It's really hard to recommend a good book. Reading-- real reading-- is deeply personal. In the end, it's what you think about the words that makes the book good for you or not. Not that I subscribe to relative aesthetic ethics . . . I think some sentences are written far better than others. But once a book reaches a certain level of competence, then it's really up to the reader to appreciate and make sense of it. And if it sounds like "hillbilly gibberish," as Darryl McDaniels categorized the lyrics to "Walk This Way"-- then even if you sing it like you mean it, it still might not mean much to you at all (even if everyone else loves it).
So skip the list if you want, but grant me one sincere, universal, sure-fire recommendation. A list of one. I would trade all the books on my list for #39. Boom. Literally.
I'm talking about Boom Town: The Fantastical Saga of Oklahoma City, Its Chaotic Founding, Its Apocalyptic Weather, Its Purloined Basketball Team, and the Dream of Becoming a World Class Metropolis by Sam Anderson. Anderson is so passionate about his subject matter that it doesn't matter if you're a Thunder/Flaming Lips fan, or a tornado junkie, or a history buff who wants to know more about the Oklahoma Land Rush of 1889-- which Anderson says should either be called "Chaos Explosion Apocalypse Town" or "Reckoning of the Doom Settlers: Clusterfuck on the Prairie-- none of that matters, as the book races along at EF5 speed towards the inevitable explosion.
Read it.
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- Glass House: The 1% Economy and the Shattering of the All-American Town by Brian Alexander
- White Tears by Hari Kunzru
- The Amateur: The Pleasure of Doing What You Love by Andy Merrifield
- The Night Market by Jonathan Moore
- Confessions of a Recovering Environmentalist by Paul Kingsnorth
- The Wizard and the Prophet by Charles C. Mann
- The Elephant in the Brain: Hidden Motives in Everyday Life by Kevin Simler and Robin Hanson
- The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion by Jonathan Haidt
- Global Discontents: Conversations on the Rising Threats to Democracy by Noam Chomsky
- Beartown by Fredrik Backman
- Requiem for the American Dream by Noam Chomsky
- The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula Le Guin
- The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life by Mark Manson
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- The Consciousness Instinct: Unraveling the Mystery of How the Brain Makes the Mind by Michael S. Gazzaniga
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- The Closing of the American Mind: How Higher Education Has Failed Democracy and Impoverished the Souls of Today's Students by Allan Bloom
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- Ask the Dust by John Fante
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- The Shakespeare Requirement by Julie Schumacher
- Vox by Christina Dalcher
- Heartland: A Memoir of Working Hard and Being Broke in the Richest Country on Earth by Sarah Smarsh
- Boom Town: The Fantastical Saga of Oklahoma City, Its Chaotic Founding, Its Apocalyptic Weather, Its Purloined Basketball Team, and the Dream of Becoming a World Class Metropolis by Sam Anderson
- Naked Statistics: Stripping the Dread from the Data Andrew Wheeler
- American Prison by Shane Bauer
- Middlemarch by George Eliot
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