Friday, January 17, 2025, Delray Beach, Florida


Inside This Issue...

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With the “Works in Progress” issues, my goal is to include three chapters a month. But one of the chapters that I had planned for this month – another one from The 7 Natural Laws of Wealth Building – needed a lot of rethinking and I couldn’t get it done in time. So in this issue, you’ll find these two:

* Chapter 3 of The Challenge of Charity – discovering how a wealth gap is also a learning and responsibility gap. In this chapter, I talk about all the “noble” but naïve ideas I had about how to interact with the very poor (and sometimes sick) Nicaraguans who came to me for help when I first began building out Rancho Santana.

and…

* Another excerpt from The Art of Collecting Art – the “accidental” collection that really got me started. You don’t have to begin with a million dollars in the bank to build a million-dollar art portfolio. In this chapter, I explain how I did it from scratch.

Note: These are not final drafts. So if you see anything that I got wrong, or if you want to suggest something I didn’t think of, please leave a message for me here.

Works in Progress

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Chapter 3 of The Challenge of Charity
Discovering How a Wealth Gap Is Also a Learning and Responsibility Gap

In Chapter 2, I talked about some of the mistakes my partners and I made early on with Rancho Santana, the resort community we were developing in Nicaragua. Some of those mistakes were because we had no experience with real estate outside of the United States. But another mistake – a big one that I was personally guilty of – had to do with a lack of understanding of Third World economics.

Antonio had given me good advice when he explained why the $400 a month that I planned to pay the housekeeper we would be hiring for the vacation home K and I had built at the resort was a bad idea. Although it contradicted my impulses, I could see that it was sensible.

Still, I wasn’t comfortable with paying my housekeeper the local market rate. Notwithstanding the logic of Antonio’s argument, paying a full-time person just $100 a month felt miserly. I wrangled with the dilemma for a few days and landed on a compromise. I would hire two people instead of one. One would work indoors only as a housekeeper and the other would work outside as a gardener, pool cleaner, and occasional handyman. I would pay each of them $125. (Antonio was okay with that.) And I would find some extra chores outside of their regular duties for which I’d pay them an additional $50, which put my overall outlay to $350, but spread over two jobs instead of one.

Experience and Expectations

Yessenia, a young woman from the area who had worked for Antonio’s family, became our housekeeper. And Enrique, a young man Antonio recommended, became our outside worker.

They both seemed grateful for their jobs, arrived promptly every morning at 7:00 a.m., and worked with energy and enthusiasm. It was a promising beginning, but I quickly discovered they had little to no idea about what to do, or even how to do it.

Enrique and Yessenia had grown up in a world without electricity, let alone modern devices. The houses they knew – in the nearby hamlets where they lived – had simple openings for windows, outdoor latrines, and dirt floors. No gardens. No pools. (The first time I gave Yessenia the keys to let herself in and out of our place when we weren’t there, she blushed. She had never seen house keys before.)

So the job of teaching Enrique how to trim hedges with electric clippers, mow the lawn with a gas-powered lawn mower, and change the pool filter fell to me. And we had to hire someone to teach Yessenia how to use a vacuum cleaner, a microwave, an electric stove, a wash machine, and a dishwasher.

But the challenge went deeper than that. Yessenia and Enrique had very different perspectives on what “clean” and “dirty” or “orderly” and “neat” meant. When you have grown up walking on dirt floors all your life, you aren’t accustomed to seeing dirt below your feet as a problem – as something that needs to be fixed. Likewise, when you’ve grown up surrounded by plants in their natural state, it’s not easy to understand why anyone would want to shape them into something else.

It was obvious to me that Enrique and Yessenia needed to learn more than the basics of what is required to maintain a US-styled home, and K and I were going to have to learn how to teach them what they didn’t know.

A happy surprise was discovering that they were as eager to learn as we were to teach them.

Una Pequeña Petición 

There was, however, one thing that bothered me.

As soon as their regular duties were completed, they would find a shady spot and sit down. I would see them talking, relaxing, sometimes even napping until the “official” end of their workday. It didn’t seem to matter whether they had finished their chores an hour early or an hour after they began in the morning. They did what they were asked to do. Then they simply stopped.

This didn’t jibe with my notion of a good “work ethic.” How would they be able to have more in life if they were not willing to do more than the absolute minimum?

But the fact was, I had knowingly and purposely hired two full-time people to do one full-time job. There simply wasn’t enough work to do in and around the house to keep them both busy. At the same time, I recognized that if we’d had additional chores for them to do, they would have happily done them and worked what I would consider to be a full day. In fact, had we asked them, I’m sure they would have even worked extra hours.

In other words, this had nothing to do with being lazy. They simply had a different view of what was expected of them. It wasn’t about staying busy for seven or eight hours. It was about doing what their employer asked them to do. A difference of culture, not character.

I mentioned it to Antonio one day. He shrugged it off.

I persisted. “But don’t you think…”

“Mark,” he said. “Just two months ago, you were telling me that you wanted to pay them too much money. Now you are telling me that they are not working enough to earn the money you are paying them. Your house is orderly. Your garden is manicured. Your pool is clean. What more do you want?”

I had no answer for that. My concern wasn’t about trying to get more work out of them. I feared that I was enabling them to develop a bad habit that would keep them from achieving what I assumed were their dreams. Clearly, Antonio didn’t see it that way.

A Little Emergency

One day, several months after I had hired her, Yessenia came to me to tell me that her mother was very sick. The problem was that the local hospital in Rivas did not have the equipment for the treatment she needed. She would have to go to the big hospital in Managua. And that would cost money – both for the treatment and the transportation.

I asked her how much it would cost, expecting to hear something in the thousands of dollars. But it was less than $500. So it was a no-brainer. I gave her the money and she thanked me.

Then one day Enrique mentioned something about wishing he had a bicycle to get to work. I asked him how he had been doing it. He had been walking. I asked him how much a bike would cost. Less than $100. I gave it to him without a second thought.

These little “solicitations” from Yessenia and Enrique continued as the months passed. And I always felt good about helping them. It wasn’t lost on me that I was solving their personal problems at a fraction of what it would cost me to do so in the US. That is, of course, a common logic to being charitable in poor countries. The cost/benefit ratio is much better than it is in rich countries. And by benefits, I mean the benefits to the giver as well as the receiver.

As the years passed, Enrique and Yessenia found spouses and had children. As their families grew, I found myself helping them with all sorts of wants and needs. There was infant care, grammar school graduations, birthday parties, confirmations, household improvements, and never-ending medical expenses.

Although their wishes were always posed as requests, I had the distinct feeling that they expected me to grant them. To be clear, they never pressured me. On the contrary, with each request I felt like I was the one being given a gift.

And there was an unforeseen bonus: It gave me many opportunities to interact with their children in an avuncular sort of way. And the relationships that developed, immensely gratifying to me, have continued to the present day.

But some of the other homeowners at Rancho Santana didn’t feel the same way as I did. Their attitude was, “I’m paying them well by local standards, so why are they asking me for more money? They should be happy to have such a good job.”

That makes some sense. This time, however, Antonio agreed with me. “We are obligated to help them,” he said. “Because of who we are, we have a responsibility to the people that work for us. Not just to them, but to their families. And especially to their children.”

