best books to read on the road

Truly, truly, truly, there is nothing more I would rather talk about than books. Today, I'd like to share with you some of the books I've been reading and really enjoying over the year so far. Last time I counted, I had 88 books tucked in nooks and corners around my little tiny home on wheels, but we don't have time to get through all of them today. So I've picked four of my favorites to talk about more in depth, but I'll also share some books I recently got that I haven't quite finished yet too. Each year, it seems a theme sort of naturally emerges, and this particular year, I've been reading lots of books that are bringing me back to nature. And honestly, this might be my best year of reading yet. Shall we? Books. They have the power to change your life, if you let them. What did you really expect? There's never been any more than this, and never will be any more than this. Nobody's out to save the world, because nobody gives a damn about the world. That was just a bunch of goofy kids talking. Get a job, make some money, work until you're 60, then move to Florida and die. Oh my goodness. Ishmael. Ishmael by Daniel Quinn. Daniel Quinn is my dude. What do I even say about this book? It's technically a philosophical fiction novel. That's the category or genre I would put it in. But at its core, Ishmael is just a really damn good story. I actually have a really hard time recommending this book to people though, to be honest. This is one of those books that has a very strong potential to shatter your worldview. At least that's what it did for me. And it can kind of rip you to pieces and tear you down. Yeah. Get it together. I just want to say that the first time that I read this book, it did shatter my worldview and it took me a hot minute to gather myself and put my pieces back together. In the end, it was for the better. I just wonder what type of path I would have gone down if it hadn't been for this book. Would I be living in my van right now if it wasn't for reading this? Yeah, maybe still. But I would argue that this book, when I read it many, many years ago, it kind of just planted the seed for me to live my life in a whole different way and see the world in a whole different perspective than what I had grown up believing or seeing. I'm starting to sound freaky. Dial it back. Dial it back. Okay. If you're at all the type of person who just wonders or asks, is there more to this nine to five, this hustle and grind, this book will either find you when you're ready or now that you have heard of this book or know of this book or I'm reminding you of this book because maybe you've already heard about it before. When you are ready, I feel like you make the extra effort to just find this book, seek it out, and read it. When your curiosity gets you to that point, you will just read this book and hopefully I won't sound crazy anymore and you'll understand a little bit better what I'm talking about. And I just would highly, highly, highly recommend after you read this book to also read The Story of Bee, also by Daniel Quinn. It's technically the sequel and if you want to go as far as to reading the third book, My Ishmael, it's kind of a trilogy but you don't have to read them in a row all together. They technically can be read separately but if you want the best experience, just read Ishmael and then The Story of Bee and then My Ishmael. Yeah. If you've read Ishmael or other books by Daniel Quinn and really enjoyed them, you might also like Man's Impact on Environment, Sapiens, A Brief History of Humankind, Plato at the Googleplex, A New Earth, or perhaps Living the Good Life. What do stories do? They kill us a bit and make us change. And that is precisely what is happening to me as I read this book. This is The Overstory by Richard Powers. It was published in 2018 and also won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. I might be jumping the gun a little bit here. I have not read it entirely. I am in the middle of reading it. I got this book a couple of days ago and I just can't seem to put it down so it's all I want to talk about. But this book is really different from any other book, any other fiction novel I've read. The structure of this novel is very different. It's a beast of a book. It's just over 500 pages. But the first few chapters, I want to say the first eight chapters or so, maybe nine, each chapter kind of feels like its own short story. The author keeps introducing these new characters. I'm really good at character development, by the way. Each character's story and how he's written about their lives is so captivating. It just sucks you in. Again, I find myself reading this book late, late, late into the night slash early morning. But what this book actually does to anyone who reads it is really forces the reader to examine their role in and relationship to nature and particularly trees. My appreciation and understanding of trees is just so different as I read this book and for the better. If you're just looking for a story that will immerse you in nature and open your eyes to the natural world around you in a way that you kind of feel maybe is missing or you just want to be wowed and see the true magic that is all around us in the natural world, you might really enjoy this book. Based off of what I've read so far, if you're someone who's already read The Overstory and really liked it, you might also like Walden by Henry David Thoreau, To See Every Bird on Earth, The Plant Messiah, Lab Girl, Desert Solitaire, Braiding Sweetgrass, or The Food Explorer, The True Adventures of the Globe-Trotting Botanist Who Transformed What America Eats. Once you can read anything, you can learn everything. It was