Whenever I can, I will send an email with a list of what I’m reading, updates on whatever I’m working on if applicable and that’s really it!

This won’t be news to you if you follow me on Bluesky or listen to my podcast, but it certainly looks like the current owners of Cracked wiped out the archive of columns, so just about everything I wrote from 2008-2017 as well as columns from Seanbaby, Jason Pargin, Kristi Harrison, Brockway, etc etc. It likely wasn’t done with malice as much as it was done with a shrug; sites get technical updates all the time and it was probably just easier to let the archives die than it was to re-code (or whatever) the old stuff.

This wasn’t on paper a total surprise; I’ve always known this kind of thing was possible and I frequently said things like “I should really save all of the old articles that I like in case whomever owns Cracked ends up deleting everything some day,” but it still left me more than a little rattled. In part because I absolutely did not save those articles (though my amazing and thoughtful wife saved a ton for this very reason) and in part because it’s just-- I don’t know-- weird. It was a decade of work!

I won’t pretend all of it was great. I started publishing there at 21 years old and I’m not only a better writer now I’m also just a more empathetic and thoughtful person, the kind of person who would cringe at some of my old language choices, attitudes and ideas. I might take it one step further and say that it’s probably better that some of that stuff is gone. It’s not the writing itself I’ll miss. What I’ll miss professionally is some kind of proof that I existed and worked for ten years writing articles that had been read by millions of people. When you’re pitching to an agent or a potential employer or an anything-else it’s handy to pull up a single webpage that houses a decade of work, including those very helpful pageview numbers. Now I’ll just have to tell those agents and so on “Trust me, I wrote a lot and people like it,” or “you can still find a lot of my stuff via the wayback machine, a thing I reference but only dimly understand,” neither of which are ideal.

It’s such a strange lifecycle. I wrote some stuff that made a lot of people laugh and made a few people a LOT of money-- including most recently the people who fed my articles into the various AI machines to teach robots how to write like me-- and now the stuff’s gone. The videos all still exist, but there’s certainly always a chance that some current or future Cracked boss will decide it’s cheaper to delete those, too. That’s just sort of the world that it is.

Jason summed up a lot of the feelings on Instagram and you can check that out and remember that Instagram is a social media app that may on a whim choose to one day delete Jason’s well-articulated feelings. Like me, Jason isn’t asking for sympathy but is carving out some space for himself to be, you know, a little blue. I think there’s maybe three or four people in the world who can claim partial credit for creating the voice of Cracked and I’m one of them. As the site continues to evolve and shed the things we built, that will mean less and less. Again, that’s the world that it is.

All of this is to say enjoy books! They can’t delete books! I mean, they can and they are, but not until they pry THESE books from my hot, dead hands.

Mother Night (Kurt Vonnegut) My high school sophomore English teacher-- incidentally one of the most important teachers in my development as a writer-- first recommended I read Vonnegut, just any Vonnegut. The class assignment was some sweetheart assignment like “use Spring Break to read literally any book, we do not care, please,” and she told my best friend Joe that he would like Kerouac and she told me I would like Vonnegut. In retrospect, it was a surgically perfect strike, just an insanely correct choice for who I was and what kind of writer I’d eventually (try!) to be. And if this was a Story story, this is the part where I’d say I read a Vonnegut book and it changed my life. But the truth is, even though I loved reading, liked this particular class and was crazy about this specific teacher, I still had a real problem with authority on principle, so I found a summary of Breakfast of Champions, read just enough to fake my way through a book report and used my Spring Break to do whatever I wanted which was, bizarrely, read other books. Years later I read my first Vonnegut book and thought “Damn, spot on, great rec Miss P.”

And years after that, I read Mother Night. Great, funny, dark and quietly profound like all of Vonnegut’s stuff. It’s about a guy in Germany recruited by the US to essentially write pro-Nazi propaganda during the war while simultaneously sneaking coded messages to American intelligence. The book follows his life after all that, when he’s living alone in hiding in America; persistent Nazis still love his work, American troops understandably hate his guts because they don’t know about his work as a double-agent, and he reckons with the “what did I actually do” of it all.

Like This, But Funnier (Hallie Cantor): Run don’t walk! A TV writer (innocently) snoops through the notes of her therapist husband, reads a juicy detail about one of his patients and offhandedly pitches that detail to a TV executive who wants to make a whole show around it. It’s a juicy plot that demands you keep turning pages to see if she’ll get caught, but doubles as a pretty accurate depiction of what working in the television industry is like right now (bad!) and triples as a deep and real story about a married couple considering having a baby. (Books can be many things!)

Harry the Dirty Dog (Gene Zion): This dog Harry hates baths so he hides the scrubbing brush they use for bathtime AND runs away from home. Which-- if I were giving notes on this-- pick one or the other, honey! Running away sends a pretty strong message, running away and hiding the brush makes it seem like the author couldn’t decide. Why would the dog run away after hiding the brush; wouldn’t he assume hiding the brush was enough? And if he didn’t think the brush disappearance was massive enough to spare him from the bath, why do it at all? Like “Oh, I don’t want to pay my tax bill this year, I know I’ll simply hide the bill on the top shelf of my closet and then burn the house down.” Stupid. Anyway Harry gets dirty as shit, just wicked fucking filthy, decides he misses home AND baths(?) and returns to his family, retrieves the brush, gets a bath, then hides the brush again and no one learns anything. When I read this to my son I change it to be about our dog Jackson and for that reason it will stay in our rotation.

Donate blood, call your parents, volunteer at your food pantry and back up all of your files.

Whenever I can, I will send an email with a list of what I’m reading, updates on whatever I’m working on if applicable and that’s really it!

It’s been a minute. Fatherhood is obviously the main thief of my time (for which I’m extremely grateful) and part of that has included some trips to tour my son around so everyone in the family can see how beautiful and sweet and small he is. There are also a few potentially exciting outside-of-work projects occupying some of my time that are way too early to talk about except as excuses for why I haven’t published this monthly newsletter.

Before we get into books, I’d like to use my small platform to talk briefly about blood. The Red Cross has declared a BLOOD CRISIS, the second such crisis in its history and it’s particularly dire for Type O. If you’re lucky, you will never have to rely on a hospital’s library of donated blood but if you’re unlucky, you’ll be incredibly grateful that a bunch of total strangers gave up a few hours to get jabbed with a need while some other total strangers safely carried and stored bags of blood on the off chance that you might need it.

Assuming you can, make an appointment to donate. If you donate in the next two days, the Red Cross will give you a Fandango gift certificate to see a movie like the new Spider-man or Odyssey or whatever you’re into. If you donate before the end of August, you’ll get an Amazon gift card. I donate every four or six months (whatever the medically safe timeline is) because it makes me feel morally superior and also if I donate one more time in 2026 I get a free tote bag and also the donation center near me is right by a Chili’s. Plenty of reasons to donate.

Books!

Vigil (George Saunders) I’m a huge Saunders head-- his Substack? Now that’s a Substack-- and while this wasn’t my favorite of his it’s still unbelievable how original and funny the writing is and how efficient and effortless it all feels. He has fun when he writes and you can tell. A ghost visits a horrible man at death’s door to give him an opportunity to repent before ushering him off to the afterlife but he’s a huge asshole who sees no need to repent, frustrating all involved.

A Psalm for the Wild-Built (Becky Chambers) My bookstore-working cousin recommended this, I had no idea what to expect but seeing that it was a “monk and robot book” I was pretty hooked pretty immediately. Very meditative, I liked everything about this buddy comedy road trip between a restless monk and a curious robot in a future where robots are sentient and free.

Good Material (Dolly Alderton) I picked this up after reading about it in Clusterfeck, the substack of former Last Week Tonighter Carlin Feck. Incredibly strong, funny break-up novel. A few opportunities where characters get to say their version of a Big Truth (”The thing about heartbreak is…” or “the thing about women is…” or “Here’s how you heal a broken heart…”), the kind of thing you can really only get away with in books like this. A comedian gets dumped by his serious girlfriend and does not handle it well. If Young Daniel would have read this, it probably would have formed the basis of his understanding of men and women and dating and relationships. Alas, instead Young Daniel read High Fidelity 900 times.

The Very Hungry Caterpillar (Eric Carle) You’re not prepared for how hungry this sick fucking asshole is. Without spoiling, the twist at the end is pretty predictable but again this one’s really about how hungry one caterpillar can be (hungrier than you would think).

