Will Schwalbe: On the Love of Reading Books

But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their good wolf h Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this episode is Will Schwabi, an author, entrepreneur, and journalist based in New York City. Will is the author of three books and was the former editor in chief of

High Period Books. In two thousand and eight, he founded the recipe site Cookster, which was acquired by McMillan Publishing in two thousand fourteen, where he serves as executive vice president his latest work, Books for Living, consists of essays about twenty six different books that affected the author's life. Among the books described by Schwaby include Homer's The Odyssey, Herman Melville's Bartoby the Scrivener, EB White's Stewart Little, and

Paula Hawkins The Girl on the Train. Carl Young once said, you are what you do, not what you say you'll do. Sometimes, at the end of a day or a week, I'll ask myself, based on my actions, what kind a person am I? If someone was to try and get a sense of who I am based on what I've done, what kind of person would they see? The truth is your actions are the portal to being the kind of person you want to be. So I'll pose the question to you for reflection. What actions have you taken to

support the things you value in this world? If you value this show, if it has helped you to feel better on a dark day, to be a better parent or spouse, or a better friend, then please donate at one you feed dot net slash support. There you'll see many levels at which you can become a patron of the show. At ten dollars a month, will offer you additional exclusive content from our guests, as well as one mini episode per month, and plus there is no quicker

way of feeling better than doing something good. And folks, we really need your financial support. That page again is one you feed dot net slash support. Thank you, and here's the interview with Will Schwalby. Hi, Will, welcome to the show. Thank you, Eric, thank you for having me on the show. Your latest book is called Books for Living some thoughts on reading, reflecting and embracing life. And as I am a passionate reader, the minute I saw the book title, I was like, all right, this should

be a great conversation. And the book is wonderful and we will get into it in a lot more detail here in just a second. But let's start like we usually do with the parable. There's a grandfather who's talking with this grandson. He says, in life, there are two wolves inside of us that are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness, bravery, love. The other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. The grandson stops and he

thinks about it for a second. He looks up and asks his grandfather. He says, well, grandfather, which one wins, and the grandfather says the one you feed. So I'd like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you in your life and in the work

that you do. Well. Erica loved hearing that power well, And it wasn't a parable that I had heard, uh before I encountered your your podcast, But it spoke to me on a very deep level because my book is really a book about reading and about the importance of reading and stopping in our busy lives, stopping with all the texting and emailing and aggravating ourselves and just taking time to read thoughtfully and purposefully. And to me, every

time I read, I'm feeding the good wolf. And and so reading, I think is just one of the most powerful, simple ways that we can feed the good wolf, that we can feed the part of ourselves which is about kindness and sensitivity and about listening. When we run around in this agitated state of greed and distraction, when we're on Twitter, when we watch endless amounts of CNN, then we're feeding the bad wolf. I will second that I have the same issue. So let's talk about reading for

a minute. You've got a couple of great lines in the book that I'll read because I really, I really liked them. I think they just speak to reading in general. You say, I'm not the same reader when I finish a book as I was when I started. Brains are tangles of pathways, and reading creates new ones. Every book changes your life, So I like to ask, how is this book changing mind? I'm so glad that quote spoke to you. One of the things that I wanted to

correct is the idea that reading is binary. So usually you say to someone can you read, and they say, of course I can read, or no, I can't read. It's something I'd like to learn if you encounter saying adult who hasn't received the benefit of an education that taught her aim how to read. But actually, reading isn't binary. Every time we read, we become better at reading, and every book teaches us to be a better reader every page.

We're just not the same person. We're a better reader at the end of that page, and we're a better reader of that book, a better reader of that author, and just better reader in general. And there's obviously the great classical Greek saying that you can never step in the same river twice, you're not the same person and the river isn't the same And that's true reading, and that's one of the things that makes it such an extraordinary way to spend our time. It is one of

my absolute favorite ways to spend time. You also say reading is one of the few things you do alone that can make you feel less alone. It's a solitary activity that connects you to others. Yes, And there's a quote that I love that really speaks of that. It's it's something I quote in Books for Living and it's James Baldwin, and James Baldwin said in an interview, you think your pain and heartbreak are unprecedented in the history

of the world, and then you read. And what he was talking about is this idea that joining the human conversation. You do that through reading, and you find doat that all these things you're feeling and all these emotions and beliefs other people have had those two or had versions of them, and it connects you to people not just around the country, around the world, that connect you to

people from hundreds or even thousands of years ago. And that's why I say, when you read, even though it's solitary, it makes you less alone, not more alone. Yeah. Absolutely, And I feel like I've seen studies to this effect, But it feels like emotional intelligence to me is one of the big gifts that I've gotten from reading fiction.