Anagnorisis 

It clicked. Finally, I had a clear understanding of the dynamics of what was going on.

In deciding to build a resort in this remote area of Nicaragua, my partners and I had invested in a local economy that was very poor and almost entirely undeveloped. Given our intentions, the amount of money we were investing, and the state of the economy, what we were doing was in some ways akin to what the French and English had done in colonizing African countries. We were developing a beautiful part of the world for our use and profit by taking advantage of cheap property prices and labor.

Our project would initially bring millions – and then tens of millions, and eventually more than a hundred million dollars of investment income – to the area. In theory, a good thing. But our purpose was not to improve the local economy. It was to build a tourist resort and residential community for wealthy gringos and, as I said in the beginning of this book, to profit from it.

For this part of Nicaragua to move up to an economy that could support a thriving middle class, it needed more than tourism and a few wealthy landowners. It needed industry. It was, after all, the Industrial Revolution in the US that ended the stark, binary divide that had existed for a thousand years between the world’s rich and poor.

But what we had done, unconsciously and inadvertently, was insert ourselves into a culture that was already, in many ways, like the culture of the feudal medieval societies of Europe.

Noblesse Oblige 

Back then, as we all know, there was the concept of noblesse oblige (literally, “nobility obligates”). It was a moral code that governed the relationship between the nobility and the commoners. It defined the rights and responsibilities of both parties.

But there were also unwritten rules beyond, for example, the written rule that the lord “owned” 10 percent of whatever his serfs produced. And among those unwritten rules was the understanding that when one of his “dependents” became sick or disabled or their children needed something, it was his duty to step in.

Some of those rules were codified. But they also existed in the more general notion of proper conduct.

I believe that idea displayed itself in Antonio’s support of my gut feeling that I had a responsibility to take care of Enrique, Yessenia, and their families. It was how his grandparents and parents treated their workers. It was how he treated the low-paid people that worked for him.

His approach to his workers was informed by the culture he grew up in. And because the local economy was still essentially feudal, that culture included a commitment to noblesse oblige.

Afterthoughts 

Today, the idea of noblesse oblige would likely be viewed as antiquated and even condescending. It was an ethic born out of a worldview that saw in the stark divide between rich and poor, landed gentry and serfs, a natural order. Perhaps even a divine plan. That attitude was replaced at the end of the 18th century by the idea that all men are created equal. And with the higher wages that millions of middle-class workers earned after the Industrial Revolution, it had become feasible for them to take care of their personal needs themselves.

As an employer of primarily white-collar, middle-class employees in my US and European companies, I don’t expect them to ask me for help when they have financial problems. But today in Nicaragua, and particularly in the Tola region of Nicaragua where Rancho Santana is located, the economy is not yet modern in the industrialized sense. Nicaraguan employees get some benefits and protections, thanks to fairly recent governmental regulations. But because the minimum wage is still so low, it is not – for most employees – nearly enough.

In the future, if Nicaragua’s economy develops to the point where unskilled workers are earning $15 or $20 an hour, the idea of noblesse oblige will surely disappear. In the meantime, I will continue to enjoy a relationship with my domestic employees that is archaic but mutually satisfactory.

Lessons Learned 

* When the lifestyle standards between you and your employees is ten times what it is in your home country, accept the fact that even the best and most willing workers will need to learn lots of things that you take for granted.

* When you are paying someone that works for you a tenth of what you’d pay for the same service in the US, understand that it is not reasonable to eschew the local customs of noblesse oblige.

 

An Excerpt from The Art of Collecting Art 

My First (Accidental) Collection – a Little of This, a Little of That

Building a valuable art collection takes more than time and money. It takes patience and discrimination and knowledge of the art industry that is not normally available to the public. During my time as co-owner of an art gallery, working with a partner that understood the game, I had acquired a bit of that knowledge. Among other things, I had learned that…

* The art industry is made up of four different sectors, each with its own practices, protocols, risks, and opportunities: (1) producers (artists, agents), (2) sellers (brokers, dealers, galleries), (3) casual buyers (decorators, casual collectors), and (4) investors (speculators, serious collectors, museums).

* Successful art dealers aren’t dilettantes, like I was. They are serious marketers and salespeople. They are 20% about the art and 80% about the deal.

* The big and fast money is made – also lost – by speculators.

* The sure money is made with “investment-grade” art.

The rest I would eventually learn through trial and error, and with the help and advice of dozens of people I would befriend in the years ahead.

Meanwhile, when I made the decision to step down as co-owner of the gallery, my interest in collecting art got a major boost from the buyout deal I made with my partner.

Our gallery specialized in modern and contemporary art, with a focus on limited-edition lithographs by “names” like Marc Chagall, Picasso, and Salvador Dali. We also sold Color Field and COBRA paintings – two schools of modern art that I knew very little about at the time.

I didn’t like Chagall. (I still don’t.) But I very much liked Picasso and Dali. So I really wanted to be “paid” for my share of the business with pieces of their work. But I knew enough by then to know that if I wanted to be a serious collector, I didn’t want the lithographs. I wanted “significant” one-of-a-kind pieces – i.e., paintings.

I wasn’t attracted to either the Color Field or the COBRA paintings that we had in the gallery. The Color Field art was minimalist and abstract – canvasses of flat bands and boxes of muted color. But even though the COBRA art looked like children’s fingerpainting to me, I arbitrarily chose five pieces. A large painting by Karel Appel. Two small pieces by Asger Jorn, and two pieces by Guillaume Cornelis van Beverloo, a.k.a. Corneille. I found places in my home to hang the smaller works and I put the large Appel in the basement.

I made up my mind to forget about COBRA art and create a collection that I would actually enjoy looking at. But as the years passed and I learned more about the COBRA artists, the seemingly childish things they had produced became more and more interesting to me. The Museum of Art in Fort Lauderdale had a collection of COBRA art that I occasionally visited, strengthening my interest. And one year, when my wife and I were visiting Amsterdam, I happened upon a gallery that specialized in COBRA art and bought a second Appel and two large works by Jacques Doucet and Theo Wolvecamp.

Since then, I’ve added to that small collection with additional works by Appel, Alechinsky, and Corneille.

I now have a reasonably complete assembly of COBRA art that I display in one room of our home in Florida. I’m no longer embarrassed by its apparent lack of technique and juvenile subject matter. I like it. (And its value has multiplied many times.)

My Second Collection – Early 20th Century Modernists

The collection that I began to assemble after exiting the gallery business was comprised of the works of artists that I had first seen in Gabriella’s house so many years before: early 20th century European modernists such as Jules Pascin, Jean Derain, and Édouard Vuillard.

I bought small paintings and drawings as my budget would allow. But the works of these artists were already pricey when I started buying them and have become even more costly. So that collection, near and dear to my heart, is still a modest one, at best.

My Third Collection – Mexican Modernists

I was speaking at an investment conference in Palm Springs, California. Strolling through town, I wandered into an art gallery.

The gallery was dimly lit and dead quiet. The art – mostly oil paintings and some gouaches – was stunning. I spent several minutes meandering around before being greeted by an elderly man in a tattered sweater who had emerged from somewhere in the back. He introduced himself as Bernard Lewin.

I explained that I was in town for business but had the afternoon free and was “in the market for a few pieces.”

