.
Fool by Christopher Moore. Do you like Shakespeare? Do you like protagonists that are defined by wit and short stature? Do you like humor derived from wordplay as much as bodily functions? You sound like me. You should also give Fool a shot. This one has been around for a few years, so you may have heard of this or other Moore books, but I just became familiar with this author and found Fool to be a delight from cover to cover. It’s basically King Lear with a little Macbeth thrown in all narrated by a flippant and somewhat omniscient court fool. Also, “there’s always a bloody ghost.”
Dictionary Stories by Jez Burrows. So, here’s the interesting thing; I did not like this book. I wanted to very much because of the intriguing way it was put together, but in the end, it wasn’t for me. The idea is novel though and worth experiencing. Burrows collected sample sentences dictionaries use to demonstrate a word in context. What Burrows discovered is that those sentences are often unique to make them distinct and easy to remember. Burrows then crafted several micro-stories and vignettes from those sentences. It’s not perfect, but it is interesting.
The Power of Giving Away Power by Matthew Barzun. This is the only nonfiction title on the list, and it focuses on leadership. Barzun is the former Ambassador to the UK among other high level government positions. This easy-to-read reflection on that experience looks at commonalities of complex organizations. From business to government, successful leaders tend to come up with similar strategies when it comes to innovating and moving the group forward. As contrary as it seems, a lot of that successful wielding of power comes down to giving away power. Barzun makes a good case for this approach and notes that giving away power was fundamental to how the founders structured the government.
You Feel It Just Below The Ribs by Jeffrey Cranor and Janina Matthewson. In an alternate 20th century, the great reckoning caused world governments to be remade from scratch. Children are no longer raised in families, and at age 10, their memories are altered so childhood attachments and loyalties don’t lead to tribalism. This book is the autobiography of one of the architects of that program. It’s based on the podcast Within The Wires. If you’re not thoroughly confused yet, I highly recommend both projects.