I just being able to be inside lots of different people's heads, I think, just naturally for me, suddenly allowed me to see the world in a lot of different ways and and help me to connect better to different people and to maybe understand people who were, at least on the surface different than me. And I love that Baldwin quote because he kind of goes on to say that, um, and I got it from you, um, that not only

does the reading, you know, can actus to others. And he says, you know that it was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive or who had ever been alive. And I love that because not only is he feeling less alone, he's able to use books in reading to transform the very difficult activities that we all have in life or challenges that we have exactly. Yeah. Yeah, it's such a

remarkable quote. I come back to that again and again, and I'm also so glad you mentioned the e word empathy. I really believe that empathy is a muscle and it atrophies if you don't exercise it. And books or how I exercise my empathy muscle you also mentioned early in the book, and it just caught my attention because I just finished this book, which is the book called A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth is it Ozaki. Yes, Yes,

it's an incredible book, that book. And mentioned it in a context of connecting with a friend of mine who who started as a pen pal years old, a woman a great music editor uh for film who lives in Los Angeles. Their names Elsa blank Felt, and we talk all the time about books. And this is a novel about a young girl who's thinking of ending her life and her a hundred and four hundred and five year old Buddhist nun aunt who is the most extraordinary character.

And I love I shared the book with Elsa, my year old friend, and she called me and she said that she'd fallen in love with the character of the aunt and she said, now I know who I want to be when I grow up. Yeah, it is a great book. I mean, I'm I'm so interested in Buddhist ideas that it was a natural thing to me. But it was just so well written in such a good novel. I mean, it wasn't just like, oh, it's got some Buddhist ideas in it. It was just a very beautiful,

well written novel. It always amazes me, like she's a I think she's a zen priest, and always amazes me when people can be like that good at multiple different things. I'm like, wow, ooh, it's incredible, isn't it. Yeah, And you've got Silicon Valley, and you've got contemporary Tokyo, and you've got Hostess Bars and she writes from the point of view of the sixteen year old girl and you're totally there with her, and you've got a Kama Kaze pilot. It is. It's a master work. Yeah, it really is.

Let's talk about that for a second, because you mentioned, you know, you've got this pen pal and you guys talk about books. The book you wrote before this one, I think, was called The End of your Life book Club, which talks about how you and your mother, you know, shared a series of books that you were reading, you know, as she was dealing with cancer. You talk about other stories in the book where there's a grandmother who says, you know, when she talks to her grandson on the phone,

how is everything. It's fine, it's fine. And then one day she asked him what he's reading, and she starts reading the books he is and now they have lots of conversations. So talk to me about this idea of books being away for us to connect to the people around us. Well, books are so democratic and egalitarian. There's a book that I wrote about in the End of Your Life book Club, which is called The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett, and it's a book about the Queen

of England discovering books. Uh, and it has a marvelous passage in it which I'll paraphrase badly. But what the Queen of England realizes in this fantasy novella, it's not it's not really about the queen, or it's it's about the queen, but but it's not a true story. But what she realizes that all readers are equal. That when she's reading, she's not the Queen of England reading a book, She's just another reader. And and that grand mother that I talked about, she was able to connect with her

grandson just by saying, what are you reading? Because he was reading The Hunger Games. And when they started talking about the Hunger Games, she was no longer a kind of grandmother pestering her grandchild with boring questions he didn't want to answer. They were just two readers who just couldn't wait to find doubt what happened next, and reading levels the playing field. When we talked to someone about a book that we both love, we're both literally on

the same page. Yeah, it is a great way. I always feel like I love that idea, and yet I always feel like very difficult for me to remember or to articulate, like what it was I loved about a book, or I don't do that as well as I as I might. Like. My other thing is I can reread nearly any book, and um, it will be new to me because my memory is just terrible. I just forget so much of what happens, and it used to trouble me. And I'm finally at the age you know, I'm like, well,

that's just the way my brain works. I don't think I'm going to change that. Um, But yeah, I love too well. I do this thing. And Winston Churchill had a great phrase. He called it visiting your books. So I'll go to a book i've read, I'll pull it off the shelf and I'll just flip open to a page and read a page and then put it back, and books become kind of like magic eight balls. It's totally weird, but it's always the paragraph that I need to hear it, just the moment I need to hear it.

