The Books That Defined Our Year

Transcript

Hello and welcome to the A16Z Crypto podcast. I'm Robert Hackett and today we're going to be talking about books. We put out a seasonal book list where we recommend our favorite reads and today we've joined the editors on our team. That's Sonel Chakshi, Tim Sullivan, Steph Zinn, and myself to talk about the books we love and think you should read, too. Let's get into it. >> So, this year we have a lot of recommendations. I think we hit like more than 30 this time, and they kind of cover everything from fiction, non-fiction, memoirs. We have a little bit fewer sci-fi this time, but there is a little bit of sci-fi, a little bit of fantasy. Uh, we've got people under

pressure. We got Endure by Alex Hutchinson. Uh there's also Racing F1 cars, octopus consciousness, Taylor Swift's business acumen. So I think there's a there's really something here for everybody. That's funny though because as someone who has seen every book reading list, the reading list tradition, my team started it here like maybe eight years ago. But what I love is that we don't only talk about tech books per se and business books per se. Octopus consciousness is definitely one that comes up at least once a year and same with the Formula 1 thing which I think is super cool that people are obsessed with either Formula 1 racing.

It is fascinating to me that that is a genre that people always recommend every year. >> I actually think we had that book on our founder summit list. >> That's right. I added it. It was from Sager on our team who recommended it and his recommendation was really specific. it was that it's actually a book about optimizing for racing and like how do you engineer a car, but what are all the optimizations you do to make it fast and work really well, but it's also kind of an analogy for how you optimize code and software. So, I kind of love how people connect the dots between various books to their work.

>> F1 is so popular right now. It is wild. >> I don't know. I think it was the show the it's on Netflix, right? The Netflix show is like just taking over the world. >> I have a question about the F1 format. Is it just a race or is it sort of like a car beauty pageant >> because I have it in my head as like they're showing cars in different ways too and I I need some answers here. I've never seen it. >> That's amazing. I So I also have not seen it but I had somebody describe monster truck rallies to me. I think it might have been Yokum on our research team who said he went to a he wanted to do like a whole Americana weekend and so he went to like a gator farm and like >> I don't know ate a steak dinner and went

to a monster truck rally. But he said monster trucks are ballet. It is a form of it is a high octane form of ballet. >> To your beauty pageant point, >> I think I might finally read this Formula 1 book so that I can understand how Formula 1 works. Yeah, I might have to read this one out loud to my son who is obsessed with anything with a motor or an engine. Uh the bigger, the faster, the whatever. Like he's into construction vehicles and race cars. >> That's so great. What were the picks that popped out for each of you on the team's picks this year?

>> One that popped out at me is the ASML Way. I've been fascinated by this company for a long time. They are the maker of the machines that make semiconductors. And um I find them fascinating. They're a Dutch company. The US developed this technology and then didn't pursue it. This like extreme ultraviolet range way of like etching lithography onto chips. >> I love that Ariana Simpson, one of our general partners, put that as her pick on the list. But what's really funny just now, Robert, I didn't connect the dots that that's what you were talking about cuz at first I thought you were saying the ASMR way.

>> ASMR way. Oh, back to the audio book. Yeah, >> I would be down >> computer chips. >> Um, >> from Tim's pics, I'll just quickly say that I love that you added Agnes Collard. She's actually very interesting thinker, modern public intellectual. I actually added one of her books in our founder summit list this year cuz I also like Open Socrates and I actually think it applies to how people can have discourse in the workplace, like kind of like talk about things. I like the fact that she is anti-debate, that debate there's a winner and a loser, and that when you are in a Socratic dialogue, there's one voice speaking. So when you engage with your friends to kind of talk

or an interlocutor about these disturbing questions that you ask, they're actually reflecting back to you your own voice so that there's just one conclusion because you're both working towards the same thing. And I thought that was kind of just lovely. any other genres on the list this year, stuff that came up or themes you saw? So, we have some memoirs. Scott added a memoir of chronic pain. It's called Look, No Hands. And he said it's actually really, really funny. So, I am very curious about that one. I have to mention because I genuinely love this that I read A Cracking of the Heart by David Horowitz who happens to be Ben Horowitz's dad and at his memorial they had like a shelf of all his writings.

He's such an incredibly prolific writer. Like he actually probably was a writer first and you don't really realize that because of his like background and political history and commentary and influence in like different political circles. And it was interesting because you see he has this very persuasive style and it's very talented and you can see where Ben also may get some of his writing ability. But the book that drew me most was a cracking of the heart because it didn't feel like a book where he's trying to persuade you to a point of view and like this type of style of writing is trying to tell you what you should think or why or make an argument.

It was just a father mourning a loss of a daughter and trying to stitch together her story from friend anecdotes, family stories, her journals, her own writings cuz she was also a writer and an aspiring writer. And one of the things that they talk about is how the father regrets that he squashed the daughter's sharing of writing with him because he wanted her to make a career out of it and she was kind of withholding her writing. And it just it's just such an incredible I balled my way through it and I think that memoirs of grief might be the best way to process one's own grief. And I haven't gotten to the Joan Diddian book, The Year of Magical Thinking, because I kind of been dancing

around that one for a while. But anyway, >> that's great. Great pick and a great tribute to him for his recent passing. I think from a personal reading habits, I only have one non-fiction pick this year and then everything else is basically fiction or memoir. I actually have just entirely almost entirely stop reading non-fiction. I can't take it anymore. It's either too anecdotal or fluffy or silly. >> A conscious decision some >> uh it's a good question. I think it is now a conscious decision. It started off subconsciously. I just sort of stopped picking and then I would pick up a book and then put it down annoyingly cuz there's just stuff with stupid anecdotes. Like I'd almost rather read a textbook or a very slim article that makes an argument, but I don't want to read anything else.

>> I like that you label memoir to be fiction, by the way. That's how it is. >> I mean, isn't it? >> Yeah. I think somebody once said, "It's the highest form of fiction." >> Oh, I love that. Like, I'm just over non-fiction. I don't know what happened. I mean, I don't know if the world has changed and it's made that type of book unnecessary with the way that we swim in information, but I don't know. I don't know. Are are you guys kind of in the same camp or disagree strongly? >> I think a lot of non-fiction, it's become formulaic in a way that is hard to break out of. It follows the same storytelling tropes. The chapter starts with a anecdote and then it goes into the thesis of the chapter and then and a

lot of times like I read um the longevity book >> which we've recommended out. >> Yeah. Didn't want any of his stories. I just wanted the information on how to live longer and better. Yeah. Just wanted a summary of diet and exercise. Spoiler alert. >> Yeah. It's what my mom told me. Thanks, Peter. to your point Tim or our point about the anecdote and this formulaic thing in non-fiction the podcast is amazing because you get none of the stories all of the information density and I love it and in fact for any people you know interested in hormones hormone replacement therapy these topics duour he has some of the best episodes on air on those topics it's just rich with

information science and no stories I do feel like many of these books could just be blog posts or articles. If you really boil them down, they don't amount to a whole lot. I really like non-fiction that's just a good story, though. Like, if you just accept it for what it is and enjoy that, that's why I love non-fiction about boats and nautical fiction. >> It's so fun. They're like, it is just sort of like you have to treat it as an adventure novel and that's kind of it. >> Some people like westerns, you know, like that's a genre people are into. My genre is like Arctic exploration on whailing ships from like the 1850s to 1900. Like that's my genre. We talked about this last time. Endurance, Alfred

Lancing. >> I have some new boat books though. >> Same Northwater. Very good. >> What are they about? >> Boats. >> What is specifically? What is Northwater specifically talking about when it comes to boats? Okay. Some dudes go on a boat, they go to the Arctic, mayhem ensues. >> That's the whole thing. It's always what they are. >> That's funny. >> There's components that can be swapped in and out. Sometimes they have to be on a raft, too, when they're surviving.

Sometimes there's cannibalism. You just don't know what you're going to get with these books, but it's always kind of the same like set of components. If you're lucky, there's going to be a polar bear or a leopard seal, some kind of thing with claws and teeth that is trying to eat somebody. >> I also feel like at the outset, you can kind of predict who's the one who's going to like die first. It's like any fiction novel. Um, and the experience is similar to reading something adventurous. I'm actually excited to read The Mad House at the End of the Earth. And in my notes, it just says more nautical history exclamation point.

