Needle Drops — Lost in the Stacks
Spotlight On's Lawrence Peryer shares the year's most compelling reads, including a provocative climate change novel, Lincoln's grief in the cemetery, and fresh insights from legendary producer Rick Rubin.
Books are the most thoughtful of last-minute gifts. Not only can you grab them from your local bookstore, an institution that sincerely appreciates your patronage, but no other gift says more about the giver and the esteem they hold for the recipient than a good book. Your choice says something about you and how you respectfully interpret the taste of who receives the gift. Most importantly, a well-thought-out gift of a mutually appreciated book reveals where the worldviews of the giver and the 'givee' might intersect. Books are magic that way.
Here are five books that livened up Lawrence's year, some of which were given to him as gifts. Any fan of The Tonearm would be delighted to receive any of these titles and enjoy finding someone to give them to. And, if you presently find yourself in a sharing mood, please recommend any great books that pleasantly stimulated your curiosity in 2024 in the comments.
Colin Woodward - American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America
Colin Woodard
This book might not have been the best I read all year, but it was one of the most important and eye-opening.
Colin Woodard's American Nations presents an original interpretation of North American history. It suggests that the continent contains eleven distinct cultural regions that better explain modern political divisions than state boundaries. The case is convincing.
Moving beyond the simple North-South divide, Woodard shows how different ethnic groups, religious beliefs, and economic systems shaped these regions. His analysis links colonial-era settlement patterns to present-day voting trends, social views, and local governance.
Woodard supports his interpretation with historical documentation about how various settler groups created different social and political structures across North America. For example, the Puritans of New England built communities focused on schooling and local government participation. Meanwhile, Virginia and Maryland's coastal areas developed under aristocrats who favored a more structured society based on Classical republican principles. These early differences, Woodard shows, still affect how different regions view issues like gun rights and public assistance programs.
The book draws from historical records, settlement data, and population statistics to make its case. Though some scholars disagree on drawing such direct lines between colonial patterns and modern regional differences, Woodard's model helps explain why neighboring states often differ dramatically in their politics and social policies - and why North America's physical and geographic borders are far less important than the cultural ones. His research highlights why Americans struggle to find common ground on major political questions.
Gabriel Kennedy - Chapel Perilous: The Life & Thought Crimes of Robert Anton Wilson
Chapelperilous
Spotlight On alumnus Gabriel Kennedy's biography of Robert Anton Wilson documents the path of a writer whose ideas spread from small press magazines to digital forums. Starting with Wilson's early writing for Ralph Ginzburg's fact: magazine, the book follows his collaboration with Robert Shea on the Illuminatus! trilogy of books and his growth as a countercultural philosopher. Kennedy uncovers new details about several different times of his life and the key moments that formed Wilson's outlook, especially his daughter Luna's murder and his struggle with post-polio syndrome. Through letters and papers, Kennedy explores Wilson's bonds with Timothy Leary, William S. Burroughs, and Alan Watts while tracking how he brought ideas about consciousness, conspiracy theories, and skeptical thinking to wider audiences.
Kennedy builds the biography from Wilson's archival material and talks with family and friends. The book sets Wilson's writing alongside his own era's counterculture and today's talks about reality, awareness, and power. Wilson's thoughts about multiple realities and questioning what we know gained new readers online, affecting writers, artists, and web creators. Kennedy adds a missing piece to counterculture history by showing how Wilson mixed doubt, wit, and bold thinking to shape underground culture across six decades.
We hosted a live book event with the author in November.
George Saunders - Lincoln in the Bardo
George Saunders
This book came to me through my son when he left for college. He (rightly) suggested I wait to read it until after I got over the melancholy of his leaving.
George Saunders's first novel takes place on a single night in 1862 when Abraham Lincoln visits the crypt holding his son Willie's body. Saunders builds this historical moment into a ghost story that mixes real Civil War-era documents with fictional accounts. The book focuses on the spirits in Oak Hill Cemetery, who watch Lincoln cradle his son's body and struggle with their incomplete deaths.
The novel's structure breaks from standard narrative forms. Saunders weaves historical quotes with the voices of his fictional ghosts, including Hans Vollman, Roger Bevins III, and the Reverend Everly Thomas. These spirits, who don't know they're dead and call themselves "sick," inhabit a middle space between life and death - the Tibetan Buddhist concept of the bardo. Their stories mix humor with grief as they persuade young Willie Lincoln to move on before he becomes trapped in their realm.
The book's core lies in President Lincoln's raw grief, shown through the ghosts who witness his cemetery visits. Through their eyes, readers see Lincoln's private pain against the backdrop of the Civil War's mounting death toll. Saunders uses this personal loss to ask questions about death, grief, and letting go. The novel won the 2017 Man Booker Prize for its fresh take on historical fiction and portrayal of death and mourning in American life.
Kim Stanley Robinson - The Ministry for the Future
Learn more about this author
Kim Stanley Robinson's The Ministry for the Future arrived in my mailbox as an anonymous birthday present this past July. It turns out my partner on this website sent it to me. What a gift.
The novel opens with a devastating heat wave in India that kills millions of people. This catastrophe sets up the book's central focus: the fight to prevent climate disaster through the work of a UN agency called the Ministry for the Future. Mary Murphy, the Ministry's Irish director, leads this effort from offices in Zurich, while her counterpart Frank May survives the Indian heat wave and grapples with trauma and radical action.
The book mixes narrative chapters with short sections written as meeting minutes, scientific reports, and history lessons. Through these different forms, Robinson shows how the Ministry pushes banks and governments to change their carbon-use policies. The story includes direct action by eco-saboteurs who ground airplanes and sink cargo ships, alongside financial innovations like "carbon coins" that pay companies to keep fossil fuels in the ground. The recent murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson called back to some of the details in the book. Robinson elaborates on technological fixes like solar radiation management and natural solutions such as refreezing the glaciers to show how humanity (potentially) pulls itself back from the brink.
The novel unfolds across several decades of climate crisis and response. Robinson depicts the messy process of global change through many voices: economists, scientists, relief workers, and activists. He presents humanity's hard choices without sugar-coating the problems or solutions. The book explains complex climate science and economics while telling a story about how people might work together to save what they can of the Earth's ecosystems.
Rick Rubin - The Creative Act: A Way of Being
More about Rick Rubin
I am glad I read this book early in the year, as it shaped so much of my 2024.
Music producer Rick Rubin's book about creativity deviates from typical how-to guides and self-help formulas. Drawing from his work with artists like Johnny Cash, Red Hot Chili Peppers, and Jay-Z, Rubin writes about creativity as a natural state rather than a rare gift. The book unfolds in short chapters that read like conversations, mixing practical wisdom with observations about artistic practice.
Rubin's core message is that art-making is a process of discovery rather than manufacturing. He describes how artists can notice what draws their attention and follow those interests without judgment. The book includes specific examples from his recording sessions, such as asking musicians to play their songs in different styles or tempos to find new possibilities. These studio experiments support his view that creative blocks often come from trying too hard rather than staying open to what might happen.
The book's value lies in its practical suggestions for creative work. Rubin describes methods like listening to music in unfamiliar languages to focus on pure sound or taking photographs without looking through the viewfinder to bypass overthinking. He explains how limitations—like Johnny Cash recording with just voice and guitar—can lead to stronger work than having unlimited options. The examples, culled from decades of record producing and being surrounded by creative people, give weight to Rubin's ideas about staying receptive and trusting the process.
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