Jordan Mattox

1. What’s Our Problem?: A Self-Help Book for Societies Tim Urban

I’ve been a fan of Urban’s blog for years and loved his Ted Talk on procrastination (it’s probably my favorite Ted Talks of all time). This book is like an expanded version of his blog posts which feature hilarious stick figure cartoons to illustrate his points. The premise is that our society has gone off of the rails, and he comes up with some interesting diagnoses, some more helpful than others. The book is thought-provoking at times and worth reading for some of the mental models and frameworks. Some parts dragged, and I think he perhaps over-emphasized some of his criticisms. Nevertheless, one of the more creative critiques I’ve read in a while. 

2. Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI David Grann

This one has sat on my bookshelf for years and the release of the trailer for the movie adaptation by Scorcese starring Leo finally pushed me over the edge. It’s a fast read with short, suspenseful staccato chapters. The story is horrifying of course, and is a broader parable about American conquest and complicity. Couldn’t recommend the book more highly, and I wish that I read it earlier. 

3. The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness, and Healing in a Toxic Culture Gabor Maté

I’ve been working on this for the past few months, digesting chapters at a time. If you don’t know Gabor Maté, he’s becoming a kind of guru in certain niches of the medical community and is a critic of the reductionist biochemical interpretations of disease. Instead, he argues for a more mind-body understanding of illness and tries in the book to create a more holistic view of illness. The book can be a kind of paradigm shifter for a lot of people, myself included, and will alter the way you look at your health. 

4. Weather: A Novel Jenny Offill

This one has been on my list to read, and I finished it on a plane to Maui where there isn’t much weather. The book does not really have a plot, but is a series of scenes and hilarious and insightful speculations. The “story” follows a university librarian who has a number of dependent relationships where she plays a caretaker/helper role. In spite of the lack of plot, I plowed through the book and LOL’d many times throughout. Recommended if you are the literary fiction type. 

5. The Deep Places: A Memoir of Illness and Discovery Ross Douthat 

I’ve been reading Ross for years, starting when he was a blogger at The Atlantic. While he writes primarily about politics and religion (and lately about UAP’s), this is an illness memoir after he contracted Lyme disease. The book is a story about his journey through traditional western medicine and then, after certain walls were hit, non-traditional medicine. As someone that has dealt with a chronic condition, albeit not as debilitating as Lyme disease, I felt myself relating to a lot of what he was describing in his encounters with doctors. 

6. The Notebook, The Proof, The Third Lie: Three Novels Agota Kristof

This is a series of three novels, and I am currently halfway through the third. The novels are acclaimed more in Europe than in the states. The recommendation came from Jhumpa Lahiri, who mentioned the novels in passing in a talk she gave. The novels follow twin brothers who are meant to be an allegorical representation of connection and division in Europe. The novels are graphic, describing violence and sexual acts in the starkest, but most minimal prose. Recommended, but not for everyone.