That’s it, that’s the post. Give blood!

Whenever I can I will send an email with a list of what I’m reading, updates on whatever I’m working on if applicable and that’s really it!

I was tempted to make the What I’m Reading list for this edition just The Hungry Caterpillar nine hundred times because that sums up most of what I’m reading these days. (ICYMI my son was born and he’s perfect.) But the dirty secret of this newsletter is it never reflected what I was reading in real time; it was usually a few months behind my actual life, which means I still have a few more books to recommend before I stop reading… forever?

It’s been difficult to rediscover reading time. As a new father, I’m constantly coming up with inventions that should exist to make my life easier, and at the top of that list is a book that I don’t have to hold but also it scrolls with my eyes at my reading speed and also it hovers in front of me and follows me around so I can walk and read at the same time and is crucially not an audiobook because I need my ears available. That’s all I want-- a hands-free floating book with a magic scroll so I can still read while walking my baby around the house. I don’t think that’s too much to ask.

Anyway books.

Rejection (Tony Tulathimutte) This collection of loosely-connected short stories absolutely owns. So funny and so uniquely of-this-moment-right-now. Tony is really good at capturing and empathizing with the modern experience of being, for lack of a better term, too online. I think it’s really hard to write as or about influencers or incels or grindset digital hustlers without being condescending, but Tony does it with a lot of humanity and jokes. It gets occasionally too dark for me and unfortunately involves a last-second twist that made me like the entire book less, so I made the brave decision to ignore that twist and enjoy the book the way I wanted to. No book law against that.

The Getaway (Jim Thompson) Incredible comedian Anthony Jeselnik has a monthly book club where he recommends a book and answers audience questions about it on YouTube and this was his first rec. Obviously I’m in favor of any comedian or comedy writer doing a book club, I think comedy folks who make book clubs are the best kinds of people in the world. I’d somehow never read Getaway, nor did I see any of the film adaptations. It’s… fucking crazy? In a really good way. The first 75% of this book is a classic smooth crook story; a famous bankrobber pulls off a heist and then has to think his way out of an escalating series of scraps to evade capture, it’s exactly the pulpy kind of crime story I’m an absolute sucker for. The end of the book is completely different from everything that came before it, it almost feels like you’re in a totally different book. I read this back in February and I still find myself idly thinking about it all the time. This book is a magic trick.

I Will Kill Your Imaginary Friend for $200 (Robert Brockway) I’ve known Brockway as a coworker and friend for almost 20 years at this point and this book is so annoyingly good I want to put a potato in the tailpipe of his motorcycle, assuming motorcycles have those and assuming putting a potato in one would cause deep distress to the motorcycle’s owner. It’s funny and heartwarming and original and dark. For a book about a loser who can see and murder imaginary friends, it’s a shockingly deep commentary on both mental health and the gig economy. I’ve recommended this book to every person in my real life. If you’re looking for Stephen King but Funny, it’s this.

That’s it. I’m so, so tired. Be nice to your parents because at least one of them is me.

Every month-ish I will send an email with a list of what I’m reading, updates on whatever I’m working on if applicable and that’s really it!

I hardly ever plug specific episodes of my podcast (Quick Question) because I’m very bad at self-promotion, but we recently did an episode about scammy AI fitness ads and I like how it turned out. It’s a medium-dive that begins with a weird ad for something called Tai Chi Walking that I casually suspected was AI generated and ends with a tech parent company that I now believe is just a front for some full-blown scammers. Give it a watch if you haven’t already.

Here are some books that won’t scam you, because they are books.

Shark Heart (Emily Habeck) This book made me want to write my wife poems. It’s so good and romantic and smart and devastating and original. It’s a love story with a twist; one of the characters is slowly turning into a literal shark, which is the kind of thing that can happen in the reality of this book.

Destiny of the Republic (Candice Millard) The true story about the rise of James Garfield, the madman who shot him, and a little bit about Alexander Graham Bell. I picked this up after watching the fantastic Netflix miniseries inspired by it (Death by Lightning). As good as the show was, the book was better and NOT in an annoying way; the book just had more time to live and breathe with each character, especially Bell with whom I’m now obsessed. This is my new gold standard for historical nonfiction, it moves so well and never feels like homework.

How to Dodge a Cannonball (Dennard Dayle) Dennard is one of the geniuses over at 1-900 Hot Dog, so I’ve been reading him for years but holy shit this book is good. I got to meet Dennard at a hangout for Hot Dog writers-- which I am in only the most technical sense-- but I didn’t read his book until after. I’m glad I waited, because if I’d read it first I’d be too starstruck to speak. A damn funny satire set during the Civil War with a billion jokes and a ton of heart. I can see the movie or miniseries version as easily as I can see this assigned in high school English class.

That's it! With our baby coming any day now, this is quite possibly the last one of these newsletters I’ll send for a while, unless everyone was lying about how much work children are. Call your parents, donate to your local food pantry, drink water, take care of yourself.

Every month-ish I will send an email with a list of what I’m reading, updates on whatever I’m working on if applicable and that’s really it! It’s been a minute since I sent one of these, and I encourage everyone to decide if the lapse was caused by the holidays, pre-baby-nesting, the general state of the world or personal laziness. You really can’t go wrong.

Playworld (Adam Ross) Holy shit, now this is a book. A Book! A coming of age story centered on one somewhat eventful year in the life of an actor/writer/high school wrestler. He falls in love and gets his heart broken and discovers and loses and learns more about his parents and he fails and he succeeds, all the things that happen in books. Almost every single line is either funny or profound or both. I was reading this while my wife and I were on a road trip and I accidentally left it in the hotel and I bought another copy on kindle because I simply couldn’t wait for the hotel to send it to me. When I finished, I started it over again, it’s the kind of book you start over again because you’re worried you’ll miss the characters too much.

Wreck (Catherine Newman) Speaking of missing characters, this is what I’m talking about. When I read Newman’s Sandwich a year or so ago, I loved it, recommended it in this very newsletter and bought more books by the author because I wanted to continue living in her brain. I had no idea there was going to be a SEQUEL to Sandwich. It didn’t NEED a sequel, but I’ll take it, I was thrilled when this came out because it meant I could continue hanging out with my best fictional friend Rocky and her family. I’ll take a million books about my best fictional friend Rocky and her family. No need to read Sandwich to read Wreck, a story about family and complications-- medical, personal and professional. I love my best fictional friend Rocky and if anything happens to her I will lose it.

Tinsel (William Goldman) A funny but deeply, deeply cynical story about Old Hollywood by the great William Goldman (Princess Bride, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and more but honestly do you even NEED more than that?). I love Goldman and Which Lie Did I Tell-- his “memoir” of sorts about navigating the film industry as a screenwriter-- has been one of the most useful books on writing and the industry that I’ve ever read, but boy did this book bum me out. It’s obviously funny and well-written, but this isn’t William Goldman the optimist, this isn’t Princess Bride Goldman where love conquers all; this is a fangs-out Goldman, warning you that Hollywood is a toxic and evil place that will punish whatever good is left in you.

You’ll notice there’s no link to Tinsel and that’s because I’m not sure how you could buy it. On the previously mentioned road trip when I found myself without a book, I stumbled into the library of a different hotel and that’s where I found Tinsel. You could probably find an overpriced copy on Amazon or something if your mission happened to be to read every single book I recommend, but if that’s your mission, maybe consider a different mission.

That’s it! It’s hard out there in the world right now, no one at my job can focus, everyone is sad or mad or losing their mind and no one knows how to turn the temperature down, or even if it can be turned down. If you are sad or mad or losing your mind, consider volunteering your time at a local food pantry. Donating your money is helpful too (one can feeds one family, one dollar feeds ten), but donating your time is soul work. You will not find pettiness, smallness, fear or anger at your food pantry, I promise. You’ll find other volunteers-- kids and retirees-- who showed up to help, you’ll find clients who are grateful for the help and always (always) looking for ways they can help. Kind people helping kind people. The world’s too big. Start small.

Every month I will send an email with a list of what I’m reading, updates on whatever I’m working on if applicable and that’s really it! Some of you may have noticed that I didn’t send a newsletter last month, while others may not have. I think we’d all do well to be more like the people who didn’t notice. They seem chill. Books!

