December ‘23 Recap

episode SUMMARY:

In this episode of the Books for Men podcast, host Douglas Vigliotti recaps the month of December 2023 and expresses his gratitude to listeners for their support throughout the year. He encourages them to rate, review, or subscribe to the podcast and to share it with family and friends during the holiday season. Vigliotti announces that there will be no new episode next week and that the episode summaries will now also be featured in the newsletter. He then provides a recap of the month’s books: Obvious in Hindsight by Bradley Tusk, a satire about a political tech consultant group's attempt to legalize flying cars; A Million Little Pieces by James Frey, a memoir/novel about the author's time in rehab; and The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle, a book about living in the present moment. Vigliotti concludes by wishing listeners a happy holiday season and new year, hints at upcoming plans for the podcast in 2024, and reminds listeners they can always connect with him on Instagram @douglasvigliotti.

Listen to the episode:

*Subscribe to The Books for Men Newsletter, a monthly round-up of every episode with full book and author info, all the best quotes, and newsletter-only book recommendations!

READ THE TRANSCRIPT:

Welcome back, the Books for Men, a podcast to inspire more men to read and bring together men who do so as always, with these recap episodes, first, I’d like to send a big thank you to everybody who has listened to the podcast and has supported the podcast throughout this entire year. It's been a lot of fun for me to do these episodes every week. I do them because I enjoy them and because I hope to inspire some guy out there somewhere to read something that he might not have otherwise. And those are really the only two reasons why I do this. And I can't thank you enough for, again, supporting the show. And I hope that you'll continue to do so in 2024. And on that note, if you haven't already, then please go rate, review, follow, subscribe, or any of that good stuff on whatever podcast platform you're listening to this on, especially if you're a repeat listener.

(01:08)

Shame on you if you haven't supported the podcast in one of those simple, simple ways that only take 30 seconds. I know here I am shaming you for not going above and beyond when you're already listening to the show. So I apologize, but you get the point. It takes 30 seconds. So if you can go do it, I would greatly appreciate it because ultimately it helps more people find the show, and that in return spreads awareness for the initiative. Or actually come to think of it, today is Christmas Day, so Merry Christmas to all those who celebrate Happy Holidays to everybody else. But it's also a good time to mention it perhaps to a family or friend. You're going to be running into a lot of people you don't see. Maybe somehow you could drop in there that you've been listening to this show about books.

(01:56)

I think you might like it. Hey, I'm just saying might be a good conversation starter. I'm not biased or anything, but anyway, enough of me pitching my own show here or trying to convince you to do so, I should say. Let's get on with the recap. Actually, before we do that, just two quick things. One is that next week there will not be a new episode. I know, I know, but last year I did the same thing. I took the first week of the year off, and I'm going to probably make that a trend as we go on here year after year, assuming that I do this year after year, I'm anticipating I will, but anything could happen, I guess. Anyway, there won't be an episode next week, but the newsletter does come out on that day, the first of every month, and next Monday will be the first of the year, of course.

(02:45)

So if you're interested in signing up for that or getting that edition, please remember to go to BooksforMen.org and you could sign up there. For anybody who is already receiving the newsletter, you'll recognize something new this month. So I have summaries that are going to be added to the edition that's coming up. I also added these summaries to the website. So if you're curious as to what those summaries will look like, you can go check them out on the website—they're pretty cool. They're just a high-level overview of each episode, and we actually have AI to thank for that. It's a program that actually listens to the episode and comes up with these nifty little summaries. I tweak them a little bit, obviously here and there just to make sure that they do in fact hit on the major themes or parts of each episode.

(03:35)

But it's a cool service. It saves time and also more importantly for you the listener, it provides you with a little snapshot of what each episode is about. Okay, now let's move on to the recap for December 2023. It was a three-book month. We had two nonfiction books for the month and one work of fiction. So actually, let's start with the work of fiction. It was called Obvious in Hindsight by Bradley Tusk. It's a satire, it reads sort of like autofiction, something that I talked a lot about in the episode. It's a novel that provides a kaleidoscope look at a political tech consultant group's attempt to legalize flying cars in three cities, primarily New York, Austin, and LA. It's fun, it's energetic, and it will make you rethink the powerful industries that shape our society. There's probably not a better person to write this novel than Tusk.

