I love books. I love reading. I love reading books.
Ensorcelled by Eliot Peper is genius. It’s a unique format that can be read in one setting. The writing is beautiful. The story, like the image on the cover, pulls you in with steadily increasing intensity. And then, a delicious twist. Amy and I have been supporting Eliot’s writing since his first book, and he’s become a dear friend. I started my weekend with this, and it inspired me to read a few more things by friends.
The Night Slayer by George Jankovic was next. I fondly remember a vacation to Hawaii with the McIntyres when their son Quinn was a pre-teen. This particular vacation was dedicated to me and Quinn reading several Percy Jackson books while lying on adjacent beach chairs overlooking the ocean. George’s book teleported me back to that week. I funded George’s first company, RF Globalnet, when he lived in Boulder in the mid-1990s. We had a failure together with a company called eVulkan, but then I was fortunate to be invited to fund NutriSystems when he and his partner, Mike Hagan, took it over as it was on the brink of bankruptcy. If you had told me in 1997 that almost 30 years later, George would write an epic YA coming-of-age fantasy series that moves faster than the Percy Jackson books, I would have laughed out loud. I can’t wait for The Princes of the Abyss to show up on my Kindle.
I’ve been remiss in addressing the infinite pile of PDFs on my Kindle from friends that are drafts of their books, so I tackled the first three chapters of the upcoming book City on the Edge by Jonathan Weber. It’s fantastic and is going to be a powerful and definitive story of San Francisco from 1990 to the present day. I’ve known Jonathan since he was editor-in-chief of The Industry Standard and was an investor in his online venture New West. Jonathan’s writing reflects a journalist’s cynicism and inquisitiveness, unwilling to accept the endless surface-level storytelling, self-promotion, and general deceit and deflection of many people. As a reward for giving him feedback, he sent me the rest of the book to read.
I’m halfway through When River Loves Deborah by Yong Kim. We are tiny investors via FG Angels in Yong’s company, Wonolo, and I hadn’t realized he’d written this book. I’m halfway through and am looking forward to lying on my couch on Thursday to finish it up.
I’m ensorcelled when I read books by friends (see what I did there…)