One Italian Summer (Rebecca Serle) Perfect summer/beach/pool read, which is why I’m recommending it now in November. A young woman and her mother plan a trip to Italy and when the mother dies, the woman decides to go to Italy anyway by herself where she meets… her mother! As a 30-year-old! It’s a magic and impossible premise and it stays magic and impossible, which I love. The book is about grief and growth and understanding your parents in all their complexity but also-- and I think this was intentional-- the book is about the different kinds of incredible food you can eat in Italy. Truly, the protagonist eats three meals a day and describes each meal in such vivid detail and it made me so freakin’ hungry for fresh mozzarella I think it cured my lactose intolerance. Also all that stuff I said about grief and growth, that too.

107 Days (Kamala Harris) Listened to this book with my wife on a long road trip. If you’re looking for any surprising insight into the last election or if you’re looking for Kamala unfiltered voicing all of the very understandable frustrations of that campaign, you’re not going to find it here. Like a lot of very quickly-written, very of-the-moment books by politicians, 107 Days is a fairly straightforward rundown an opportunity for Kamala to clear up the record a few times. (”Actually here’s why this thing I did that seemed like a bad idea was a GOOD idea” and “Actually here’s why a thing my opponent/the media said about me was a LIE” and “Actually here’s why it was really SMART for me to do everything I did.”) This isn’t meant to be scathing or anything, this is par for the course for these kinds of books and what I should have expected. There’s a hint that one day Kamala will write the book that gets into how she really felt, and I can’t wait to read that one.

Heart the Lover (Lily King) Sweet and cute and real, I love Lily King’s books. Meaty and romantic and funny. She has an incredible knack for writing condescending asshole men who don’t know they’re condescending assholes.

That’s it! I don’t have anything extra to say or plug at the moment, we’re on hiatus at work and I’m filling my time by alternately being sick and getting radicalized by toxic parenting advice on Instagram. (ICYMI, I’m going to be a dad which among other things probably means the reading list will, um, change.)

Every month I will send an email with a list of what I’m reading, updates on whatever I’m working on if applicable and that’s really it!

In case you missed it, the jerks I work with and I were lucky enough to win an Emmy Award and I used the opportunity to be an accidental prophet of doom. Watch my acceptance speech here and listen to me talk about the experience here. WANT MORE!? It came up on the show proper.

I also reunited with my former intern Robert Evans on the massively popular Behind the Bastards podcast discussing the crooked sheriff of all crooked sheriffs, Buford Pusser. Here’s part one and part two of that conversation. Those are the only parts!

Lots of housekeeping before we get to what I’ve been reading lately.

Murder on Sex Island (Jo Firestone) If you’re reading this there’s a pretty good chance you’ve already heard of writer/comedian/podcaster/game-inventer Jo Firestone. There’s a murder on Sex Island-- a reality show-- so the producers hire a private detective to solve the murder as quietly as possible by posing as one of the contestants. And for one final bonus twist, the private detective is actually a bored woman who just started posing as a private detective. It’s such great fun, my only notes in my book notebook was “writing can be fun.”

Stupid TV, Be More Funny (Alan Siegel) Fun fact about me is that I will read any and every book about the legendary Simpsons room and this is one of those. Much of Simpsons is absolutely perfect and I’m constantly learning and re-learning how they did it. It’s about setting standards, it’s about meeting standards, it’s about being the best version of yourself that you can imagine. Be funny, don’t compromise.

The Expectant Father (Armin A. Brott) Great book (though not for everyone) and I’m sure I’ll have some follow up questions. This book newsletter will likely be lighter on recommendations as most of the reading I do these days is books like this. The incoming baby news is already public via my wife and my instagram accounts, and also we tell everyone we run into, but just in case this newsletter is the only way you keep up with my life, surprise! We’re pregnant.

That’s… it? That’s a lot. That’s plenty. Don’t be greedy. There’s a lot going on in the ole’ book club.

Every month I will send an email with a list of what I'm reading, updates on whatever I'm working on if applicable and that's really it!

Zotz! (Walter Karig) This book-- originally published in 1947-- is insane and hilarious. A lifelong academic stumbles upon a magic power-- the ability to kill anything he wants just by pointing at it and saying the word "ZOTZ!" His goal is to use this power to help America win the war against the Germans but gets eternally sidetracked by bureaucrats and politicians, and also there's a pretty slick dick joke thrown in for the patient readers. Not long ago my wife and I drove an hour to a massive rummage sale in Northern New Jersey and I picked this up purely because it looked very old and very weird. (I was right.) I know comedy writing wasn't invented in the 70s; I've read enough at this point to not be shocked when writing this old and even older is funny, but it's still surprising to come across something old that feels funny in a modern way. Funny, silly, stupid, incredibly sitcommy and has something important to say about the military industrial complex but doesn't let the message get in the way of being dumb and funny. I couldn't find it on BookShop or Amazon, so check your local library or if you ever run into me I'll lend you my copy, I guess.

Anima Rising (Christopher Moore) The Bride of Frankenstein meets Freud, Jung and a buttload of horny artists. She's on the run from the police for reasons I won't spoil and also has a giant monster dog for a pet for reasons I can't spoil. Like all of Moore's stuff, it's hilarious and poignant and smart AND dumb. Like a lot of the books before it, Anima is complete fiction but still somehow meticulously researched (this one borrows from Frankenstein, Native American spirituality and a bunch of, like psychology and art stuff). Moore is on my Mount Rushmore of comedy writers, which made it all the more thrilling when he kindly gave a blurb for my book which you can buy here. A writer of his stature could probably write another bestseller every year in his sleep if he wanted, but it's clear that he wants to put real work in (hence the immersive research) and it's also clear on the page just how much he fucking loves writing. Entertaining, funny, heartfelt when it's supposed to be. I'm going from memory here because the only thing I wrote in my notes was "How he do it?"

So Far Gone (Jess Walter) A disgruntled grandpa decides to leave society behind and live off the grid when he feels like the world is going crazy (and it's our world, so you kind of get where he's coming from). After several years off the grid, he gets contacted because his daughter is missing and his grandkids may be in danger. The book is funny, original, timely and-- to use a word I've used a thousand times in this newsletter-- propulsive. It moves so briskly, and not in a no-offense Dan Brown sort of way. I want to re-read it just so I can map out the structure chapter-by-chapter as a lesson in how to pace a book so it keeps the reader engaged with just the good parts.

Man this was a fun run of books to read, just hit after hit.

That's it! Go on walks, volunteer, call your parents, pick up the trash you see on your walks.

Every month I will send an email with a list of what I'm reading, updates on whatever I'm working on if applicable and that's really it! NEW WORD ALERT: Because of the CBS/Colbert news and the subsequent coverage that I can't seem to pull myself away from, I've been a bit depstracted (depressed and distracted). It’s difficult to take my mind off it when everyone in my life (understandably) asks “What do you think of this whole Colbert thing” whenever they run into me. An innocent and reasonable question, but my answer is “Yikes.” “Fuck and yikes.”

People are maintaining that cancelling a top-rated legacy late night show is purely a financial move, people are speculating it's definitely a political move, people are saying it's possibly a combination of both things-- the "why" doesn't totally matter to me. I don't know that we'll ever get an answer, but no answer really makes me feel great if the end result is still "200 people will lose their jobs." I feel it a little bit harder because many of those people are my friends, and they're ALL my people, which maybe sounds corny or self-important or some third thing, but it’s how I feel, they’re my people. There's a big circle of people, a smaller one of writers, an even smaller one of comedy writers and a teeny, tiny one of late night comedy writers. We're all doing this Thing, we’re all In It. There are fewer places for us to do it now. People will always write, they'll always write political comedy, it'll just be harder to make a living doing it. Harder now, maybe later impossible.

"Is it a financial move or a political move?" I don't know, which is better? Aren't they both different versions of "We don't think this specific form of writing is worth it anymore?" The factory's closing.

Times like this, one finds distraction and inspiration and kinship in-- YOU GUESSED IT-- books.

James (Percival Everett) This is a reimagining of Huck Finn from the point of view of James (Jim the slave). This is the book everyone was talking about in 2024 and it was on all the lists and everyone was right! Propulsive is the word I'd use to describe this book, fast-paced and funny, another book that felt like the guiding principle was "only the good parts."

