All right, Jesse, let's do some books. Let's do it. All right, so these are the five books I read in March 2023. We're recording this in April, so it still counts, even though you're going to hear this in May. The first book, a short novel by Stephen King called The Colorado Kid.

You know where I found this was a drugstore in Clearwater, Florida. I was looking for another book to read. I wanted something more fun. I was in a CVS in Clearwater Beach in Clearwater, Florida. And they had a small book section, which was all Daniel Steele. And then for some reason, they had a hard case crime edition of The Colorado Kid by Stephen King.

So it's this cool sort of short, it's called an anti-mystery because it's a hard-boiled mystery type novel, but they never get to a solution. It's sort of postmodern. And so you're learning about this case, about this body that washed up on the shore of this small island in Maine.

And there's these two hard-nosed old newspaper men, and they're telling it to their intern, this young woman. And they're kind of walking through the story, and these clues kind of pile up, and no resolution is reached. And so it's an anti-mystery, it's kind of deconstructing mystery. I love that hard case crime.

They do this beautiful cover art. They re-released all of Michael Crichton's books he wrote under a pseudonym in med school. They call them the med school files, the med school books, all his cool covers. Anyways, it was fun. I read it on the beach and enjoyed it. I just felt serendipitous.

Why would that book, this 2003 release from hard case crime, why would that show up in this random CVS? But it was there. And so I felt like it was a sign. I also read The Unsettlers by Mark Sundin. This is one of these books where you have a sort of very literate Harper-style writer who sets out on sort of a personal quest.

And in this case, he goes and spends time with people who live very unconventional lives, sort of simple, intentional lives of various types. And it's him spending time with these people and reflecting on his own life. So it's part memoir, part observation. And it was kind of interesting. I bought this book a long time ago and then just took it off my library shelf and read it.

And I enjoyed it. He spent time with some people living very simply in Missouri and some urban farmers in Detroit, among some others. It was good. Does it motivate you to get your cabin? The weird thing about it, and I think this is just the uncanny valley, is that when he was hanging out with other young people, people our age or younger, they kind of annoyed you.

But when he was talking about the generation before who had moved to these farms or whatever in the 70s, it was fine. Like, yeah, these people are doing what they're doing. But when it was other young people, it made me feel a little curmudgeonly. I mean, I'm Mr. Deep Life, and there were cases where I'm like, I think you need to get a job.

Because there was some of this over-the-top stuff, these people that we put on capes and bike around the country to try to raise awareness about bringing together the earth. And some of it felt like there's people super far adrift. They didn't go through a Deep Life systematic exercise, I'd say.

There's a lot of big swings happening. And so it's just like you feel like some of the young people, I know people like that. They always have a big idea, and it's kind of weird. But then some of the people are really cool. But Mark's a great writer, and it was interesting.

It really got me thinking. But it was that book that led me to my next book, which was Living the Good Life by Helen Scott Neering, which we did a whole deep dive on a few weeks ago. I forgot exactly what we called it. Simple Life or something like that.

But I read that after The Unsettlers, and this was the same idea, like Helen Scott Neering leaving Manhattan and moving to this farm in Vermont and homesteading. But because they're Depression-era people, they're not people you know, and then you can come at them with an objective remove, and it's much more easy to find aspiration and draw an example out of them.

So anyways, that book was cool. It was written in the '50s, and I did a whole deep dive on it. So Living the Simple Life or something like that. So look for that episode if you want to find out more about it. I bought an old version of that.

I felt like I needed a... I got the 1974 edition. Those type of books I like to read in the original editions. I read a novel, C.J. Box had a somewhat recent novel called Shadow's Reel. I think I bought this in an airport somewhere. I like C.J. Box. His whole series is a game warden in Wyoming, Joe Pickett.

And it's cool. I like the Wyoming stuff. This one's got a lot going on. Stolen Falcons, Black Lives Matter protest, murderous henchmen seeking stolen Nazi memorabilia, which has shown up in Wyoming and ended up in the possession of Joe Pickett's wife. All of this happening in the same book.

It was fine. So stolen Nazi memorabilia, that's stuff that the Nazis stole while they were in power and then... No, American G.I. took when they raided the Eagle's Nest, Hitler's whatever. And I guess there was something, I don't want to spoil too much, but there was a photo album that a G.I.

brought home to Wyoming to where Joe Pickett lives. And it got passed down to his son. And there's something incriminating in there for, I guess, a political leader now in Eastern Europe. And so he sends these henchmen to Big Sleep County to go get it back. And they're kind of murderers.

They kill a bunch of people. But anyways, someone drops it off at the library. Joe Pickett's wife is a librarian, so she has it and they're coming to... They're kind of lurking around the house and all this type of stuff is going on. It's interesting. CJ Box has got into some Twitter...