(04:33)

He's, as I mentioned in the episode, an insider with an outsider's perspective, and that sets up really well for satire and this style of novel. And one of the other things that he includes in the back of the book is a list that is called the “10 Rules that Demystify Politics.” So I think for many it will be eye-opening or entertaining or I don't know, it could be a lot of different things to a lot of different people who come at this from the varying ways that they do and their preconceptions and ideological perspectives and the way that they see things. It might offend or it might confirm. I don't know. But it's interesting either way. And because of that, I will be featuring the entire list in the newsletter that comes out next week. Alright, so now let's move into the first nonfiction book for the month.

(05:31)

And that was A Million Little Pieces by James Frey. So it's a memoir or a novel perhaps, I guess it's up for debate. And if you go back and listen to the episode, then you'll understand what I mean. It's about the author's six-week stint in rehab for alcohol and crack addiction. But the big reason why I wanted to share the book was to discuss the ever-interesting topic to me of blending fiction and reality inside of works that are both labeled based on a true story or fact as well as in stories that are clearly fictional narratives, like say, Obvious in Hindsight or the slew of other novels that come out that seem to be autobiographical in a sense. And so this interesting dynamic that we have with fact and fiction, and is it possible that sometimes the only way to convey emotional truth, like real, emotional and mental truth is through the utilization of fiction, even in a narrative form that is supposed to be primarily fact.

(06:39)

I really asked the question, does it matter if this book is true, or what about any book? And so if you're interested, I delve a lot deeper into those questions so you can go back and listen to that episode. One of the quotes that I absolutely love from the book is, “I am aware that the battle I am fighting is a petty one, but I'm also aware that in order to win that, which is great, you first must win that which is small.” Okay, so for the final book of the month, I carefully selected it as the final book of the year because I think it could be very helpful for a lot of people. And it was called The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle. It's a book about learning how to detach from time, basically—past and future—and focus on the present.

(07:26)

So our entire lives are lived through the present moment. And why is it that our minds spend so little time there? So this idea is really interesting to me that our minds travel without us knowing both to the past and to the future and spend such little time in the present moment, which in reality is the only thing that we have, anything that is the past was once the present, anything that's in the future will also once be the present. And so this focus on the present moment and the now is one that I think many people could get a lot of benefit from. And don't confuse this with the idea of Yolo. You only live once, right? Like, go do crazy things. Certainly, the idea that your time is finite should promote that you do the things that matter most to you, even if they are crazy or what have you.

(08:27)

But this book is a lot deeper and a lot more meaningful than that in the sense that you are appreciating even the mundane aspects of now realizing that now is the only thing that you have. It reminds me of a quote by Nora Ephron, who was someone I featured on this podcast. She says, “If you can't be happy washing dishes, you can't be happy.” And I think that there's a lot of truth in that, and I overlooked this book, The Power of Now for a lot of years because of my own walls that I had built up in my mind of what I think about this type of book and these types of people. And I'm using air quotes because it's all ridiculous in a way. I talk a lot about self-help and the crappiness of a lot of it in the episode, but that doesn't mean you should throw the baby out with the bath water, so to speak.

(09:20)

There is a lot of stuff that could actually help you in the genre too. It's like anything, you either get down with someone's sensibilities or you don't, and I'll leave you with a quote. “There is never a time when your life is not this moment. Is that not a fact?” Of course, if you want more, go back and listen to the episode. So that's all I've got. It is a wrap, not just for this episode, but for the year 2023. So again, thank you so much for being a listener. I want to wish everybody a happy, safe holiday season and a great new year. I hope all of your resolutions come true. And I'm looking forward to bringing books for men into 2024. I have some pretty cool stuff planned for the year, probably double down on promotion, start up some interviews, and maybe some different solo episodes that are more listicle-like. I don't know. I'm playing with a lot of different ideas, but either way, I appreciate you and if you want to connect with me, you can always do so at @douglasvigliotti on Instagram. It's the only social media I have. And of course, for more information, you could always visit the website BooksforMen.org.