Mrs. Caliban (Rachel Ingalls) My brilliant coworker Sofia Manfredi recommended this, and TALK ABOUT PROPULSIVE. This is a novella about a lonely housewife who fucks a fishmonster (it's extremely Shape of Water-coded). What I mean about propulsive is in chapter one, there's a breaking news story on the radio about a fishmonster breaking out of the zoo and in chapter two the fishmonster shows up at the narrator's door like "Hey can I hide here and also what that thang do?" I loved how active this book was, it was just a thing happens then next thing then next thing. It's dark and at many times very heartbreaking but it's not a book you will want to put down.

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Mark Twain, heard of him?) Something that occurred to me while reading James was that I hadn't read Huck Finn, or it's very possible that I'd half-read it in school if it had ever been assigned. Everyone's right when they call Mark Twain a genius and this book had maybe my favorite meta ending of a book I've ever encountered, where the "author" of the book Huck Finn ends it by basically saying he's tired of writing this book and if he'd known how hard it was to write a book he probably never would've started in the first place. Brother, you and me both. Just a silly and subversive way to end what was and maybe is still considered the great American novel. I will say-- and this says more about a gradual evolution in tastes than anything else-- where James was incredibly propulsive, Huck Finn could at times feel meandering. There’s a part in the book where Huck just describes a series of paintings and poems, and I'm sure it means something but I'm also like C'mon, I'm already reading, don't make me do art stuff, too. I am only half serious about this gripe, but I think even that half is enough to earn some outrage from Serious Book People.

One other final note that might not mean anything to anyone: Previous editions of this newsletter linked to Amazon because I was part of their affiliate program (if people clicked through my links and ended up buying something on Amazon, I would receive the teeniest tiniest amount of referral money). 2025 is the year I'm attempting to stop using Amazon once and for all (if possible), so now all links lead to bookshop.org, a company that I believe is better and will continue believing that until someone inevitably tells me bookshop is owned by Haliburton or Big Tobacco or, more than likely, Amazon.

That's it! Go on walks, volunteer, call your parents, pick up the trash you see on your walks.

Every month I will send an email with a list of what I'm reading, updates on whatever I'm working on if applicable and that's really it!

It's June, it's very hot, too hot to think thoughts and turn those thoughts into words to type. So here come books.

Swimming to Cambodia (Spaulding Grey)

My (and your?) favorite comedian John Mulaney mentioned this piece as an early influence in some interview so I picked it up in accordance with my practice of reading the things my favorite writers love. I can see why Mulaney latches on to this so much, and if I was still performing live or had pursued it, Spaulding would probably be one of my guys. Longform storytelling with tangents and parentheticals within parentheticals, humor and heart.

Harold (Steven Wright)

You know Steven Wright, he's the long-haired, brilliant comedian known for incredible one-liners that alternate between really dumb and incredibly profound. He's also an Academy Award winner and a joy guest on any late night show. I've admired his stand up since before I even thought about comedy or writing and he's a major influence but, oops, I didn't love his first novel. A dozen or so truly great one-liners and thoughtful… thoughts, but it felt like I was reading this book forever. It's all stream-of-consciousness, a day in the brain of a curious third-grader, there's no stakes or any real momentum. Again, funny lines but also again, oy vey.

Harold realized that adults were always saying and describing how the world worked and he felt sorry for them because he knew they believed it and he knew they knew nothing and thought they knew everything which was the lowest rung on the whole ladder.

Meditations for Mortals (Oliver Burkeman)

Helpful in my ongoing pursuit of being present and enjoying life instead of trying to master it or get ahead. Burkeman also wrote Four Thousand Weeks which I think had a slightly bigger impact on my quest for peace, but they're both work it. Most books like this are! Even if you don't stop and sniff every rose, it's good to be reminded that that's one of the things we're supposed to do here.

The Dream Hotel (Laila Lalami)

Holy fucking shit this book ruled.

So good. Insane to learn Lalami first started writing it in 2014 because it's one of the most Right Now books I've ever read ("Algorithms are bad, strikes and collective labor are good.") I can't remember being so moved and terrified by a book. It's the not-at-all distant future and people are being put in jails for literal dreams that are determined to be problematic. Surveillance state! Prison industrial complex! Tech companies obsessed with a growth-at-all-cost mindset rapidly ruining the world! If all that isn't prescient enough, there's also an epidemic AND a California wildfire thrown in there. I cannot over-reccommend this book enough, read it, let it fuck you up, come back and we'll discuss.

That's it! I'm going to go read.

Every month I will send an email with a list of what I'm reading, updates on whatever I'm working on if applicable and that's really it!

In addition to books, this month I'm excited to share some news about "Dead Presidents," a new old podcast miniseries exploring the mystery: "Why did we put HIM on money?"

Here are some facts:

-I wrote and hosted a podcast miniseries about presidents for an exclusive podcast platform.
-That platform disappeared, along with the podcast.
-I finally found and secured that podcast.
-Each episode covers a different president on a bill with hilarious guests Hannah Hart, Liana Maeby, Patrick Stump, Rachel Bloom and Ralph Garman.
-We’re releasing the series EXCLUSIVELY on the Quick Question Patreon.
-It is, again, about presidents and money and it’s very funny.

I loved making that show and was bummed when it seemed to have disappeared forever, lost like so many things in the pattern of mergers, acquisitions and consolidation that defines our current media landscape. I fear that one day some massive tech company that thinks it wants to dabble in being a media company will buy up all of the Cracked archives, and then a few years later will decide it no longer sees value in art and hits delete on the whole operation, erasing the work I (and others) spent over a decade building. If one day that happens, if mega-brand Dupont-Uber ultimately flushes the toilet on all the stuff I made, at least I can say I managed to claw back a cool, little podcast series I created for very little money.

It's a good show and I own it now and the only way to listen to every episode is by supporting our podcast endeavor Quick Question on Patreon.

BOOKS!

The Spamalot Diaries (Eric Idle)

An inspiring glimpse into the creative and business struggles that went into writing and staging SPAMALOT, an incredible musical I love very much. It's a crazy document if you've seen or know the show; you see Idle and Co. writing now-iconic songs over a weekend, you see them casually cutting a song that you KNOW is perfect before they do, and your breathe a sigh of relief when they decide just as casually to bring it back. SPAMALOT was so confident that it seemed to me like it just emerged fully formed; it's kind of comforting to get an unfiltered close-up look at the process to discover that even the greats-- from time to time-- have no idea what they're doing. Plus it's got some good Idle gems.

"It's interesting to me that when people raise 'head vs heart,' they always assume that thinking with your heart is somehow morally superior to using your brain… Your head is what does the thinking for you to spare you from the emotional mess you get into when you let your emotions lead… Your heart is an organ that pumps blood. It is snobbery to think you can think better with a pump than with the amazing brain we have evolved."

Funny Story (Emily Henry)

Another romance and it was… fine? It moved well, I think I just wanted more out of this, like I wanted it to be romantic AND funny or romantic AND really sad or poignant or-- I don't know-- any additional thing. Instead it just very clearly sets up your two characters who are perfect for each other and will obviously get together in the end and the whole book is just a waiting game to get to that endpoint. Which I understand is the point of this genre, I just didn't get enough joy out of the waiting that occupied the bulk of the thing.

Dancing Aztecs (Donald Westlake)

Nothing like getting burned by a book I didn't love to send me sprinting back for something reliable. I'm back on my Donald Westlake bullshit for a non-Dortmunder comic, crime novel. And it didn't disappoint, which is the whole point of comfort food. There's some pretty WILD of-the-time racism and if that keeps you from enjoying a book, I totally get it, skip this one. Otherwise it's an incredibly complex heist book with a lot of moving parts that somehow pays off. I'd be shocked if Dave Barry wasn't a fan. Westlake is a genius at taking a fun idea-- in this case, "There are 16 identical statues, one of which is worth a million dollars, and 8 different crooks are all chasing them"-- and blowing it up completely. Deceptively easy formula: inventive crime + interesting characters + ticking clock = book. Here's an insane passage for a book published in the 1970s:

"State Troopers love Fury IIs (a car). State Troopers will go on driving Fury IIs until some car company puts out a car called Kill. Then State Troopers will drive Kills. State Troopers get their self-image from Marvel Comics."

Get 'em, Donald.

That's it! Call your parents, take walks, support your local food pantry because food banks and pantries are all struggling everywhere right now.

