The Five Books Cal Newport Read In March 2023

00:00:00.000 | All right, Jesse, let's do some books.

00:00:03.000 | Let's do it.

00:00:04.000 | All right, so these are the five books I read in March 2023.

00:00:07.000 | We're recording this in April, so it still counts,

00:00:09.000 | even though you're going to hear this in May.

00:00:12.000 | The first book, a short novel by Stephen King called The Colorado Kid.

00:00:19.000 | You know where I found this was a drugstore in Clearwater, Florida.

00:00:26.000 | I was looking for another book to read.

00:00:27.000 | I wanted something more fun. I was in a CVS in Clearwater Beach in Clearwater, Florida.

00:00:33.000 | And they had a small book section, which was all Daniel Steele.

00:00:38.000 | And then for some reason, they had a hard case crime edition of The Colorado Kid by Stephen King.

00:00:44.000 | So it's this cool sort of short, it's called an anti-mystery because it's a hard-boiled mystery type novel,

00:00:51.000 | but they never get to a solution. It's sort of postmodern.

00:00:54.000 | And so you're learning about this case, about this body that washed up on the shore of this small island in Maine.

00:01:01.000 | And there's these two hard-nosed old newspaper men, and they're telling it to their intern, this young woman.

00:01:06.000 | And they're kind of walking through the story, and these clues kind of pile up, and no resolution is reached.

00:01:12.000 | And so it's an anti-mystery, it's kind of deconstructing mystery.

00:01:15.000 | I love that hard case crime. They do this beautiful cover art.

00:01:20.000 | They re-released all of Michael Crichton's books he wrote under a pseudonym in med school.

00:01:26.000 | They call them the med school files, the med school books, all his cool covers.

00:01:29.000 | Anyways, it was fun. I read it on the beach and enjoyed it.

00:01:34.000 | I just felt serendipitous. Why would that book, this 2003 release from hard case crime,

00:01:41.000 | why would that show up in this random CVS? But it was there. And so I felt like it was a sign.

00:01:47.000 | I also read The Unsettlers by Mark Sundin.

00:01:52.000 | This is one of these books where you have a sort of very literate Harper-style writer

00:02:00.000 | who sets out on sort of a personal quest.

00:02:03.000 | And in this case, he goes and spends time with people who live very unconventional lives,

00:02:07.000 | sort of simple, intentional lives of various types.

00:02:10.000 | And it's him spending time with these people and reflecting on his own life.

00:02:15.000 | So it's part memoir, part observation. And it was kind of interesting.

00:02:20.000 | I bought this book a long time ago and then just took it off my library shelf and read it.

00:02:24.000 | And I enjoyed it. He spent time with some people living very simply in Missouri

00:02:28.000 | and some urban farmers in Detroit, among some others. It was good.

00:02:35.000 | Does it motivate you to get your cabin?

00:02:39.000 | The weird thing about it, and I think this is just the uncanny valley,

00:02:42.000 | is that when he was hanging out with other young people, people our age or younger,

00:02:46.000 | they kind of annoyed you. But when he was talking about the generation before

00:02:52.000 | who had moved to these farms or whatever in the 70s, it was fine.

00:02:58.000 | Like, yeah, these people are doing what they're doing.

00:03:00.000 | But when it was other young people, it made me feel a little curmudgeonly.

00:03:04.000 | I mean, I'm Mr. Deep Life, and there were cases where I'm like,

00:03:07.000 | I think you need to get a job. Because there was some of this over-the-top stuff,

00:03:11.000 | these people that we put on capes and bike around the country to try to raise awareness

00:03:15.000 | about bringing together the earth. And some of it felt like there's people super far adrift.

00:03:21.000 | They didn't go through a Deep Life systematic exercise, I'd say.

00:03:27.000 | There's a lot of big swings happening.

00:03:30.000 | And so it's just like you feel like some of the young people, I know people like that.

00:03:33.000 | They always have a big idea, and it's kind of weird.

00:03:37.000 | But then some of the people are really cool.

00:03:39.000 | But Mark's a great writer, and it was interesting. It really got me thinking.

00:03:42.000 | But it was that book that led me to my next book, which was Living the Good Life by Helen Scott Neering,

00:03:47.000 | which we did a whole deep dive on a few weeks ago.

00:03:51.000 | I forgot exactly what we called it. Simple Life or something like that.

00:03:55.000 | But I read that after The Unsettlers, and this was the same idea,

00:03:59.000 | like Helen Scott Neering leaving Manhattan and moving to this farm in Vermont and homesteading.

