Tis a break from the My Summer Lair podcasts and #SetTheVCR recommendations to offer book recommendations.

A new season means new books. A new season means new perspectives.

I’m currently reading Rick Rubin’s The Creative Act: A Way of Being. (The passage from above is a quote/snapshot.)

It’s a slow read, happily so. Rick’s writing style allows you to languish between the pages. Some serious tea, a couple of lazy rainy days…and it gently opens the mind for fresh creativity. So enjoying it.

For this #NewBookAlert newsletter I present 4 books. Not 5 or 10 or some other cleanly rounded number. Nah man, 4 it is: 2 novels; 2 non-fictions.

And 3 of the books overlap thematically. One is a random surprise. Cue: One Of These Things Is Not Like The Others.

I’ll let you decide which one is not like the others.

Though that’s why I’m presenting these specific books. These 4 books are about fitting in just as they are about thinking outside the box. They’re populated with distinct characters and unique individuals.

Not to get all Mister Rogers You Are Special on you.

Like, the final writer I recommend is W. David O. Taylor who tweeted on May 17, 2022:

“I’m reminding myself today that it’s OK to be un-interesting, unexciting, and un-remarkable and simply be a human who loves his wife in practical ways, makes lunches for the kids, files folders, grades papers, puts laundry away—and that this too is God-blessed good stuff.”

So true. That’s a beautiful simplicity. Most of us can’t be on the wrong side of history because…history is not gonna record us. We’re simple people who…enjoy the simple pleasure of reading.

As such here are 4 recent books for your reading pleasure.

What are you reading?
What recent book kept you up at night past your bedtime…one more chapter, bah!?

Leave a comment

? Sunset Empire (A Morris Baker Novel #2)
by Josh Weiss
In Beat The Devils (Book #1) the Red Scare never ended. Joseph McCarthy became President & the HUAC is a terrifying secret police that crushes rebel activities & punishes disloyalty. Oh boy.

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Grand Central Pub
@GrandCentralPub
BEAT THE DEVILS by @JoshuaHWeiss is out in paperback today, just in time to catch up before SUNSET EMPIRE hits shelves in hardcover next week! Learn more about these alternate-history thrillers in which the Red Scare never ended: bit.ly/3JmuUjb
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4:21 PM ? Mar 21, 2023
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Favourite Line: “Nothing else mattered, except the cause.” Beat The Devils is out in paperback; recently released. Just in time for the dynamic follow up Sunset Empire. It’s December, 1959: The Korean War rages on. And President Joseph McCarthy is determined to rule American with an iron fist.

Favourite Fun Fact: An alternative universe Steven Spielberg shows up in Sunset Empire…working for an underground adult film studio. (McCarthy’s presidency is devoted to overt antisemitism. No surprise there.)

Favourite Gut Punch: Beat The Devils…opens with a murder. Who dies in the first chapter? Why…an up and coming young journalist named Walter Cronkite. I dunno why but Walter Cronkite’s murder was a gut punch. That’s so sad and so rude. Devils follows Detective Morris as he attempts to solve Cronkite’s murder. For more on Book #2 here’s an excerpt.

Favourite Text Excerpt: via The Hollywood Reporter.

? G-Man: J. Edgar Hoover and the Making of the American Century
by Beverly Gage
A bio on the O-G…Man: J. Edgar Hoover.

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Viking Books
@VikingBooks
Congratulations @beverlygage! ??? G-MAN is the WINNER of the 2023 Bancroft Prize in American History and Diplomacy! Start reading the book that @NewYorker calls “crisply written, prodigiously researched, and frequently astonishing” now: bit.ly/3FVeUmV
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5:08 PM ? Mar 9, 2023
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Favourite Line: “We cannot know our own story without understanding his, in all its high aspirations and terrible cruelty, and in its many human contradictions,” writes Gage.