But this one is about the Belka which is also relevant to you Robert because it has Rolled Amunson aboard it and he plays a big part um who is a legendary explorer. >> Oh >> interesting. >> I'm pretty excited about that one. I know exactly what's going to happen and what it's going to be like and I'm still going to read it. >> Is he the very large Norwegian explorer who's pictured like wearing his giant fur coat >> and he has a little tiny white >> next to the Yeah, that's Yeah. Do you read this genre, Tim?

>> Not with the passion that Robert and Stephanie clearly have embraced it. >> The closest I got to this was when I read Prince Harry's memoir last year and he did an Arctic exploration and in his book, and maybe we cut this from the podcast. >> That's right. That's I know what you're going to say. >> And spoiler alert, at the end of that novel, Prince Harry is eaten by a snow leopard. >> You might as well put that in. Like, yeah, if we're saying all non-fiction is fiction, you might as well get eaten by a soap. So, open it at the end. >> Yeah.

>> Well, have you read any non-fiction besides nautical things stuff or is it like basically all fiction and nautical non-fiction and that's it? >> So, yeah, I do read a lot of fiction. I love historical fiction. It's kind of my uh favorite genre. I'll read anything. I've also been reading like anthologies of letters from the Italian Renaissance. One is called Voices from the Italian Renaissance. Another is a anthology called a corresponding renaissance which is just letters from women. The first anthology I mentioned is a mixture of like writing a lot of primary resources, letters, all kinds of stuff. And it's sort of organized into themes, which is incredible because you're sort of like diving into like marriage and household

and domesticity as well as the papacy as well as war and like they're all kind of primary resources organized around those themes which is great. Couple of highlights. First is some primary resources about Leonardo da Vinci who was nuts I think also like a genius and an innovator of course. But one of them is around how he was like collecting animals to like draw this like frankincense like mashup animal together and paint it for his dad. Um his dad sold it for like 100 >> and then eventually the Duke of Milan Ludiviko Forza came into his hand. He sold it for 300 duckets. So that's a sad story about being undervalued by your

father and also trying to scare him with your little Frankenstein monster. And then the other one is his letters to the Duke of Milan. Same guy. Early in his life, Da Vinci is looking for employment. And he's listing all the stuff he could do. And I think this is also in Ken Burns's documentary, which I haven't seen. So, sorry if this is like this letter's old news, but I'm obsessed with it. It is about how he's got all these sort of like instruments of war that he's built, moving bridges. He's got a trebuche. He wants to demonstrate it in the park, a city park which feels like very dangerous. And then that at the end of the letter, he's like, "If none of that interests you, I paint and I can I can paint you.

>> I can be anything you want me to be." >> I did bring some books, by the way, when I get went to get my water. I found the letter Steph that you're referencing. So, it's in this book, Letters of Note, which was compiled by Sean Usher. He also did lists of note. This is the British edition of it. And then at the very end he says, "And if any of the above mentioned things seem impossible or impracticable to anyone, I am most readily disposed to demonstrate them in your part or in whatsoever place shall please your excellency to whom I commend myself with all possible humility." It's like so funny. I love that you are reading these letters.

>> Imagine someone in Central Park just being like demonstrated trebuche like >> I love it. >> Anything you can do, I can do better. Yeah, >> that's the vibe I got from that letter. >> True. But he's like he's looking for an he's looking for an employment. First of all, he's quite young. This is like early in his career, which I was surprised when I first read it. When I first read it, I was like he's pivoting. Like why is he like why is he making such like a hard pivot here from painting and sculpture? So the other thing to know is like yeah, he's looking for employment. It's early in his career and he does get the job. Like he goes to Milan after this. So he was really appealing to Budovikos Forza cuz you know he knew that he knew that he wanted

to be this big bronze horse. It's actually very cryptothemed for the record too. It's basically a creator or a maker looking for funding which is as we all acknowledge in our world a very broken thing. Like he needed money in the Renaissance era. The only thing that worked was patronage. >> It's a great point. >> Such an incredible pitch and um yeah I I feel like this is one of the best primary resources we have from the time. It's phenomenal. >> What's made you kind of drawn to this letter episttolary genre? >> So, you know, actual letters, I think, give us a really good insight into the past. They kind of make you feel like what's old is new again. People are always the same. One letter that's in both of these books is this merchant's wife. She's complaining to her husband

about how poorly he's running his business. And he's like, she's like, "This is a business run by children. Why are you like sitting around writing letters to your friend while you're writing these Bibles? People are taking advantage of you. And it's so funny. And I just feel like this could have happened today. And a lot of them are just funny. They're just like day-to-day interactions that we discount when we're thinking about like big historical events. So I I love them. I mean, I think what appeals to me by what you said though is that that to me is what non-fiction should be, which is just original primary sources and facts without any other commentary. like let people read the thing directly and draw their own conclusion. That is what non-fiction should be.

>> Yeah. I have a friend who is a non-fiction author who talks about at the end of every book he's like I'm never going to write another book because and they write another book but it's all it's lies in the sense that you are stating a hypothesis and then crafting a narrative around it which carves out this body of information from other things you know to be true. >> Right? And that's kind of the non-fiction author's job is to make those choices. And I think I agree with that. But like that's trusting the author to to kind of cleave to the truth that they know rather than shaping the narrative to make it popular or useful or whatever, which is what a lot of non-fiction has become, especially in like the stuff that trends into self-help or business is not terribly

appealing to me for the same reasons you were kind of talking about earlier. Zone. >> Yeah. Uh, and what you said about like carving out the information you want, like what you're really describing is they basically have a pre-existing hypothesis. They seek out the information that confirms it. The non-fiction I do like is actually one where the writer is taking you on a journey of exploration around some topic or information that they're trying to understand and you're coming along. Which is why one of my picks, which is also on this podcast, coming up next is an episode with Nadia Asparova, my friend formerly known as Nadia Igbal when she was on this podcast. She's been on the podcast like three times total at AS6 and Z over the past decade. And she wrote a new book called Antimdetics: Why

Some Oh my gosh, I have to find the subtitle. Give me one sec, guys. She's saying that maybe this this topic is anti-imemedical. about it is that the fact that you can't remember the subtitle is is anti-imetic. >> Exactly. It seems that the idea is Yeah. >> She made the exact same observation to me, Robert, cuz I just I remember the book and I read it so thoroughly, but the subtitle does not stick. It's anti-imetic, but it's called antimmetics: Why some ideas I resist spreading. >> I'm excited for this one. >> What I really liked about this, and this is what non-fiction should do, is it was new fresh non-derivative and thoughtprovoking. like I learned something. I went along with her on a journey. She had just the right amount of personal injected and no stupid anecdotes. There were a few useful

examples, but no like stuffed anecdotes in this formulaic way that Tim was talking about earlier. And it's tight. It's not longer than it needs to be. >> I'm intrigued. >> I think it would really fit your interests. >> So, I might take this opportunity to weave some threads from our conversation. We talked a little bit about memoir as a kind of fiction. We talked about episttolary novels as a genre and what you were just talking about Sonel about this idea of sort of like private truths and public lies. I am going to talk about one of my recommendations on the book list this year which is Mark Twain by Ron Cherno >> which full disclosure have not read but one of my favorite pastimes is listening

to historians on podcasts or give lectures and talks people who have immersed themselves in the primary sources and then they kind of give you a tight you know within an hour summation of their research and discovery. So, I feel like I'm on the exact opposite end of the spectrum as maybe Steph you are in in reading these primary sources from the Renaissance. I like getting the tight focused point of view from somebody who has done all of that work and I don't want to do that work >> especially when I trust that person and Ron Cherno is somebody that I would trust.

