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18 Great Books You Probably Haven't Read

2014-02-18 · list · John · 3:25 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Books & writing · mode: Advice & reviews · tags: self promotion

With The Fault in Our Stars at number one, John recommends 18 books he loves that aren't bestsellers, and asks Nerdfighters to suggest books he hasn't read, promising to read and review 18 of them.

What is said

The parts of the video and what is said in each (★ — how much it matters to the video).

00:00:00 — TFIOS is number one; why John picks books that aren't bestsellers; ask for viewer suggestions and promise to review 18

  • ★★ John reports that The Fault in Our Stars is number one on the USA Today and New York Times bestseller lists this week (week of 17 February 2014), which he calls bananas. — 00:00:01 · The Fault in Our Stars, The New York Times
  • ★★★ Prompted by that, John introduces 18 books he loves that aren't bestsellers and that Hank and most viewers probably haven't read. — 00:00:04
  • ★★ John asks Nerdfighters to leave in the comments the names of books they love that he probably hasn't read. — 00:00:15 · Nerdfighteria

  • ★★ John says he will read 18 of the suggested books and review them in a future video. — 00:00:18

    “I'll read 18 of them and review them in a future video.”

00:00:22 — 18 recommended books: sports, conjoined twins, funny books, YA, picture books, classics, political prisoners, the Carter Family

  • ★★ John recommends Jonathan Rendall's This Bloody Mary Is the Last Thing I Own: the best book title ever and his favourite boxing book. — 00:00:23
  • ★★ John recommends Alice Dreger's One of Us, by far the best nonfiction about conjoined twins, also about disability and how the powerful essentialize and marginalize the other. — 00:00:30
  • ★★ John recommends Tony Hawks's Round Ireland with a Fridge, about hitchhiking around Ireland with a refrigerator: one of the funniest things he has read. — 00:00:43
  • ★★ John also recommends Hawks's follow-up, Playing the Moldovans at Tennis, in which he plays tennis against every member of the Moldovan national soccer team. — 00:00:53
  • ★★ John recommends The Unthinkable Thoughts of Jacob Green by Joshua Braff, Zach Braff's brother: a great coming-of-age novel, worth it for the bar mitzvah thank-you notes. — 00:01:00
  • ★★ John recommends M. T. Anderson's surprisingly brilliant vampire novel Thirsty, less read than his Octavian Nothing, one of the decade's best novels. — 00:01:09
  • ★★ John recommends Cecil Castellucci's YA novel Boy Proof (2005), whose haunting story of an outcast girl named Egg has stayed with him. — 00:01:19
  • ★★ John recommends E. Lockhart's Fly on the Wall, a brilliant feminist reworking of Kafka's Metamorphosis. — 00:01:28
  • ★★ John recommends Tayari Jones's The Untelling, which captures the precariousness of working-class life; she is best known for Leaving Atlanta. — 00:01:37
  • ★★ John recommends The Golden Rule by his mentor Ilene Cooper: children don't inherently excel at empathy, and the book has helped his family talk with Henry about others' feelings. — 00:01:45 · empathy, Henry Green
  • ★★ John recommends Jacqueline Woodson's picture book Show Way, one of his all-time favourites and one of Henry's. — 00:01:57 · Henry Green
  • ★★ John recommends E. E. Cummings's first book The Enormous Room, his memoir of being imprisoned and falsely accused of treason in World War I, and a study of individual versus collective. — 00:02:02
  • ★★★ John recommends Susan Sontag's Regarding the Pain of Others: it made him think about representing versus exploiting pain in art, and is required reading on the unreliability of the image. — 00:02:14
  • ★★ John says Willa Cather's Death Comes for the Archbishop may be the most important novel about American religion and asks why it isn't required reading for every American high-school student. (hedged) — 00:02:26
  • ★★ John recommends Tahar Ben Jelloun's This Blinding Absence of Light, a fictionalised story of real political prisoners: a little intense but really good. — 00:02:33
  • ★★ John says the real political prisoners behind the book lived for decades in complete darkness in six-by-three-foot rooms. — 00:02:40
  • ★★ John recommends Coe Booth's Kendra, which he likes as much as her more famous first book, Tyrell. — 00:02:50
  • ★★ John recommends Eudora Welty's The Optimist's Daughter: out of fashion, but in his view the best book by one of the best 20th-century writers. (hedged) — 00:02:55
  • ★★ John recommends Will You Miss Me When I'm Gone? The Carter Family and Their Legacy in American Music, which inspired an early Vlogbrothers video and is excellent. — 00:03:01 · Vlogbrothers
  • ★★ Finally, John recommends The Last Summer of Reason, a novel about a bookstore owner in a country overtaken by extremists who believe art is evil. — 00:03:11

00:03:16 — Wrap-up: books that aren't bestsellers but should be; sign-off

In the description and comments

  • ★ John's list credits the last of his recommended books, The Last Summer of Reason, to Tahar Djaout. — video description

Threads in this video

Where the stories that moved here went next

Mentioned

People: Henry Green · Tony Hawk · Zach Braff

Works: Boy Proof · Death Comes for the Archbishop · Fly on the Wall · Kendra · Leaving Atlanta · One of Us: Conjoined Twins and the Future of Normal · Playing the Moldovans at Tennis · Regarding the Pain of Others · Round Ireland with a Fridge · Show Way · The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing · The Enormous Room · The Fault in Our Stars · The Golden Rule · The Last Summer of Reason · The Metamorphosis · The Optimist's Daughter · The Untelling · The Unthinkable Thoughts of Jacob Green · Thirsty · This Blinding Absence of Light · This Bloody Mary Is the Last Thing I Own · Tyrell · Will You Miss Me When I'm Gone? The Carter Family and Their Legacy in American Music

Organizations: The New York Times · USA Today

Concepts: conjoined twins · empathy

Events: World War I

Only in the description or credits: Alice Dreger · Cecil Castellucci · Coe Booth · E. E. Cummings · E. Lockhart · Eudora Welty · Franz Kafka · Ilene Cooper · Jacqueline Woodson · Jonathan Rendall · Joshua Braff · M. T. Anderson · Susan Sontag · Tahar Ben Jelloun · Tahar Djaout · Tayari Jones · Tony Hawks · Willa Cather

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