Favourite Fun Fact: Hoover had professional relationships with eight U.S. presidents. That’s a lot of power. Never realized it was that many. He’s like the Billy Graham of law enforcement. (Billy rolled with at least 11 Presidents…)

Favourite Gut Punch: G-Man is a disturbing and definitive work that sheds new light on the man who helped shape the conservative political landscape of America today. This is, in part the story of how we got here.

Favourite Text Excerpt: via The Atlantic.

? Never Sleep
by Fred Van Lente
Meet Kate Warn the first female private detective in American history.

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Blackstone Publishing
@BlackstoneAudio
Happy #pubday to #NEVERSLEEP by @nytimes bestselling author @fredvanlente ??? ?You can order this historical adventure (and @AppleBooks spring pick) right HERE? buff.ly/3vDLBPq
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6:33 PM ? Mar 28, 2023
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Favourite Line: Nothing to do with the historical novel but this is a fun line. Many moons ago I took Fred and his lovely wife Crystal Skillman to Honest Ed’s in downtown Toronto. Looking around at all the crap on the walls, the loud signs…the comforting chaos of the sloppy displays he concluded: “This store is…like a physical manifestation of the internet!” See? Great line.

Favourite Fun Fact: Based on a true story! It’s 1861 and the first female agents of the Pinkerton National Police Agency are racing against time to foil an assassination attempt on the President Abraham Lincoln’s life. Secessionist high society, secret societies…it’s all happening! What’s so civil about war, right?

Favourite Gut Punch: This isn’t the Ford Theatre assassination of Abraham Lincoln! It’s another attempt on his life. Obviously and sadly the Ford Theatre attempt was successful. Single tear…

Favourite Audio Excerpt:

?A Body of Praise: Understanding the Role of Our Physical Bodies in Worship
by W. David O. Taylor
“I dedicate my book to dancers.”

Twitter avatar for @JacksonWoosley
J.D. Woosley
@JacksonWoosley
It is truly a thing of beauty to hold this one in my hands today. Spent a long time waiting on this one.

Grateful for the brilliant mind and pastoral heart of @wdavidotaylor! Excited to learn from him a bit more about what it means to be human.
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10:06 PM ? Mar 24, 2023
Favourite Line: “I’ve been thinking about this book for 25 years. I’ve been working on this book for 4 years.”

Favourite Fun Fact: “What we do with our postures, gestures, and movements in worship matters. How our senses of sight, scent, sound, taste, and touch are involved in worship matters. How our spontaneous and prescriptive activities form us in worship matters. All of it matters to faithful and fulsome worship for the sake of a body that is fully alive in the praise of God.” Interesting perspective, not sure if I agree. I’ll hafta read this book and get into it. I value books where you can argue with the page.

Favourite Gut Punch: Chapter 8 is why I’m recommending this book. (Well that; and I also enjoy dude’s outstanding writing.) Chapter 8 focuses on “Artistic Perspectives on the Body in Worship.” Super curious about but I gotta read all the way to Chapter 8? Alright then; let’s get started. I’ll put the kettle on.

Favourite Texts: Follow David on Twitter & IG. He posts these wonderful payers and rich cultural insights. It’s a joyful mashup of culture and Christianity. (Sometimes those are the same things…)

How is TV treating you these days?

March Madness is always a fun distraction. April 1st is the Final Four games while April 3 is the NCAA Championship Game: all of em are on CBS. (I wonder how working from home during March Madness has impacted productivity and the ratings?)

On TV I just wrapped up The Fall. One of those creepy British police procedurals centered around gruesome murders. Kinda like Broadchurch with those Sherlock long episodes (hour and 20 minutes). (I said British to provide a easy shorthand but it’s really an Irish production filmed and set in Northern Ireland.) The Fall ran from 2013-2016. CBC Gem just picked it up; might still be on Netflix? Check.

Gillian Anderson is the face you’ll recognize; she plays Stella Gibson, a senior investigating officer who reviews investigations. Is this accurate? Her role is to assess the progress of a murder investigation that has remained active for longer than 28 days. I’ve never seen 28 Day Reviews in American police TV shows.