Hello! This is the official substack of me, Daniel O'Brien, Emmy/WGA/Peabody-winning Senior Writer for Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, author of How to Fight Presidents and its adaptation Your Presidential Fantasy Dream Team, Head Writer for the Cracked De-textbook and editor and contributing author for You Might Be a Zombie and Other Bad News (a New York Times Bestseller), and co-host of the popular hang out podcast Quick Question with Soren and Daniel (now on YouTube). I co-created, co-wrote and co-starred in Cracked After Hours, which is easily the most popular thing I've ever done, but that's in the past. This is the latest issue of my substack, a thing you signed up for on purpose.

Every month I will send an email with a list of what I'm reading, updates on whatever I'm working on if applicable and that's really it!

No new creative things to announce, but one new creative thing to almost announce, which is very frustrating for me and I imagine you. Until then, books!

Werewolf Lawyer: (Shea Serrano)

I've been a fan of Shea's writing since I first came across it on The Ringer years ago, he always just seemed like someone who was physically incapable of not being funny. I'd read his writing about teams I didn't care about, sports I didn't follow, musicians I'd never heard of-- anything. He writes like he's your cooler, older sibling sharing something he finds exciting and if one day he decided to publish "The Phonebook as Interpreted by Shea Serrano," I'd be the first to preorder it. Werewolf Lawyer is either exactly what it sounds like or almost exactly what it sounds like, depending on whether or not you think it sounds like "a lawyer who is a werewolf" or "a lawyer for werewolves" (it's the second one).

Glory Days/New Teeth/Spoiled Brats: (Simon Rich)

Honestly fuck Simon Rich he's so good and so talented and is doing exactly the kind of writing I want to be doing and he seems nice and I'm very jealous and I hate his guts. "Here's a funny short story that's like what if a baby was a detective or What if Super Mario but in real life?" fuck you, I want to write that. Simon Rich thinks he can just write the kind of quick, hilarious, irreverent-until-they're-poignant short stories that I want to write-- why? Because he came up with the ideas first and wrote them? Seems unfair. I burned through these three short story collections incredibly quickly. Glory Days is probably my favorite of this batch, probably because it's written by an older and more thoughtful version of Rich, and I myself am also now older and more thoughtful.

Our American Cousin: (Tom Taylor)

So this play is notable for exactly one thing and I'd be honestly shocked if the majority of people subscribing to this particular newsletter didn't already know what that one thing was: this was the play Abraham Lincoln was seeing when actor-turned-kook John Wilkes Booth shot him in the back of that massive Lincoln head of his. I learned this fact at some point and gave it a home in my brain in case it ever came up in Jeopardy! or whatever. Certainly afterwards no one was really interested in restaging this play and giving it a second chance, but even without the assassination association it was a fairly forgettable and unremarkable play. But it occurred to me that I hadn't read it. My brain told me to read it, that's the thing about brains. I don't know if I'm going to, like, do something with it, but sometimes my brain says "Hey it might be useful to have specific familiarity with this forgettable play," and I try to respect my dumb brain when it tells me things like that. Some good lines in a show that-- I agree with history-- would not be remembered for anything if not for That One Thing. It did provide two antiquated colloquialisms that really tickled me; referring to someone who is multi-talented as "some pumpkins" struck me for whatever reason ("Wal you can sing and paint and play on the pianner and in your particular circle you are some pumpkins." "Some pumpkins. First I am small potatoes and now I am some pumpkins.") In the other case, a person is (pejoratively) referred to as a "sockdologizing old man trap," a word I think was invented by and for this play. If I were writing for The Simpsons, "sockdologizing" would be moved straight to the top of the pile of "impossibly old things to drop into Mr. Burns's idiolect." It is-- funnest fact-- the word Booth used as his cue to shoot Lincoln, because the line usually got a huge reaction and he thought the laugh break would provide cover for the gunshot. What preparation. What a thought process. What a crazy guy.

That's the thing about brains, sometimes they tell you to do something before you know why and you end up learning things and making connections and turning wheels. (Another thing brains do is sometimes they get splattered all over the place if some dickhead shoots you in the back of the skull.)

Whelp! That's it! Call your parents, take walks, support your local food pantry because food banks and pantries are all struggling everywhere right now.

Every month I will send an email with a list of what I'm reading, updates on whatever I'm working on if applicable and that's really it! Fun fact: The only reason I remember to post this newsletter is because I have a calendar alert that syncs with my daily to-do list app to tell me, once a month, POST NEWSLETTER. That reminder is set for the 29th day of every month which explains why we went dark in February. No cool reason, just a poorly-designed system meeting general incompetence.

"Hey, Daniel-- change that date in your calendar right now so this doesn't happen again next year!"

"Hey! Shut up!"

Anyway, my 2025 book-reading continues at a pace slower than I'd like, but I think things have calmed down enough that I'm finding my rhythm again. It's tough, because I've been trying to-- for lack of a better word-- "de-automatize" several aspects of my life this year. I'd previously been living exclusively on my to-do list app which includes some necessary calendar reminders but also several daily tasks including MEDITATE and EXERCISE and WRITE and, yes READ. The attempt was to create habits, the result was I'd turned several of my favorite things into sometimes homework or chore and sometimes a game I could lose if I failed to tick a box. That's no fun and no way to live; I don't think we're meant to assign point values to things like reading, running, meditating or living. We should do the things we like because we like them. In taking a step back from automatizing and optimizing, I am falling behind on my reading.

It's a process!

BOOKS!

Tom Lake: (Ann Pratchett)

It's a story about horny, reckless, young love, it's a story about thoughtful, healthy adult love, it's a story about theater kids, it's a story about parents, it's a story about the play Our Town, it's a story about what our parents used to be. It's a lot and it's great! I can't remember why I picked this up, but it was great and a fast read. Made me nostalgic for doing theater summer stock, something I've never done.

Our Town: (Thornton Wilder)

The thing about this book is it's a play. I saw it when I was in middle school and my brother was in it and there's a pretty good chance I read it in school too at some point, but neither made an impact. Our Town plays a big part in Tom Lake so once one was done I picked up the other. Now that I've read it For Real, I'm an evangelist! It's a classic for a reason. "Whenever you come near the human race, there's layers and layers of nonsense."

Cops and Robbers: (Donald Westlake)

I will eventually read all of Westlake's stuff. This one isn't in the Dortmunder series but it's still a) about crime and b) funny. Donald Westlake is great at a lot of things and one of them is describing New York. "A guy I was talking to in a bar once a couple years ago said it was his opinion that the main characteristic of New York is that it's going through all of the phases of the phoenix at once. New York is living, and it's on fire, and it's dying, and it's ashes, all at the same time and all the time."

Final note! This newsletter is free and will be forever, but if any of you sickos want to support me, the podcast I do with Soren is available to support on patreon. Quick Question is completely independent, we use the money we make to buy ads to spread the word and pay our engineer/editor/producer Gabe. If there's any extra money at the end of the year, Soren and I get a little Christmas bonus, which we do not invest wisely.

That's all! Volunteer at your local food pantry, call your parents and remember to get up and move around every 30 minutes.

Hello! This is the official substack of me, Daniel O'Brien, six-time Emmy-winning Senior Writer for Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, author of How to Fight Presidents and its adaptation Your Presidential Fantasy Dream Team, Head Writer for the Cracked De-textbook and editor and contributing author for You Might Be a Zombie and Other Bad News (a New York Times Bestseller), and co-host of the popular hang out podcast Quick Question with Soren and Daniel (now on YouTube). I co-created, co-wrote and co-starred in Cracked After Hours, which is easily the most popular thing I've ever done, but that's in the past. This is the latest issue of my substack, a thing you signed up for on purpose.

Every month I will send an email with a list of what I'm reading, updates on whatever I'm working on if applicable and that's really it! We're back to work at my day job (LWT) and there's a new old president and my wife and I just bought a house, so "what I'm reading" lately has almost exclusively been "hateful and alarming yet utterly unsurprising dispatches from the White House" and various "Things Every New Homeowner Does Wrong" guides you can find on the internet. It feels like it's been a thousand years since I've been able to engage with a novel even though the real timeline is probably closer to Christmas, but what is time? One day I will be able to again read something that isn't either a Times article about how it's now illegal to think pronouns or that we're renaming all Chipotles "Hamburgers," or an instruction manual for installing blinds that has pictures of bald goblins with screwdrivers instead of words, but that day isn't today and tomorrow's not looking great either. Here are some books I read back when I still could.

