My Vacation Reading List

People often ask me what I’m reading. I actually brought all of these physical books with me on vacation and read almost all of them. Half of my bag was books. The important half. :-)

• Dark Matter by Blake Crouch - Another mind bending “what if” style Sci-Fi novel from Blake Crouch, a quick read with an interesting and unexpected twist at the end.
• Self Care by Leigh Stein - I ordered Self Care after reading an article by the author and this book doesn’t disappoint. It’s an unusually smart exploration of “woke culture” that manages to both respect and ridicule it simultaneously. Not an easy thing to do.
• Flight by Sherman Alexie - This book found me at a used bookstore just a few days before my trip. I have always loved Alexie’s raw unfiltered writing about the Native American experience and this dream-like book was simultaneously heartbreaking and hopeful.
• Extra Bold: A Feminist, Inclusive, Anti-racist, Nonbinary Field Guide for Graphic Designers - My advance copy of this one arrived just before heading out on the trip and I’ll be interviewing several of the authors on an upcoming episode of my show, so of course I had to bring it along. I’m only 50 pages in and already have learned a ton.
• Ex Libris by Simon Groth - I had been looking forward to finding time to read this one since I first ordered it more than a year ago. It’s an ambitious novel with a fascinating backstory (the 12 chapters of the book are arranged at random so no two copies are exactly identical).
• The Liar’s Dictionary by Eley Williams - On a quiet afternoon at the Unicorn Bookstore (the only one on the island), I picked up this book based on the dust jacket description of the story alone. It reminded me of The Professor and the Madman, a book that I loved. This is the one I’m currently reading, so it will be my plane reading on the way home.