April ‘23 Recap
This episode of Books for Men is a short recap of all the episodes from April '23. It was a full month—(2) book episodes, (1) Bad Advice episode, and (1) From the Vault episode. All super solid. Listen for more!
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READ THE TRANSCRIPT:
Welcome back to Books for Men, a podcast to inspire more men to read and bring together men who do. So as always, when I start the recap episodes, I'd like to just send a big thank you to everybody who listens to the show, especially those who share the show with friends and family members and other people who they think might like it. Because like I always say, word of mouth is everything when it comes to spreading awareness. So without you, we would not be reaching as many people to inspire more men to read and bring together men who do, which ultimately is the most important thing, even though it's masked in a lot of other stuff that we do here on the show. And hopefully, we never lose sight of the big picture. I did just want to remind you that today is the first of the month.
(01:03)
So the newsletter will be going out later today. And if you are not on that, you can subscribe at BooksforMen.org. It's basically a monthly recap of all of the episodes complete with links and full book and author information, as well as quotes from each book. Also, newsletter-only book recommendations. So this month's newsletter actually has a lot more quotes than I typically included. I'm sort of playing with this new feature of five quotes from each book. And then if I have more, I put a plus. So it'll be five plus one or five plus three, but you can always expect a minimum of five quotes from each book. It's just that some books that I read have so many that I want to share with you, or maybe the author has some quotes that aren't in the book that I also want to share with you. And that's what I've done this month. So I hope you enjoy it. And again, if you want to sign up for that, you could do so at BooksforMen.org.
(02:04)
Now, with that being said, let's hop right into the recap, which was a fun month. We had two really strong books. I know I always say that because of course they're strong, or of course, I think they're strong. That's why I'm sharing them with you, or at least I think you might like them. And so, the first one was non-fiction, and it was called Is This Anything? by Jerry Seinfeld. And, basically, it's a book that comprises the comedian's best material self-selected over five decades. So the 70s, 80s, 90s, 00s, and the 2010s. Pretty cool, right? It's really more or less like a love letter to a lifelong commitment to process, craft, and comedy. And I'm not going to share too much more about it here, but I did share a lot in the episode. So if you're in this book, I would definitely go back and listen to it. I will say that there are a lot of great Seinfeld quotes coming up in this month's newsletter.
(03:07)
All right now let's pivot into the fiction selection for the month, which was called The Son by Philipp Meyer. So it is a Western, it's a historical fiction. It's an epic novel about the rise of a Texas oil dynasty spanning from 1836 to the 2010s. This expansive nature of it really aids in its greatness, at least in my opinion. I talk a lot about that in the episode. It's really a story of power, family, self-discovery, and perhaps most importantly, the brutal past that birthed our country. And so, although there's a lot to love about this book, I do hit on a very specific reason why I loved it in the episode.
(04:02)
And so if you're interested in this novel, I would definitely go back and listen to the episode. And just quickly, it was really hard for me to select quotes to share with you in the newsletter for this book because I had so many pages of quotes and excerpts that I pulled from reading this book. With that being said, I think that the ones that I did choose are probably my favorites, but there are a lot of close seconds, let's put it that way. So that concludes the two books that we shared on the podcast this month, but we did have two other episodes, a Bad Advice segment, as well as, a From the Vault segment. And the Bad Advice segment speaks to a well-trodden oft-given piece of advice to “work on your weakness” or improve in areas that you're not so great at. And while there are specific examples where this would probably be good advice, I think in general, most of the time the exact opposite is probably better advice. So I know before you jump down my neck, hear me out, go listen to the episode, I think I lay down a pretty good case for doubling down on your strengths as opposed to working on your weaknesses.
(05:10)
And then, the From the Vault episode was an article that I wrote about five years ago called “An Urge Worth Fighting.” Really, it just challenges you to rethink competition and offers a subtle nuance that I think will be helpful, maybe even a little inspirational. Again, the article was written five years ago, but I feel like it is truly evergreen, and it kind of stuck out to me when I was reviewing the past episodes and I didn't really have the intention to share old articles with you, but I thought that this was applicable. I thought that it might help you, and I think we could all use a little bit of help and support, and inspiration in our life at times. All right, so that is a wrap. That was the recap for April 2023. I already gave you a lot of pre-amble, so I will wrap this up quickly. But I did want to remind you that if you are a consistent listener on this show, please remember to rate it, review it, follow, like, and subscribe on whatever podcast platform you listen to this on, because that will make a huge difference inspiring more men to read and bringing together men who do.