Dead Detective Mountain: (John Swartzwelder)

I've lost track of how many of Swartzwelder's Frank Burly novels I've read at this point, but I can read a million of them. For the COMPLETELY uninitiated, Swartzwelder is the legendary Simpsons writer behind almost 50 of what's considered golden era Simpsons's episodes. He's a weird genius recluse who started self-publishing "detective" stories starring Frank Burly, a detective who is sort of like Homer Simpson but indestructible and with no redeeming qualities. The books are line-after-line hilarious and incredible quick reads. DDM is his latest and it's great, though my favorite is probably How I Conquered Your Planet.

The Gatekeepers: How the White House Chiefs of Staff Define Every Presidency: (Chris Whipple)

Another Ryan Holiday recommendation. A trip through the last several decades of Chiefs of Staff, a position I knew embarrassingly little about. Good lessons on leadership and service. It sounds really dry and if I'm being honest when I picked it up I thought it would live on my Forever Next shelf, the large stack of books I promised myself I'd read but probably never will (shout out Devil in the White City and that boring-ass Harry Truman book I accidentally got when I meant to get the other one). But it was great and fascinating and just incredibly readable.

My Funny Cowboy Dance: (Jack Handey)

Another legendary comedy writer (SNL, Deep Thoughts), another hit collection of short, stupid, perfect humor pieces.

Wedding People: (Alison Espach)

Actually funny, romantic and sweet. A woman gets cheated on/dumped and decides to end her life in style at a fancy hotel. TWIST— a wedding has taken over the hotel all weekend long and due to believable plot reasons our protagonist can’t go through with her suicide plan and gets swept up in wedding shenanigans. It was full of poignant lines ("Love is visible, it paints the air between two people a different color, and everyone can see it.") and featured my favorite, casual description of an uptight character, "A man who would only eat Oreos in private."

And that's it! I'm exhausted because I just moved infinity boxes and now there are still infinity boxes to move. Read books, run, volunteer at your local food pantry and call your parents. Bye.

Every month I will send an email with a list of what I'm reading, updates on whatever I'm working on if applicable and that's really it!

In case you missed it, I published my first longform comedy article in like 7 years on 1-900-hotdog.com, the best and only comedy website that publishes this kind of thing anymore. If you don't know Hotdog, it's an exclusively patreon-funded comedy promised land run by Seanbaby and Robert Brockway, two of my friends and former coworkers from Cracked.

They let me write about the very real safety video that Virgin America ran for several years, and which was a bit of an obsession of mine. Writing is fun. Obviously I do a lot of writing for Last Week Tonight, but writing in my own voice-- and writing to be read versus said-- flexes a different muscle that I wasn't sure I still had in me. (Turns out I do still have that muscle, it’s one of the ones I will apparently never lose, like my calves, butt and end of list.) I had a good time and I hope you give it a read, it's free unless you think your time has value, in which case it's about 4000 words too expensive.

Onwards to some things that I didn't write.

Furious Hours (Murder, Fraud and the Last Trial of Harper Lee): (Casey Cep)

True story. So, a guy allegedly (definitely) goes on a little murder spree, killing various wives and friends to collect the insurance money, everyone knows he's doing it but no one can stop him or put him away because he's represented by a hot shot lawyer who keeps getting him off. Then the murderer is shot in the head and killed in broad daylight with dozens and dozens of witnesses. Who will defend the shooter? That's right, the same hot shot lawyer who suddenly has time on his calendar! Obviously the trial's going to be insane and dramatic, and who should be there to cover it all? Harper Lee!

That's, like the setup of this true crime book, I'm not even giving anything away, but even if I had it wouldn't spoil anything because the book is so non-stop-entertaining. The writing is no-nonsense and efficient, as is the tendency with journalists, but when sudden poetry does sneak in it really sings.

"Ghost bells, war cries, the clanging of slave chains: if ever a land came by its haunting honestly, it is eastern Alabama."

"'I know exactly why she did it,' (Harper Lee) explained in 1976 of Lizzie Borden: 'Anyone burdened with long petticoats and having had mutton soup for breakfast on a day like that was bound to have murdered somebody before sundown."

The Midnight Assassin: (Skip Hollandsworth)

I must have been on some kind of murder/true crime kick, which is extremely unlike me. The book follows what is possibly the first serial killer in American history, a creep who went on a rampage in 19th century Austin, Texas. Again, I'm not typically drawn to murder/dark stories but I like the just-the-facts writing style. It’s all hits. When you're telling the story that's just about a series of murders one after the other, it's almost impossible for the writing to NOT feel propulsive. SPOILER: I was let down because I read the whole fucking book and at the end the author is like "Oh by the way we still don't know who this murderer was and we never will. Wait, were you reading this whole book and taking little notes about every minor character trying to figure out who the murderer was? Lol, wow, sucks, how sad for you." I would have appreciated a head's up.

Shirley Estar Goes to Heaven: (Winston Rowntree)

This book-- written by the incomparable genius Winston Rowntree who illustrated both of my books-- is incredible. It's the real deal. It's about an assassin in the future future future, but it's actually about a million things. I don't have a summary in my notes, just a series of quotes I loved.

-"God is all the things you don't know, and if all you know is all the stuff that's freaking wrong with you then god knows the rest, and maybe they'll reveal all that to you someday. God wants you to be happy, because it helps you help the world-- not to go to heaven or whatever, but to create a universe that is heaven."

Simpsons Confidential: (Mike Reiss)

Great for Simpsons fans obviously, and great and occasionally frustrating for writers. If you read this like I did-- searching for writing tips and tricks to figure out 'how the Simpsons writers did it'-- I've got bad news for you: the trick is the funniest people in the world just sat down in front of a piece of paper and wrote and rewrote until they arrived at the funniest thing. They weren't trying to be anything other than funny, so that's exactly what happened.

46% Better than Dave: (Alastair Puddick)

Once again took a gamble on a random book described as "hilarious" that probably should've been described as "hilarious for, like, a book, you know?" I didn't hate this novel about a middle-aged guy who induces his own doom spiral when someone with his exact same name moves into his neighborhood and seems to enjoy a life that is, roughly, 46% better than his own in every way. I think I just expected something sillier? It's a quick read and there are definitely some real laughs in it and I do love how propulsive it is, I guess I just can't get too excited for a book that is at the end of the day a well-articulated dramatization of a mopey, privileged white dude's mid-life crisis. Mopey white guy complaining about his mostly fine life worked gangbusters for me when it was High Fidelity, but this treatment just didn’t do it for me.

That's it! This is the last substack I'll send in 2024, a year that saw me read 44 books, which is not the 52 I was hoping for but not the 0 that I was dreading. Nothing to do in 2025 but try again for 52.

For the very few people that subscribe to this book club, first of all I'm grateful. Thanks, idiots. Second of all, if there's anything you'd like to see me/this newsletter do in the future, let me know in the comments. I'll keep doing book recs forever, but I'm open to the idea of answering questions about writing/reading as well as picking a book for us all to read and discuss together.

Happy New Year!

Every month I will send an email with a list of what I'm reading, updates on whatever I'm working on if applicable and that's really it! Did you miss me IN PERSON as a guest on LATE STAGE LIVE at the Bell House in Brooklyn? If so, you can watch the whole thing here! I had a small part and it was great fun. On to books!

Sandwich: (Catherine Newman) A hilarious and moving story about a family vacation but-- twist-- there are SECRETS! I'm wracking my brain trying to remember why I found this book and, honestly? It's probably an algorithm or an ad I saw somewhere. It takes very little to get me to buy a book, so it seems pretty likely that my kindle served me an ad for Sandwich and maybe there was a pull-quote that called it "funny" so I bought it immediately. Very glad I did. I've told everyone in my circle to read this book and I will continue to do so until everyone has. It is funny, and not just funny for a book, but funny funny. And heartbreaking and relatable and eye-opening when it comes to the parts that aren't relatable.

In the notebook reserved for notes on books-- which collects my immediate reactions to whatever I just read-- I noted that sometimes an author doesn't have to hold back or save their best stuff for a future book or a sales pitch about a future book. An author can-- if they can-- throw nothing but fastballs and leave it all on the page. This author did. Every page felt like a legacy, nothing was held back. Every funny idea, every profound idea, every opportunity to speculate on Why We're Here was taken and jammed into the thing, and it all worked.

"I have always envied my mom, her loveliness. She has never seemed like a person who might axe down the kitchen door in lieu of making dinner again."

I liked the author so much I immediately picked up another book of hers.

