3 book recommendations for December, 2020
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Thank you. You are the best readers any writer could hope for.
And now, books I love that you might too:
Tigerman by Nick Harkaway is an adventure of surprising depth that explores the burgeoning friendship between a retired sergeant and an irrepressible young boy stuck on a tropical island acting as a nexus for all sorts of geopolitical transgression. Harkaway conjures a fully realized pocket universe that is a joy to lose yourself in.
Consolations by David Whyte is a beautiful collection of essays that manage to consistently surface profound emotional truths. Whyte’s skill as a poet shines through in the clarity and subtlety of his prose, and you’ll quickly find yourself nodding along as you recognize the ebb and flow your own life’s particular nuances captured and elevated.
Your People and Music by Derek Sivers is a compelling, pragmatic guide for musicians, writers, podcasters, programmers, artists, and creators of all stripes seeking to build an audience and make an impact. In a world overflowing with tactical advice that encourages short-term growth hacking, Sivers’s considerate, generous commitment to process and principles is exactly the kind of actionable balm you need to make change happen by making good art.
Bonus recommendation: The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas by Ursula K. Le Guin is a parable that will stretch your moral imagination and leave you pondering the paradox at its heart.
In other news:
Over in the Science of Fiction, Maddie Stone published a wonderful essay exploring the implications of the near future extrapolated in my latest novel, Veil. Part book review, part geoengineering primer, part creative process x-ray, she assembles a whole greater than the sum of those parts. Go read the whole thing.
A beautiful thing about text as a medium—besides its durability and information density—is how inexpensive and efficient it is to create, publish, and distribute; that featherlight quality opens the field to idiosyncratic creativity and diverse voices. Share on Twitter.
The Mad King: “The mad king’s madness was the source of his power, for by wrongly ascribing subtle reason to his actions, his enemies defeated themselves.”
A pop band that talks about complicated emotions: “At the heart of Sylvan Esso is this really fun argument —Nick wants things to sound unsettling, but I want you to take your shirt off and dance. We're trying to make pop songs that aren't on the radio, because they're too weird.”
Line from my work-in-progress: "Across the water, wind keened through the shattered remnants of empty skyscrapers—steel fingers grasping at forgotten grails."
Granular verisimilitude: “Engineering the suspension of disbelief is all in the details.”
Italo Calvino on what makes great writing great: “I am convinced that writing prose should be no different from writing poetry; both seek a mode of expression that is necessary, singular, dense, concise, and memorable.”
The internet could use a lot less hustle, outrage, and snark, and a lot more whimsy, patience, and gratitude. Share on Twitter.
Having read this essay, you will never think about sweet potatoes the same way again.
Silence: “The world was a windup toy that had unexpectedly exhausted its clockwork motor.”
Anyone who thinks social media's role in politics is de novo should read up on the poetry that taifa rulers in 10th century Andalusian Spain wrote to and about each other—hot takes, mis/disinforation, ad hominem attacks, spin, and viral memes that sparked intrigue and war. Share on Twitter.
Quantity is a route to quality, not its opposite: “There’s a school of advice that claims good writing is the result of endless, painstaking, comprehensive rewrites that iterate toward perfection, but I’ve learned much more about craft writing and publishing nine novels than I ever would have rewriting my first novel nine times.”
Two subscribers debuted their first novels this month: Nucleation by Kimberly Unger and Super-Borg Dies by Tac Anderson. Huge congrats to you both!
And another subscriber, Joe Stech, launched a Kickstarter to publish a collection of science-fiction stories exploring the implications of the Fermi Paradox. Readers, check it out, back it, and enjoy. Writers, submit your best ideas.
If you enjoy this newsletter and want to support it, become a paid subscriber and tell your friends. Every month, I 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 grow. In an age of digital abundance, quality is the new scarcity. The right book at the right time can change your life.
When I'm not reading books, I'm writing them. If you savor the promise and peril of new worlds opening up, if you prefer hard questions to easy answers, if you seek adventures that will transport you and leave you changed, then you're the kind of person I write for. You can find my novels right here. Bon voyage, fellow traveler.
Cheers, Eliot
Eliot Peper is the author of Veil, Breach, Borderless, Bandwidth, Neon Fever Dream, Cumulus, Exit Strategy, Power Play, and Version 1.0. He publishes a blog, tweets more than he probably should, and lives in Oakland, CA.
“This is the best kind of science fiction, in which the overriding issue of our time, climate change, is addressed with vivid characters serving as exemplars of all the roles we need to take on in the coming decades, all gnarled into a breath-taking plot. I hope it’s the first of many such novels creating climate fiction for our time.”
-Kim Stanley Robinson, Hugo, Nebula, and Locus award-winning author, on Veil
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