Hand on his chin, Mr. Lewin studied me for a moment. Then he smiled, spread his arms, and said, “Look around. Take your time. Ask if you have questions.”

He turned and disappeared into the back.

I spent a good hour or so looking and making mental notes of the pieces I especially liked. I left without seeing Mr. Lewin again, but I went back the next day… and the next day… and the next. Each time, I was warmly received and my many questions were answered before he would, again, disappear.

Despite Mr. Lewin’s apparent indifference towards me as a potential buyer, I loved the art I was looking at and was determined to buy something from him.

What I didn’t know at the time was that I had inadvertently wandered into a gallery that featured some of the most important Mexican modern artists, including Diego Rivera, David Siqueiros, José Clemente Orozco, Rufino Tamayo, Francisco Zúñiga, and Frida Kahlo. And this old man in a tattered sweater was not only a major collector, he was the most important US dealer of their work. (Before his death, he and his wife Edith donated more than 2,000 pieces from their private collection to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.)

Most of what I thought I wanted to buy – “significant” works by these artists –was way out of my price range. But Mr. Lewin helped me select three pieces that I could afford: a large “mixograph” by Tamayo, a drawing by Rivera, and a beautiful little oil painting by Orozco.

The three cost me considerably more than I had planned to spend. But in retrospect, they were very good investments. The Orozco alone is worth more than ten times what I paid for it.

Over those several days, I had spent a total of no more than four hours with Mr. Lewin. But in that time, he had set me on a path that would immeasurably enrich my life.

Having fallen in love with the Mexican modernists, I began to add to this mini collection with pieces by Francisco Toledo and Vladimir Cora, whose work at the time was relatively affordable. I also bought additional reasonably priced pieces by contemporary (living) Mexican masters.

This set me up for the next phase of my collecting career: I met Suzanne Snider and got back into the art business.

Readers Write

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A personal note from longtime reader DC: “I have a question and seek your advice, please.” 

“Previously your advice – whether shared in your writings, your talks, or in person – has always been helpful, appreciated, and usually timely.

“A couple of years ago, I had to go through a rough and contentious divorce…. I know I did the right thing, but financially it wiped me out and necessitated a large debt hole. I just turned 60 and am healthier and happier than ever…. Income is solid, but it largely goes to servicing debt.

“Today, I read your writings on debt and will follow the ideas you shared. I am starting all over again. Is there any further advice or pointers you can share to help me on my path out of debt?”

My Response: Thanks for reaching out and for being so candid about your situation. I think there is a lot you can do to get back on track and start enjoying the benefits of your talents, your concerns, and your ambitions. One thing I’m going to do is have one of my books – The Pledge – sent to you. It’s about starting over. And it’s very pragmatic. After you’ve had a chance to read it, we can have a chat… either just the two of us or maybe make it something we can share with others.

Coming Next Time

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“Just One Thing” 

February’s “Just One Thing” issue will be a challenge for me. The topic is COVID – the disease and the vaccine. Longtime readers know that I was skeptical of the government’s position on both from the beginning. In this issue, I’ll provide more than sufficient data to prove that my skepticism was valid. In fact, I now believe that the entire thing – from the creation of the virus in a Wuhan lab to all the terrible and deadly decisions governments throughout most of the world made in response to it, to the development of the mRNA vaccines – may have been the greatest assault on human life and freedom since the Civil War!

If you believe that the anti-vaxxers were conspiracy theorists or that government agencies made “the best decisions they could make, based on the info available at the time,” this issue may change your mind.

Postscript

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“My Mom’s Motorcycle” 

A sweet and sentimental short film about the past and the future and our connections between objects and people.

Friday, January 10, 2025, Delray Beach, Florida


Inside This Issue...

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In this, the first monthly “Review” issue of 2025, I’m introducing a new feature – a rating system. It’s something I’ve been cooking up in recent years to explain and justify my judgements on the quality of books and films and other works of art that tell stories. These are obviously abstract notions about subjective experience, but they work for me – and I hope they work for you.

My Rating System for Most Books/Films 

* Horizontality: How much and how well did the book/film provide a sense of a particular place, time, community, and/or culture?

* Verticality: How deeply did the book/film go in mining the depths of the human experience?

* Stickiness: How tightly did the book/film keep me glued to the story?

* Literary/Visual Richness: How well did the written descriptions/cinematography enhance the story?

For some non-fiction works that need a slightly different approach – e.g., Stoic Paradoxes and The Last Lecture (reviewed below) – I’ll be using this…

My Rating System for Some Non-Fiction Works 

* Vertical Knowledge: How much did the work elucidate what is essential to the human experience?

* Horizontal Knowledge: How much did the work teach about the details of the subject matter investigated (history, science, psychology, etc.)?

* Depth of Thinking: Were the insights and revelations deep? Did the work leave me feeling that I’d learned something important?

* Literary Quality: Was the writing itself engaging and entertaining?

One More Thing 

There will be occasions – rare occasions – when I will add a half-point or a point to my rating. When, for example, the book or film changes the way I think or feel about something in some important way (I’m thinking of Schindler’s List or Walter Isaacson’s biography of Elon Musk, which I’m reading now) or when, even though it doesn’t score very well on the analytics, I enjoyed it so much that I still want to recommend it strongly (e.g., my rating today of What We Do in the Shadows).

In this issue, I’ll be applying my new system to three books and four films/TV series that I’ve enjoyed.

The books:

* Stoic Paradoxes by Cicero
* The Blue Hotel by Stephen Crane
* The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch

The films/TV series:

* Maria
* Emilia Pérez
* Conclave
* What We Do in the Shadows

Plus… I’ll be sharing my list of 46 more books that I’m thinking of reading in 2025.

Books I'm Recommending

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Stoic Paradoxes by Cicero 
A New Translation by Quintus Curtius 

106 pages
Paperback published 2015

I’ve done what I’d consider the basic requirements of Stoic studies since it became the predominant philosophic perspective of the self-help bloggers about 20 years ago.

I’ve read Marcus Aurelius, Seneca, and bits of Zeno, Epictetus, and Diogenes. But I’d never read Cicero.

I decided to read Paradoxa Stoicorum (Stoic Paradoxes) – written by Cicero sometime in 46 BCE – after reading somewhere that in it “he attempts to explain six famous Stoic sayings that appear to go against common understanding.”

I’ve always had a weak spot for concepts that are contra-intuitive. I like to learn them and then use them as burrs to irritate the minds of those who are confident in their thinking.

There are, admittedly, other explanations. Your average second-year student of psychology would probably (and correctly) diagnose me as (a) rating high on the “disagreeable” scale, and (b) having recurring “narcissistic” tendencies.

Never mind. The point is that I’m glad I read this. Not only is it intellectually challenging, I have gotten a few nuggets from it that will help me sound like I know what I’m talking about in future conversations about Stoicism.

The Six Paradoxes 

I’m certainly not an expert in Stoicism. However, I feel confident in saying that it is an ethical philosophy that advocates for the development of character based on reason.

In Paradoxa Stoicorum, Cicero examines these six principles of Stoic thought:

1. Virtue is the sole good.

By this (I think) Cicero is saying that there are some goods (things like pleasure and fortune) that, however satisfying for the moment, cannot give us enduring satisfaction. They merely arouse the desire for more of the same. The goods that can satisfy the soul, he says, are honor, honesty, and virtue. And these can be attained only by disassociating oneself from impulses and desires and committing to the fruits of reason.