>> The book is about Mark Twain who was like the original American celebrity writing celebrity. >> Why do you guys think why is Mark Twain and the Zeitgeist right now? like why is Cherno I mean do we have any insight into why this book >> and by the way so on the list I kind of like secretly actually recommended a conversation he had with Conan O'Brien who won the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor this year so anyway that's kind of like what my recommendation was rather than the book itself but uh there is something going on because James won the Pulitzer Prize and that's this reimagination or revisiting of Hug Finn which some would say is the original great American novel There is certainly something in the atmosphere right now. People are

>> interested in Mark Twain. And I think maybe part of it has to do with the fact that he was such an unrelenting advocate of free speech. >> He would say the things that nobody else could say or would say >> and he could get away with it. And I think that maybe that is something that's going on. There's an interest in this sort of like what can you say in public versus private kind of thing happening right now. >> That's a very like you said very connected to the anti-imetic. Yeah. >> The man was known to embellish like he made stuff up a lot of the times. He would always sort of juice his stories to make them more interesting and appealing. It's hard to pin down what is

truth and what is fiction. Later in life when he had somebody writing his biography, he told the guy that they couldn't publish the biography for 100 years after his death, but the biographer would constantly be reading like his correspondences and his personal effects and letters and whatnot and discovering that all of the conversations he was having with Mark Twain were like totally incorrect or had some like extreme falsity. And uh so he he was a very unreliable narrator of his own life. And actually that biography I think came out not too long ago. Yeah.

It was published by the University of California Press. That was a huge like volume one of the autobiography was a massive bestseller because it had never come out. And then you look at volumes two and three which did not sell as well. And this is why Cherno's book will be so great. volumes two and three are just like incoherent because they are primary sources that are like put down and kind of cobbled together so valuable historically but like as a story you want to read there's not a there or there by the way I've been stewing on this idea of why is Mark Twain like back in the in the public consciousness and two more two more reasons why I think Mark Twain is in the public consciousness right now one is because a lot of his writing had to deal with race and another reason is he was kind of the

original influencer Like we're all on social media now. Like people are trying to be celebrities, whatever. Like Mark Twain was the OG influencer >> of his era. The most probably the most >> famous recognizable person in the world at the time that he was alive and writing. Um and he was obsessed with fame. He wanted it. He saw that glowing orb and that he just like he sought it out like a moth to a flame. He was super obsessed. And maybe also like the internet has sort of steeped our media in this idea of like irony and postirony and stuff. And actually I would say like there was a period of my life where I first read Huck Finn and became

acquainted with Mark Twain at the same time that like Steven Colbear was doing his wholeick on the John Stewart show where he kind of was skewering people with this ironic persona that he had developed. that was hugely influential on me in my earliest writing life. And just Mark Twain is like obviously his whole thing is irony. He like beats you over the head with irony at every second. >> And by the way, is it actual irony? Cuz I don't know if people know this or even listeners of our podcast who follow Chris Dixon. Chris Dixon used to have a website called notironic.com. I think he took it down and basically all it did was define like what is irony and what isn't. Like no, that's not ironic.

That's a contradiction. like you know he has this like funny thing but is it like I actually believe it or not have not read enough Mark Twain but like what's the essence of this? >> Oh man yeah he is ground zero for irony. He is the master of it. >> I think what you said about that it might be related to this post internet era. Well there's two things what you said that I find personally very interesting. One is that this idea that the internet has changed our tastes and that is definitely I think changing what we read. The other is this meta comment you made at the beginning that you were slightly saying almost too fast, but we're we're not going to let you go on this, Robert, which is that you haven't read the book and yet you put it on the list. But to your point, you are okay

with it. And I think we should be okay with it because it's almost as if hearing it on a podcast means you kind of know and you have read a lot of people do that today. And maybe we should just admit that that is an okay way to understand a book instead of fighting that anymore. >> I don't know. >> I just can't I'm going to fight that. I can't read third person omnisient. I just structurally incapable of reading third person omnisient. So it's >> there's nothing I can do about it. >> Fight us, Tim. >> Oh, I I think it's fine to to read and listen to all the commentary around a book, but I don't think that I think you're in a dialogue with the author when you're engaged with the text in a way that's not true when you're reading commentary or listening to interviews.

And I think you're absorbing the information in a different way. >> Yeah. No, I agree with that. And I I would say that by the way podcasts are so great because you get to hear the authors do these interviews and it also widens the funnel for me. I feel like I get to sample such a wide variety of authors and topics and stories and whatever and then that allows you to kind of say, "Oh, this is the one that I want to like invest my time on and dig deeper." So >> So you're saying podcasts are a discovery engine, not necessarily just the information transformation of a book >> for me. Yeah. I think maybe not for everybody. Some people might just use it as their diet, but I I like to use it as a you know, it's like you go to the buffet, you get to try a little bit of

everything, and then maybe the next time you go out to eat, you're like, I really liked that Korean barbecue. Let's just go to, >> you know, that spot instead. >> I think, you know, we often rely on all of these third parties to recommend us books, circling back to what Tim said, almost to the point where we kind of know a book before we start reading it because we're we're we're like protective of our time. We don't want to like spend all like 40 hours reading something that we don't love. But I do feel like you're in sort of like Tim said a dialogue with the author. Like have you ever misread something and then you only find out later? You're like, "What was I thinking when I read that?"

And I think those say more about you than they do about the book or how the book was written. You can think it was confusing, but it's more like what is my interpretation and why did I take it there? So, I do think it is important to engage with the text just because you get these moments where you're like, "Wow, that was probably not what the author intended. I'm going in kind of blind." And I'll admit to like not going in kind of blind anymore. I read a lot of reviews before I get started on anything. >> Yeah. The the cost isn't the 14.95 for a paperback or probably 40 bucks for the Ron Chernow biography. It's your time.

It's all the other things that you could be doing with the time that you're giving to this author. And that's why trite non-fiction maybe doesn't warrant our time anymore because it's not worth spending that time there when you can absorb the information in other ways. >> Unless it's about a boat on a boat. Yeah. >> One of the things that's super interesting, Robert, when you were talking earlier about Twain and how he kind of lied in his biography, I immediately thought of Lucy Mod Montgomery, who's the author of Anna Green Gables and also one of my all-time favorite series. I actually brought these books to show you guys. is this exact effect. So she wrote this book. I picked it up in Prince Edward Island. So this is called The Alpine Path and this is like her little memoir of the story

of her career and it's very like rosy and like you know distilled clean advice. And then in Prince Edward Island, I picked up this book, Looking for Anna Green Gables, which is the story of her career. And it actually talks more about her life and actually she had depression and she lost children to the war and her husband was mentally ill and it talks more about that reality. So it's like these two texts and justosition. And then this year, speaking about memoirs and biographies, this new book that came out, which I actually just started, and it's called The Gift of Wings, and it's drawing on all her letters that she wrote over the years and stories from her grandchildren and great-grandchildren and estate and archives to tell a more thorough,

complete reckoning of her story. So, I'm reading that right now. But I do think it's a great example of what you were saying about Mark Twain and how you can have like the fiction of a story of one's life that's told by yourself told by someone else and kind of constructing the truth through all these texts. I mean, any any other Anna Green Gable people here? I feel like Tim Sullivan would be my Anna Green Gable person. No, my wife loves Ann of Green Gables. But it makes me think of um The Little House on the Prairie books. >> Um where Laura Engles Wilders wrote what according to her daughter Rose were the boring versions cuz they were like true to life and Rose went in and had a very heavy hand editing them to make them kind of exciting stories for readers.

>> I have read those >> many many times reading them out loud to the kids. The misreading piece. So I a while ago I started trying to read poetry every morning. So I have this book on the list by um I can't remember his name. Padrick oh somebody who is an Irish poet and a podcaster who has collected poems that mean something to him. He has like a little personal introduction then the poem and then like an explanation of form or structure or something about the poem. And I was like I got it when I was traveling and I was like I don't think I'm going to read his explanations of the form and structure and meaning. I'm just going to read the poems. And then I started reading the explanations and I was like, "Oh, I got that one totally wrong." Like, what was

I? Yeah, >> that one went straight over my head. I'm discovering that not a lot, but oftentimes enough like even if it's just a couplet that changes the meaning and that close reading of these very carefully chosen words is a very different experience. >> Well, it's interesting because it feels like you guys are all sort of talking about the author as this person who's writing this book as a voice in the book. And it's funny because this whole debate about non-fiction fiction to me comes down to the author getting out of the way because if you think about books as information transmission like a podcast what Robert's doing or just me I want the information I almost don't care about the author even though they have made certain selections but when it comes to fiction I'm actually really

noticing the author's choices and clever things even though they're not remotely a character in the book they've just put this world in front of me. So I I'm finding that really interesting. It's almost like books are to entertain and not to inform anymore. And in this world of the internet, we get our information from everywhere but books. I think like two thoughts on that. One is the book, Robert, that you introduced us to last year, which was about physics. that starts very straightforward in the first chapter and then over the course of the book becomes more and more fictional more imagined by the author which is such a clever device and that writing is like even though it's in translation is

completely pleasurable like the way he puts together sentences the way I I want to spend time with him >> there's something about the way that he manages to add emotional depth in a way that often is inaccessible in pure non-fiction Like sometimes you need that fiction to access the interior life of whoever you're writing about and when you hue too closely to the documents you have available you are unable to really get into there which maybe Steph leads to your love of historical non-fiction because you do get access to that other space that is absent from a lot of non-fiction.

>> Yeah. Uh, and there are some historical fiction where you don't have a ton of information on who the people were or what the time period was like. There's like gaps, but a like there's so many books about the Boura family, which is like an infamous family kind of the family around like one of the popes at the end of the 15th century. Hopefully not butchering that. Regardless, there's just a ton of like information about them because churches were meticulous in like their recordkeeping. So, we have lots of information about this pope. We have lots of information about his family, their sense of letters.

Mchavelli wrote about them a lot. Like there's just so much information available. So, when you're writing fiction about it, it's just going to be like kind of insight into their interiority because the historical facts are so laid out, they're kind of indisputable. Although I will say that like I think one of the issues with reading on the internet generally today is there's not a lot of context and I think we get this in LLMs when we don't see like kind of what's gone into it, who's saying it and I just hope we don't lose that as a people like where we want to know more about like why someone wrote this or where it came from and I just don't think we get that anymore.

Like speaking of Mchaveli, like the amount of times I've seen him misqued egregiously today is like wild. I wonder if your point about historical fiction though is that that should be how we educate people about history instead of even bothering to use history books because when Tim and Robert were talking earlier about when we cease to understand the world the genre should be fiction and that should be how you learn about those scientific figures throughout history and similarly stuff I don't know if you would argue that people don't really need to read a history textbook to understand a period like why not just read that fictional thing to understand And in fact, you get more context in that cultural container than you do in this other form. I just

feel like if we're really being realistic about technologies impact on our lives and things changing, we should be leaning into this reality and these differences. And the reality is like we get information elsewhere and now we can learn and be entertained in a different form. I I don't know. It almost feels like I'd rather learn from historical fiction than read a history book. At this point, >> I've read some really bad historical >> I don't know if we want anyone learning from some of these.

>> I mean I mean there should be a cannon just like as we have in current education there is a cannon. Someone curates and picks like what are the good ones. >> Yeah. I I think about the way and this is the way Dixon has talked about reading philosophy philosophy books as philosophers in dialogue with one another to kind of thesis antithesis synthesis of reading the >> the Hegelian dialogue >> the philosophers themselves and I think you can do the same thing with any non-fiction genre whether it's textbooks or you know each of them has a history of the way that the discipline itself has developed over time which is in conversation with itself self which in itself is instructive and I think that's useful and interesting and I think

there's also I've been reading an alarming amount of computer science and there are some just really great books that particularly put out by MIT press these little short introductions like if you want to know about algorithms if you want to know about you know machine learning whatever the subject is where they do get this expert and they're like just boil it down we just need you know 50,000 words on this of everything you know about it and Those are so effective as learning tools as opposed to other methods that I don't think you could do as historical fiction.

>> I've read these books too, Tim, at your recommendation and um they're really great. I love when you get somebody who's totally in command of the material and they synthesize it all for you in a digestible way. I am so there for that. >> That to me sounds more like an expert who is giving the map and the terrain like they've they've explored the whole territory. They're giving you the map. It's again book as really good useful information transmission. So it's like a highfidelity transmission than say having to hunt and peck on the internet and get random sources or to Steph's earlier point unsighted or uncontextualized sources as getting the information from an LLM. I would say that the genre you guys described is a really good modern highquality magazine

article or an article like a you know Sage publications used to do this format like these atomic books on like one topic and it was very thin and small and they were great these little green books we read them in grad school it's the same kind of thing and I think that's kind of an interesting genre >> you can do that with like the 33 and a third series books it's one person usually a musician writing about an album they love and they're short and to the point. They're opinionated. They're fun. Not all of them. And that is to me like long form magazine writing because it's opinionated and there's some history thrown in. It's a little idiosyncratic. But I still think there's a place for those big like the big

histories or other subject matter areas that are kind of in media res. It's like you're picking up the way that they thought about this subject in 1968 or 1975 or whatever. And to understand that perspective, you have to know where they're coming from and then how it's been updated over time. That gives you a richer and fuller understanding of the thing you're trying to approach. >> Yeah, I do really appreciate it as a kind of artifact of our time and how we think about, you know, the past. Like I I feel like there is a place for it and it is really useful, but context is super important. I am wondering if context is that important anymore.

Truly, I've been thinking about this a lot. Maybe we should just be unmed in this sea of crazy information and maybe it doesn't matter anymore. Doug Ruskov used to call it context collapse. I did an article at Wired when I was editing there. He basically talks about context collapse and I feel like that time has arrived. I mean, I think it's it's absolutely necessary because otherwise like what's the point of having written language and being able to talk to one another? like how do we learn anything from what happened? And like I think Mchuavei is a good example. If you take what he wrote at face value without looking at the past at all, it's a completely different text.

>> That's true. >> When you talk when you think about his letters and and the prince, which a lot of people quote, like if you don't understand any context about that, it is sort of like a completely different thing than it is once you understand the history. Like what is the position that it's being written in? What are the forces that he's contending with? Where is he? Literal like geographic like spaces. All of these things add so much nuance to a text that if you strip them away then it becomes meaningless. We could have wrote it today. That's a completely different thing. >> I'd like to spin off of Steph's point about Mchaveli because I recently read the Mchavelians which is a book that has made the rounds here within A16Z.

Mark Andre likes to recommend it on many podcasts as one of the books that was hugely influential on his own intellectual development. Anyway, I read it and one of the main premises is about the social and cultural context of Makiabelli's writing. And he makes this point of the formal meaning of a text and the real meaning of a text. And the formal meaning is sort of like what does it say? What is the argument that it's making? It's sort of like looking at the text itself versus the real meaning which is why did the author write this text? Why does this text exist at all?

What's the point of it having been created? When I was going to school, I sort of studied under the neoformalist school of literary criticism which is basically like close reading of a text like the text is the only thing that exists in this world. You interrogate the text and everything else is extraneous detail. After reading the Makavelians, I came to really appreciate this idea of the real meaning of a text having such weight and how you can't extricate a text from its, you know, cultural millu like where it came from, what >> what the author was trying to achieve with it.

>> I loved hearing that because when I was in English in undergrad, it was all about the postmodern Pomo vibe, which I completely reacted against. I hated it. I completely hated it. Mh. >> Like there is no truth, nothing matters. It was almost like I was in a grad school class in undergrad and it was all about like these unhinged discussions about the text that had nothing to do with the text and I'm like this is completely effing unhinged. I can't take it. >> It really turned me off school. Yeah, exactly. It was like Edward say and dered and I was like no no no thank you.