That's awesome. I am going to adopt that practice. That's a great because I look at these books all the time and my main thought is, well, I'd like to read that again. But I love that because one of the things that we talked about on this show and I coach people and all the time, is like, just instead of trying to do the huge thing, just take like a really small step. And that's like the book version of it. I don't have to wait till I can reread the whole book. I can bring it down

and read one page. I love it. Yeah, just a page. And and I think especially if you ask your bookshelf a question and just let your hands settle on a book, you can see if the book and the page will answer the question you have. And as I said, it's uncanny how it does. I also have to share with you, Eric, one of my great techniques for finding which book to read next, and that's I'm a very clumsy person, and I always read the book I knock over. That's a

good way to do it. If you've got them stacked precariously. Yeah, we have them. I can never remember if it's stillagmites or stillagtites. But whatever comes up from the floor is what we have all over our apartment. And I'm constantly looking over huge stacks of books and the first one I stumble over is the book I read next. Well, you are in the professional publishing industry in addition to being an author, right, yes I am. I um edit books and have been publishing for a couple of decades.

You must have books coming out your ears then, um, I love it. Yeah. Well. One of the things I, you know, is a constant source of fun for me in this doing this show is that people are just sending me books. And uh, even when it's not really a book that I want or that I care about, it's still I love books so much. The very fact that they're just showing up it just you know, still tickles me. Now my problem is starting to become one of storage, where I'm like, I don't where do I

put all these things? Um, I live in a pretty small apartment, so um, it's just fun that they just keep coming. I'm gonna say the storage problem is when I face and in books, for thing, I tell the story of a professor who was a great friend of mine, who had a vast library, and in the last decade of his life, he decided to give all of his books away except for one hundred books. And if he wanted to keep a book, he had to give one

of the one hundred books away. And what happened was that when he died, Um, he left a hundred books that almost perfectly described his life. And it was such a marvelous gift to the rest of us. Of course, we miss him dreadfully. He was one of the most extraordinary people I'll ever meet. But to look at the books on Martinis, and the books on Tangier, and the books on the Foreign Legion, and and this was his autobiography and a hundred books. And someday I'm going to

do that. I'm not ready for it yet, but someday, Yeah, I love that idea. I went through a thing a few years ago where I guess more than a few where I was like, all right, this book stuff needs to come to an end, and I'm going to become a library guy. Like I've always loved the library, but

I was like, no more buying books. I'm just going to get them from the library that I'm going to take them back to the library because a I'm you know, every time I move, I've got like forty boxes to bring with me, and I only display a portion of them because I don't have the space, and it's a you know, it costs a small fortune. But then of course that lasts for a little bit and then I'm like, but I want to have that book, and so you know, but I have gotten better at at least saying I'm

only going to have books by and large. Now again, a lot of them keep showing up. But the ones that I'm going to have and keep I've I've tried to get better at, like the ones that really matter to me. You know that that those are the ones that are around. Yeah. I love the idea of keeping on hand the books that really matter, but I also have to be surrounded by books that I haven't ready I love this line. You say, my primary emotion at the start of any book is hope, hope that it

will teach me something. And I love that line, and I think that that describes better than anything I've done before, the way I feel in a library, like I love being in a library. But I don't know that I could have ever said what the emotion was, but I think that's what it is. You know, it's hope, and

it's also curiosity. And so we started when we were talking by by talking about the idea that reading uh feeds feeds the good wolf, but I was thinking more about the parable, and I was also started to think that curiosity is a good wolf and prejudice is a bad wolf. So when I choose books because I'm curious about them, because it's something I don't know, an experience I haven't had, someone from a different place, your different culture,

then I'm feeding the good curious wolf. But when I go to the library of the bookstore in my bookshelf and choose a book that just confirms some prejudice I already hold, or some deeply felt belief and just makes it more ingrained, I think then in those cases, maybe I'm I'm feeding the bad wolf even though I'm reading. Yeah, I agree. I think it is hope and curiosity at the library and sort of a sense of unlimited potential, like like who knows what's going to happen? Yes, who knows.

I love that there's millions of books out there for us. But the hope also is that this next book you read is going to chuse something so powerful that it will rock your world, that that this will be the book that changes your life, not in a subtle way, but in a kind of earth shattering way. Right, So let's talk about some specific books we've talked about reading

in general. Let's talk first about a book that you reference throughout the book that you wrote, by a gentleman by the name of visit Leeu tang Lynu tang Linu tang to talk to me about that book. So this was one of those books that I was curious about. I, as a kid, having seen the movie Cabaret, became obsessed with Christopher Isherwood, who wrote the Berlin stories on which

Cabarets based. Started reading all the issue what I could, started reading as much about the nineteen thirties as I could, and I kept coming across this name, len U Tang, and the title of a book, which was the Importance of Living, and the Importance of Living was a monster bestseller in the entire world. Was reading The Importance of Living, I was like Tuesdays with Mori on steroids at this point, though by a couple of decades ago, it had been

completely forgotten. So when I was in publishing, I stumbled across this book and actually arranged for it to come back into print and reached out to Lynnu Tang's surviving two daughters. There's only one of them who's surviving now. Uh. And the book is just a revelation. It's a five hundred dense pages. It's charming, it's discursive, but it's really about what Lynn calls the noble art of leaving things undone,

and it's about the Chinese philosophy of life. And he was trying to explain to everybody across the world this idea, and he phrased it so wonderfully. He said, if you've spent a perfectly useless afternoon doing absolutely nothing, then you've mastered the art of living. And I just fell in love with this book, and I think it's a book for our times. It's a book about relaxing, about looking at nature, about lying in bed, about reading poetry, spending

time with friends. But but Erica is one more thing that I think, just it's so amazing about this book is when you start reading it, you think, oh, this

is charming and delightful about napping and reading. But then as you get further into the book, you remember this thing was written in ninety seven, published in thirty eight, and Linnu Tang starts to mention Stalin and Hitler, and he starts to talk in this book about the culture of greed and power, and what he's really doing in this is positing humanism, conversation um as everything that's good and really the bulwark that we have against the kind

of tyranny that he saw rising across Asia and Europe and that of course culminated in the great genocides and slaughters of our time. Yeah, you reference it throughout. It sounds like a fascinating book. And I love that, you know, I think you say it, or he says it, but you know, naps and reading are two of life's greatest pleasures. Yes, their life's greatest pleasures, or two of them, but they're also, uh,

really a form of resistance. Uh that in a world mad with greed and ambition and power, to reaffirm what it means to be human, just simply to breathe, to be alive, to stroll in nature, to talk to our friends. Um, this is an act of resistance. Yeah. He talks about three American vices. I love that. So thout. The three American vices as I as I recall them are punctuality, efficiency. I'm trying to remember what they are, and you were coming.

They've gone out of my mind. That is punctuality, for sure. I'm pretty sure I haven't. And you know what, I didn't. I just took the quote three American vices out, But I don't know that I have the funny. I can't. I can't. I'm having I'm having a middle aged moment. Here they are actually here. They are so efficiency, punctuality, and the desire for achievement and success. There we go. And he he said in his book, and I quote it mine that all of Americans unhappiness can be traced

to those three things. Yeah. It's very interesting because I am sort of by nature a doer. You know, I've got a lot of like go and and and do things. But I've realized over the last couple of years that um, I need to learn to spend a good idle and beautiful afternoon more often. Yes. And the question really to ask ourselves after reading lynn U Tang is do we live to work or do we work to live? And

of course he would have us work to live. How do you, from your perspective, how does working to live tie with doing things that are deeply important to you? Like writing a book is working in a sense, but it's also you know, a deep passion. So how do you reconcile that sort of idea of you know, work and relaxation and is writing a book do you not work because it's something you love? Or what's you're thinking

on that? Well? My thinking on that is that we all have to work to two different extents, depending on where we live and what our rent is and what our family obligations are. And it would be silly to pretend that most people have the option of not working. I really think of it more as a mindset. Uh. And for example, if you work twenty three hours a day, on that one precious hour you have off, are you checking your email or are you reading a book or

talking with a friend or staring at the window. Um, really, what you do when you're not at work is determines a large part of it. And I do believe there's some work that is such a joy that it doesn't seem like work. But I'm actually more of the belief that most of us know the difference between working and living, and no matter how much we love our work, it's

probably still work. I had a friend, a great friend who I wrote about in this book I'm a friend who was killed in an accident, and whenever he heard anyone complained about their job, he used to say the same thing to them. He'd say, if it was so much darn fun, they wouldn't have to pay you. Yep, but you don't have to write books. Obviously, that is something that you're doing in addition to your your career, right,

So you are you're taking on that additional work. Yes, and I do love that And for me, um, it's mostly not work, although there's certainly days when I feel like a school child in detention and all my friends are running out does see movies and outdoor and I'm chained to my computer. But yes, I do. I I enjoy it and I feel compelled to do it. So the books, happily for me are usually not work. There's

something that brings me great joy. Yeah, I find that paradox there you're talking about of I sort of frame it up for myself in terms of, you know, what do I want to do versus what do I feel like doing? So something like writing the book or for me doing this show is something I want to do, So it's a it's a voluntary thing that I choose

to do that I love to do. There are moments that I certainly don't feel like it, though, and so for me that helps me to sort of get back to like, Okay, I do want to and I am choosing to do this even if I don't feel like it in that moment, because otherwise it really it sucks

to turn something you love into a chore. Yeah. I also wrote a chapter about for me a story that's a real touchstone, and that's Melville's bartleby the Scrivener, and bartleby the Scrivener is a wonderful story obviously author of Moby Dick, about a clerk who just quits. He just besides one day he'd prefer not to do this or that, and he just stops doing anything, and it's It's an iconic American short story. But one of the things I

wanted to celebrate in books for living is quitters. I think we give quitters a bad name, and I think part of the joy that I get in writing a book is actually knowing I can stop at any time, that since I've given myself permission to quit, it never becomes too onerous because I never really have to do it. It's always something I want to do um And that's that's a big difference my day job. Yes I could quit it, but I don't know who would pay the rent. Yeah.

I think that idea is so important in general, even with things like day jobs, because the minute I start feeling like I have to do something, I start to feel trapped and I and and even recognizing, like to your point, like I could quit the day job. Now that would mean X, Y, and Z, and I may not like those consequences, but the option is is there too. You know, I could just, you know, suddenly decide to quit and go go live in a shelter if I

wanted to know. I don't want to, but that idea of knowing that I could really helps take a burden off my shoulders when I start to get into that I have to I have to I have to thing. Yeah. And I think as a culture, uh, we really set a dangerous precedent for ourselves when we denigrate quitters and when we make people feel badly because they try something and they stop it. Because I really think freedom to

quit is really freedom to explore. Uh. If you start a book and you don't much care for it, stop reading it, but don't not start it because you won't quit it. Or if you want to throw pots and you've never thrown a pot before, try it. If you don't like it, quit The ability to quit really allows ourselves, I think, to be fully human in a way. Uh that adhere in step seeing everything through to the bitter end.

Just doesn't Another line that I had pulled out. You say, when we denigrate mediocrity, we discourage ourselves and others from trying new things. It would be great to be a great painter, but it's also great just to paint or sing, or throw pots or knit scarves or play chess. And I love that idea of just being a to do something because I like doing it regardless of where it leads.

And I think that goes a little bit back to the Lynn you tang some of the ideas of that not everything has to go somewhere or have a have a purpose beyond I enjoy doing it exactly. And one of the I think other big causes for unhappiness in my life and in my friends lives and in the lives of people around me is this idea that everything

has to be great. And I write in the book about I'll be sitting around with a friend having a nice piece of pizza, cold beer, and granite village where I live, and I'll be enjoying the pizza and enjoying the beer, and my friend will say something like, oh, well, this pizza is good, but you know, the very best pizza is that, And then he'll name some plays you know, across town or Naples, I don't know wherever. But the

idea is, why can't I just enjoy my pizza? And I think that's a bit of a metaphor for life in general, is if we're always in search of mind blowingly great things, were really rob ourselves the ability to enjoy the good things that we have in our lives. Yeah, it's that idea of the paradox of choice they talk about, and that there's like two types of people. I think it's I may get this right, um, maximizers and satisficers. Right.