2. Virtue is the sole requisite for happiness.

Virtue is all that is needed for happiness. Happiness depends on a possession which cannot be lost, and this only applies to things within our control.

3. All good deeds are equally virtuous and all bad deeds equally vicious.

This one I had problems with. Apparently, the classical Stoic idea is that all vices are equal because they each involve the same decision: to break a moral law. Cicero’s argument seems to be that all vices are the same but only if they are equal in terms of the social statuses of the offender and the offended. A person of lower status offending a person of higher status deserves a considerably harsher punishment than a person of higher status offending a person of lower status.

4. All fools are mad.

This one I didn’t get. Or if I did, it is a specious argument. Cicero seems to be saying that people that are not virtuous are, by definition, mad because any sane person, understanding that the only good is virtue, would act virtuously and therefore be immune to punishment or failure, whereas any person that chooses to be unvirtuous, is, by definition, a fool.

5. Only the wise are free, whereas all fools are enslaved.

Here, Cicero seems to be making the same argument (that all fools are mad) in a different way. Virtuous people are free because they are making choices based on reason, whereas people that act in accordance with their desires are always locked into the tyranny of those desires.

6. Only the wise are rich.

Again, this seems to be a variant of the previous three. On the one hand, since virtue is the only good, seeking other goods – such as fortune, fame, and power – will never produce any lasting good. On the other hand, someone who has an abundance of fortune, fame, and power cannot be said to be rich if he has no virtue.

What I Liked About It 

* I believe the subject matter of Stoicism is important because it deals with two of the most important philosophical questions: What is a good and rewarding life? And how does one attain it?

* By finally reading this book, I feel that I now have an understanding (at least a partial and introductory understanding) of Cicero’s contribution to Stoic thinking.

What I Didn’t Like So Much 

* Although I now have something to say about Cicero, I don’t have a deeper or even a much broader understanding of the range of Stoic thinking.

* Since the book is a translation of a translation (Cicero translated the Stoic arguments from the Greek), it was pretty much impossible to get a sense of how close the ideas were to the original.

About the Author 

Marcus Tullius Cicero (106 – 43 BCE) was a Roman statesman, lawyer, scholar, and philosopher. He is considered a key figure in Roman intellectual history.

About the Translator 

Quintus Curtius is the pen name of writer and translator George J. Thomas, who has written extensively on moral philosophy, ethics, and historical subjects.

My Rating 

I found this to be a good book, but hardly a great one. I would recommend it if you read it as I did: with the purpose of understanding Cicero’s role in Stoic philosophy. If you have little to no interest in that, I wouldn’t bother.

* Vertical Knowledge: 3.5
* Horizontal Knowledge: 2.5
* Depth of Thinking: 3.0
* Literary Quality: 3.0
* Overall: 3.0 out of 4.0

 

The Blue Hotel 

A short novel by Stephen Crane
40 pages
First published in 1898

This was an off-the-shelf read for me. An off-the-shelf read is a book that has been sitting alone and untended for years on one of the many bookshelves in one of five locations that, for whatever reason, calls out to me for attention.

I was drawn to it because of the color of the cover, the title (modest but also promising), the author (by whom I’ve only read one other book, The Red Badge of Courage, and yet I know he is considered a great American novelist), and the small size of it (a book I could read during a busy business weekend in Baltimore).

The Story 

Five strangers, each on his own journey, de-board a train in Fort Romper, Nebraska, a small town at the edge of the wilderness of the American West, for a night’s rest at the Palace Hotel. Pat Scully, the hotel proprietor, persuades them to book rooms and offers them dinner.

At dinner, the men engage in small talk. Afterwards, Scully invites them to play cards, which they agree to. One of the five, referred to only as “the Swede,” is brooding and quiet at dinner, and during the card game predicts that he will die in the hotel that night.

The game resumes. But before the night is over, the Swede is indeed killed.

The rest of the story is about the fairness of the murder trial and the verdict.

What I Liked About It 

I liked the story itself – the simplicity of its structure, the directness of the plot (chronological), the plainness of the prose, and the mood (brooding).

I loved the irony – the fact that the Swede comes to Fort Romper expecting to be killed because of the image he had about the violence of the Wild West, which came from reading dime-novels written by hacks who know nothing about the real West.

And I liked the way the story was written. Crane tells his stories like Hemingway does: straightforward and without sentiment or embellishment. I’ve always felt there is an inverse relationship between the sparseness of the prose and the emotional power that can come from it.

What I Didn’t Like 

Nothing.

Interesting 

The Blue Hotel was published in 1898 in two installments in Collier’s Weekly and has subsequently been republished in many collections. In 1977, it was made into a TV movie directed by Ján Kadár. In 1999, David Grubbs did a musical adaptation – a folk-rock album titled “The Coxcomb.”

About the Author

Stephen Crane (1871-1900) was an American poet, novelist, and short story writer. Prolific throughout his short life, he wrote notable works in the Realist tradition as well as early examples of American Naturalism and Impressionism. He is recognized by modern critics as one of the most innovative writers of his generation.

I haven’t read his poetry yet, but I’m going to.

Critical Reception 

The Blue Hotel is considered to be a masterpiece – one of Crane’s finest short novels, along with Open Boat and The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky.

My Rating 

* Horizontality: 3.5
* Verticality: 3.75
* Stickiness: 3.5
* Literary Richness: 4.0
* Overall: 3.75 out of 4.0

You can read the full text here – for free – on the Washington State University website.

 

The Last Lecture 

By Randy Pausch 
106 pages
Published April 2008

The title intrigued me. I looked it up and found this:

The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch, a computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon University, is a distillation of his life lessons and experiences. Written with reporter Jeffrey Zaslow, the book is an expanded version of a lecture Pausch gave in 2007 (when he was 47) after being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.

JSN, one of the great mentors in my life, died from pancreatic cancer.

The book (and Pausch’s lecture) has two parts. The first is a lighthearted explanation of how he achieved six of his childhood dreams: experiencing zero gravity, playing in the NFL, authoring an entry in an encyclopedia, being Captain Kirk, winning stuffed animals in amusement parks, and becoming a Disney Imagineer. The second part, which is more substantial, is about how he used his experience to help others achieve their childhood dreams.

What I Liked About It

His positive attitude and upbeat energy is infectious. Most of the ideas, however mundane, are nevertheless true and important.

For example:

* We cannot change the cards we are dealt, just how we play the hand.

* How do you get people to help you? By telling the truth and being earnest.

* Apologize when you screw up and focus on other people, not on yourself.

* Remember: Brick walls exist to separate us from the people who don’t really want to achieve their dreams. Don’t bail.

* Show gratitude. (When he got tenure, he took his research team to Disney World for a week. “These people just busted their ass and got me the best job in the world for life,” he said when asked why he did it. “How could I not?”)

* Work hard. (He got tenure a year early. When asked what his secret was, he said, “It’s pretty simple. Call me any Friday night in my office at 10 o’clock and I’ll tell you.”)

* Find the best in everybody. You might have to wait a long time, but people will show you their good side. Just keep waiting, it will come out. And be prepared. Luck is truly where preparation meets opportunity.”

