George Saunders

And he can't sell them meat anymore.

And so his world gets constricted.

He loses his office, then he loses his job, then he loses his house.

But it happens over, I think, about a five-year period.

So reading that now, it's kind of amazing how relatively slowly it's happening.

And then every so often something seeps in.

And so it's a really interesting read for right now.

And then the other one I would recommend, I maybe have recommended it before because I love it so much, but it's Red Cavalry by Isaac Babel, the Jewish-Russian writer.

And I think what speaks to me about that book right now, it's so chaotic.

It's written from different points of view, and it doesn't really underscore who's speaking to you.

And the kind of very, very understated through line of the book is,

This Jewish kid throws in with the revolution and they go back and forth over Poland, mistreating Jews, you know, and mistreating everybody.

And so his heart slowly starts to turn against the revolution.

So I think it...

It speaks to me of the way I feel about the country right now, that as soon as you sit on a truth, it gets knocked out from under you, and that kind of kaleidoscopic feeling.

And then the third one would be maybe more of an antidote.

It's a beautiful book called The Place of Tides by James Rebanks, nonfiction.

And he goes to an island, I think it's off Iceland, and he lives with this woman who is, her job is to collect eiderdowns.

And there's an elaborate process where you lure the ducks in by being very quiet, basically, and setting up little environments that they'll like.

And then they come in and they leave Eiderdown, which is then collected and sold.