>> Uh-uh. Not for me. >> Agreed. I had a similar allergic reaction to a lot of that. >> The author is dead etc. And I'll just say after reading Makavelians suddenly I could only see the world in terms of what people were saying as what they were actually saying and what they meant in the subtext of what they were saying and like what they were trying to achieve with their words. >> I do think that both meanings are really important though otherwise like text from the past wouldn't even be applicable to us. I think a good example is like Shakespeare's plays. Like they happened in a bunch of contexts and and whatever the past is the past. Now there's a lot of things you don't need to know. Like you don't need to know

that the Midsummer Night Stream was performed at a certain time that like the theaters were closed by the plagues intermittently. That's important for some things and understanding the text, but like it's not important for the enjoyment of the text. And then the other thing is like we see a lot of adaptations like you know they're set in different parts of the world performed by different kinds of people and like that is our interpretation on it which I think is equally valuable and there's like you know we get a lot out of that otherwise yeah again like these things from the past wouldn't even be applicable to today. That's that's exactly right. There must be something resonant in the underlying themes that can still apply. Makaveli is a great example because our very own Miles Jennings wrote a piece that you can find on our website on Makaveli and

principles applied to Dows decentralized autonomous organizations. His main point is the political realities of that time. It was very like multi-arty multi- stakeholder different decision-m things. How do you kind of lean into people's true natures to actually get things done and make decisions? and Miles takes that work and applies it to how Dows could operate in terms of governance today. And so that makes sense. But then to only understand where Mchavelli was coming from, to your point, Steph, you kind of have to know that cultural history and context. And just to like put a point on that, like there was a time in which the prince was read as satire. And we now we know that we don't necessarily think it's satire.

We think he's like, you know, exploring two different ideas, republic and authoritarianism, all of this stuff and exploring thought ideas, but at there was a time when they were like, "Oh, Makaveli likes republics. This is this thing. He's not going to say that there should be a prince or there shouldn't there should be a prince at all." Um, so it must be satire. And that was that was an artifact of the time and now we think of it differently. So I think it's important to, you know, look back at everything we thought about just to make sure that we're running the thought experiments thoroughly. >> One of the books you recommended, Steph, was a like retelling of Uripides, too, like to that point cuz it's updated.

It's contemporary. >> Yes, I loved this book. It's called Glorious Exploits by Ferdia Lennon. I'm going to pop it on screen because I like the cover. I think it's so fun. Wow, that's a great cover. So, this is about two unemployed potters. It's set in Sicily during the Pelanesian War. So, historically, like Athens had a devastating defeat in Sicily. They were like, "We're just going to take it. We're totally eviscerated." And they they know hubris. They know it so well. And yet, so the potters go, you know, it's sort of like a fun activity for them to do to go feed Athenians and the prisoner of war camp in like a quarry nearby. And they end up staging like two plays, two Uripides plays. One is Meda

and the other is Trojan women. And it kind of all stems from like the people they interact with to stage the plays, the people in the P camp, what happens after, and all of this stuff. And it's it's historical fiction, but I think like the innovation here is it's written in contemporary Irish vernacular, which is extremely fun. So you have these people from this time saying like ars and shite and stuff, and it's very fun. um it doesn't take itself too seriously, but yeah, I think it's it's another one of those things where like the author is drawing on themes from like Ireland itself and the people he grew up around and it makes it relevant to the time and is another way of learning lessons about the past, the power of art to kind of unite us all. It's very very fun and I

highly recommend it. >> Oo. Okay. I have to note Mark Twain was obsessed with the idea that Francis Bacon wrote Shakespeare's plays. >> Oh, really? >> Just going to put that out there. Yeah. He was like super into conspiracy theories >> which you got a close reading of Ron Cherno's biography. Is that what you're saying? >> Extremely close reading. So close. So close that I couldn't even see anything else. >> Yeah. I was like >> no to book >> those eyes on the cover of your book. That was like me looking at Rono. >> Speaking of adaptation and Ron Chernob, the only Ron Cherno book I've ever read is the Alexander Hamilton biography. And I actually only read it because I saw Hamilton, which as we all know, Lyn Manuel Miranda was inspired by reading

that biography on vacation to come up with Hamilton, which is obviously an adaptation or his own creation, riffing off the themes of Hamilton in rap lyrics, and that was incredible. >> Let's talk about adaptations. We've been talking about that a little bit. Steph, I know that when Noseratu was dropping over the holidays recently, you were very eager to watch it. I know that you were looking forward to this and you've since seen it. That's obviously an adaptation of Dracula. >> Yeah, I was really excited to watch Noatu. I love everything Gothic horror, Gothic romance, all the adaptations. If it's content out there that is sort of like Gothic and theme, I will totally con consume it. I loved Crimson Peak especially. It is a Gimmo Zuro film that

came out maybe like almost 10 years ago. But yeah, I I love the whole genre. It's my favorite. I was excited about Nosatu because um Dracula especially is one of my favorite novels and >> epistlary. >> It is episttolary. Yes. >> And last year you mentioned the audio book Dracula read by Alan [ __ ] I remember that cuz I added that based on your recommendation. So I watched No Fatu. I was a little disappointed by it, but I still loved the vibe and I thought the cinematography was beautiful. All the costumeuming and everything was was so wonderful. But it was like a little bit disappointing. It felt really flat to me. Like the acting I didn't think was very good. I don't want to say mean things about Louis Rose Depp, but I just it the character didn't feel quite right to me. And I love Nicholas Holt. That

also didn't feel like the right vibe to me. Like I somehow prefer the Francis Ford Copala version which was totally unhinged. >> Which was Copula's >> Brahm Stoker's Dracula. >> Oh, I love that movie. Is that >> a great movie? Yeah. >> Yeah. >> Jenny Reeves. Oh, >> Gary Oldman. >> I mean, Gary Oldman is in that movie. How can you beat that cast? >> That's a star cast. >> Part of the acting in Osraatu for me, which I actually really enjoyed, was that I thought some of that acting, the melo melodrama of the acting was a throwback to the original Nauseatu, which was what 1920ome,

>> right? Um, and some of it worked for me, like Nicholas Holt being terrified, and some of it didn't work for me, like Lily Rosepp acting with her eyebrows. >> Yeah, it it was Yeah, it it's hard to call back on like a a silent film like that. I think it it just didn't quite work. >> Robert Edgars followed it quite closely, I think, too. Like, you could do a sort of analysis frame by frame. He was really drawing a lot of inspiration from that early silent film. I actually so I loved the part where he visited the count in his castle. That was super cool. And they kind of like didn't reveal him. He was kind of like blurry in the background, the shadows. Totally weird. He had just come from like the Romanian village >> and seen a bunch of crazy stuff.

>> I loved that part of the movie. And then when they got back to I forget where it t is it in Germany somewhere? >> Germany? Yeah, >> Gretzburg maybe. >> At that point I was kind of like this is getting I don't know. Take me back to the castle. >> Yeah, there were components though that was that just had so much potential. Like there's like a blood plague. Like ah just didn't quite meet my expectations. >> I will watch anything Robert Edgars puts out though for >> 100%. >> Hands down. >> What else has he made? >> The Northman, which is a Viking movie. And I what I appreciate about his uh lighthouse, I think he's taking a different form, a different moral universe and taking its logic and projecting it onto a screen in a way

that makes it foreign, >> even though it's logically coheres in all of his movies. None of the moral universes are ours. And so it's like a >> a pinhole into a different different place. >> What a great description, Tim. >> Yeah. by the way, is a retelling of uh Hamlet speaking about adaptations. He's sort of always adapting >> Shakespeare >> different story lines. >> Yeah, I like Tim's interpretation and it's so much more generous than us being like, eh, didn't like it? >> Um, what what is it about this the Gothic genre in general, just broadly speaking, that speaks to you, Steph, that why are you so crazy for it and like mustwatch, read, devour this everything in this category? It's kind

of hard to describe. I mean, I first of all, vibes are always impeccable. Like, you're in a crumbling house. It's creaky. It's so creaky. You know, the house is really creaky. You know that anytime the wind blows, there are like thuds, voices. The vibes are very good. They really excite me. But bringing in sort of themes of like families, domesticity, the claustrophobia of like something going wrong in the home. I just think it's a lot of fun. >> The setting kind of mirrors the people's psychological state. >> Yes. Yeah. >> I always like that. In a novel when you get like descriptions of the environment kind of matching the the interior life of the >> characters and in Gothic literature it sort of does that to the extreme cliff and the moors in >> yeah that's like very a more like