Anyways what her 28 Day Review reveals is that a couple of the recent murders could be linked: looks there is a serial killer operating in Belfast. Dum, Dum, Dum!

The third “series” was kinda eh, but the first two were dark and disturbing delights. We tend to view serial killers through the lens of psycho and victims. And yet the impact they have on a community, on families, the stress it puts on cops, the anxiety of women as the bodies pile up: means serial killers are more like a virus.

Yes COVID is a disease but it affected so much. That’s what serial killers do; they’re a virus. We pay a steep price for failing to address broken people in our society.

Our inability to properly and effectively care for the broken people who populate our society creates a widening ripple effect of trauma. A serial killer’s childhood or his busted life are butterfly wings. It’s the Butterfly Effect of hurt.

Anyways with The Fall wrapped up I’ve started The Night Agent. Yo!

I never read Matthew Quirk’s novel but The Night Agent about an FBI agent who gets a Federal Booty Call (U Up?) has been fast fun. Classic heart-pumping action and lots of Kiefer Sutherland can’t trust anybody this goes right to the top shadowy machinations.

The TV series follows the crooked journey of Peter Sutherland a young FBI agent who finds himself caught up in a conspiracy (of course he does!) that threatens to upend the entire nation (of course it does!).

As he navigates a web of lies and deception (oh yes!), Peter must use all of his skills and training to uncover (wait for it!) the truth before it’s too late! (There it is.) A spy thriller meets political drama should be enough to…keep you up at Night. U Up for The Night Agent?

I’ve been loafing in the 90s.

Just finished reading The Fresh Prince Project: How the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air Remixed America by Chris Palmer. A love letter that revisits the beloved sitcom. (Chris does excellent work noting the various Jordans Will Smith rocks on the show.)

On Wednesday Netflix released Waco: American Apocalypse. A 3-part docuseries about the 1993 Waco, Texas combat when cult leader David Koresh faced off against the federal government in a 51-day siege. I wrote about it in late February in Don’t Let The F-U-N in Fundamentalism Fool You!

And we’re gonna kick off today’s proceedings with Charles Barkley’s classic I Am Not A Role Model commercial which came out in 1993. Same year as Waco.

The past is a candy-sticky 4 year old that persistently (and annoyingly) asks “why?”

Rollin With Role Models?

The entire text of this short Nike ad is: “I am not a role model. I’m not paid to be a role model. I’m paid to wreak havoc on the basketball court. Parents should be role models. Just because I dunk a basketball doesn’t mean I should raise your kids.”

Yo…yes! Even as a high school punk in 93 I was like high fives; this makes so much sense. I don’t “need” you to be a nice guy and like help the kids or whatever. You’re here to win basketball games and I’m here to enjoy that. Winning is the only value we agree on. We good! Proceed.

Barely 30 seconds and yet it was an elegant revolution: a rousing rejection of many of our culture’s core values. We’re shrines and shills for famous folks. We have always worship celebrity. Sometimes envied the Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous especially when we see their Cribs.

Lamentably this warped worship leads to betrayal. As much as they’re known for being rich and good looking and enjoying the perks of fame…celebrities mess up. A lot.

Barkley said “I am not a role model” in 1993, 2 years after his dreadful spitting incident.

During an NBA game in 1991, Barkley spit in a fan’s general direction. Only he missed hitting a young girl, a second grader, sitting in the crowd. Fans turned on Barkley and for a while this hot mess refused to go away.

(You know how many dull variations of Spit Happens headlines we hadda endure back then? Barkley was Public Enemy No. 1 but many lazy newspaper copywriters weren’t far behind.)

Later Barkley confessed: “When the spitting incident happened…I remember sitting in a hotel room and I was like dude what the hell is wrong with you? What are you so angry about?”

So he changed how he played and he worked at addressing his untamed anger. An easy line for me to write that doesn’t truly convey the amount of work that takes. And he did change…and thankfully…he kept failing too. Whew.