July ‘23 Recap (and Happy 1-Year Anniversary!)

episode SUMMARY:

In this episode of the Books for Men podcast, host Douglas Vigliotti expresses gratitude to listeners and highlights the one-year anniversary of the podcast. He shares the top three most downloaded episodes, which are all book episodes, mentioning he plans to focus on more book episodes in the future. Vigliotti discusses the intimate nature of podcasting and the global reach it provides. He then provides a brief recap of the previous month's episodes, featuring two works of fiction, Bright Lights, Big City by Jay McInerney, and The Poet by Michael Connelly, and two episodes of “From the Vault” with Annie Duke, author of Thinking in Bets and Quit. Vigliotti recommends checking out the featured books and encourages listeners to visit the website for full transcripts and to sign up for the newsletter at BooksforMen.org.

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Welcome back to Books for Men, a podcast to inspire more men to read and bring together men who do so. As always, with the recap episodes, I first like to give a big thank you to everybody who listens to the show on a regular basis, and especially to those who share the show with friends and family members and other people who they think might enjoy it. Because word of mouth is everything, and I know you always hear me say that, but it truly is when you are trying to spread awareness. And with this podcast specifically, as I always start the show off with, it's to inspire more men to read. So without you, then we would not be spreading that message as far and wide as we possibly could. If you want to double down on that support, please take a minute to just rate review, like subscribe, or follow on whatever podcast platform you are listening to this on, because doing so, helps more people find the show.

(01:08)

And on that note, I should mention that today marks a pretty big milestone for the podcast. It's actually the one-year anniversary! The very first episode was the trailer on July 25th, 2022, and that's where I explained the concept for the show. But the first real book episode was on August 1st, 2022. And that was still one of my favorite novels to date. And it was, of course, naming Mus Miles from nowhere. I highly recommend you go back and listen to that episode or skip it altogether and just go read the book because it's a great one. I thought it would be cool to share with you the top three episodes as far as downloads are concerned for year one. So in the third position, I have an episode that I already mentioned and that is the trailer. And this sort of makes sense because it's also prompted as the top episode on most of the listening platforms.

(02:09)

And so I assume people want to know what the show is going to be about, at least a little bit. So that makes sense. The second episode was the Haruki Murakami book, Sputnik Sweetheart, which is another novel that I absolutely love. And so I thought that that was interesting. And then by a pretty wide margin, I would say the number one listen-to episode throughout the first year, which totally warms my heart, is the episode where I featured Hell's Angels by Hunter S. Thompson. For those who listen to that episode, they know Hunter was a very big influence on my life at an earlier age. So if you want to join the mob and listened to the most popular episodes, there they are the trailer, Haruki Murakami’s Sputnik Sweetheart, and then in the top slot Hell's Angels by Hunter S. Thompson.

(02:57)

The interesting thing about podcasting for me is that it's sort of like a black hole. You don't know who is listening, you don't know who you're talking to. It could be a little frustrating at times just because if you want something that's more interactive, then you have to use a different type of medium, I guess. But the thing that I love the most about podcasting is it is very intimate, right? And so when I listen to podcasts, I feel like I really get to know the host or know the guests that are on the interview shows that I listen to quite a bit. And that's one of the huge benefits of it. And so, you know, time and time again, I think about potentially doing different style episodes, but the one thing that has become pretty apparent for me is that the most listened-to episodes are actually just the book episodes. They're not the interview episodes, they're not the advice episodes, they're not my old articles, they're literally just the book episodes.

(03:53)

So I'm going to focus on doing probably more of those in the back half of this year. Of course, I may switch it up and you know, add some stuff in periodically. But as for right now, I think I'm going to keep doing the book episodes because they seem to be the most popular among all of the styles, which kind of makes sense because that is the original concept for the show. And I would imagine that maybe listeners come back to hear that, or maybe I'm completely wrong and the sample size is still too small to know, but I guess time will tell. Oh, and just one more thing on that black hole idea. The other interesting tidbit is that when you're podcasting, you reach the entire world, which is pretty amazing, right? In that when I look at where a lot of the listeners are for this show, certainly 70% of them come from America, but that other 30% is really from all over the world, everywhere from Europe to Africa, to South America, to Asia, to you know, it's everywhere.

(04:50)

It's every continent. It's so interesting. And so that idea is just super cool to have that kind of global reach for all the negatives that we hear about technology, the ability to distribute definitely has its pluses and its minuses. But never before has there been a time when you could reach people all over the world in such an easy way, an intimate way, really, even if it does have some pair of social qualities about it. Anyway, let's hop into the recap and I will keep it brief because you have the episodes to go back and listen to. Anyway, the month was sort of a unique month in that I featured two works of fiction and two episodes From the Vault, which was a two-part conversation with Annie Duke. And that conversation centered around her book Thinking in Bets: How To Make Smarter Decisions When You Don't Have All the Facts.

(05:47)

And that is a nonfiction book that is in my top five pretty easily. So I was so happy to give it a feature for two weeks on the podcast. And Annie is someone who I just loved talking to and someone who I admire a lot in the way that she thinks about decisions and just about life as a whole, I guess. And you'll probably gather that if you go back and you listen to either one of those conversations, they're both very strong in their own right now. As for those two works of fiction that I had mentioned, there were two different books. The first one was The Poet by Michael Connelly, which is a novel about a small-time reporter trying to solve the murder of his homicide detective twin brother. And it turns into a secret f b I hunt for a serial killer who leaves a line or two from Edgar Allen Poe with each of his victims.

(06:39)

It's dark, it's propulsive, it’s really quintessential crime fiction, and it might be the best of the bunch in a catalog from a legendary crime writer. So go check that episode out if you want to learn more or skip it and just go read the book. And the other novel that I featured this month was the episode just last week, and it was called Bright Lights, Big City by Jay McInerney. And it's a literary novel, it's coming of age story, a novel about a 20-something writer who resorts to the hedonism of 1980s Manhattan, all the cocaine and nightclubs and parties, and doing this to cope with his unfortunate life and some of the events that have happened in his life. It's not totally hopeless. I kind of cue on that in the episode. It's also told in a very unique way using second-person point of view, which places you in the shoes of the unnamed protagonist, which is just a super interesting way to read a novel because it's just not that common.

(07:41)

Although I did read a novel recently that utilizes second-person pretty effectively, and I think I'm going to share it on the podcast, so I won't say any more about it. Anyway, if you want to go back and listen to that episode, Bright Lights, Big City by Jay McInerney. I highly recommend it not just for the novel, but also as a referential piece of literature for anybody who wants to learn how to write in second-person or just have a better understanding of that narrative form. All right, stick a fork in me. This episode is a wrap. That was your month of July, and I look forward to doing more of these episodes in year two of the podcast. So stick around and tell your friends, everything I said at the beginning. But also remember that if you want more information, you could always visit BooksforMen.org, where you could get full transcripts for all of these episodes. As well as sign up for the newsletter, which is a monthly roundup of every episode with full book and author information, all the best quotes, and newsletter-only book recommendations. So again, if you're interested in that, you could sign up at BooksforMen.org.