About the Author 

Randy Pausch was a Professor of Computer Science, Human-Computer Interaction, and Design at Carnegie Mellon, where he was the co-founder of Carnegie Mellon’s Entertainment Technology Center (ETC). He was a National Science Foundation Presidential Young Investigator and a Lilly Foundation Teaching Fellow. He had sabbaticals at Walt Disney Imagineering and Electronic Arts (EA), and consulted with Google on user interface design.

Critical Reception 

The book was a bestseller. The lecture, which went viral, has been viewed by millions. You can watch it here. 

My Rating 

* Horizontality: 2.0
* Verticality: 3.0
* Depth of Thinking: 2.5
* Literary Richness: 2.5
* Overall: 2.5 out of 4.0

Movies/TV Shows/Series I'm Recommending

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Maria 

A biopic about the last years of Maria Callas in Paris in the 1970s
Directed by Pablo Larraín
Starring Angelina Jolie
Released Aug. 2024
Watch Time: about 2 hrs.

It had been weeks since I had found the time to watch a movie, but on Saturday, the 14th, K and I needed a break before getting back to our holiday chores and my work. I was hoping for a Christmas movie. Strolling through Netflix, however, K chose Maria. She said she’d heard it was good. And it was good. Not amazingly good, perhaps, but good enough to leave me thinking about Maria Callas for weeks afterwards.

What I Liked About It 

* Angelina Jolie in the leading role. Her expression was significantly restricted by the mise en scene, with the lion’s share of the footage of her being close shots of her face. Notwithstanding that limitation, Jolie was able to project a strong, complicated, and deeply sympathetic character almost entirely with her eyes. That’s no small accomplishment. In fact, considering the role and her performance, she is surely on the short list for at least one major award.

* The two secondary leads. Pierfrancesco Favino as Callas’s loyal butler and Alba Rohrwacher as her loyal housekeeper.Without their good acting, the drama would have been less intense and the pathos of Callas’s character weaker.

* Pablo Larraín’s decision to present Callas’s story through the perspective of someone suffering from depression and drug-induced hallucinations.

* The cinematography. The lush but still moods of the interiors, the sad grays of the exteriors, the camera angles, and the graininess throughout.

* The stories behind it. In just 124 minutes, Maria tells at least four compelling stories: one of Callas in her prime, another of Callas in her last act, another of Jackie Kennedy, and still another of Aristotle Onassis. It provoked a lot of questions about them that I’d like to answer one day if I can find the time to do the reading.

* The way the film portrayed the loneliness, self-doubt, and despair not only of Callas, but of other world-renowned artists. It had me thinking about the last days of Elvis Presley, Michael Jackson, and Jim Morrison, but also of the likes of Robin Williams, John Belushi, and Philip Seymour Hoffman.

What I Didn’t Like So Much 

The pace of the movie was slow – at times uncomfortably slow. But in defense of Larraín, the slowness was effective in allowing me to feel the hopelessness and ennui that Callas must have felt after her great gift and enormous stardom was gone.

Interesting 

I was shocked to learn that some portion of the singing was performed by Angelina Jolie herself. I read that the parts she sang were the “not-so-good” pieces from the end of Callas’s career – although I couldn’t tell the difference. I also read that in preparation for the role, Jolie took months of training under Eric Vetro, the same voice coach that worked with Timothée Chalamet as the young Bob Dylan in I’m Not There.

About the Director 

Pablo Larraín Matte is a Chilean filmmaker. He and his brother Juan de Dios co-produced Sebastián Lelio’s A Fantastic Woman, the first Chilean film to win the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.

Critical Reception 

Maria got mixed reviews from the critics, though Angelina Jolie’s performance was generally praised. It did very poorly at the box office, taking in less than $140,000 in the first week.

* “La Diva Eterna lives in Jolie, with a performance as towering as it is understated: sad and soulful and heartbreaking. She has never been better. Brava!” – John Nugent, Empire Magazine

* “Pablo Larraín’s latest biopic drowns in melodrama but dazzles with visuals, leaving Angelina Jolie to rescue what she can of Maria Callas’s legendary life.” – Rex Reed, Observer

* “As a movie, Maria is just okay. As a calling card for the next phase of Jolie’s career, however, it sings to the rafters.” – Caroline Siede, Girl Culture (Substack)

My Rating 

* Horizontality: 3.0
* Verticality: 3.5
* Stickiness: 2.0
* Visual Richness: 2.5
* Overall: 3.25 out of 4.0

You can watch the trailer here. 

 

Emilia Pérez 

Directed and co-written by Jacques Audiard
Starring Karla Sofía Gascón, Zoe Saldana, and Selena Gomez
Released Nov. 2024
Watch Time: 2 hrs. 12 min.

MM recommended it. He said, “I can’t tell you why without giving too much of it away, but I’m pretty sure you’ll like it.”

He was right. And I know why he didn’t want to explain it to me. Had he done so, I might have refused to see it.

One could say that the movie is about a Mexican cartel leader that decided to get out of the business and evade capture in the future by going through “gender affirmation” surgery. Had that been the core of the story, I would not have liked it. But it was much more.

I don’t know how to sum it up. It is unlike any film I’ve ever seen.

I can’t even nail down the genre. It’s part a gangster story. Part a story about guilt and redemption. Part a story about female empowerment. But it is also an action movie and a thriller. And a love story. Actually, several. All that would not have surprised me. I’ve seen movies (not many) that successfully spanned that many boundaries before. But this one is also a theatrical production – part Evita and part Slumdog Millionaire!

What I Liked About It 

* What I just said: that it managed to do so many different and diverse things successfully at the same time. When it was a cartel movie, I was frightened. When it was an action movie, I was gripping my seat. The love stories pulled at my heartstrings. The redemption story was inspiring.

* Everything it took to pull it off: great acting, directing, editing, cinematography, music, make up, colorization, costuming, and scenery.

* It had me thinking about it days after I saw it. That happens only with films that are very good.

What I Didn’t Like 

As Kamala Harris said when asked if she’d do anything that Joe Biden did differently, “Nothing comes to mind.”

Interesting 

* The woman that plays the male gangster turned female philanthropist (both roles – amazingly) is Karla Sofía Gascón, a Spanish trans actress who found success in Mexican films and soap operas long before transitioning.

* The film was shot almost entirely on Parisian soundstages, where the streets of Mexico City were recreated for scenes with an international cast.

About the Director 

Jacques Audiard is a French film director, producer, and screenwriter. Over the course of his career, he has received numerous accolades, including two British Academy Film Awards, three Golden Globes, 10 Cesar Awards, and four prizes from the Cannes Film Festival.

Critical Reception 

* “Phrases like ‘game-changer’ and ‘cutting-edge’ can’t capture just how audacious and original Emilia Pérez is. It’s a knockout.” – Leonard Maltin

* “Audiard has created Emilia to startle and divert, but it’s Gascón’s performance that centers and grounds the story, and it’s the actress who finally gives the movie real stakes. She is its heart and soul both.” – Manohla Dargis, The New York Times

* “By making Emilia Pérez a quasi-musical, Mr. Audiard cranks up the campiness; by making it a parable about one’s own past being inescapable, he makes it profound.” – John Anderson, Wall Street Journal

My Rating 

* Horizontality: 3.75
* Verticality: 3.75
* Stickiness: 3.75
* Visual Richness: 4.0
* Overall: 3.8 out of 4.0

You can watch the trailer here.