>> situation going on. >> Yeah. Since we're not we're supposed to be talking about books, but just brief aside on another movie since you guys mentioned No Ferraratu, I do have to say of the quote gothic genre, although I consider this movie to be incredibly genre defying, even though a lot of people describe it as southern gothic, the best movie I saw by far this year, and I would actually put it in my top five of all time is Sinners. Did any of you guys watch it? >> It is so good. And it's basically vampire zombie type movie tied to tell the story of the blues. And it's also much more complex story culturally and on many other levels, but it is so so so well done. And it has one of the most

incredible scenes I've ever seen in my life. It's he calls it the surreal montage in the middle of the movie. And as music lovers, especially all of you three actually, all love music more than I do, you will love that even more than I would because it was so good. I saw it like multiple times, including an IMAX 70 cuz it was so good. >> High praise. I've never heard of it. >> Have you seen it? >> Ryan Cougler, Black Panther Creed. >> Oh yeah, >> it's his movie. And in fact, what's really interesting from a creator's perspective, you guys will also really appreciate this. He negotiated a very clever deal with Warner Brothers where he gets to keep the rights. I forgot the specifics of it, but basically it's such a personal movie for him that he

structured it creatively intellectual property wise in a way where it really is his movie. Like Warner Brothers can't really own it after 25. Yeah, good for him. So, if you guys haven't seen it, go watch it. But to your guys' point, Tim and Steph's and Robert's, it has the morals and the the the characters of what's happening on the visual field is what's playing out emotionally. There's moral pinhole kind of rot in a different way and there's a timelessness to it and it's just so beautifully shot. My god, it's incredible. Anyway, >> speaking of authorship rights, what's really interesting about No Ferraratu, since we were just talking about No Ferraratu, is that the original film did not have rights to Dracula and the estate of Bram Stoker famously uh sued

them and they had to burn basically all copies of the movie, which they did unsuccessfully, which is why we still have uh stills of the silent film No Fatu today. Yeah, there was a whole legal entanglement battle going on there and it's only by happen stance that we happen to have surviving copies of this uh really influential early film. >> Wow, that's fabulous. That's amazing. What are other classics you guys are rereading because I noticed that Steph, you and I both have some classics on our picks this year.

>> Yeah, I reread Little Women. It also has two wonderful adaptations. They're both good. the 1995 one with Winona Ryder and then the one that came out more recently with Sa Roden. They're both beautiful, wonderful adaptations. The first one really defined my childhood and I loved it so much. >> Yeah. >> So, the experience of reading a a Little Women didn't really hold up for me. Like I think the book is it's kind of tedious. It's kind of moralistic. It's supposed to be didactic. It's not like a great reading experience, but I think you know the adaptations were really lovely. I was about to say I think the movie, this is a case where the movie is now better than the book. The Greta Gerwick version was like way better than the book in my opinion at this point.

The classic that I reread and this is kind of in a pet peeve of mine even say on air on a tech podcast because one of my real pet peeves in tech gosh you guys I kind feel like every time we do this podcast I complain about pet peeves but here I go with another one. I really hate how people in tech kind of can be insular and read all the same stuff. And I did go on this journey rereading a lot of classics. And so I was super annoyed when Patrick Cullison, who I'm a big fan of and admire of and I love his reading habits, posted like, "Oh, I reread all the classics including Anna Corinina." And it was funny because at our offsite last year in London, I was talking to Chris Dixon and he was also reading Ana Corinina and so was I. So like all three

of us, Dixon, Collus, and and me were independently reading the same thing. And I'm annoyed though cuz I don't want to be reading the same [ __ ] as everybody else. like why did everyone suddenly decide to pick up like Anacrinette? But I did find Anna Corinina to be one of these incredibly timeless books. I read it in high school or college when you're supposed to read it and it had zero impact on me and as an adult it was like oh my god and I also by the way read it in audiobook form read by Maggie Gyllenhaal which was really good but also very long and tedious because it's like such a long book but you pay attention to every bit of dialogue in a way you don't when you're just reading it. I love audio books. H >> Yes.

>> I find this interesting though because like I love to read the text and the audio book at the same time. >> Yes. I remember you're the multimodal one. >> Yeah. I now call it double fisting. So when double a book, it is the audio and the text at the same time. I did this with the book I mentioned earlier, Glorious Exploits. It was great to hear it in an Irish accent because it is an Irish vernacular. But I have a problem where like if I listen to an audio book, I'm usually driving like somebody cuts me off. I have to spend 20 minutes cooling off from that because I'm so mad and I'm not paying attention to the audiobook and then I have to go find my way back. And I feel like when I read the text, I'm so much more engaged with

what's actually there. It I definitely read every word. With the audio book, I get the vibe, I get the tone, but I'm ultimately very distracted when I'm just listening. >> True. >> You're absolutely right. And I found this as my biggest struggle with audiobooks and for the longest time I could not read them because it was like I would always be distracted and lose my place in a conversation I could tune in better to. What has worked for me and this has been my big unlock. Last year I talked about on this episode I talked about reading Pride and Prejudice as read by Rosman Pike which was like one of the most incredible audio books. But this year I read Jane Er read by Tandy Newton, Tande Newton and she is so so so so so good. And so to your point, Steph,

I think yes, audiobooks can lose you and make you lose your spot, but if they're read by a really talented reader, narrator, and honestly, an actor, one of the things I've noticed is that these days most audiobook narrators sound like AI, which is so interesting to me given that AI is fast replacing audio narrators. And the only reason it's not is because of the actors unions not allowing it. But like at this point, like AI is better than most voices and could probably do a better job. And so it's surprising to me that so many of these narrators read like AI. Like why aren't they working harder and better to inject more voice, emotion, cadence to distinguish themselves from AI? Anyway, that's why I'm drawn to these audio

books that are read by actors. Janeire read by Tanny Newton is like one of the best things. I would put that in the top 10, not even top 10, top two of all audio books. So I highly recommend that one. >> Okay. >> Yeah, I I did listen to that one and read it at the same time and it it was very helpful. Um, she was she was excellent and added so much to the text. >> Like I think something that didn't come through when I was actually reading Janeire was it's funny. Like the banter is funny. Mr. Mister is funny. Like >> there's a lot of humor in it. >> And if you're just reading the text and it's in sort of like a little bit of archaic language, like it doesn't always ring like that. It doesn't always that way.

>> But when you listen to it, you hear all the intonations and it is really helpful. >> I would say the same thing for the novel James by Pival Everett, the person who reads the audiobook version. I mean, it's so rich with dialect like the way Mark Twain used vernacular dialects and folksy ways of speaking. Perival Everett, he followed that same thing and the audiobook version like the speaker is so incred. It's so rich. >> So, they they found a good narrator for it. >> They did. It's really wonderful. I don't know who read it. It's funny that you know so much about the readers of the audio books. I don't pay attention to them at all, but you know, when there's somebody a good reading that I love, I'm just like, "Ooh, that was a nice one."

>> So, what do you do if there's a book you want to read or listen to and you don't like the narrator? Like, >> oh, that is what you don't listen to. >> Got to read it. >> I've had this issue actually with The Lord of the Rings, which I was rereading. >> Sure. >> Um, there is a version read by >> the original guy. I don't remember some British guy. He sounds like he's sitting by the fire reading you some like nice children's story. Not a fan. And then there's the Andy Circus version which is absolutely incredible. >> So good. There you go. >> Absolutely incredible. That man is a absolute genius. I do know who read that one because he played Gallum. But >> well because he's an actor though.

That's my whole point. Like an audio book needs to be performed. It can't be read anymore. Especially in an age of AI. And to your point, Robert, about knowing who the audiobook narrators are, I actually don't. But what I do do now to help pick audio books because they have to be read well is Audible has this top top rated narrators link and you can go there and find all the audio books read by those top narrators and so you can back select books based on the voice which you kind of have to do to get a good audio book. >> That's a great tip. I watched a lot of Janeire adaptations after I read the book because I was like I want to see what's in these and what's not. And I think that one thing I've learned about those adaptations is the book is long

obviously. So if you're only watching the adaptations, you don't get the fact that it's like a building's roman. So like it's about her whole life, but the movies really focus on the romance. They were like, "Forget about your sad childhood. Forget about being locked in a room. Let's put all that aside. It's too sad. Let's go to this romance." And that's kind of like the theme of the adaptations, which I thought was funny. >> You know, I'll say you all were talking about how you find it difficult to concentrate on audiobooks sometimes. I just got to say like my eyes are so tired looking at a screen all day.

