This is NOT a ‘best of 2019’ list. For one thing, as I said in my Recommended Movies of 2019 post, “I find most ‘best of’ lists annoying and more suited to conversations in high school with your smart-aleck friends while you all are smoking weed.” But much more important is that my catholic reading preferences coupled with my seriously erratic engagement with books means I generally have no clue what is happening out there in the literary landscape at any given time. I’ll learn of something just released that sounds interesting and I’ll buy that at the same time I purchase a title everyone else read decades earlier. What follows are just some of the books that I read in 2019 regardless their publication date, and that I found interesting and memorable enough to tell you about. They are presented in no particular order.
The Culture Map: Decoding How People Think by Erin Meyer (2014). I’ve been working in a global environment since around 2005, and I’ve become quite aware of how different cultures approach things like company hierarchies, collaboration and dissent, managing up as well as managing down, and resolving differences across borders and time zones. Therefore reading Meyer’s book was not so much eye-opening as it was confirming and codifying what I had already learned, along with placing it in a broader context with data to anchor it. But make no mistake, one way or another, these insights do have to be learned – we aren’t born with this knowledge – whether you earn that understanding through experience as I did, or the quick way through Meyer’s book. In the end, though, the understanding won’t do you any good if you don’t put it into practice. So many of my American colleagues just have no clue that the ways they are engaging with clients and co-workers in other countries is not only ineffective but, in some situations, actually doing harm to the relationship. Pro tip: a low-context communicator negotiating something crucially important with a high-context communicator is super-dangerous if neither side is familiar with what this book is talking about.
Exhalation: Stories by Ted Chiang (2019). Chiang wrote what is probably my favorite science fiction work, the 1998 novella Story of Your Life (adapted reasonably well for the movies as Arrival in 2016, though the film couldn’t begin to reach the heights of the original). He remains fascinated with time and memory, and the nine stories here explore those topics in various ways, as well as the meaning of free will, the nature of being human, and bioethics. The opening story, “The Merchant and Alchemist’s Gate”, winner of the Nebula, Hugo, and Seiun awards, is a breathtakingly evocative piece about time travel that plays by highly specific rules but nonetheless raises complex questions I’m still not sure there are answers for. Chiang’s fan club includes people such as Barack Obama, Joyce Carol Oates, and Alan Moore, and Exhalation was included in many books of the year lists, including the New York Times, Washington Post, NPR, Time Magazine, and Financial Times. Thrilling, brilliant, heartbreaking, and intriguing.
The Designer’s Dictionary of Type by Sean Adams (2019). My wife finds my fascination with type as something of a nerdy indulgence. But when you become sensitive to typeface choices, just as when you become aware of any form of design, the world becomes a more fascinating and pleasurable place. You see the touch of artists and designers everywhere, and gain new appreciation for the right use of the right typeface in the right instance. You also lose patience for bad uses of inappropriate typefaces at the wrong time! For someone like me this book is a huge pleasure. Not an exhaustive encyclopedia of typefaces, it is instead a kind of mid-level overview of type families and some of their representative examples. Adams examines 48 typefaces in depth, talking about their designers and the circumstances of their creation, how they best can be used, along with examples of the typefaces in the wild. You’ll understand, for example, the important differences between a Caslon face, and a Garamond, and a Bodoni. And there’s some history as well, so you’ll have a brief introduction to people like the Englishman William Caslon (1692-1766), and the Frenchman Claude Garamond (1510-1561), and the Italian Giambattista Bodoni (1805-1806). Plus, you know, have fun with your nerdy indulgence.
The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson (1959). I have no idea why it took me so long to get to this. I was certainly aware of this book from an early age through the 1963 film adaptation by Robert Wise with Julie Harris and Claire Bloom, which was probably the scariest picture I saw as a child. Even now I vividly recall the wallpaper and the door and I still don’t reach my hand out of the bed in the middle of the night. But I never got around to the source material. Too bad for me, since it has, since publication, been seen as a landmark work in the genre. Stephen King considers The Haunting of Hill House and Henry James’ The Turn of the Screw as the only two great modern novels of the supernatural. Of course, the question remains whether the book is about the supernatural at all. Is poor Eleanor Vance really being persecuted by the spectres in the house? Or has she some psychic powers of her own that are causing all the problems? Or, in the end, maybe there are no problems, no spectres, just some eager amateur haunted house sleuths being sucked into the delusions of a fragile, self-destructive woman?
This is Marketing: You Can’t Be Seen Until You Learn to See by Seth Godin (2018). I’ve run into Godin multiple times over the years, most recently at the International Association of Business Communicators World Conference in Montreal a couple of years ago. It’s interesting to chat with the real Godin, to engage with the normal person behind the ultra-confident and nearly didactic marketing imp persona Godin uses in print and conference keynotes. And he’s earned that confidence over many years; I’ve been following his ideas and writings since his days at Yoyodyne and his work in permission marketing. This latest book brings together many of his ideas into a more cohesive approach to customer engagement. He talks a lot about the concept of the “smallest viable audience” which is another way of describing targeted marketing that provides value and service and positive impact to that slice of the world – no matter how small – making up the right audience for your product. With today’s marketing and communication technologies, that focus is possible. And taking that further, it enables companies to actually do good in the world, to be a force for positive change.
