More Help Is On the Way
Dear All,
This is the latest episode of Don’t Press That Button, a newsletter about books and music and movies and cats and baseball and whatnot. As the name would indicate, we are very cautious about buttons around here. We want to understand what the button does before we smack that thing.
But the button below simply subscribes you to this newsletter. That’s it. And it’s free! If you’re new here, and you’d like to stick around, you can safely do so by clicking on it.
The Hot 100
The New York Times recently published a poll of 503 readers, writers, and critics on the 100 Best Books of the 21st Century. My ballot looked like this1:
While I stand by those choices 100%, and boundlessly admire and love each book, and there are few things that bring me more pleasure than to sing the praises of amazing writing, I actually could have made a second list of ten books, and possibly even a third, that I felt just as strongly about. Truly great works of literature are just, well, great. They have an extraordinary way of drawing emotion from you, or lifting you out of yourself, or making you tense up, or inducing you to see some part of your life anew. My very favorite books do all those things, but from there, comparing their respective values, I tend to get stumped.
Do I actually regard Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall as superior to, say, David Foster Wallace’s Consider the Lobster? No! They’re both masterpieces that have enriched my existence — and they’re incredibly different! If you forced me to choose to live without one or the other, I don’t know how I could. Wolf Hall felt particularly urgent to me as I was making my ballot. You can’t do better.
On another day, however, I might have swapped Lobster (or Percival Everett’s James, or Karen Russell’s Orange World and Other Stories, or Mary Beard’s SPQR, or Ruth Ozeki’s A Tale for the Time Being, or Dennis Lehane’s Live by Night, or George Saunders’s Pastoralia, or Philip Pullman’s The Amber Spyglass, etc.) in for it, or in for any of the other nine that I did pick. What I mean is, for me, there’s a lot of bests out there.
We Need to Talk
Issue 2 of Self Help, “We Need to Talk,” arrives in comic stores on 7/24. There’s an enormous amount of trouble in store for Jerry Hauser, I promise you that!
Thank you so much to everyone who got in touch about issue 1. Thank you for giving our wild crime story a chance. We are overjoyed at the positive reception.
We’re also hugely grateful to the good folks at Dr. Comics and Mr. Games and at October Country, who helped us celebrate the release of issue 1. I plan to keep popping in to the latter to sign, and I’m guessing that Jesse will keep visiting the former to do the same, so if you’d like autographed copies going forward, I bet both stores would try to help you out depending on where you are. You can also keep up with the story digitally if that’s your preference.
The Latest
My friends at Oblong Books are offering advance orders on the Sleeping Beauties: Deluxe Remastered Edition graphic novel, adapted by Rio Youers and Alison Sampson. If you’d like me to sign one for you, here’s where to go!
Speaking of my friend Rio Youers: He has a brand new novel out called The Bang-Bang Sisters, and it looks awesome.
Elizabeth Nelson — lead singer of the Paranoid Style, the reason we started the Psychic Benefits, steely-eyed Nationals fan and defender of golf — has expanded her empire in the coolest way possible: She wrote the liner notes for the new box set from Columbia Recording Artist Bob Dylan, The 1974 Live Recordings.
My thumb is still healing. I’m in a hard cast now, and it’s awkward and annoying, and it looks like I’m giving everyone a thumbs-up. I can see the light at the end of the tunnel, though.
The Red Sox have been terrific fun to this point. All-Star Game MVP Jarren Duran has absolutely devoured the base paths. Tanner Houck has had wonderful, evil powers on the hill. If the playoffs started today they’d be in. I have zero complaints. Go Sox!
John Warner’s and Lincoln Michel’s considerations of the NY Times Best Books list are well worth reading.
In case you ever have a question or a comment or just want to say hi, if you reply to the email, I will see it. I’m over on Instagram, too, if you’d like to follow along there.
All Best,
Owen
Here are some links if you’d like to snag a copy of the books on my list: The Unnamed by Joshua Ferris, The Association of Small Bombs by Karan Mahajan, NW by Zadie Smith, Random Family by Adrian Nicole LeBlanc, The Northern Clemency by Philip Hensher, The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen, Lord of Misrule by Jaimy Gordon, The Flamethrowers by Rachel Kushner, and The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon.