3 book recommendations from Eliot Peper
It's hard to believe Cumulus came out a year ago. Y'all are the folks whose enthusiasm got it reviewed in Businessweek, Ars Technica, Popular Science, io9, GeekDad, etc., made it a #1 bestseller in its Amazon categories, and helped the story raise more than $10,000 for the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Chapter 510 to fight for a free and open internet and cultivate youth literacy in Oakland.
That's pretty darn unusual for a self published novel with no fancy publicist or marketing team. Your word-of-mouth recommendations and grassroots reviews are what put wind in its sails. Sometimes the small things make a big difference.
To celebrate, Amazon is running a limited sale and today you can grab the Kindle version for just $.99. Perfect reading material for the holiday weekend if you haven't already checked it out. Oh, and don't forget to leave a review. They really do make an outsized impact.
Thanks a million. You are the best readers ever.
And now, books I love that you might too:
New York 2140 by Kim Stanley Robinson is an inventive, moving portrait of a future Manhattan drowned by sea level rise. Robinson has been one of my favorite authors since I discovered his Three California's trilogy as a teenager. His visionary science fiction is driven by an extraordinary sensitivity to and empathy for the human experience. New York 2140 will make you think deeply about the implications of climate change and the tradeoffs baked into our political and economic systems. I was honored to have the opportunity to interview Robinson about the book and I think you'll find the conversation fascinating.
Hit Makers by Derek Thompson is a titillating deconstruction of the science of popularity. If you've ever wondered what really happens behind-the-scenes when a song, movie, book, or idea "goes viral," this is the book for you. In a series of brain-teasing anecdotes, Thompson weaves together Impressionist painters, Hollywood hits, and social media phenomenons into a compelling analysis of what makes blockbusters tick.
Underground Airlines by Ben Winters is a brutal thriller that takes place in a modern day America in which the Civil War never happened and slavery is still legal. The story is as darkly mesmerizing as a nightmare that stays with you for days after waking you in a cold sweat. I fully expect Quentin Tarantino to adapt this story into a movie one day. Read it. Devour it, even. But don't say I didn't warn you.
Bonus recommendation: The S-Town podcast is an extraordinary piece of investigative reporting that's also one of the best examples of audio storytelling I've ever heard. It's weird, wild, and impossible to stop listening to.
In other news, my next novel, The Feed, just went into copyediting and my designer is starting work on the cover. I also just finished writing the rough draft of my very first short story, Blue Eyes. If you missed my talk at the GamesBeat Summit about how science fiction influences reality and vice versa, you can read about it and watch the full interview here. If you missed my various panels at the Conference on World Affairs, you can listen to audio recordings here: bioengineering, hacktivism, singularity, and the future of art. Finally, I recorded a short video about why I write to help raise money for Room to Read.
If you enjoy this newsletter and want to support it, forward this email to a friend. I love sharing amazing stories that explore the intersection of technology and culture. The goal of this newsletter is to recommend books, both fiction and nonfiction, that crackle and fizz with big ideas, keep us turning pages deep into the night, challenge our assumptions, help us find meaning in a changing world, and make us think, feel, and ask hard questions. In an age of digital abundance, quality is the new scarcity. The right book at the right time can change your life.
I also pull back the curtain on my creative process. When I'm not reading books, I'm writing them. If you're interested, you can find my books right here. They've been praised by Businessweek, Popular Science, TechCrunch, io9, and Ars Technica. I'd love to hear what you think if you give them a read.
Cheers, Eliot
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