>> Oh god. >> That audiobooks have been such a huge unlock for me. >> Yes. >> And I am so ready to live in a world that is like audio first. I am done. I am done with the screens. Don't want them. Don't want to look at things anymore. I am very excited about getting some smart glasses which apparently allow you to like listen to things but still have your ears open to the world unlike AirPods. So I am like you know fast forward me right to that spot like I want that platform shift and I want it now.

>> Yes. >> I know at least two of you read out loud cuz you have children. >> Oh yes. >> Does anybody else read out loud for like So there was an adaptation of Beaowolf that I read called Bea Wolf which is a graphic novel. >> Yes. which I deeply deeply love, which is about kids fighting, uh, getting old. >> Um, and Grenle is an old man who's mad at them because they're making noise and having fun. And the language in that book is amazing. And it's only better when you read it out loud. I I love >> So, both an adaptation and a kids book.

Very cool. And a graphic novel. I'm so glad you brought up a graphic novel. >> And it has I have a shelf full of Beaolf translations. And this is probably like Sheamus Haney I'm never going to read again. I'll just go. >> Um >> Beowolf is great. Yes. And Tolken basically revived Beaowolf from obscurity and it hugely influenced all of his writings. >> And then I read I watched The Green Knight. This came out a few years ago. Speaking of like a different moral universe, that is just a weirdass movie. And but it made me want to go back and reread the poem because Tolken had translated that as well to be like just how weird is this? and it remains just as weird in print. Like it's it's but it's wonderful because again it's like

this coherent moral universe where you're just like you're trying to unravel what is this what is this thing that I'm reading. You started this by asking whether we read out loud and um >> I'm adamant that poetry must be read out loud but >> one thing I've discovered recently is like two of my favorite authors of all time, obviously Tolken on the one hand, but then one of my favorite poets ever, perhaps my favorite poet, is this guy Gerard Manley Hopkins, who was an Irish poet who was obsessed with old English, uh similar to the way that Tolken was.

But there's something about the way that they play with language. Like Gerard Manley Hopkins has this style that draws from early English poetry that is so rich in the way the alliteration is like is so gorgeous. Unfortunately, he also was sort of like the inspiration for freevere which was taken up by the modernists and became like the dominant form of poetry. So he spawned this whole like horrible thing that happened later. But I mean, whatever. Maybe people like that.

>> It's not to your taste. >> It's not to my taste. Well, it's just that people have taken it and by abandoning all of the rules of poetry, there has been a lot of schllock and, in my opinion, not as great material produced. >> I have one more read aloud thing. So, yeah, I read aloud to my 5-year-old. I read a lot of kids books with her. We read a lot of books from my childhood as well. But the last book I read aloud, I was actually reading aloud cuz I was just really enjoying it. But it is The Waves by Virginia Wolf. It's an experimental novel. It's from like six different perspectives. It's kind of a lot, but if you can get past like the first, you know, few pages, it turns into like this really lovely poetic writing. And there was a scene in which

one of the characters is kind of acting like a kid. They're kind of being juvenile, a little petty, and then if you read it aloud, it picks up like the cadence and rhythm of like a nursery rhyme. So, it was really lovely to like just sit and enjoy it. I think reading aloud is like just a great way if you're just having a nice time like you should just read aloud. If you feel like the words are good and they feel good in your mouth, just like read it. It's nice. >> As a writer, you should read out loud your work to see if the cadence and the writing works all the time, right? We all know that as editors. Wait, so Steph, you were reading Virginia Wolf to your three-year-old daughter. Like, >> no, I wasn't reading this. Was this was an alone thing?

>> No. I feel like >> I'm like I got the I was listening and I was like, is it the nursery rhyme? Is that what she's responding to? Like >> No. Oh, no. Yeah, I read to her all the time and I I've read to her some things where it's like especially when she's smaller, like on the verge of falling asleep, you have a little a lot of liberty in like what you can read to a child. >> Yeah. >> But yeah, and definitely not the waves. I I don't think she would allow that. >> Did you guys have any kids books in the read aloud genre or just kids books in general? >> We like Dr. Seuss. We like the tongue twisters. They're really fun and we read them as fast as we can. I have one children's book in my recommendations in our blog post called The Cafe at the

Edge of the Woods. It's very funny and it's mostly about marketing, which we love as, you know, marketers in addition to editors. Um, it's about like positioning your product for your audience. It's about this chef who goes to like she's a chef. She really wants to make fine cuisine. She opens her own restaurant. It's at the edge of it like an enchanted forest. And the fairy tale creatures within the forest like do not get her food. So, she has to like hire a local waiter, reposition the menu, then kind of like appeal to her audience. And it's wonderful. It's really cute.

Another author I love with my daughter is Mac. Barnett. He has like a series of books about shapes. There's triangle, square, circle, but they're all kind of dark. The characters do bad things and they miss things and some of them don't have a clear lesson there. Uh, and they can be very, very fun and the illustrations are incredible. That's fabulous. >> I'm so far removed from the you read aloud kids books, although we have all of those books on bookshelves scattered around the house. I always liked like one of the pleasures of taking young readers to the library where we would go every Saturday with like sacks to fill with books was they run out and then you have to like get creative about what

they're going to find in the stacks. And it was always fun in a place like when we lived in Princeton, New Jersey to find these books that have been on the shelves since the 50s that they would pick up and read. Or they would get bored on vacation and you'd be at a cabin and there'd be weird old books that they would pick up and read. And that was just great to to find new stuff that wasn't at your local bookstore. Speaking of books you like to read out loud. I saw a great question someone posed on Twitter and I'd love to hear your guys' answers to it, which is what are books or a book in childhood that specifically influenced you in like the most influential period for you as a young person and you don't have to also answer this, but that also may have

actually to this day kind of shaped your worldview potentially. Like what would you guys put as some of those books? I'll say I have been rereading books that I really loved as a kid. One of those is Enders Game and still love it, which I was very happy to find out that I still vibe with my younger self's taste. >> Oh, Enders Game. Oh, man. That's great. >> Yeah. >> I thought you were going to say Tolken because of last last year's podcast said the Bobbit Lord of the Rings. >> Tolken 2. Tolken 2. I read Enders Game and Tolken at the same time. That year was like my annis morabilus of uh formative reading.

>> Rereading Enders, I was sort of like, man, why did I identify with this like really really lonely like isolated violent boy sort of made me question? >> Yeah. No, there's something really universal about Enders. I think we all I related to Enders, too. I think it's something about being special and and being seen in a way that the world doesn't get you and then there's a place for your special skill. There's something about that theme that resonates. >> I like that interpretation rather than mine >> violent alien killing. Well, they he does reckon I mean as a controversial as he is as an author for some people, he does reckon with it very well in book two of the Enders Game series with

Speaker for the Dead >> and he only wrote Enders Game actually as a layup to get to that story like that. That was the story he actually wanted to write and he was like I'll just write this book to get there first. What's cool too is Orson Scott Cardard then retold the story through another person's perspective. Just talking about like you know these adaptations and recuts of earlier works similar to like James and Huck Finn. You have the same author Orson Scott Hard taking that same story but then again delivering it through a totally different perspective ender shadow through the character Bean which I'm currently reading right now and it is great.

>> So Ender Shadow is like what book? Three or four in the series. It's weird the kind of like it's concurrent with Enders Game. He wrote them at all different times, but like there's like some order. There's probably some order that you could read it in, but it's almost a parallel story line which has other book offshoots. >> Got it. Because then there's a third book. It's actually one of the few books I've seen that has a positive AI because the the alien intelligence that lives in the network, Jane, I think her name is, is kind of a friendly person lurking in the network and she appears in book two. I'm trying to think if Anna Green Gables would be one of mine, but I don't know.

