'The Help' by Kathryn Stockett. 'Big Little Lies' by Liane Moriarty. 'Let's Pretend This Never Happened' by Jenny Lawson. 'American Dirt' by Jeanine Cummins. 'This Is How It Always Is' by Laurie Frankel. 'Listen for the Lie' by Amy Tintera. 'We Begin At the End' by Chris Whittaker. 'A Higher Loyalty' by James Comey. 'The Book of Awesome' by Neil Pasricha. What do these books have in common? The famed but invisible editor pulling the strings from behind the curtain: Amy Einhorn Fifteen years ago my seven-month-old blog '1000 Awesome Things' was nominated for 'Best Blog' from the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences. I was approached by literary agents and my new agent Erin Malone told me she wanted to auction my blog to publishers … next week. Suddenly I was in the foreign position of interviewing editors who were somehow clamoring to publish my book. I signed with Amy Einhorn—a woman I'd never heard of, who had just started an eponymous imprint I'd never heard of, within Putnam Publishing, which I'd also never heard of. But I was immediately and magnetically attracted to her vision for the book. "It's a hardcover, Neil," she said. "It's for moms. It's a gift book. You gotta lose the frat boy posts. No blowing your nose in the shower. And I need a lot more new content." I learned everything about editing from Amy in our passionate late night diatribe emails, our hot-potato-ing of 300-page Word docs back and forth with 100s of comments in red down the sides, and arguing—good arguing!—about every single element along the way. I'd sit in her office and she'd have a variety of 'cases' laid out on her desk. "What do you think of 5" by 7"?" she'd say. "Too precious? Too cute?" Amy is one of the most successful editors in the world today with the highest percentage of books edited hitting the New York Times bestseller list. According to a feature in The Observer, "New York editors and publishers speak of Amy Einhorn's success as the product of an almost mystical editorial instinct." She has a knack for sniffing out voice, for knowing what will work and what won't and, as you can imagine, I've been begging her to come on 3 Books for six years to hear how it all works. So I flew down to NYC to talk with the bright, brilliant, and beaming Amy Einhorn about what an editor does, how a book gets published, what helps a book sell, Amy's 3 most formative books, and much, much more. Let's flip the page to Chapter 140 now…

Happy new moon, everybody!

I am going to release a few of my favorite classic chapters of 3 Books. Let's start with Seth Godin!

I flew down to New York to uncover and discuss the most formative books of the one and only Seth Godin (​@ThisIsSethsBlog​) from his Hastings-On-Hudson studio.

Seth is the bestselling author of '​Linchpin​', '​Purple Cow​', '​Tribes​' and ​many more books​ and is known as one of the world's biggest thinkers in communities such as ​TED​ and the ​Marketing Hall of Fame​. And did I mention he writes one of ​the most popular blogs​ in the world?

In this interview we discuss where Seth sees publishing going and his thoughts on the changes we're seeing in how people read and spend time. Seth shares his opinions on blurbs, acknowledgments, and his unique perspective on work-life balance. He also gives insights into how we can change our own world by changing the narrative inside our heads.

I sat in Seth's studio transfixed, mesmerized, and hypnotized by one of the world's best brains.

I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

Big thank you to the kind, generous, and indispensable ... Seth Godin.