Twitter controversies aren't real controversies, but he's moved more... There's more politics in his book. Like, not super right-wing politics, but right-of-center politics. And then he's getting pushback, like, "Why is this so right-wing?" And he says, "That's Joe..." He's like, "These are the..." For a... What's he trying to say?

He's saying, "These are the politics of... This makes sense if you were a game warden in Wyoming. This is not my politics. This is the politics of the world of the book." So he's in this interesting back and forth. I was like, "Wow, this is interesting." There's a whole plot line in here about Antifa.

And in the book, it's all really overprivileged white kids from rich households who are dressing up and stuff and are completely hopeless and are being manipulated by this evil guy who stole the Falcons. So it's like a whole plot line, this whole anti-Antifa... It's like pro-Black Lives Matter, anti-Antifa.

All this stuff is in CJ Box. When I think of CJ Box, it's typically like... Joe Pickett is... There's been a murder in the woods, and he's in the game warden. So, I don't know. CJ's going in interesting places. - When was it written? - That's pretty recent. It takes place during...

It must take place during... When were all those protests and riots and stuff was 2020, right? So it had been written after that. I don't read a lot of CJ Box. I always like the idea of liking genre books, detective books or these type of books. And I never really have gotten into a series...

The last genre writer I really just read everything was Michael Crichton when I was young. But these new ones where it's like, "Here's the character." It's like Hieronymus Bosch and Connelly or Joe Pickett and CJ Box. And here's the character, and every year there's a new book, and it's this character.

I really love the idea of being really into those, but it just doesn't click with me. Even the good ones. CJ Box is fine. Connelly is much better. Michael Connelly is great at this. But I just can't get into... I've read some. It just doesn't... I don't know why it doesn't do it for me.

It's like fantasy. I should like fantasy books. And I have a hard time. And I blame Brandon Sanderson. It's somehow his fault. I should be a fantasy book fan. But I don't. I get bored. It's too much like... "Thou as the wizard's staff will smite the dwarf" or whatever.

I should love that stuff. Maybe it's just fiction. I'm just not an accomplished fiction writer. How many of the Stephen King books have you read? I have a hard time with King. Because they're so long. All of his good books he wrote on Coke. It's all over the place.

It's a really interesting approach, but it's not my style. So I like the short ones. The Colorado Kid is great King. But I read 300 pages of Fairy Tale and finally gave up. It's a very interesting tone. It's very accessible and conversational. And it just feels too... It's just going and things.

He's spinning out ideas and doing this and that. I don't know. It's not my style. I like a tighter thing. But I should like Stephen King. I'm telling you. There's all these books I should like. I did read Name of the Wind. I did actually read all of Name of the Wind.

And I did enjoy it. So kudos Brandon Sanderson. For Name of the Wind. I did read that. It was good. And I read half of the second one and then I sort of lost steam. I think it's an issue I have with fiction. But my last book was also fiction.

So I have three novels on my list. The last one was Haven by Emma Donoghue. And it's just a novel about the monks who inhabited Skellig Island off of the west coast of Ireland. So there's this like desolate rock where there's a real monastery that was built on there in the medieval period.

And I saw it. I was out there. Years ago I spent some time in Dingle on the west coast of Ireland which is real near to there. And it's a real place, a real monastery. They used it to film scenes from The Rise of Skywalker. So like the place where Luke Skywalker is like hiding away on that island, that's Skellig Island.

And so this is a fictionalized, it's historical fiction. So it's a fictionalized account of like the original monks. And it just starts inland in Ireland and they sort of make their way out there. And they try to tame it and inhabit it. And that's the book. That was pretty good.

Gotta be cold out there on that island, right? That's not optimal. Not optimal. I looked up the reality. So in reality, they used it seasonally for a while. Like the actual way it turns out is they would raise sheep on it and they would use it seasonally. It's not far from land.

So the monks would come out there and they would stay on there during the summer because they would keep sheep there. But they wouldn't live there full time. They wouldn't live there in the winter. They'd come back to the mainland. It turns out to be the reality. And then at some point they built some more permanent stuff and then the Vikings just...

You know how the Vikings do. It was good. I give it like a 7 out of 10. It was like fine writing, not great writing. 7 out of 10 is pretty good. Yeah. Not like a great novel, but also better than Shadows Reel by C.J. Box. So like on the scale, it's...

There is no Falcons being stolen or murderous Nazi henchmen. That was a pretty good book, but it wasn't my... I'm not thinking I got to recommend this to everybody, but I am proud of myself for reading three novels. Like for me, it's uncharacteristic. (upbeat music)