The Best of Me

I read or listened to a few other books by this author, and I find him interesting, funny, introspective, and down to earth. His writing is hard to define though, because he sometimes writes about his observations, his adventures, and his thoughts, but he is sometimes funny and sometimes quite serious or even sad. He writes long texts and short texts, books and five-minute comedy sketches, autobiographical narratives and fictional anecdotes, and everything in between. His favourite subject is his family (they were six brothers and sisters).

This particular book is a collection of his writings and talks over the last 25 years. As usual, some is absolutely hilarious, like, for example, his story about his brother’s southern accent, or his adventures on a plane, and some is quite deep, like, for example, his recollections of his father’s last few days and death, or his sister’s suicide. A few things were less interesting to me, like his reflections on buying a beach house, although his explanations of why he did it (his relationship with his father, etc.) definitely made me think about the reasons why we do things.

The great thing about this book is that the chapters are not related to one another, so you can skip one if you find it boring, come back to it later if you feel like it, stop reading for weeks or months and get back to it without having to remember what happened before, read chapters individually or in bulk between other books, etc.