Derek Thompson

I'm glad you made that distinction, because if someone said your book has no vision, I would say, well, it does begin with a, you know, four page vignette of what the future in 2050 would look like if we got abundance right.

My three books.

Number one, weird choice maybe for a reformed Jew, but Mere Christianity by C.S.

Lewis in the first 30 pages in particular is probably the most interesting analysis of the concept of morality that I've ever read.

At my ripe old age of 39, I find myself often wanting to like...

re-enter reading experiences that I had when I was younger in the hopes that the reconsumption of that object would put me back in that mood again.

There was a period when I was in my 20s when I just moved to New York where I read a bunch of books that I adored.

The Emperor's Children by Claire Massoud, The Interestings by Meg Wolitzer, and The Secret History by Donna Tartt.

And I just reread The Secret History by Donna Tartt, and it is so fucking good.

I finished the book

two weeks ago and like entered like a brief, like one hour period of mourning.

Like that wonderful experience you have with a novel where like the turning of the last page is a true tragic event for the soul.

I think the secret to history is absolutely extraordinary.

I have a four month old at home.

So that means a lot of audio books.

And the last book that I'm going to recommend is specifically an audio book.

The audio book is,

of Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy is like the trippiest possible, it's an extraordinary book that's basically like a sort of, if you haven't read it, like a sort of 20th century Dante explaining an absolutely hellacious experience of a bunch of people in the mid-19th century along the Texas-Mexico border.

And the audio book is like, the guy who reads it has the most incredible sonorous Southern accent.

It's just this like amazing auditory experience.