 

Conclave 

Directed by Edward Berger
Starring Ralph Fiennes, Stanley Tucci, John Lithgow, and Isabella Rossellini 
Released Oct. 2024
Watch Time: 2 hrs.

The plot of Conclave follows one of the world’s most secretive and ancient events – selecting a new Pope. Cardinal Lawrence (Ralph Fiennes) is tasked with running this covert process after the unexpected death of the beloved current Pope. Once the Catholic Church’s most powerful leaders have gathered from around the world and are locked together in the Vatican halls, Lawrence uncovers a trail of deep secrets left in the dead Pope’s wake, secrets which could shake the foundations of the Church.

What I Liked About It 

Most of all, the directing, editing, cinematography, and the acting. But it was also a beautifully designed film, with visually arresting attention to light and color. The music and sound effects were perfect for the emotional atmosphere the film needed. In other words, it had all the components a film needs to be very good.

I also liked the information the film presented about the Vatican and its rules, written and unwritten.

What I Didn’t Like 

* The ideas behind the movie were clichés.

* The resolution of the mystery was implausible. Actually, it was absurd.

* It showed me nothing truthful about the human condition.

Interesting 

* The word “conclave” – referring to a room that can be locked for privacy – was derived from the Latin phrase cum clave (“with a key”).

* This is the fourth time a Sistine Chapel set has been built at Cinecittà Studios for a feature film, following The Agony and the Ecstasy (1965), The Shoes of the Fisherman (1968), and The Two Popes (2019).

Critical Reception 

* “You may think that being locked in a room with a bunch of pompous elderly men deviously attempting to shaft each other wouldn’t be a lot of fun. But trust me on this: Conclave is a blast.” – Wendy Ide, Observer (UK)

* “There is much to admire about Conclave, but in the end, all of its lofty aspirations come tumbling down due to that poorly constructed Jenga tower of a plot.” – Richard Roeper, Chicago Sun-Times

* “It’s possible that the film takes itself entirely too seriously. Fortunately, the viewer is under no such obligation and may have a good time as a result.” – Matthew Lickona, San Diego Reader

My Rating 

* Horizontality: 3.0
* Verticality: 1.5
* Stickiness: 3.25
* Visual Richness: 4.0
* Overall: 2.93 out of 4.0

You can watch the trailer here.

 

What We Do in the Shadows 

Written and directed by (and starring) Jermaine Clement and Taika Waititi
Released 2014
Watch Time: 1 hr. 26 min.

Like Emilia Pérez, this was a strong recommendation from a friend. “This is right up your alley,” he said.

I didn’t doubt I’d like it because it was the creation of Jermaine Clement and Taiki Waititi. I’ve been a huge fan of Clement ever since watching Flight of the Conchords about five years ago. And I knew Waititi from JoJo Rabbit, which I thought was brilliant.

The Plot 

What We Do in the Shadows is a mockumentary that follows four vampires who share an apartment in a New Zealand suburb. They have most of the expected habits and superpowers of vampires, such as sleeping in the daytime, sucking blood for sustenance, and hypnosis. But some have additional skills, like levitation and morphing into animal forms.

They also have wonderful backstories. Viago, for instance, is a 17th century dandy who originally traveled to New Zealand in the 1940s in search of Katherine, the love of his life. Vladislav is a 12th century former tyrant known as “Vladislav the Poker,” who is haunted by memories of his nemesis “The Beast.” And Deacon is a 19th century former peddler who was turned into a vampire by the fourth roommate, Petyr, a reclusive ancient that looks and acts like Nosferatu.

I don’t think I need to tell you more. By now, you are either dying to see it or have zero interest. As for me, I loved it!

What I Liked About It 

* The idea of it – doing it as a fake documentary. It adds a layer of humor that gives it extra comic power.

* The sense of humor: This is New Zealand humor. If you liked Flight of the Conchords or JoJo Rabbit, you’ll like this.

* The quirks and idiosyncrasies of each of the vampires were very smart.

* The way the movie plays against vampire movie tropes.

* The acting – especially Clement’s.

Interesting 

* What We Do in the Shadows is based on a 2005 short film – What We Do in the Shadows: Interviews with Some Vampires – written and directed by Waititi and Clement.

* Genre movies that are heavily quoted or referenced in the film include The Lost Boys, Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Interview with the Vampire, Blade, Twilight, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

* $447,000 was raised for the film from over 7,000 supporters via the crowdfunding website Kickstarter.

* In 2019, What We Do in the Shadows was made into a TV series. The 6th (final) season ended in 2024. I haven’t seen it yet, but based on the movie, I’m going to give it a try.

Critical Reception 

* “An irrepressibly charming B-movie that never over-stays its welcome, and is both conceptually clever and admirably well-executed.” – Simon Abrams on the Roger Ebert website.

* “At a brisk 86 minutes, What We Do in the Shadows never sags or drags, delivering its comic punches with surgical precision and then getting off the stage.” – Alonso Duralde, The Wrap

* “It’s a cheerfully horrific affair, a sanguine comedy that feels more than a bit like a Christopher Guest farce or an elaborate Monty Python sketch, imprinted with the Kiwi comic sensibilities of [Clement and Waititi].” – Stephen Rea, Philadelphia Inquirer

My Rating 

* Horizontality: 0
* Verticality: 2.0
* Stickiness: 3.8
* Visual Richness: 3.8
* Overall: 2.4 out of 4.0

But I’m also giving it…

* 1.5 Extra Points for New Zealand Humor
* So Overall: 3.9 out of 4.0!

You can watch the trailer here.

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46 More Books I Might Read in 2025 

Since I began writing Early to Rise in 2000, I’ve challenged myself to read at least 50 books a year. For a fast reader like my parents, who could easily consume books of 350 pages in a single evening, reading a book a week is par for the course. But for someone who has diagnosed himself with ADD and dyslexia, it’s an ambitious goal.

I don’t think there has been a year that I haven’t hit my mark. But I succeed by taking shortcuts and (some would say) cheating. I can skim through non-fiction books at a rate of about 600 to 800 words a minute by using a speed-reading method I invented years ago.

Since I read fiction primarily to enjoy the literary skillfulness of the authors, I don’t have the option of skimming. I must read every word. Consequently, I prefer short novels (200 to 250 pages).

At the beginning of each year, I usually spend an hour or so looking up the books that have been nominated for and/or won some of the major literary awards in order to put a few dozen prize-winning titles in my head. This year, I also looked at “best of 2024” recommendations from the newspapers I read (the NYT, the WSJ, The Guardian, the Washington Post, and The Times of India (Don’t ask!), as well as a few blogs I follow to get a gut feeling for new books that might be up my alley.

One thing I noticed: A large percentage of the books that won multiple prizes were authored by women or men of color – another example of what I would call the current “affirmative action award culture.” You may say, “It’s about time.” But it’s not a new trend. It’s been going on for decades, though it may have peaked in 2024. At least I hope so.

That said, here are 46 books (24 fiction and 22 non-fiction) that are on my list to “maybe” read in 2025. What you will find is the title and the author, followed by a brief comment on or critique of the book from one of the sources I consulted. (I’m sure that some of them will turn out to be dreadful. I apologize in advance.)

