The Beastie Boys Book.

It feels a little silly to say that this book, which just came out last year--wait, no, 2019--changed the way I navigate the world, but it did. I mean, I’ve read a lot of books and they all changed me in some way. I’ve read plenty of the “greats” and the “next best things” and the “low brow” and the non-fiction that shook and rattled me.

But, this book? This is a book I recommend to everyone. It helps if they're a fan, but really it's a book about friendship and encouraging one another to chase dreams, regardless of how silly they might be, and always having one another's back. I mean, I was 43 when I read the book and I was generally an optimistic person, so I was pretty firmly entrenched in believing these things already. But things had begun to whittle away my faith that it would all work out. Reading it reconnected me with the adolescence and reminded me that all things were possible. Not everything works, but if you keep at it, something will stick.

I’ve read books that have had that kind of uplifting feeling, but none were constructed in the way this one was. There’s a cookbook in there, there’s a comic book, they gave voice to Kate (their female drummer they fired when they were being assholes) and let her write a chapter about her experience, it is just as experimental and fun and heart-warming as their story of friendship and whimsy is. And I love it. In fact, I love it so much, I even bought the audiobook—which might rival Lincoln in the Bardo for having the best cast ever. But that way, when I forget, and I struggle, and I’m in quarantine or whatever, I can listen to it. It has definitely shaped and changed me in a way I wouldn’t have thought a book could have to a guy in his 40s.