Hello! This is the official substack of me, Daniel O'Brien, four-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), co-host of the popular nothing podcast Quick Question with Soren and Daniel and sole host of the less popular podcast Dead Presidents. I co-created, co-wrote and co-starred in Cracked After Hours, which is probably the thing I'll be most remembered for, even after whatever horrific crimes I commit in the future (something using-- or in defense of-- bees, is my guess). This is the third stack(?) of my substack, a thing you signed up for on purpose.
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!
Before we get into the books, a brief note about quitting a book in the middle of reading it: You can do that! You can just do it. (Billy Joel Voice:) For the longest time (end Billy Joel Voice), I would never quit books. I'm a completist by nature and also volume used to be important to me ("I read [x] books per month" or "I read [y] books this year, a new personal record" etc). For that reason, I found myself powering through several books I fully hated in pursuit of a stat I no longer remember. When I'm on my deathbed fifty-seven years from now, I can't imagine I'll look back with fondness on the minutes and hours spent forcing myself to finish a book that brought me no joy.
This thought has been top of mind recently because I just last week decided to quit a book I won't name that I didn't care for. Every time I picked this book up, it felt like a chore. I would read a page and then I'd find some excuse to daydream or look at my phone; the process of reading it took ages because I was dragging my… eye feet? My eye feet. While I was in this book, I thought it was a new Me Problem. I thought I must be moving slowly because my attention span had gotten worse or I'd gotten dumber or lazier. I'd been "reading" this book for over a month and I'd only muscled through seventy pages, I must be an idiot. Then I said fuck that book and picked up Liberation Day-- the (spoiler) first book on this month's list-- and sprinted through it in a day and a half, my eye feet never tiring, my eye calves large and tight, my eye hips open and smooth. It wasn't a Me Problem. I hadn't gotten worse at reading and I hadn't lost my love of reading, I was just trapped under a book that sucked shit and I forgot that I could quit it. Quit books! The author won't mind. Trust me, I am an author and I DON'T mind if you quit my books, mostly because I already have and spent your money.
Anyways, let's get into
4 BOOKS I'D NEVER QUIT
Liberation Day (George Saunders): This isn't the first and I suspect won't be the last time I recommend a George Saunders book of short stories, a very specific art form that he absolutely owns at this point. The titular story is fantastic, but I'm going to be thinking about "A Mom of Bold Action" for a long, long time. It's an incredibly compelling drama in its own right and would remain a compelling drama even if the characters were just blank slates, moving around where the story told them to go. But every character, regardless of the amount of page real estate they occupy, is a real, unique and fully realized person. It's amazing how much world Saunders can build with what feels like a brief amount of time and space. No one makes it look easier.
Ant Farm (Simon Rich): More short stories! Simon Rich is the undisputed king of taking one simple, usually stupid idea and exploring and exploding absolutely every inch of it. All of his core concepts are wonderful and every line is funnier than it needs to be. I don't know if everyone can do this or if this is a super power specific to me, but I can tell that Rich has fun when he writes. Not every author does, and even the ones that do don't always, but every time I read Rich I can tell: this guy's having a blast.
The Stench of Honolulu (Jack Handey): I'm a broken record about this: There aren't enough books that are as funny as TV shows. Most of the novels that get described as "funny" or "hilarious," in quotes, right on the back of the book and everything, are just kind of, like, clever. They're still mostly just novels that are about, you know, whatever novels are about. Families and the war. I've been let down by the vast majority of clever books described as funny, and I've never totally understood why there aren't more books that are as funny as, say, an episode of 30 Rock or The Simpsons. The Stench of Honolulu is Funny funny. Funny funny funny. Funny and stupid and mean, it might be a perfect book, Jack Handey (SNL, Deep Thoughts) is a legend.
The Time Machine Did It —but, really, anything— by (John Swartzwelder): Legendary Simpsons writer John Swartzwelder is untouchable. He wrote dozens and dozens of iconic Simpsons episodes, and now he just self-publishes these hilarious short novels centered on a Homer Simpson-esque detective who fails his way in and out of ridiculous situations. Imagine a mean, stupid, un-killable detective who never makes friends or learns any lessons as he meets aliens, travels through time and occasionally destroys the world. That’s the star of Swartzwelder’s Frank Burly stories. Here's how he describes his approach to writing these books in a phenomenal New Yorker article.
"Nobody wants to read a book. You’ve got to catch their eye with something exciting in the first paragraph, while they’re in the process of throwing the book away. If it’s exciting enough, they’ll stop and read it. Then you’ve got to put something even more exciting in the second paragraph, to suck them in further. And so on. It’s exhausting for everybody, but it’s got to be done."
He accomplishes this, believe it or not, in every book. The first sentence is funny, the second is funnier and on and on and on. I'm sure I've said this before, but this person has my dream career; write on a show that is critically successful and beloved by real people, and then quietly write your books specifically for the audience that wants your exact thing. No bosses, just readers.
Bonus News Alert! I've partnered with Writers For Hope benefitting The Every Voice Coalition and Lambda Legal. From now until April 12th, you can bid to win a signed copy of my book, How to Fight Presidents. I will also include a hand-drawn picture of Teddy Roosevelt as a cat, because why not? Proceeds go to two great causes! Bidding started today and we're at $80 which is frankly too much.
And that's it! That's the third sub(?) of this thing. Read books, run, volunteer at your local food pantry and call your parents. Bye.
*NOTE: I think if you click on any of those links and buy a book, I get a commission, but I don't totally know for sure because I haven't looked into it too deeply.
Thanks for the recommendations. I’m going to add these to the list, especially Jack Handey. In keeping with the short story theme, I really enjoyed Meet Me in Another Life (Catriona Silvey) which is a novel, but feels like a book of short stories, with each story about the same two characters. But in one story they’ll be college students and in the next story one will be a kindergarten student and the other a middle-aged teacher. After half a dozen of these short stories the characters begin remembering glimpses of these other lives and all the seemingly unrelated short stories tie together. It was clever although I’m not sure it completely stuck the landing, but I’m still thinking about it months later so there’s something to it.