up to her. Nobody's been close to filling their brains, he said. We're all like giraffes, not using their necks to reach the higher levels. I don't know what it is, but I've been on a serious fiction kick this year and I'm not mad about it. This is Where the Cloud Adds Sing by Delia Owens, published in 2018. Yes, it's been on the New York Times bestseller list for quite a while and sometimes those books are hyped up to be more than they actually are, but I can see why this one made it and I think that it's really worth it. It's just one of those books that is a page turner. I read this in two sittings over the course of 48 hours, just reading and reading and reading. Once you start, you get to a point pretty early on in the book where you can't really stop reading it. It's a beautifully written book. It's a coming-of-age story. It's a haunting mystery. It's an ode to the natural marshlands in North Carolina, I believe is kind of the setting. It's a beautiful book and it's a story about resiliency and loneliness and love and loss and prejudice and strength and determination. There's so much in this book and I believe, yes, this book is soon to be a major motion picture. So what that really means is if you haven't read this book and it at all sounds interesting to you, you should read it now before the book comes out because we all know once the movie comes out, you'll just watch the movie, but you should read the book because the book is always better. The book is always better. I'm not really one to give like a full synopsis because you can easily do that online. I just want to share more so the themes and the feelings and the vibes that the books give because it's too easy to give too much away and I do not want to be someone who spoils a good book for anybody. If you've read Where the Crawdads Sing and really liked it, you might also like A Sand County Almanac, The Sand Keeper, Can Poetry Save the Earth, or Poems by Walt Whitman. What happens to the time and space to actually think one's own thoughts when the technologies we use every day collapse our experiences into 24-7 news cycles and 24-7 availability? In an endless cycle where communication is stunted and time is money, there are few moments to slip away and fewer ways to find each other. Platforms such as Facebook and Instagram act like dams that capitalize on our natural interest in others and an ageless need for community, hijacking and frustrating our most innate desires and profiting from them. How to Do Nothing, Resisting the Attention Economy by Jenny O'Dell. This was published in 2018. It is surprisingly the only non-fiction book I am talking about in depth today. The title is misleading. I think sometimes people pick it up and based off the cover and the title, it seems like it would be some sort of self-help book to get you to unplug from your phone or to leave social media, but that is not what this book is at all. So if that's what you thought it was, or if that's what you think it is when you go into reading this, you will be sadly disappointed. In actuality, How to Do Nothing is a really well-researched book that kind of examines and analyzes a lot of nuanced, somewhat abstract, at times esoteric concepts like the self and resisting in place and what happens when your attention is constantly up for grabs by companies and by social media and by the news and how that limits our ability or our functioning self to just be silent and ponder and think our own thoughts. This book really helped me have a healthier understanding and relationship to social media, to YouTube, to online presence, if you will. This author just puts in towards a lot of the things I think many people are feeling in relation to social media and feeling anxious and buzzed all the time from soundbites and the fear-mongering tactics of how news is presented to us. Again, it's hard for me to recommend books because you might just not jive with this book. I think this is one of those books that it either really speaks to you and resonate a lot with it or it kind of just does nothing for you and it's just not meant for you, which happens especially with non-fiction. I would just say if you find yourself in a bookstore and pick this up, just start reading it from the introductory page and you'll know pretty soon right off the bat if it will be a book that you could continue reading or not. That's all I'm going to say about that. Yeah. If you have read How to Do Nothing and you enjoyed it, I think you might also like Shop Class as Soulcraft, A Place of My Own, Mastery, Flow, The Evolving Self, or Figuring by Maria Popova. Woo! We did it! If you've stuck around this long, you are my people. But I will say, as much as I love talking about books, it's not as much as I love reading them. So. Don't spill, don't spill, don't spill. Wake up! Let's get focused. Let's film before all the road noise. Yeah. Damn good story. I think I just spit a little. Will she ever finish? It's not a spider. Okay, it's quiet. All right, let's go. Let's try again. I should have written about this before I started. You could put on a sweater, but you're not gonna do much. What do I want to say about this book without giving anything away? Yeah. Yeah. I just want to talk about books and go back to sleep. I'm never gonna finish filming. It's nine o'clock. It's nine o'clock already. Already. What is that song? Popcorn, you're it. I think I'm just making shit up. Won't be the first time. Okay. Focus. Focus. We're gonna focus now. Okay. Okay. Three down, one to go. Gotta start over. No. No. Okay. It's fine. It's fine. We're gonna do it again. Okay. The struggle today. It is a Friday indeed, but like 17 hours of editing ahead of me. Lord, help me.