Jordan Mattox

1. The Importance of Being Earnest Oscar Wilde 

My Audible subscription includes all of these classics read by actors and celebrities. Some are better than others. I really enjoyed this one. It has a full cast, kind of like a radio drama. I think most people’s association with Wilde is The Portrait of Dorian Gray, which means that people are missing his humor, which may be one of his best assets as a writer. 

2. Let Me Tell You What I Mean Joan Didion 

I recently recorded a podcast with Steven Church, an essayist and professor from Fresno State, and we talked for a long time about what the world lost when Joan Didion died. The next day I happened to see this one on the shelf at the library. It is a collection of essays over the course of the last 60 years, ending with an essay on Martha Stewart. 

3. The Hummingbird’s Gift Sy Montgomery 

The brief, but poignant, book is more essay than book, but it has a large impact on your soul. Kelsey and I have a feeder in our backyard and both enjoy watching them drink and fight. They are graceful and violent. The book focuses on a baby hummingbird rescue in northern California. 

4. The Egg and I Betty MacDonald 

MacDonald became famous for creating a series of children’s books, but this is definitely her greatest achievement. The book is a memoir of her time starting a chicken farm in Western Washington in the late 20s. She is hilarious, to the point where my wife told me to read this book in particular in another room. Read it, please. 

5. Advice Not Given: A Guide to Getting Over Yourself Mark Epstein 

Epstein is a psychiatrist and a buddhist teacher and practitioner. The book tries to show the unity of the tasks of psychiatry/psychology and Buddhism, contending that both attempt to address difficulties. The central thesis of the book is that giving the ego free reign is the recipe for unhappiness. The book is interesting, but sometimes these books tend to follow the recipe of exposition for a few paragraphs followed by examples, which gets repeated each chapter. I enjoyed this book, but I won’t remember most of it. 

6. The Darkening Age: The Christian Destruction of the Classical World Catherine Nixey 

If you’ve grown up in the church, this book might mark a major paradigm shift for you. And even for me, a pastor’s kid who went to seminary, many of the ideas and facts included in this book were news to me. The central thesis of the book is that, when Rome became Christian, they used the power of the state to destroy most of the culture of the classical world, including books, art, architecture, temples, etc. The evidence is damning and startling.