Maximizers are that sort of like everything always has to be the best, like I'm going to spend eight hours on Yelp picking out the very best dinner restaurants. Satisficers are more able to just sort of go, you know what, this is good enough. Here we go and and then and they're just in and they're happy with it the way they are, and and uh, I have to watch

my tendency to be a maximizer. It's the story I tell often is about music, Like I'm a I'm a guitar player, and I used to write songs and for a long time I sort of thought, well, maybe that's what I would do. And then it became clear that that was not going to happen. You know, that just

wasn't in the cards. And it took me a while to be able to pick up the guitar and just play it just for fun, just because I like the way that chord sounds, or I like the way it feels without always being like I would start to hear a little partner, I'm like, oh, I need to write a song out of this, or I need to and it just took it just kind of ruined it for me for a while until I was really able to do what you said, like, I'm just a mediocre guitar player,

but you know what I like. I like doing it, and so I'm gonna do it just for that reason. That's so great. I love the start, I love the idea of that. And I also believe too, when you say mediocre guitar player, it's really just a frame of reference. Uh. I like to talk about for example, the most mediocre baseball player on say the New York Yankees is one of the best baseball players in the world. Yea, in

the world just depends on your frame of reference. Um, So to see yourself as proudly mediocre is really just to admit that whatever it is you're doing, there's probably someone who does it better than you, and to take satisfaction in the way you do it and to admire the way they do it. And I catch myself this all the time. There's a wonderful phrase A publishing friend told me, he said, you write the books you need.

And one of the reasons I wrote books for living is it was it was the book I needed, because I catched myself doing this all the time. I was in Bufort, South Carolina. I was having something that was the most delicious boiled thing with sausage and shrimp and potatoes and a little restaurant I stumbled across, and I was enjoying it so much. And then all of a sudden, I thought to myself, Oh, I had my iPhone here, I'll google what's the best version of this in Bufort?

And I was just about to do that. I thought, why are you doing that? You're just trying to make yourself unhappy with what you're loving. And who cares what the best is? This is really good, right, And and that is where you actually happen to be, not at the other place. Yes, I'm there, I'm not at the other place. I'm leaving in a couple of hours. I'm never going to make it back or you know, not for years. So why do we do that to ourselves? Why do we we insist on making ourselves so unhappy?

And actually, I think these little electronic devices we carry everywhere, uh aid in our making ourselves unhappy. And a chapter that I really had fun writing was a chapter about George Orwell, And what I had to say about that was or Well imagined a world where there were telescreens watching everything we did, everything we said, everything we ate, But he never could have imagined that we would carry the telescreens in our own pockets and spy on ourselves. Yep. Yeah.

The other thing that you mentioned about our our devices is how they allow us to rob ourselves of silence. And I think that is really that is a big one. I think that is underappreciated. Boy, it is true. Just this sort of backstory to our talking right now. Um, you sent out some wonderful instructions about how to how to maximize the experience, and you said you make sure that the bones and are turned off and the ringers

and buzzers and notifications. And it took me about fifteen minutes of running around the apartment before I had actually turned off every buzzer, tone, ring And it made me so happy once I've done it, and I thought, you know, thanks, Eric, I'm not going to turn them back on. Yeah, why I have all these buzzers and beeps and notifications. Anyways,

I'll look at the thing. When I look at the thing, I have become a big fan of the do not disturb feature on my phone, such to the point that I forget to turn it off and then I miss like eight calls. But I just love the idea. Like I'm like, I don't want to I don't want to

deal with it, whatever it is. I'm just going to flip this switch and and I'm not going to be othered except for like if somebody calls me three times in a row, so like if my son is in North Carolina college is in trouble, I'll get the call. But otherwise you know what I you know, I don't. I just don't need to do it. It also saves me when I do that. It saves me the guilt of seeing somebody call, knowing I don't want to talk, and screening it and then feeling like I'm screening that

