Ahoy,
It’s nearly the end of summer here and the trees are already edging into their riot of color. I drove for twelve hours last week, between Pittsburgh and Brooklyn, and it was like rushing down a historical diorama: at the lush edges of the continent the trees were still vibrant, maybe a little brown at the edges. Then, into Pennsylvania you see the leaves changing more and more, a crash of leaves along the side of the road where one of the oaks have given out early.
We’re entering a season of change. We might be going back to normal, but the new normal is far different than it was a few years ago. We’ll be entering a world of strange weather, of endless pandemic, of young people rethinking the pact between them and the world. I expect to see a Summer of Love sooner than later, pandemic be damned. And I also expect to see endless Summers of Fire.
Every twenty or so years the world changes. Sometimes it goes back to the land — think the 1960s and their sweaty communes — and sometimes it goes into the head — think the late 1990s. Sometimes it changes subtly but completely — see 2008 when the mobile switch got flipped. Sometimes it changes catastrophically.
The only constant is change.
How we react to that change is key. As the leaves turn to red and then brown and snow starts blowing on some forgotten ridge in the middle of a vast continent, we hunker down and wait for the next change, the next snowbell poking from dark earth, the next sunset over a summer lake. The next full moon over rushing hills outside some prairie town. And the next. And the next.
And, in the end, that change is all that stands between us and oblivion. Let’s welcome it. It’s all we’ve got.
Best,
JB
My friend Ryan Holiday opened a bookshop in Bastrop. Please buy books from him.
I’m going to be offering startup advice and offer pitch coaching. It’s something I love to do and it’s something I’ve missed. I think a lot of startup coverage is saccharine and useless so I’ll try to change that. You can subscribe here.
Ok. Onto the books.
by Patricia Highsmith
This is a fascinating book by a fascinating author. Highsmith was a consummate novelist with an amazing breadth of skill in terms of description and geograpy. This book is a perfect little gem. It features Ripley, the man of many faces, who is, in short, a sociopath. That you come to admire him and feel sorry for him is a fascinating thing and that Highsmith never caved to baser instincts and was careful about telling all the story is wondeful. Well worth a cozy read.
Landslide: The Final Days of the Trump Presidency
by Michael Wolff
I Alone Can Fix It: Donald J. Trump's Catastrophic Final Year
by Phil Rucker and Carol Leonnig
I read both of these just to remember the depths of depravity that we just lived through. Both are excellent but I Alone Can Fix It was just a bit better. Wolff is an excellent chronicler of politics while Rucker and Leonnig got access to Trump yet were baffled why he agreed. Their final assessment? He’s a narcissist and fool who had no business being where he was. Anyway.
by Michael Pollan
Pollan used to write about food and now he writes about mushrooms. He’s a good writer and thorough and although this book is a bit boring it’s well worth a read. I also read This is Your Mind on Plants which was terrible so if you read one book on expanding your consciousness this month make it this one.
As always, I welcome recommendations. Just email me at john@biggs.cc.
I loved it.
Thank you for the books recommandations.
I’m very interested in the use of mushrooms for mental health.