00:04:04.000 | But because they're Depression-era people, they're not people you know,

00:04:09.000 | and then you can come at them with an objective remove,

00:04:13.000 | and it's much more easy to find aspiration and draw an example out of them.

00:04:17.000 | So anyways, that book was cool. It was written in the '50s, and I did a whole deep dive on it.

00:04:22.000 | So Living the Simple Life or something like that.

00:04:25.000 | So look for that episode if you want to find out more about it.

00:04:28.000 | I bought an old version of that. I felt like I needed a... I got the 1974 edition.

00:04:33.000 | Those type of books I like to read in the original editions.

00:04:36.000 | I read a novel, C.J. Box had a somewhat recent novel called Shadow's Reel.

00:04:41.000 | I think I bought this in an airport somewhere. I like C.J. Box.

00:04:45.000 | His whole series is a game warden in Wyoming, Joe Pickett.

00:04:52.000 | And it's cool. I like the Wyoming stuff. This one's got a lot going on.

00:04:57.000 | Stolen Falcons, Black Lives Matter protest, murderous henchmen seeking stolen Nazi memorabilia,

00:05:06.000 | which has shown up in Wyoming and ended up in the possession of Joe Pickett's wife.

00:05:11.000 | All of this happening in the same book. It was fine.

00:05:15.000 | So stolen Nazi memorabilia, that's stuff that the Nazis stole while they were in power and then...

00:05:21.000 | No, American G.I. took when they raided the Eagle's Nest, Hitler's whatever.

00:05:29.000 | And I guess there was something, I don't want to spoil too much, but there was a photo album

00:05:35.000 | that a G.I. brought home to Wyoming to where Joe Pickett lives.

00:05:39.000 | And it got passed down to his son. And there's something incriminating in there

00:05:44.000 | for, I guess, a political leader now in Eastern Europe.

00:05:48.000 | And so he sends these henchmen to Big Sleep County to go get it back.

00:05:53.000 | And they're kind of murderers. They kill a bunch of people.

00:05:56.000 | But anyways, someone drops it off at the library. Joe Pickett's wife is a librarian,

00:05:59.000 | so she has it and they're coming to... They're kind of lurking around the house

00:06:03.000 | and all this type of stuff is going on. It's interesting.

00:06:06.000 | CJ Box has got into some Twitter... Twitter controversies aren't real controversies,

00:06:10.000 | but he's moved more... There's more politics in his book.

00:06:14.000 | Like, not super right-wing politics, but right-of-center politics.

00:06:19.000 | And then he's getting pushback, like, "Why is this so right-wing?"

00:06:24.000 | And he says, "That's Joe..." He's like, "These are the..."

00:06:27.000 | For a... What's he trying to say? He's saying, "These are the politics of...

00:06:31.000 | This makes sense if you were a game warden in Wyoming.

00:06:35.000 | This is not my politics. This is the politics of the world of the book."

00:06:38.000 | So he's in this interesting back and forth. I was like, "Wow, this is interesting."

00:06:41.000 | There's a whole plot line in here about Antifa.

00:06:47.000 | And in the book, it's all really overprivileged white kids

00:06:54.000 | from rich households who are dressing up and stuff and are completely hopeless

00:06:59.000 | and are being manipulated by this evil guy who stole the Falcons.

00:07:02.000 | So it's like a whole plot line, this whole anti-Antifa...

00:07:06.000 | It's like pro-Black Lives Matter, anti-Antifa.

00:07:11.000 | All this stuff is in CJ Box. When I think of CJ Box, it's typically like...

00:07:15.000 | Joe Pickett is... There's been a murder in the woods, and he's in the game warden.

00:07:20.000 | So, I don't know. CJ's going in interesting places.

00:07:23.000 | - When was it written? - That's pretty recent.

00:07:26.000 | It takes place during... It must take place during...

00:07:30.000 | When were all those protests and riots and stuff was 2020, right?

00:07:34.000 | So it had been written after that. I don't read a lot of CJ Box.

00:07:37.000 | I always like the idea of liking genre books, detective books or these type of books.

00:07:44.000 | And I never really have gotten into a series...

00:07:48.000 | The last genre writer I really just read everything was Michael Crichton when I was young.

00:07:53.000 | But these new ones where it's like, "Here's the character."

00:07:56.000 | It's like Hieronymus Bosch and Connelly or Joe Pickett and CJ Box.

00:08:01.000 | And here's the character, and every year there's a new book, and it's this character.

00:08:05.000 | I really love the idea of being really into those, but it just doesn't click with me.

