• Pyongyang: A Journey in North Korea and Shenzhen: A Travelogue from China, two autobiographical books by Guy Delisle. Pyongyang will blow you away – especially when you realize that this is the most visual story about North Korea that a human being can tell and survive.
  • Clyde Fans by Seth (author of Wimbledon Green). Curious about the economic history of the Canadian electric fan industry? You will be while you’re reading this book. On a superficial reading, this is a standard literary bemoaning of the creative destruction of the market – air conditioning destroys the electric fan industry. But its first-person perspective on the life of a travelling salesman suggests a different lesson to me: over time, the market has not only come to provide more satisfying products, but also more satisfying occupations.
  • A bundle of loaners from Tim Kane, including the excellent Solstice and Next Men.
  • How’s this for geeky? Confessions of a Blabbermouth, a graphic novel about a blogger.

P.S. Tyler Cowen recently asked me, “What’s so great about graphic novels?” My main answer: They give me a lot more content per hour than “real” novels. Tolstoy really does have stories that require hundreds of hours to tell. But as far as I’m concerned, most novels take dozens of hours to tell two-hour stories. The writers of graphic novels have a higher level of self-awareness, so they keep it short and sweet.