We All Want Impossible Things: (Catherine Newman) I absolutely don't want to say that Newman repeats herself; I'm just pointing out that the protagonists and points of view across both books are very similar. Again, this isn't a complaint! I was devastated when Sandwich was done and just wanted more and this scratched an itch (even though it came out before Sandwich) While Sandwich dealt primarily with family drama/trauma, Impossible Things is more about friendship and found families. Our protagonist has decided to relocate herself to spend every day with her lifetime best friend, who has been put in hospice care. It's a DARK SUBJECT! No one even tries to make hospice care funny-- what a stupid endeavor-- but Newman pulls it off. Loss is hard to live and hard to write or read about while laughing.

"It's like we've all been digging and digging, shoveling out a hole, and we can finally stop. Only now there's this hole here."

Hammer on Bone and A Song for Quiet: (Cassandra Khaw) My brother recommended this two-part series of very short, very cool and weird stories. My note to self on Hammer: "Novels can be short and only the good parts." It's hard to describe the plots-- part noir detective story, part supernatural, epic battle story. I confess to not entirely know what was going on for parts of these books but I’m still glad I read them. Come for the supernatural demon-fighting stuff, stay for the occasionally profound lines.

"I don't remember who said it, but there's an author out there who once wrote that we don't need to kill our children's monsters. Instead, what we need to do is show them that they can be killed."

And that's it! That's the most recent edition of our book club. Read books, run, volunteer at your local food pantry, find me on Bluesky and call your parents. Bye!

Feel free to comment below with recommendations similar to the above picks!

Every so often I will send an email with:

-Three-to-five book recommendations;

-Updates on whatever I'm working on, if applicable;

-That's really it! 

As you might have noticed, I'd been trying to "theme" this newsletter as much as I could, but going forward I think this will just morph into "What I've been reading lately." That's almost definitely less helpful for anyone who was using this newsletter to get meaningful book recommendations; after all, you could argue that books on a theme were always, at the very least, vetted by me (whatever you think my vetting is worth). We were dealing with books that I'd read and also thought would be useful for writers or just plain good for readers. Transitioning to "What I've been reading" makes this newsletter more of a grab-bag.

So why the change? Well, I want to keep the newsletter going and I think focusing just on what I read recently makes that more likely. I read every day and I take notes on every book I read. It's not a heavy lift to just translate those notes for the newsletter. And if I'm being honest, there was more completely unnecessary pressure on the curated version of this newsletter. I was trying to make sure I picked the "right" books for whatever arbitrary theme I'd concocted, and when you focus on picking the right thing you open yourself up to doing the wrong thing, and that's a silly way to accomplish my endeavor which is to create a book club for people.

The revamped version of this newsletter will kick-off next month but in the meantime here is the long-threatened "Everything So Far" post that attempts to explain Who I Am and How I Got Here and Why You Subscribed.

The short version is, I've been writing comedy professionally since 2007, when I was 21 years old. I've been writing for longer but, for my purposes, "professionally" here means "and getting paid for it." The long version is this handy little FAQ.

Wait, Who Are You?

By a wide margin, most of the people who are reading or subscribed to this newsletter are doing so because they saw my work-- videos or a weekly column-- on Cracked.com, a comedy website that for almost a decade was either the first or second-most-viewed comedy website on this planet, planet Earth. We traded the top spot with The Onion, CollegeHumor and FunnyOrDie back-and-forth, and we were easily the least-cool brand in that bunch. It was a fun time in internet content history. It seems quaint now but once upon a time you could make a decent living creating long-form (written!) content for an audience that did insane things like wake up every day and check their favorite websites to be entertained or informed or comfortably distracted.

(These days instead we have social media that we check every day to be enraged or tricked or violently radicalized by. The only websites that exist anymore are about gambling, sites that let you see how much your neighbor’s house costs, pornography and recipes, the only four unbeatable industries in all of human existence).

When I started at Cracked in 2007, the creative team included one full-time employee (Jack O'Brien, no relation) and one part-time employee (me, relation). Jack quickly hired tiktok darling Jason Pargin and for a while it was just the three of us managing the site, buoyed by some truly incredible freelance talent. By 2016, Cracked had evolved into a multimedia content company that was so successful it ended up selling for almost $40 million.

(I'd like to say that again. Just a few people--one of whom was a college senior making $15 an hour to write, edit and design articles-- built a comedy website that in less than 10 years would sell for $40 million. I was that college senior. Wanna hear something crazy? I didn't get a piece of that $40 million sale and-- wanna hear something crazier-- no one I personally know did, either.)

At Cracked, I co-created, co-starred and co-wrote the Webby-Award-Winning series After Hours, which ran for 10 years and accumulated a truly unfathomable amount of views. I also created, starred in and wrote Obsessive Pop Culture Disorder, and created and wrote a web sitcom called Rom.Com-- a cute show about brains and hearts I'm incredibly proud of-- as well as an amount of other shows and one-off sketches that I have, to be completely honest, never actually sat down and counted. We published two books through Cracked, The De-Textbook, for which I was the Head Writer and You Might Be a Zombie and Other Bad News, now a New York Times Bestseller, for which I was a writer/and editor. 

My job titles at Cracked went from intern to Assistant Editor to Editor to Head Writer to Head of Columns to Head of Video to Creative Director of Content Development to Laid Off, when the internet content bubble burst and the company that bought Cracked for all that money changed their minds and went “whoops.”

I Wasn’t One of Those Losers Who Went to Cracked. Why Am “I” Here?

If you don't know me from Cracked, there's a chance you know me because of one of my solo books, How To Fight Presidents and Your Presidential Fantasy Dream Team or Quick Question, the weekly podcast I do with my best friend, former coworker and fellow comedy writer Soren Bowie (American Dad!). We do-- no exaggeration-- no promotion for this show, and it gets about 80 thousand listens per month.

There is an outside chance you know me from my Stitcher (Howl?) podcast miniseries Dead Presidents, featuring Ralph Garman, Patrick Stump, Rachel Bloom, Liana Maeby and Hannah Hart.

(That is such a cool list of guests, all of whom we got because I reached out and asked. I truly can't believe how little I was paid to make this show that I don't, at the end of the day, own. Always ask for ownership. If they laugh at you, ask for double what they offer. If they laugh at that, walk away. Another good reason to ask for ownership? It appears this podcast no longer exists!)

Cool? What About the Present, Where “I” Live?

Since 2018, I've been writing for Last Week Tonight with John Oliver on HBO, a late night political comedy show that has won several Emmy awards (Emmys are like Webbys but for TV). It's a great job and has changed my life in more than a few ways, please keep watching it so I can keep writing for it.

Did You Say a Podcast, Too? Oof.

Oof indeed! Quick Question with Soren and Daniel, I don't know if it's been said before, was initially invented to EASILY and LUCRATIVELY CASH IN on the fanbases Soren and I built together in our years making things for Cracked and then it somewhat organically evolved into a show that is about many things but is mostly about-- we hope-- positive, male friendships in the present. I think there are a lot of young, thoughtful boys who end up being drawn to Joe Rogan and Jordan Peterson and Dilbert's Dad for silly ideas about what it means to be a man dressed up by 80s action hero cliches and long-debunked pseudo science. We're a quiet but confident alternative. Without really putting too fine a point on it, we offer ourselves up as imperfect examples of men who are successful and creative without pretending like the world is a jungle where you need to dominate your enemies to achieve goodness.

Sometimes we engage in the kinds of evergreen pop-culture-focused conversations that we routinely did in After Hours or Excessive Pop Culture Discussion, but mostly you're listening to an hour-long weekly phone call between two guys who are doing their best.

That's the story so far! I'm an incredibly lucky comedy writer who has been able to work in some version of this industry somewhat steadily since 2007, and I'd like to keep doing that for a while before ideally getting run out of town for thoughts I have now that will prove to be problematic sometime in the distant future.

After Hours Reunion When?

That’s all the time we have today! Come back next month when our topic will be: Books.

Once a month I will send an email with three-to-five book recommendations to-- 

Hold on "once a month" you fucking liar?

I know I'm sorry.

Would you believe I've been slacking off on writing this newsletter because I've been reading more? It sounds extremely "I can't do my chores because I'm doing too much homework," but that's the partial truth. I'm simultaneously reading more and trying to not spend time sitting in front of a computer unless I absolutely have to.

