Daniel O'Brien's Newsletter: May '23!

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 easily the most popular thing I've ever done, but that's in the past. This is the latest clump(?) 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, it's probably worth addressing the elephant in the room: the writer's strike. (As a television writer and proud union member of the Writer's Guild of America, I am currently on strike which is why the show I work for as well as many others are either missing or delayed right now. If you haven't been following the strike-- what's happening, why it's happening, when it might end-- this is a good primer). Obviously I'm allowed to keep doing this newsletter; going on strike doesn't mean I can't write, it just means I can't get paid to write. But I am pretending that the strike is the reason this month’s newsletter is late.

It sucks if I'm being honest. I don't like being on strike, I like writing. My girlfriend recently asked me when I started writing and when I knew I wanted to be a writer, and the second half of that question is complicated and and difficult to answer, but the first part was much clearer because the answer was “sort of always.” Without thinking of myself as a writer, and without thinking about what I was writing as "content" or "entertainment" or "anything," I was always writing. We had a basketball hoop in our backyard, and one of my brothers was always out there taking shots, not really thinking about being a professional basketball player, just taking shots as a thing to do. I was doing that but with dumb short stories. I didn't share my writing or try to do anything with it, it was just a thing I did. When discussing it with her, I landed on the word "compulsory." When I wrote short horror stories starring me and my friends in school fighting vampires or whatever, I wasn't thinking "I am writing a story because I want to be a writer," I was thinking "I am scratching an itch." I got a thing in my head and I'll put it on paper and then eventually I'll put the piece of paper, you know, away somewhere. Who cares where it goes, the writing is the thing.

The road from itch-scratching to being an Actual Writer is longer and more complicated, but the bones are there: I write because I like writing and well before I was old enough to understand writing as a career, I performed writing as a natural extension of having an imagination. I'm eternally grateful to be part of a union that, decades ago, fought to make writing a sustainable career. We're fighting today to protect that and to secure it for future writers.

I love writing. It's loudly inspiring to protest and picket with other writers, standing in solidarity to protect the future of our industry. It's quietly devastating that we have to. You'd think the conversation could begin and end with "We're asking for fair payment for creating all of your favorite shows and movies," but it doesn't, which is unfortunate and exhausting. I want the strike to end so I can write— the thing I’ve devoted my entire life to— but I don’t want it to end until we reach a fair contract.

Anyways.

You didn't subscribe to this newsletter for industry rants; you subscribed for book recommendations and occasional details about my personal life that I avoid on Twitter and the pod. Let's get to the first thing!

BOOKS BY FRIENDS OF MINE

Before I get into the books themselves, a brief but necessary aside about books. I buy lots of books and I like having them. Owning them. I like having physical books and for a while it was a point of pride to have bookshelves that were absolutely FULL of books, my own little library. In a previous apartment, I had a room that was supposed to be a home office but was mostly "the place where all the books lived." Books were on shelves, books lined the walls, and still more books were stacked on the floor.

As my interior design preferences evolve, I’m no longer interested in having a book room. I still buy books like crazy, but I don't know where the fuck to put them all. Books take up so much space, which is a cool thing about books, but also an annoying thing about books and I'm constantly arguing with myself about donating all of my books versus keeping all of my books in storage, because I do like the idea of being a person who could lend a friend a book for any situation. But, again, books take up space, and I’m not in a financial position where I actually can have a dedicated personal library.

My relationship with the amount of books I own and the physical space they occupy is fraught, is my point.

That said, there's one book-flex I will allow myself. I have a small, side-table-high bookcase made of crates that I bought at a flea market. Some people organize bookshelves alphabetically or by color, but my organizing strategy for this little bookcase is "books published by real-life friends of mine." I'm lucky that I've been able to meet and befriend so many other authors in my however many years of professional writing, and egotistical enough that I can turn their accomplishments into mine. While some books live in storage and closets, I will always have a bookshelf dedicated to “books written by friends” on display in my home. Here are some of those books.

Raw Dog (Jamie Loftus): There's not a funnier person than Jamie Loftus. Period. PERIOD! She's the best to ever do it. She could easily and successfully write anything for anyone and she decided to focus her talents on a book "about" hot dogs, and that's sort of what's great about her. When I think about myself as a writer, I think about a person who is figuring out the most efficient ways to maneuver through an existing path in a way that might be new or exciting. When I think about Jamie as a writer, I think about a person who is carving her own goddamn path.

This Book is Full of Spiders (Jason Pargin): I was a fan of Jason's before we worked together. I can't remember if I ever told him that and I don't feel like telling him now, but it's true. In my interview for Cracked, I was asked about other writers that I liked and I mentioned Jason, who to me was singularly inventing being funny in prose. A week after I'd been hired, my at-the-time boss Jack told me "Oh, you'll be happy to know we hired Jason on as an editor." I was twenty one years old and absolutely terrified to learn that I'd be working closely with someone I considered an inspiration.

(After years of working with him I learned that he's just, you know, normal in a weird way and weird in a normal way, but at the time I was freaking out.)

Jason's written a bunch of books and all of them are hilarious and surprising and good, I just happened to pick this one. I might as well have been throwing darts at a board that was Oops! All Bullseyes, because you really can't go wrong. I'm not a horror guy. I like to make that clear when I recommend Jason's books, because I know horror can be a non-starter for some folks. I'm not a horror guy, I don't seek it out and mostly actively avoid horror. Jason's books in the John Dies at the End series are an exception worth making.

South on Highland (Liana Maeby): I wish Liana would teach a class about writing so I could take it and learn from her. We met a hundred years ago at a party when I was loud about being a writer and she was quiet about it, which is to say she was (and is) a better writer. The book is a fake memoir about a young writer who gets swept up in the ridiculous Hollywood scene of writing and drinking and drugs and sex, but I promise you it's not sleazy or sensational, it's real and hilarious. I don't know why this book isn't a movie or why Liana isn't the most famous writer on the planet. Probably it's because she doesn't want to be.

And that's it! Read books, stretch, 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.