I was at a coffee shop on College Street when the barista Tony yelled "Hey! There's that duck!" I turned and, sure enough, out the front window was a… duck. A giant pixelated-looking green-headed Mallard set atop a rubber-tire-sized body on top of orange-stockinged legs and a pair of orange Converse. And he was just … walking by. Like some kind of interdimensional tumbleweed. Uh, what … was this? Some gimmick from the local radio station? An ad campaign for a boot company? I ran outside with my friend Ateqah and was puzzled that … she seemed to know him! "Hiiiiiii Lewis," she cooed. "You're looking great, Lewis! How's your day going, Lewis?" He just … quacked at her. I had so many questions: "Who are you? What are you doing? What is the meaning of this?" But, of course, he just … quacked. Ducks can't talk! Then he turned and did a 1920s-pauper-finding-a-penny-style heel-click a good three feet in the air and I was left standing on the sidewalk, stunned, with a big smile on my face. I couldn't let the story finish there. Turns out Ateqah had been following Lewis Mallard on Instagram for years so when she saw him she knew who he was. She took a picture of us and posted it on her Instagram Story, after which Lewis Mallard picked it up, artistically edited it, and posted it on his own. I learned Lewis Mallard is an anonymous 'interdimensional psychedelic folk artist' responsible for street performances and art installations across Hamilton, Toronto and, most recently, Victoria. Little duck-painted streetcar stations are popping up and, of course, the duck, in full quacking character, is being spotted on the streets. Lewis's work has been covered in all the local press in Toronto—CP24, City News, CTV, The Toronto Star, etc. In one of many pieces of coverage in CBC a person named J.J. Collins, manager of a local record label, said "Anybody who sees Lewis will tell the next person they see and say, 'Oh my God, I saw Lewis on the way to work today.' It's like finding the golden ticket." Finding the golden ticket? I … love that. BlogTo calls Lewis a "Toronto legend" and a "viral folk artist" and was trumpeting him after he painted a Toronto streetcar stop to look like … himself. There was this … allure, to me, of what Lewis Mallard *was* and what he was doing. Taking over the streets, creating art amidst dustry construction, and mapping rivers of love, humanity, and community through endlessly flowing change we all feel happening on the streets. Lewis Mallard agreed to meet me in human form—though his face, name, and identity remain secret throughout this interview—on a bright orange bench on College Street outside the same Manic Coffee where I saw him the first time. Lewis and I parked in the hot sun in front of noisy streetcars, gaggles of teens, and one guy who (really) believes Lewis is a spy. We share Manic's famous yogurt cups, ham and cheese croissants, and cookies—all homemade!—and discuss sacrifices for art, the power of the collective, the right amount of 'bad,' community through poverty, how to parent your parents, becoming an adult reader, what vandalism *really* is, and, of course, Lewis Mallard's 3 most formative books… Let's flip the page into Chapter 139 now…

Pages are 333-second or less highlights from Chapters of 3 Books.

They are released at 3:33am between Chapters.  

Page 143 comes from Chapter 14 with Rich Gibbons, President of Speak Inc.

Listen to the full chapter: https://www.3books.co/chapters/14

Get the 3 Books email: http://www.3books.co/3mail

Join our community: Follow @neilpasricha on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, & YouTube

Pages are 333-second or less highlights from Chapters of 3 Books.

They are released at 3:33am between Chapters.  

Page 142 comes from Chapter 14 with Rich Gibbons, President of Speak Inc.

Listen to the full chapter: https://www.3books.co/chapters/14

Get the 3 Books email: http://www.3books.co/3mail

Join our community: Follow @neilpasricha on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, & YouTube

Pages are 333-second or less highlights from Chapters of 3 Books.

They are released at 3:33am between Chapters.  

Page 141 comes from Chapter 14 with Rich Gibbons, President of Speak Inc.

Listen to the full chapter: https://www.3books.co/chapters/14

Get the 3 Books email: http://www.3books.co/3mail

Join our community: Follow @neilpasricha on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, & YouTube

Maria Popova was born in communist Bulgaria and emigrated to the U.S. six days after her 19th birthday back in 2003. She studied at the University of Pennsylvania after "being sold on the liberal arts promise of being taught how to live." Did it work? Well, yes and no. She spent her family's life savings in the first few weeks on textbooks and, despite attending an American high school in Bulgaria, found herself in a bit of culture shock. "I mean, fitted sheets? Brunch?" She worked hard, a defining Popova characteristic, sometimes eating store brand canned tuna and oatmeal three times a day to get by. "I figured it was the most nutritious combo for the cheapest amount." At one of her jobs in 2006 a senior leader started sending out a Friday email of miscellany to provoke innovation and then Maria took the project on herself—weaving together write-ups on seemingly unrelated topics. One day was Danish pod homes, another the century-long evolution of the Pepsi logo, another on the design of a non-profit's new campaign to fight malaria. It was becoming clear: You never knew what you were going to get from Maria. And in an era of homogenization that was so ever-delightful. Maria's emails got popular and then she taught herself programming to put it all online on a site called BrainPickings.org. I was blogging on 1000 Awesome Things every night in that internet paleolithic. I still remember so many times I'd be researching for some arcane bit of wisdom or trivia and Google would wisely fire me over to BrainPickings.org. I came to love the site which had a top-of-the-page tagline back then that read: "A scan of the mind-boggling, the revolutionary, and the idiosyncratic." And like my own blog's 'About' page, this one didn't reveal the author's name, face, or identity. Was the internet just a bit more chat-room-anonymous back then? Or was this just before social media had been invented or figured out they needed our real names to maximize their ad revenues? Either way, Maria and I never got to know each other then … but, thankfully, a full 18 (!) years later the endlessly curious, cool, and erudite Maria Popova is ... still going. George Saunders, our guest in Chapter 75, says Maria Popova manifests "abundant wit, intelligence, and compassion in all of her writings." Seth Godin, our guest in Chapter 3 says Maria "is indefatigable in her pursuits of knowledge and dignity. She does her work without ever dumbing down the work." And Krista Tippett, host of On Being, calls Maria a "cartographer of meaning in a digital age." Perhaps no surprise the Library of Congress has included her project, The Marginalian (once called Brain Pickings), in their permanent web archive of culturally valuable materials I agree with the accolades and find Maria, her blog, and her wonderful books ('Figuring,' 'The Snail With the Right Heart,' 'The Universe in Verse,' and 'A Velocity of Being') truly exquisite and much-needed reflections of everything that makes life beautiful. Like 3 Books, her site The Marginalian has remained free and ad-free over the years. Maria has no staff, no interns, no assistant, and The Marginalian is, in her words, "a thoroughly solitary labor of love that is also my life and my livelihood." The world can feel heavy, intense, and overwhelming—media, politics, and news pulls us away from those harder-to-measure things that make life wondrous. Love, connection, trust, kindness, passions, memories. The invisible but much-more-important guideposts that emerge as we look back on our lives from the end of it. That's where Maria and The Marginalian rescue us—to point our attention towards the turn of phrase in a poem, a forgotten piece of advice from Ralph Waldo Emerson on trusting ourselves, or to provide a close reading with some stunning artwork from a 100-year-old picture book that helps illuminates one of those impossible-to-articulate emotions that we all share and feel… I loved this conversation with the much-requested Maria Popova on a wonderfully wide-ranging set of topics including, of course, her 3 most formative books…