person's call. This is just sort of across the board, like everybody, you know, give me some give me some space, give me some space. And when I read, I do go into a zone. Um that's when I have my reading for me is a form of meditation. Uh, because I know that my heart rate settles my blood pressure. Uh. I just relax because I don't have any responsibility when I'm reading other than simply to absorb the words on the page. The writer in the book don't care what

of them. Um. I can comment, but not in any way that they can hear me. Uh. And so it's just a kind of time of bliss. Uh. One of the other books I had great fun writing about is Zen and the art of archery. Ah, and I that book sort of got me thinking that that reading is an art. Uh. And it comes back to that quote that you mentioned before. Uh. But when I read, I feel like I'm practicing this art. And anytime there's a

battle or ring or buzzer. Um, I resented bitterly what I hadn't thought to do until you said that as wonderful instructions to simply turn all that stuff off. You've got somewhere in the book where you describe the um you give somebody the can't you tell I'm reading face? And that just made me last because when I get deep deep into a book, it's like, I don't want to be unpleasant if you interrupt me. But boy, I'm just so deep in that it's very difficult for me

to change gears at that point. And so I was like, I think I've given plenty people that look before. Oh yeah, I really have that look down, back down cold. I think that was in a chapter I was writing about an extraordinary novel by Hanya Yanagahara called A Little Life, and I actually was so obsessed with that book. I was near the end and I wasn't finished, and I called in sick to work. Yeah, I've been there. I have done that sort of thing before. So we're gonna

wrap up here in in just a moment. But you you say at one point, if you could have only ten books, Song of Solomon by Tony Morrison would be one of them, which made me very happy because I've not read that book, so it sounds like I have a treat ahead of me. Um. But I wanted to ask you as for more recently, what's the what's the best novel you've read? Or or maybe not even best, but what are you know? What's a couple of favorite

novels you've read recently that we're also written recently? So one of them a book I read recently that was written recently is a historical novel called Pachinko and it's by Minin Lee. And this book was a finalist for the National Book Award, and it is a story about a Korean family in Japan over the course of several generations. UH. And it is one of those novels that absolutely sweeps you up in it. I guarantee if you start this book, you will give people. Anyone who dares disturb you, you

will give them that. Can't you see I'm reading Glower. So that's a book that that I loved recently. I also really uh fell in love with a book called The News of the World by Paulette Giles. And in this book, um, it's about someone traveling the West who reads the news to UH, to communities where they have no newspaper. He's absorbed the newspapers and he brings them around and he reads them, and he's given custody of a little girl who has to reunite with her family.

And it's an absolutely marvelous book. But I'm constantly finding things, and I read a lot of young adult books. Um. I read The Hate You Give by Angie Thomas, which is a young adult book that has a kind of extraordinary story. But a young African American woman and a friend of hers who's killed by the police and and everything that follows that, and her awakening, uh, and her attempts to awaken others, And that's an incredible book. But

I'm constantly, uh constantly devouring things. Um. Here Comes the Sun is another book Nicole Dennis span And this is a book that's set in contemporary Jamaica and it's it's a marvelous novel and the pros is just electric. Yeah. I love the end of the year because all the end of the year book lists come out and I

have just a field day reading them all. And then I go to the library and I walk out, you know, embarrassed because I've got sixty books with me, and of course I only read like one or two of them before the time is up. But it's just I just love that time of year. And so I think I actually have Pachinko sitting in the other room that I that I got from the library. Um. And so that's

another encouragement to pick it up. And I will put links in the show notes to the books you've mentioned a as a service to our readers and be as a service to myself. Listeners, if you decide you want to buy them, just click that link, because then we will you know, it'll be the ongoing support of the show plea that I have. But I'll definitely put him there mainly so people can find them. Will thank you so much for taking the time. I've got a whole

lot more notes. We will have an after conversation posted so so, uh, listeners, if you are interested in that, you can become a supporter of the show and get this conversation with Will and and lots and lots of other ones, because we're gonna go on and talk about at least the Little Prince if nothing else. Great. Thank you so much, Eric, I really I really appreciate it. I've loved talking with you today. Yeah, it's been a

real pleasure. Okay, take care, Thanks bye bye. If what you just heard was helpful to you, please consider making a donation to The One You Feed podcast. Head over to one you feed dot net slash support. The One You Feed podcast would like to sincerely thank our sponsors for supporting the show.