Non-Fiction 

1. King: A Life by Jonathan Eig
A revelatory portrait of Martin Luther King, Jr. that draws on new sources to enrich our understanding of each stage of the civil rights leader’s life, exploring his strengths and weaknesses, including the self-questioning and depression that accompanied his determination.

2. Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945 by Tony Judt 
Both intellectually ambitious and compelling to read, Postwar is thrilling in its scope and delightful in its small details.

3. An Unchosen People: Jewish Political Reckoning in Interwar Poland by Kenneth Moss 
As a chronicle of how an embedded minority, buffeted by strengthening winds beyond its control, is forced to confront questions of belonging, identity, and illiberalism, the book has a disturbingly acute relevance for our current moment.

4. Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland by Patrick Radden Keefe 
Easily the most compulsively readable entryway into Northern Ireland’s “Troubles” – an endlessly fascinating, and terrible, episode in 20th century conflict.

5. Blind Spots: When Medicine Gets It Wrong and What It Means for Our Health by Dr. Marty Makary 
A high-profile specialist at Johns Hopkins University, Makary shows how the medical establishment promoted misinformation on a range of topics, ranging from childhood peanut allergies and hormone replacement therapy for menopausal women to a cavalier attitude toward antibiotics and the damage of excessive antibiotic use.

6. Building a Story Brand: Clarify Your Message So Customers Will Listen by Donald Miller 
Whether you are trying to persuade a lawmaker to adopt your policy proposal or inspire donors to give to your local conservative club, compelling storytelling is essential to communicating conservative ideas effectively.

7. Hero of Two Worlds: The Marquis de Lafayette in the Age of Revolution by Mike Duncan 
A nobleman, motivated by the ideals of freedom and democracy in the time of the American Revolution, in search of adventure. Although the book is nonfiction, Duncan’s prose is easy to read with interesting facts and good pacing to move Lafayette’s story along.

8. Marlborough: His Life and Times by Winston Churchill 
George Washington once advised his friend James Madison that when the country faces storms, what it chiefly needs are “wisdom and good examples.” Marlborough provides both. More than that, it provides both twice-over, because in retelling the remarkable life of one of the greatest statesmen and generals in Western history, Churchill tells us a great deal about himself.

9. Nuclear Revolution: Powering the Next Generation by Jack Spencer 
The good life means clean air and affordable, reliable resilient energy. Spencer explains how to get there through nuclear power.

10. Thinking in Bets: Making Smarter Decisions When You Don’t Have All the Facts by Annie Duke 
Written by a cognitive psychology graduate student turned one of the most successful female poker players of all time, Thinking in Bets examines the process of human decision-making and suggests ways to optimize it to achieve better results in all facets of everyday life.

11. Detrans: True Stories of Escaping the Gender Ideology Cult by Mary Margaret Olohan 
What happens when a young person “changes” her gender – and then realizes she made a mistake? Olohan tells stories the legacy media has largely ignored, describing exactly what happens in these experimental medical procedures and the effects they can have.

12. Two Years Before the Mast: A Sailor’s Life at Sea by Richard Henry Dana Jr. 
In 1834, Richard Henry Dana Jr. dropped out of Harvard to sail on a small trading brig bound for California. Two Years Before the Mast recounts his time at sea, including themes of courage in the face of danger, the consequences of poor leadership, and the thrill of diving headfirst into a new way of life.

13. The Woketopus: The Dark Money Cabal Manipulating the Federal Government by Tyler O’Neil
A very accessible read despite the fact that it deals with an enormous number of facts.

14. Uncanny Valley: A Memoir by Anna Wiener
An aspiring writer making her way up the publishing hierarchy of the New York book scene, Anna Wiener suddenly decides to travel west and settle in the Bay Area, where she will enter the Silicon Vally culture and report back to us. 

15. A History of Money and Banking in the United States by Murray Rothbard
An interesting account of how government and the large financial institutions have been manipulating the economy by manipulating money.

16. Soldiers and Kings: Survival and Hope in the World of Human Smuggling by Jason De León
An intense, intimate and first-of-its-kind look at the world of human smuggling in Latin America by a MacArthur “genius” grant winner and anthropologist with unprecedented access.

17. Circle of Hope: A Reckoning with Love, Power, and Justice in an American Church by Eliza Griswold
Part of a little-known yet influential movement at the edge of American evangelicalism, Philadelphia’s Circle of Hope grew for 40 years, planted four congregations, and then found itself in crisis. The story that follows is an American allegory full of questions with relevance for many of us, not just the faithful.

18. Unshrinking: How to Face Fatphobia by Kate Manne
Manne examines how anti-fatness operates – how it leads us to make devastating assumptions about a person’s attractiveness, fortitude, and intellect, and how it intersects with other systems of oppression.

19. Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder by Salman Rushdie
A deeply moving reminder of literature’s capacity to make sense of the unthinkable, an intimate and life-affirming meditation on life, loss, love, art – and finding the strength to stand up again.

20. Whiskey Tender: A Memoir by Deborah Jackson Taffa
Whiskey Tender traces how a mixed-tribe native girl – born on the California Yuma reservation and raised in Navajo territory in New Mexico – comes to her own interpretation of identity.

21. The Return: Fathers, Sons, and the Land in Between by Hisham Matar
Transforming his personal quest for answers into a brilliantly told universal tale of hope and resilience, Matar has given us an unforgettable autobiography with a powerful human question at its core: How does one go on living in the face of unthinkable loss?

22. Serendipity: The Unexpected in Science by Telmo Pievani 
Pievani, a biology professor at the University of Padua in Italy, provides a catalog of serendipitous discoveries. For example, in 1941 the Swiss engineer George de Mestral was vacationing in the Alps and noticed that burdock seeds stuck annoyingly to his clothes and to his dog’s fur. Examining the culprits under a microscope, he saw many tiny hooks, whereupon he got the idea for… Velcro!

Fiction

1. The Book of Love by Kelly Link 
The prose is diamond-sharp. It’s hard to imagine Link ever writing a clunky sentence or a bad description. Her characters are all brilliantly fast-talking and fast-thinking, their conversations full of wordplay and in-jokes. As people, they are multi-faceted – charming and understandable and tragic, as well as a bit obnoxious.

2. A Dove of the East: And Other Stories by Mark Helprin 
The 20 stories here, many of which first appeared in The New Yorker and have since been anthologized throughout the world, are strikingly beautiful essays on enduring and universal questions. Pick this up, crease the binding, turn the page. You’ve never known anything like it. It has the benefit of being true.

3. Creation Lake by Rachel Kushner
You know from this book’s opening paragraphs that you are in the hands of a major writer, one who processes experience on a deep level. Kushner has a gift for almost effortless intellectual penetration.

4. Beautyland by Marie-Helene Bertino 
Through friendships, hardships, adolescence, adulthood, celebrations of life, death, and the publication of an alien’s musings on humanity, Beautyland is not only a story of remembering the difficulties and beauties of being different, but one of discovering life as a person every day.

5. The Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Orczy
If you are looking to reengage with classic fiction but want something not too long or daunting, The Scarlet Pimpernel is a delightfully fun adventure. Set during the French Revolution, it introduces readers to a mysterious hero in disguise who rescues families from the daily executions by guillotine. There is mystery, intrigue, daring escapes, and just a little romance.

