3 book recommendations for February, 2021
When I ask for advice, often what I’m really looking for is reassurance.
But the work I’m most proud of requires taking real risks with no possible guarantee of success, so seeking reassurance that things will turn out okay is a trap.
Trust yourself. Trust the process.
(Yes, as you may have guessed, I’m in the middle of the messy process of planning a new novel.)
And now, books I love that you might too:
Attack Surface by Cory Doctorow is set in a near-future riven by insurrection, corruption, misinformation, and inequality. The story follows a self-taught hacker from San Francisco who helps build the American digital surveillance apparatus out of a genuine sense of patriotism, only to discover that she’s propping up exactly the kind of unjust, predatory system she’d set out to defeat. Computers play a role as important as any other member of the diverse cast, and computing is treated with a rare technical rigor that reveals the extent to which our tools shape our lives and world. Complement with my conversation with Cory about writing Attack Surface.
Caste by Isabel Wilkerson deconstructs the invisible systems that operate just beneath the surface of American life and, as the subtitle promises, reveals “the origins of our discontents.” Reading this book reframed my fundamental understanding of the country I call home, and gave me a new lens through which to make sense of why things are the way they are, and what it means to change them. Even more extraordinary, the story is as compelling as it is revelatory—this is a work of profound and rigorous analysis that reads like a page-turner.
The Mezzanine by Nicholson Baker is a novel about a man going up an escalator. Yes, you read that correctly: this is a novel about a man going up an escalator. It is also a masterpiece. Baker unfurls that subversively arbitrary narrative architecture into a hilarious and endlessly fascinating exploration of human psychology, growth, and the beauty hidden in what we take for granted. Ultimately, this is a story about how investing care and attention imbues life with meaning.
Bonus recommendation: The surprising science behind Brussel sprouts' unlikely ascension from most-despised-vegetable to David-Chang-inspired-foodie-trend.
In other news:
Magic: “The world is brimming with magic. Summon it by bringing your attention to bear, by following the path into being. The keener your sense of presence, the more miraculous the universe reveals itself to be.”
S.D McKinley reviewed Borderless: "There wasn’t a single page I didn’t highlight. This story deserves five stars out of five, all day long."
The Second Life Book Club had me on to talk about writing science fiction and the story behind the Analog series, and they hosted the event in a custom virtual-world interpretation of the trilogy's eponymous off-grid social club, complete with easter eggs from the novels. More than two-thousand people live-streamed the event, which blows me away. You can watch the full video recording of the interview here.
We experience stories linearly, but their underlying structure is fractal. A story consists of stories (acts), which consist of stories (scenes), which consist of stories (moments). A big story like a movie or novel is a set of narrative Matryoshka dolls. Share on Twitter.
OneZero reprinted my interview with Kim Stanley Robinson about inventing plausible utopias: “I love so many things about The Ministry for the Future—its sprawling future history, its rigorous picture of institutional change, its structure of feeling, its cascading collisions of big ideas—but what resonates most deeply is that this is a book about and for practical, determined people working to make a messy, complicated world better.”
Bridging the personal and the universal: “When a story integrates the personal and the universal, it becomes an emotional flywheel that moves the reader, offering them a new perspective of lasting value, subtly or profoundly changing them into someone new.”
It never ceases to surprise me how idiosyncratic the paths to commercial creative success are. If you want to be a lawyer or doctor, success requires hard work, but there's a playbook. If you want to make art, there isn't. Everyone is making it up as they go. Share on Twitter.
From my conversation with Cory Doctorow about Attack Surface: "Technology and politics are inseparable. There’s a kind of nerd determinism that denies politics ('Our superior technology makes your inferior laws irrelevant'). But just as pernicious is the inverse, the politicos who insist that technology is irrelevant to struggle, sneering about 'clicktivism' and 'solutionism.'"
Nick Greene, a longtime subscriber to this humble newsletter, has a new book coming out next week that deconstructs the physics, economics, culture, and history of basketball. If you’re a fan of the NBA, you will love this book.
Yogurt: “You can’t control cultures directly—be they yogurt or human—but you can create the conditions for them to grow and thrive.”
A poet's mind is a magnifying glass that focuses life into points brilliant enough to set hearts on fire. Share on Twitter.
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.
"Thrilling, thoughtful, and richly imagined. A lovely book about a terrifically important subject."
-Oliver Morton, author of The Planet Remade and editor at The Economist, on Veil
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