List #81 - 5 books you should know how to reference in a proper conversation
Let’s talk about competence porn. Defined as the pleasure or fascination people feel when watching someone display exceptional skill, efficiency, or mastery (non-sexual!). A few examples of competence porn include The West Wing, The Pitt, and Dept. Q on Netflix.
In the past few years (maybe longer), we’ve been innundated with the opposite of competence porn. We’ve been surrounded by people who display narcissistic, dangerous, destructive, incompetence, stupid, and egomaniacal behavior that has lead us down a deeper path into the proverbial cave and away from the sunlight. We need more competence porn in our lives so that we can expand our sense of what is right, truly productive for our society, and smart.
This post is the first of many designed to make you better in day to day life, highlighting five books that you should be able to casually reference in a conversation. This is NOT an exhaustive list, just five examples that I happen to believe are crucial for our collective consciousness to evolve and improve.
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
A story of both. An actual realistic love story that covers themes of class mobility, ego, and bias.
The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
Covers themes of gendered punishment, public shame and private morality. You should be able to reference Hester Prynne in a sentence.
A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Hemingway’s “to-the-point” descriptions and stripped-down prose is a masterclass in writing excellence. A beautiful and tragic story about an American ambulance driver in the Italian army during World War I and his tragic love affair with a British nurse.
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez
Landmark story in the “magical realism” genre, One Hundred Years of Solitude follows seven generations of the Buendía family as they experience love and war.
Beloved by Toni Morrison
A masterpiece. Set in 1873 in Cincinnati, Ohio, the novel follows Sethe, a formerly enslaved woman who escaped from a Kentucky plantation. She is free, although she is haunted by the memory of killing her infant daughter to save her from slavery. The spirit of her child, manifesting in the form of a woman named Beloved, returns to confront her mother.