00:08:09.000 | Even the good ones. CJ Box is fine. Connelly is much better.

00:08:12.000 | Michael Connelly is great at this. But I just can't get into...

00:08:15.000 | I've read some. It just doesn't... I don't know why it doesn't do it for me.

00:08:19.000 | It's like fantasy. I should like fantasy books.

00:08:23.000 | And I have a hard time. And I blame Brandon Sanderson.

00:08:28.000 | It's somehow his fault. I should be a fantasy book fan.

00:08:32.000 | But I don't. I get bored. It's too much like...

00:08:36.000 | "Thou as the wizard's staff will smite the dwarf" or whatever.

00:08:40.000 | I should love that stuff. Maybe it's just fiction. I'm just not an accomplished fiction writer.

00:08:45.000 | How many of the Stephen King books have you read?

00:08:47.000 | I have a hard time with King. Because they're so long.

00:08:51.000 | All of his good books he wrote on Coke.

00:08:55.000 | It's all over the place. It's a really interesting approach, but it's not my style.

00:09:00.000 | So I like the short ones. The Colorado Kid is great King.

00:09:04.000 | But I read 300 pages of Fairy Tale and finally gave up.

00:09:08.000 | It's a very interesting tone. It's very accessible and conversational.

00:09:14.000 | And it just feels too... It's just going and things.

00:09:18.000 | He's spinning out ideas and doing this and that.

00:09:21.000 | I don't know. It's not my style. I like a tighter thing.

00:09:24.000 | But I should like Stephen King. I'm telling you. There's all these books I should like.

00:09:28.000 | I did read Name of the Wind. I did actually read all of Name of the Wind. And I did enjoy it.

00:09:32.000 | So kudos Brandon Sanderson.

00:09:36.000 | For Name of the Wind. I did read that. It was good.

00:09:38.000 | And I read half of the second one and then I sort of lost steam.

00:09:40.000 | I think it's an issue I have with fiction.

00:09:43.000 | But my last book was also fiction. So I have three novels on my list.

00:09:48.000 | The last one was Haven by Emma Donoghue.

00:09:52.000 | And it's just a novel about the monks who inhabited Skellig Island off of the west coast of Ireland.

00:10:03.000 | So there's this like desolate rock where there's a real monastery that was built on there in the medieval period.

00:10:10.000 | And I saw it. I was out there.

00:10:12.000 | Years ago I spent some time in Dingle on the west coast of Ireland which is real near to there.

00:10:18.000 | And it's a real place, a real monastery. They used it to film scenes from The Rise of Skywalker.

00:10:23.000 | So like the place where Luke Skywalker is like hiding away on that island, that's Skellig Island.

00:10:28.000 | And so this is a fictionalized, it's historical fiction.

00:10:31.000 | So it's a fictionalized account of like the original monks.

00:10:35.000 | And it just starts inland in Ireland and they sort of make their way out there.

00:10:39.000 | And they try to tame it and inhabit it. And that's the book.

00:10:42.000 | That was pretty good.

00:10:43.000 | Gotta be cold out there on that island, right?

00:10:45.000 | That's not optimal. Not optimal.

00:10:48.000 | I looked up the reality. So in reality, they used it seasonally for a while.

00:10:53.000 | Like the actual way it turns out is they would raise sheep on it and they would use it seasonally.

00:10:59.000 | It's not far from land.

00:11:00.000 | So the monks would come out there and they would stay on there during the summer because they would keep sheep there.

00:11:05.000 | But they wouldn't live there full time. They wouldn't live there in the winter.

00:11:07.000 | They'd come back to the mainland. It turns out to be the reality.

00:11:10.000 | And then at some point they built some more permanent stuff and then the Vikings just...

00:11:15.000 | You know how the Vikings do.

00:11:18.000 | It was good. I give it like a 7 out of 10.

00:11:20.000 | It was like fine writing, not great writing.

00:11:23.000 | 7 out of 10 is pretty good.

00:11:24.000 | Yeah. Not like a great novel, but also better than Shadows Reel by C.J. Box.

00:11:29.000 | So like on the scale, it's...

00:11:34.000 | There is no Falcons being stolen or murderous Nazi henchmen.

00:11:38.000 | That was a pretty good book, but it wasn't my...

00:11:40.000 | I'm not thinking I got to recommend this to everybody, but I am proud of myself for reading three novels.

00:11:45.000 | Like for me, it's uncharacteristic.

00:11:48.000 | [MUSIC PLAYING]

00:11:51.360 | (upbeat music)

The Five Books Cal Newport Read In March 2023

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