Like I still love those books as a child and growing up, but I don't know that they're the most formative. For some weird reason, the books that keep coming to mind is a great brain series by F. Scott Fitzgerald. One of my all-time all-time favorites along with Encyclopedia Brown. So, there was something about like the smart kid outwitting others, whether it was Encyclopedia Brown or Tom Fitzgerald or like what Tom forgot the last name. >> Yeah, John. John Dennis fits JD. >> Well, JD is the author, but JD, sorry. JD, the character was not the smartest brother. It was Tom. Remember that book for me and my little brain? Cuz that's where he gets to write. Yeah. And that's where he gets to rise and beat out without Tom's help cuz Tom's away at

school and he saves his younger adopted brother Frankie from like the the bandit. I remember that so well. I love that you know those books. They're like my >> definitely my universal. Yeah. >> Encyclopedia of Brown, too. Great books. Remember how Sally I love that Sally was like the Braun and Encyclopedia Brown was a brain >> and the aptly named Bugs Meanie. >> Oh yeah, >> the villain. >> Are we just way out of generation? Uh Robert and Steph, do any of these books sound familiar to you guys? Cuz they were very much in our zeitgeist growing up. >> I'm familiar with it but never read it. >> When I was a kid, I didn't really read books for children that much. Like my dad was a huge reader. He had a big library so I would just kind of go and pick stuff off of his bookshelf and

that's kind of how I started. Little Women was definitely one of them. I mentioned that. Jane Austin was one of my favorite writers. But I think the more formative books were two that I can think of. One was Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which really informed my sense of humor and like how I approach the world. >> You and Elon Musk. >> I totally see that. >> Thought it was the funniest book that I've ever read. Anyway, and then the other one was called is called The Mezzanine by Nicholson Baker. >> Oh my god. Yeah. So good. >> It's incredible. And I don't hear very many people talk about this book anymore, but it was quite popular. But the whole book takes place over somebody like it's just a guy in an office and he's riding an escalator and his shoelace broke. And that's the entire

book and the rest of it is him just stream of conscious fitting in memories and it's funny. It's really funny. He has like a whole some of it's in footnotes. The format's really interesting. He has a whole diversion on paper straws. So he was like an early critic of the paper straw and how it looked. >> Yeah. He would fit right in in California. >> It's short and it's just like I remember reading that and being like this is what it's like to be a writer. This is what it's like to read good books. I remember like my dad laughing on the couch and asking him what he was reading and it was that book and yeah I love it for very formative for me.

>> Yeah. All of Nicholson Baker's microfictions are like that. They're just amazing little gems. Matt Lavine, the uh Bloomberg columnist who writes the Money Stuff newsletter. Apparently, that was one of the things that changed his life, was reading the Mezzanine. He was like, he didn't realize you could write like that and that he has such an idiosyncratic style that is very funny and irreverent. Anyway, he draws from >> the mezzanine. >> That's so funny. I know. I've never read the book. Is it worth reading now? Today, you think? >> Yes. kind of now. It's funny because it's got all these like little old technology things like there's memos and like fax machines and like it's definitely still worth reading. It's a great >> I just added it to my list. I love that.

>> I want a shout out for Lloyd Alexander. So that was definitely formative for me as a kid thinking back on it in addition to everything else. It's Welsh. Have you guys read them? The Prideane Chronicles. P R Y D A I N. And he took Welsh fairy tales and turned them into kids books. And some of them are really heavy morally, but there's like a series of four and it follows a pige assistant pigkeeper. He is not a pigkeeper at the beginning. So classic hero's journey as he goes through life to eventually, you know, his rise to the top, but just kind of deeply felt novels of a kind that kind of are conversant with Tolken and others of that genre that were just

great. >> So you think Lloyd Alexander you could read even today? >> Oh, yeah. I I have them. They're on a shelf in my house. I read them every few years when I go back to him as a writer. And it's one of those things you know that you were a reader and not somebody who talked a lot when it took me years to not know that you didn't say his name. Lloyd. >> I was like, "Oh, it's just Lloyd." >> Tim, how do you pronounce the author of The Virgin Suicides? How do you pronounce his last name? >> Jeffrey Eugenities. >> Eugenities. There we go. Thank you. >> Is the book good? It's so funny because I only know of that book from the Sophia Capola and Kristen Dunn movie. I like the book.

>> I just haven't read it in a super long time, but I remember enjoying it. So, I'm curious if it would hold up after whatever 30 years. >> I think it holds up. It's an an interesting perspective. It's in first person plural, so it's like from an anonymous group of teenage boys, which I've thought was an interesting way of telling the story. It's funny because you brought up The Voice a few times and I think you're the one who originally told me about this thing that like third person omnition is a thing that kids can't read and apparently Robert too can't read anymore. But like what's the deal with that? Like what's happening there? >> Okay, so I don't have any basis for this other than there was this viral tweet about how teenagers don't read Omnician Third anymore or they can't read Omnician Third anymore, which is

interesting. And I don't know how true this is. And I don't know if it's like they can't physically read it with their eyes or if it's just a preference thing. >> That's so funny. So what what do they read? Like first person only like kind of like YouTube influencer genre mediated now or what's the deal? Do we know? >> Who knows what they're reading? They think it's head hopping. >> Head hopping. >> It was supposedly like a literary agent's recommendation not to write in omnition third because teens can't read it anymore. >> But like Okay. So, in defense of teens, how many books were you assigned in high school did you actually read? Like, I think I just read maybe a third of them that were in omnition third or whatever.

Of mice and men is an omnicient third. And I have very clear memories of reading sort of like the first and last paragraph of every chapter and then just calling it a day on that one, writing my essay and submitting it. So, like teens have been, you know, cheating forever. They have they have been not reading the books that are assigned to them for as long as as long as books have been assigned. So I I don't know where this is coming from. I think we are uh forgetting. >> I will say there's no way I would have ever written a single essay without chatbt if I were in school right now knowing myself. >> Totally.

>> I mean we had Wikipedia, we had Encyclopedia, >> which at the time people were like you can't site Wikipedia. You still can't but everybody everybody uses it as their basis of information. >> Exactly. >> But there was like that whole controversial period. People were like do not use Wikipedia. Can't be trusted. >> Mhm. Yeah. Yeah. We're all optimists here. I don't think any of us buy it. >> No, the kids are all right. >> What about So, speaking of the teens, do you guys have any young adult books you like reading as adults? Cuz one of my picks this year on the reading list is a young adult series, Geek Girl, which they made into a Netflix show, which is way worse than the books. the that entire series. I devoured it in like one vacation last summer and I put it on my

list this year because it is so funny and so good and so well done. Do you guys have any young adult books that you're not just revisiting nostalgically, but that you are adding to your repertoire of reading right now? >> Last year I read How's Moving Castle, which I think might even be a children's book, >> but >> yeah, it's Diana Win Jones, right? >> Yes. Yeah. I had such a good time with that. I love the films, the Miyazaki film. The book is so different and definitely worth reading if you've seen the film >> than the film. >> Both excellent. I I feel like you can't really compare them. They are just so different.

>> I haven't read any young adult since my kids got older. But I would recommend like if you're going to recommend books from your youth to your kids, definitely make sure you reread them because I remember being like, "Oh, I should recommend Piers Anthony to my teenage daughters." And I went back and read it and I'm like, "Oh, no. Nobody should read these books ever. It should be >> locked away as a artifact from a different time." No. >> So true. >> I've been on a quest to reread >> a lot of the uh books that I read in my youth, of which Andrew's Game was one, but I recently read His Dark Materials trilogy. We talked about it on the last pod, actually. I finished that one. Uh bunch of the Lord of the Rings again.

and we talked about that last time, but I've been revisiting a lot of these stories now that I've had kids uh as I'm sort of thinking about their childhood and wondering, you know, what I might expose them to. So, I don't read a lot of young adult fiction, but if anybody's interested, my sister is a booktuber and she recommends a lot of them on her channel, which is Merrily Kristen. So, we covered a lot of ground here today. We talked about adaptations of stories across multiple media formats. We've talked about different ways of reading, whether through audio books and the vectors through which you might experience these. We've talked about our childhood favorite books and classics,

young adult fiction. Can't forget about the Gothic novel. If you want more, check out the post, our semianual reading list. This one is our summer things we're reading 2025 list. You can see it on a6cz ccrypto.com. And you can also see, if none of these books vibe with you, a recommendation engine that our founder and managing partner, Chris Dixon, vibecoded with some AI tools called forage.com. You can go there and source up some other books of your own.

Thank you all for joining. >> Thank you. >> Thanks. Super fun. Let's do it again. >> Thanks everyone. Heat. Heat.