6. Night Watch by Jayne Anne Phillips
A beautifully rendered novel set in West Virginia’s Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum in the aftermath of the Civil War where a severely wounded Union veteran, a 12-year-old girl, and her mother, long abused by a Confederate soldier, struggle to heal.

7. I, Robot by Isaac Asimov
Asimov’s short stories about the challenges of programming robots are extremely interesting in light of today’s AI policy debates. While this collection was written in the 1940s and 1950s, it offers surprisingly timely food for thought.

8. Long Way from Home by Frederick Busch 
Responding to a magazine ad that may have been placed by her biological mother, Sarah Barrett abandons her Bucks County family and runs slowly to disaster in this sedate, ruminative thriller.

9. Red Cavalry by Isaac Babel
A group of related short stories about Russia’s (the Red Army’s) war against Poland. It is considered one of the great masterpieces of Russian literature.

10. Dirty Snow by Georges Simenon
A strongly written, darkly viewed novel about a young man who decides to live a life of crime. Simenon is not well known, but he may be the granddaddy of this sort of noire fiction.

11. Stone Yard Devotional by Charlotte Wood
Charlotte Wood has been described as one of Australia’s most original and provocative writers. This novel, set in a convent in rural Australia, follows a woman who is feeling despair over climate change.

12. The Doomed City by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky
An absolutely unique, unaccountably under-rated gem: Soviet-era science fiction written “for the drawer” (in the assumption that nothing so daring could be published in the USSR) by a wildly inventive pair of brothers who claim they wrote every single sentence collaboratively.

13. Zero K by Don DeLillo 
DeLillo is best known for his sprawling Cold War epic Underworld (1997), but this shorter novel feels more eerily relevant today. An emotionally stunted billionaire and his wife have locked themselves away in a state-of-the-art facility beneath Kyrgyzstan. Their goal is to be cryogenically frozen until technology has developed enough to enable them to forestall death.

14. Ghostroots: Stories by Pemi Aguda
A debut collection of stories set in a hauntingly reimagined Lagos where characters vie for freedom from ancestral ties.

15. My Friends by Hisham Matar 
A devastating meditation on friendship and family and the ways in which time tests – and frays – those bonds, My Friends is an achingly beautiful work of literature by an author working at the peak of his powers.

16. Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar
Cyrus Shams, an Iranian American aspiring poet and recovering drug addict, wallows in a post-college malaise in a fictional Midwestern town. He’s working dead-end jobs and halfheartedly attending A.A. while grieving his parents’ deaths and, increasingly, fantasizing about his own. Cyrus is lost and sad, but this captivating first novel, by an author who is himself a poet, is anything but.

17. You Dreamed of Empires by Alvaro Enrigue
Hernán Cortés and his men have arrived at Moctezuma’s palace for a diplomatic – if tense and comically imbalanced – meeting of cultures and empires. In this telling, it’s Moctezuma’s people who have the upper hand, though the emperor himself is inconveniently prone to hallucinogenic reveries and domestic threats. The carnage here is devilishly brazen, the humor ample and bone-dry.

18. Havoc by Christopher Bollen
This abidingly wicked novel of suspense and one-upmanship is narrated by an 81-year-old American widow permanently installed in a hotel on the Nile catering to moneyed vacationers. The widow is driven to “sow chaos” by what she calls her “compulsion.” “I liberate people who don’t know they’re stuck,” she claims. But her routine is disrupted when an eight-year-old American boy arrives at the hotel and becomes wise to her machinations.

19. The Storm We Made by Vanessa Chang
Ambitious” would be a trite term for Vanessa Chan’s outstanding debut, a historical novel that thrums with the commingling tensions of its backdrop: the lead-up to the WWII Japanese invasion of what is now Malaysia. Chan writes her characters with a precision that neither flinches from the brutality of war nor ignores the humanity within.

20. Wandering Stars by Tommy Orange 
Stories about the ancestors of characters from Orange’s celebrated first novel There There. Extending his constellation of narratives into the past and future, he traces the legacies of the Sand Creek Massacre of 1864 and the Carlisle Indian Industrial School through three generations of a family in a story that is by turns shattering and wondrous.

21. All the World Beside by Garrard Conley 
As Conley himself has described it, All the World Beside is a pioneering “queer Scarlet Letter,” revisiting the Puritan New England we remember from Nathaniel Hawthorne’s classic with a new cast of conflicted lovers.

22. Trust by Hernan Diaz
At once an immersive story and a brilliant literary puzzle, Trust engages the reader in a quest for the truth while confronting the deceptions that often live at the heart of personal relationships, the reality-warping force of capital, and the ease with which power can manipulate facts.

23. The Land in Winter by Andrew Miller
A study of two young marriages during England’s 1962-63 Big Freeze, The Land in Winter is a page-turning examination of the minutiae of life.

24. Lies and Weddings by Kevin Kwan
In a globetrotting tale that takes us from the black sand beaches of Hawaii to the skies of Marrakech, from the glitzy bachelor pads of Los Angeles to the inner sanctums of England’s oldest family estates, Kevin Kwan unfurls a juicy, hilarious, sophisticated, and thrillingly plotted story of love, money, murder, sex, and the lies we tell about them all.

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From KW re my article about “Growers and Tenders” in last week’s issue: 

“Growers and Tenders… interesting concept. I have always considered myself an efficiency guy (Tender). I realized early on in my corporate career that I am not the visionary type. However, if you want to turn around your unprofitable company/division, I am your guy. That’s the way I always thought of this concept. Thanks for sharing your thoughts!”

My Response: I agree. If you are an “efficiency guy,” I’d say you are a Tender. And as you say, as someone who thinks (and prioritizes your work) as a Tender, you can contribute to the business by paying attention to how all the many parts of your business are running – repairing broken parts; streamlining protocols, processes, and procedures that are no longer running as well as they once did; eliminating processes, protocols, and procedures and firing or establishing different objectives for employees who are no longer contributing positively to the bottom line.

Growers can sometimes get obsessed with growing revenues. And when they do, they need a Tender around to take care of the bottom line, which is ultimately more important to the future of the company.

A Question from KJ, a fellow BJJ enthusiast:

“What made you start your martial arts journey in 1998 in BJJ? Was it UFC 1 winner Royce Gracie? For me, it was the podcasters ex-Navy Seal Jocko Willink and Joe Rogan.”

My Response: My father, who was a literature professor and had no interest in sports, once told me that a good grappler will beat a good boxer. That stuck with me. When my boys were old enough to wrestle, I began looking for places they could do that. (Their school didn’t have a wrestling team.) One day I was driving down Federal Highway in Boca Raton and noticed a new storefront business: “Reylson Gracie Jiu Jitsu.” I knew that Jiu Jitsu was largely a grappling art and that the Gracie family had somehow brought it to a new level down in Brazil.

I enrolled my three boys, and the owner, Reylson Gracie, persuaded me to take lessons, too. I did. And I fell in love with it. My boys eventually dropped it, but I’m still practicing nearly 30 years later.

I agree with you about UFC 1. Nobody outside of the BJJ and UFC world today knows who Royce Gracie is. The name Jocko Willink is known to at least a million people. Joe Rogan? Half a billion?

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