This post contains affiliate links to Bookshop.org. F@ck Jeff Bezos and Amazon.com. I also recommend utilizing your public library and Thriftbooks.com.

THE BEAST YOU ARE: STORIES by Paul Tremblay (2023)

This is a collection of horror fantasy short stories in the lineage of Ray Bradbury. The title story The Beast You Are is written in free verse (in the style of Beowulf) and about anthropomorphic animals (in the tradition of Watership Down) that live in a city where every 30 years the city practices a The Lottery style ritual sacrifice. Two children who survive the ritual grow and choose very different ways of dealing with their trauma, while the city and society decays around them. The Beast You Are was especially moving and resonant in the wake of the 2024 presidential election, but my favorite story from the book is The Last Conversation (so haunting, please call me after you read it) and the first story Ice Cold Lemonade 25 cents Haunted House Tour: 1 Per Person is hilariously poignant and strangely relatable.

WOLF TOTEM by Jiang Rong (2004)

The day after the election, I kept thinking of the film To Live by Zhang Yimou (1994) in which a family endures the Chinese Civil War and senseless tragedy of the Cultural Revolution, as a reminder that a nation can survive a personality cult dictator, anti-science, anti-fact, anti-expert government, family and neighbors turning on each other, educated people and undesirables being lynched, famine and it’ll all be fine in 20 years. But this is a book list, so let’s finally read Wolf Totem, which is a semi-autographical tale about a educated young man that is “sent-down” to Inner Mongolia during the height of the Cultural Revolution and makes something of it. To be honest, I haven’t read it, continually putting it off saying I want to read it in the original Chinese, but I recently picked up a paperback of the English translation at a thrift store so it’s on the to read shelf.

MAN’S SEARCH FOR MEANING by Viktor Frankl

In The Myth of Sisyphus, Camus asserts at the conclusion that “The struggle itself towards the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.” But why and how? Frankl describes his personal experience in a Nazi concentration camp and how he came to develop a type of psychotherapy to help people find individual meaning in their lives. You can still find therapists that practice Frankl’s logotherapy on Psychology Today. I looked when I was in the process of deciding to quit my job this past spring.

WHEREVER YOU GO THERE YOU ARE by Jon Kabat-Zinn (1994)

So, yes, my mind was catastrophizing in the wake of the election, jumping to the Cultural Revolution and Nazi Germany. I found it time to pull out this mindfulness meditation classic, which is practical, does not promise results and is not woo woo at all. The book consists of short chapters, each concluding with a short practical exercise. Use this as an item on your dopamine menu instead of doom scrolling.

ENDURANCE: SHACKLETON’S INCREDIBLE VOYAGE by Alfred Lansing (1959)

A somehow completely engrossing account of Ernest Shackleton’s complete failure of an Antarctic expedition in 1915, where for most of the adventure the men are just stuck on a giant ice floe. Miraculously, none of the men die during the 10 months. And surprisingly, the book is not about how miserable and desperate the conditions were but about how man really needs very little to be happy.

One final paragraph of advice: do not burn yourselves out. Be as I am – a reluctant enthusiast…. a part-time crusader, a half-hearted fanatic. Save the other half of yourselves and your lives for pleasure and adventure. It is not enough to fight for the land; it is even more important to enjoy it. While you can. While it’s still here. So get out there and hunt and fish and mess around with your friends, ramble out yonder and explore the forests, climb the mountains, bag the peaks, run the rivers, breathe deep of that yet sweet and lucid air, sit quietly for a while and contemplate the precious stillness, the lovely, mysterious, and awesome space. Enjoy yourselves, keep your brain in your head and your head firmly attached to the body, the body active and alive, and I promise you this much; I promise you this one sweet victory over our enemies, over those desk-bound men and women with their hearts in a safe deposit box, and their eyes hypnotized by desk calculators. I promise you this; You will outlive the bastards.

Edward Abbey, Desert Solitaire