The Princess Bride by William Goldman (1973). Another book that I’m embarrassed to admit to reading a few decades late. Like just about everyone else in the world, I know and enjoy the 1987 film adaptation. My old friend Tony has often talked about how this is one of his favorite books of all time. I have no excuse! Better late than never, as Goldman himself would say since he rediscovered S. Morgenstern’s “Classic tale of true love and high adventure” himself years after it was first told to him, a backstory which is, of course, completely untrue. This is a book about love, and destiny, and revenge, and honor, and pirates and princesses, and the difference between mostly dead and all dead, but most of all it is a story about storytelling, about skipping the boring parts and just telling the good parts, about interpretation and meaning and beginnings and endings. It is also about having fun with stories and how even children’s tales are about death and violence and sex, which we all know but somehow we always seem to forget. It is also chock full of unforgettable lines, many of which made their way to the screenplay, spoken by unforgettable characters.
APE: Author, Publisher, Entrepreneur – How to Publish a Book by Guy Kawasaki and Shawn Welch (2012, updated). After a long time away I am returning to writing and I have a few books planned. Things have changed since I last had an agent and grappled with book publishers. One of the most important changes is that the long-promised revolution in digital self-publishing is actually here. If, for whatever reason, you want to bypass traditional publishers and finalize your own book and offer it through self-publishing platforms like those available at Amazon.com, you can do it. The problem is, though, that there a whole lot you need to know, about book layout, cover design, marketing, deal-making, etc. Most people don’t have the appetite to try and become good – or even merely adequate – at all the skill sets that come into play. If, however, you are one of those people who wants to publish even just one of your books yourself, this is an invaluable resource. It provides very specific advice for very specific situations, laying out options for every step of the way and discussing the pros and cons. This includes artistic advice, business advice, and technical advice. Kawasaki and Welch have been diligently updating the book in the years since it was first published so it remains current. If you have any interest in ever walking down the digital self-publishing path, this is a valuable reference to own.
Dublin Murder Squad series by Tana French (2007-present). I don’t know why I never came across Tana French before, but early in 2019 her name and her collection of novels known as the Dublin Murder Squad series was put in front of me by articles and by friends recommending her. The books all take place in and around Dublin, Ireland, and involve policemen that are part of, or associated somehow with, the Dublin Murder Squad. One intriguing aspect is that the books all feature different characters as the protagonists, but they are all characters occupying the same world and often characters we have already met. That is, a minor or supporting character in one book could become the primary character in the next one (and, likewise, a major character in one book could recede in the next). The books are very well-written, an example of literary genre work, and feature flawed and interesting characters who often have an internal life quite different from what they are showing the outside world – sometimes because of the secrets they hold. There are six books to date, and I’ve tackled five so far this year:
In the Woods (book #1, 2007). Features the characters Rob Ryan, Cassie Maddox, Frank Mackey. An archeological dig where the past will soon be paved over by a highway, a murdered child, woods holding a truth that simply refuses to be given up, and several characters on all sides who are not who they seem to be and who, like those woods, refuse to give up their secrets. The most divisive of the books because one protagonist is not such a good person, or maybe just irretrievably damaged.
The Likeness (book #2, 2008). Features the characters Cassie Maddox, Frank Mackey. The premise is a bit implausible but once you get over that it raises all sorts of interesting questions about identity and personal truth. This is about going undercover to investigate a crime, but it is also about how we define who we are by the company we keep, and whether there are boundaries any longer in how fluid our identity can be. French was trained as an actor, and this story is informed psychologically by that world.
Faithful Place (book #3, 2010). Features the characters Frank Mackey, Mick “Scorcher” Kennedy, Holly Mackey, Stephen Moran. This dives deep into a tight Dublin working class neighborhood where people don’t so much as look after each other as keep each other hostage, where any change is rejected, any ambition mocked, any desire to get under the surface strongly resisted. Trying to solve a decades-old murder in that environment is really difficult, especially when pulling at the threads leads to places you would rather not go.
Broken Harbor (book #4, 2012). Features the characters Mick “Scorcher” Kennedy. Taking place in a half-built, barely inhabited tract housing estate that was abandoned when the money ran out. This is an environment where dreams and aspirations battle to become real even as the money runs out, where keeping up appearances can become indistinguishable from shared madness. The book manages to take a dislikable character from one book and turn him into at least a sympathetic one by exploring the totality of his life.
The Secret Place (book #5, 2014). Features the characters Stephen Moran, Antoinette Conway, Holly Mackey, Frank Mackey. A somewhat different structure, shifting perspectives between the detective protagonists and the students at a private school. Competing cliques of girls, with a dead boy between them.