Pages are 333-second or less highlights from Chapters of 3 Books.

They are released at 3:33am between Chapters.  

Page 131 comes from Chapter 13 with Ariel Bisset, YouTuber and owner of Bisset Books.

Listen to the full chapter: https://www.3books.co/chapters/13

Get the 3 Books email: http://www.3books.co/3mail

Join our community: Follow @neilpasricha on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, & YouTube

I remember getting the knife. It was near Christmas about 10 years ago and Leslie and I were zipping up a tiny suitcase before a beach trip with her grandparents and extended family. We weren't married and I was making a desperate last-second plea to stuff a 576-page novel called 'The Corrections' by Jonathan Franzen into our bag. "It just won't fit," Leslie said. "You have … 100 pages left? Want to leave it and read it when we're back?" I did *not* want to do that. The book was slipping under my skin—serrating my soul. So I remember getting that knife. The deep blasphemous pain I felt slicing the paperback spine and carving the last 100-ish pages off the book was far outweighed by the exquisite suite of pleasures I had slowly savoring it on the beach all week. I had never read anything like 'The Corrections'—with a clarity of character, wildly spinning plot, and unique three-dimensional *realness* that, page by page, twist by twist, left pits in my stomach, lumps in my throat, and tears in my eyes. The book single-handedly elevated what I thought books could do. I read 'Freedom' (2010), 'Purity' (2014), and 'Crossroads' (2021) the same way—equal parts admiration, fascination, and with a psychologically-transporting feeling of living outside of myself. Jonathan Franzen is one of the most successful, accomplished, and decorated writers in the world. He is a Fulbright Scholar, National Book Award Winner, Pulitzer Prize Finalist, PEN/Faulkner Finalist, 2x Oprah's Book Club Pick, voted to TIME's '100 Most Influential' list as well as gracing their cover as "Great American Novelist," and much, much more. The NYT calls his books "masterpieces of American fiction," NYMag calls his books "works of total genius," and Chuck Klosterman writing in GQ says "Franzen is the most important fiction writer in America, and—if viewed from a distance—perhaps the only important one." Tall praise! But there is just nothing like a Jonathan Franzen novel and it was sheer delight going deep with the master of the deep to discuss writing advice, the magic of the written word, what heroes look like today, competing with David Foster Wallace, the best thing we can do for the climate, Jon's 3 most formative books, and much, much more… Let's turn the page to Chapter 137 now…

Pages are 333-second or less highlights from Chapters of 3 Books.

They are released at 3:33am between Chapters.  

Page 126 comes from Chapter 12 with Chris Anderson, Head of TED.

Listen to the full chapter: https://www.3books.co/chapters/12

Get the 3 Books email: http://www.3books.co/3mail

Join our community: Follow @neilpasricha on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, & YouTube