(The other reason I've been derelict in my duties is-- as completists well know-- I've been planning a wedding. Mine, specifically or, you know, ours. If we're keeping score, I'm at two time-consuming full-time jobs [Wedding Planner, occasionally Last Week Tonight Senior Writer], two part-time jobs [podcaster, musician-for-hire but we don't need to get into that], plus one little side project that pays nothing [this newsletter!]. It is in my opinion too many things. And yet? Here I am.)

Without further ado, let's get into the reading list which is a little bit different this time around. I typically like to have a theme for this newsletter, and the original planned theme for this one was "Authors My Favorite Authors Love." If you like someone's writing, find out who their favorite authors are and read them immediately. We are all of us doing impressions of our heroes; seek out your heroes' heroes and on and on until we can maybe once and for all track down the Only Good Writer that directly and indirectly inspired the rest of us.

That was, as I said, the plan. That plan got derailed as I spent the first quarter of 2024 absolutely consumed by one author and one series-- Donald Westlake's Dortmunder books.

Peter Gould, the showrunner for Better Call Saul-- which is a perfect television series-- mentioned Westlake's Dortmunder series in an interview several months ago, so I tracked down the first book in the series and have spent the last few months tracking down and reading all of them because-- if it wasn't clear-- that is what I'm like.

The Dortmunder novels are some of the funniest and most fun books I've ever read. I genuinely couldn't believe I'd lived this long (26-40 years) without hearing about these books. John Dortmunder is a crook, a long-suffering criminal whose speciality is putting together impossible plans to heist the unheistable. Described in one book THUSLY: "John Dortmunder was a man on whom the sun shown only when he needed darkness." Dortmunder is the most and least lucky crook imaginable; he'll never get caught but he'll never get "the big score" either. Every book is a new spin on a put-upon master thief planning the perfect heist that still goes wrong, featuring a somewhat recurring cast of regular accomplices, plus new side characters, all of whom are unique and funny and fully realized. It's possible this is recency bias, but Westlake might be my favorite writer?

The books are designed to be read in any order you want, although I will say it's rewarding to read them in order, as there are a few subtle set-ups and pay-offs for those of us who pay attention.

That said, if you still feel like jumping around and you've only got time for let's say three books:

The Hot Rock: This is the first in the series, and while it hasn't entirely settled into the groove that would define the books yet, it's a perfect introduction to Dortmunder and his world. The premise is Dortmunder and his team need to steal the same valuable rock five times from increasingly difficult locations.

Good Behavior: Less a heist and more of a rescue mission, this book teams Dortmunder up with a bunch of silent nuns who require his particular brand of expertise (breaking into places, taking things, breaking out of places). It's possibly the funniest and most fun book in the series, the author doesn't outline, he just follows where the story seems to want to go and that propulsive yes-and energy is really felt throughout this one.

What's the Worst that Could Happen?: Some real piece of shit steals something of Dortmunder's and he spends the rest of the book trying to get it back. Every Dortmunder book features a different team of crooks/cronies helping Dortmunder pull his heists, but this one brings all of them together, it's the Avengers of Dortmunder novels.

And that's it! That's the most recent episode(?) of this thing. Read books, run, volunteer at your local food pantry and call your parents. Bye.

Once a month I will send an email with: 

-Three-to-five book recommendations;

-Updates on whatever I'm working on, if applicable;

-That's really it! 

I hadn't planned on taking a month off from this newsletter, but I did. June ended up being occupied by lots of travel and lots of breaking-my-damn-foot. Sorry about that, but also, it's a free newsletter and you're not the one with a broken foot, so. Shut it. Anyway, this month's books are…

3 BOOKS THAT ARE ACTUALLY PLAYS

If it wasn't already obvious enough from my Everything, I was a Theater Kid in high school, and while my broad thoughts on my experience are complicated and nuanced (high school theater is a cult), there's one aspect of my high school theater life that sticks with me: all the plays I read. Devotees will recall that I've already talked about the deep library of plays my high school maintained, way back in issue 1 of this newsletter. Still, "library" is generous; there was a large cabinet full of plays in our drama teacher's office, and I went in there and took whatever I wanted whenever I wanted. One year I read a different play every single week, hiding the little play books inside the larger textbooks I was supposed to be reading in class. Think I'm reading about history, teach? Guess again; I'm reading Shakespeare, you fucking idiot, joke's on you.

(I don't know what happened in my life at an early age that made me think reading in school was a cool act of rebellion, but I'm really thankful for it and I hope my eventual nerd children are similarly cursed.)

The Pillowman (Martin McDonagh): Martin McDonagh drives me crazy. Recently, he's been either the writer or the writer/director behind Banshees of Inisherin, Three Billboards Outside of Ebbing Missouri, Seven Psychopaths and In Bruges. It's an incredible track record in an annoyingly short amount of time, but in the middle of making all of these Oscar-magnets, he'll occasionally take a pause to briefly write another play, something he does incredibly well and incredibly quickly. If I ever got to meet him, my first two questions would be "How" and "How dare you". The Pillowman is the first McDonagh I read; I was lucky enough to see it on Broadway and then immediately bought the script to read it ten million times. The dialogue feels natural and weird, and the show is surprising and dark and really, really funny. Sometimes I’ll watch different productions of it on YouTube, because it’s really fun to see how different productions handle the characters.

Moonchildren (Michael Weller): I've been (gently and correctly) mocked by my old Cracked directors because most of my shows and sketches were not written to be visually dynamic; everything I wrote was basically "People in a Room Talking to Each Other." (Have you heard of my show After Hours?) And boy howdy, Moonchildren sure is People in a Room Talking to Each Other, and maybe that's why I gravitate towards it? I don't know. This play was assigned in the one theater class I took in college and, for reasons I've never investigated, I've re-read it so many times that the play itself has been completely ripped and read to shreds. It's about a group of college students who live together in the 60s, just at the tail-end of graduation, and despite reading it a million times I don't even know that I could say what it's about, necessarily. Not that it's hard to decipher or anything, it just feels more like a very specific snapshot in time and not necessarily "about" any one thing. For a show written during and about the 60s, it feels shockingly contemporary. Sometimes works written during a very specific time where there’s just one thing on everyone’s mind-- in this case, the Vietnam War-- don't totally hold up, which is understandable. Some aren't accessible 50 years later because you as a reader can't really tap into that particular mindset.* Moonchildren isn't one of those shows. It's timeless enough that a 21-year-old in 2007 could read about 21-year-olds in the 1960s and think "Yes, our concerns are exactly the same."

*A brief, half-baked tangent about this. I think a hundred years from now future archivists will look at shows like Succession, White Lotus and Righteous Gemstones and wonder "Geez, why was everyone so hungry for shows where rich people are very sad and bad things happen to them?" Let me tell ya, future archivists, it's because my generation watched a small group of dead-eyed lunatics become richer than anyone's ever been before while the American middle class crumbled. We had a president whose biggest claim to fame was that he was really rich, and he bummed us all out and scared us. Hope that helped/will help!

City of Angels (Larry Gelbart, Cy Coleman): Is this my favorite musical of all time? Possibly! This show bounces back and forth between two timelines, telling two stories at once; a classic, noir detective story full of murder and betrayal AND the story about the writer writing that story. The detective stuff is lit and costumed in a way that makes it look black and white, to distinguish the events from the ones happening in the "real" world. (If it sounds hard to wrap your head around, it's not, I'm just bad at explaining the concept.) There was a stretch of time when I read this musical cover to cover several times a week, and while one reason for doing that was because I was in the show and needed to memorize lines, another part of it was pure joy, because it's such a layered and densely funny show. Lots of musicals are funny, that's in fact part of the job for most musicals; you're playing in front of a big, mixed audience and doing a (forgive me) fairly broad performance, so you're going to need to get some big crowd-pleasing laughs. A lot of the jokes in City of Angels, however, aren't broad, almost as if the show was designed to be read as much as it was designed to be seen. It's so god damned clever and funny and features the two things that every comedy writer I've ever met in my life loves; pulpy, noir detective stories and stories about how writers are Good and Right and studio hacks who tell writers what to do are Bad and Wrong. (And also sometimes that Being Good at Writing is the same as Being Nuclear-Grade Fuckable.)

And that's it! That's the fifth episode(?) of this thing. Read books, run, volunteer at your local food pantry and call your parents. Tell the studios to come back to the table to negotiate, or else there won’t be shows anymore. Bye.