Daniel O'Brien's Newsletter: November '24!

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! 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!