Dear Newsletterest,

I’m on the West Coast this week for a series of talks and putting the finishing touches on this week’s newsletter from a lovely hotel lounge sitting beside a bottomless bowl of wasabi peas. Welcome to the glamourous life of book touring and speaking!

The story roundup this week includes a fun job listing for a part-time barista at a pharmacy which prescribes poetry, some revealing data about the future of diamonds, an expansion of the famous Black List to feature undiscovered fiction authors, a yogurt brand that will pay you $1000 to stay off social media until after the U.S. Presidential election and the backstory behind the most famous manga comic of all time.

Enjoy the stories this week and stay curious!

Rohit

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This London-based Pharmacy Prescribes Poetry As Treatment

For those of us who love poetry, it really can lift your mood or shift your perspective in a way other written words can’t. Now there’s a place that is offering it literally as a prescription for that effect. The Poetry Pharmacy is a two-location concept in England that is currently looking for a part-time barista and part-time bookseller. That sounds like a dream job.

The vision behind the retail concept is ambitious and beautiful: “We believe that poetry can do so much to match or alter a mood, to assist in so many ways with good mental health. The Poetry Pharmacy was a way for us to bring the therapeutic effects of poetry under one roof, with an emphasis on well-being and inclusivity.”

When you visit, you can buy a bottle tiny rolled pieces of paper featuring poetry that look exactly like pills, as well as other books and products. It is, as you might suspect, the “World’s First Poetry Pharmacy” but at a time when people are seeking relief from emotional or mental distress in more non-medical ways the idea seems perfectly timed and a wonderful experience. It’s going on my list to visit next time I’m in London.

The Future of Diamonds Will Emerge From The Story We Tell Ourselves

The gap between the price of lab grown diamonds and mined diamonds is continuing to grow. As it does, it’s raising new questions among consumers about what the real value of diamonds is or should be. The appeal of lab grown diamonds is clear. They are conflict free, much cheaper and chemically perfect. On the flip side, some feel maybe they look too perfect. And to protect their most profitable product category, many jewelers are putting barriers in place to try and ensure customers don’t turn to lab grown diamonds for engagement rings.

Mined diamonds have long been problematic, from their blood-stained history to the artificial scarcity that has fueled their high prices. They still maintain a premium on cost, though and the new question people are already starting to ask is whether this is worth it. What do you think? Will lab grown diamonds overtake mined diamonds for more situations or will mined diamonds still win the day for the purchases that matter most'?

How the Black List Changed Hollywood, and Might Change Publishing Too

Nearly twenty years ago, Franklin Leonard started publishing his Black List which collected “an annual survey of Hollywood’s best unproduced screenplays.” The goal was to help undiscovered projects find funding and backers. More than 400 of the forgotten works on his list were eventually produced, including blockbusters like Slumdog Millionaire and The King’s Speech. His efforts have had a dramatic effect in helping more diverse projects get made and The Black List even inspired a Harvard case study.

Now he is opening the platform to feature works of fiction as well. In the world of publishing, it has been notoriously difficult to get diverse projects discovered and funded. In addition to providing a platform where authors and writers and submit their work and an approved set of publishers can review them—the site is also launching the “The Unpublished Novel Award,” a $10,000 grant for authors of unpublished manuscripts in seven genres — children’s and young adult, mystery, horror, literary fiction, romance, science fiction and fantasy, and thriller and suspense.”

This is the sort of platform that I love to see and different from anything else out there that might allow a more merit-based way for authors to get discovered by publishers without desperately trying to land a superstar literary agent first. It’s an idea worth sharing and talking about.

This Yogurt Brand Will Pay You $1000 To Stay Off Social Media Until After The Election Is Over

How will you avoid the toxic conversations that often come along with an election cycle? It might start with avoiding social media altogether. Yogurt brand Stonyfield is challenging their customers to do that and rewarding 100 winners with $1000 each if they can do it. The campaign’s website describes the intention of the campaign like this:

It’s election season. No matter what side you’re on, we all know that political conversations on social media can quickly become heated and tension-filled: poisonous instead of productive… In other words: toxic.

While we champion voting and voicing your opinion, we recognize that social media can become a breeding ground for toxicity during this time. As an organic brand, Stonyfield is on a mission to help you avoid toxicities that lurk around you, whether it be in the food you eat or where you spend your time.

The brand connection is a bit far-fetched, but it’s hard to argue with the intention behind the campaign. If we did leave social media discourse behind for a month, do you think it might improve our ability to participate in an election with a bit less angst?

How the Japanese Anime Series One Piece Became One of the Biggest Entertainment Franchises In The World

The Japanese anime series One Piece just hit it’s milestone 25th anniversary and has run for more than 1,000 episodes. The show has become a worldwide phenomenon, and is the most popular manga comic story of all time based on sales, with a Guinness World Record to prove it.

One interesting secret of its success may be its complexity. According to One Piece Podcast host Zach Logan, “One Piece changed the manga industry. When it comes to the sheer number of characters and ideas created by Oda-sensei [One Piece creator Eiichiro Oda], no other body of work can match it.”

During the pandemic when people were seeking content like this with a huge body of work that could be binged for days upon end, One Piece was just right. Hundreds of episodes to catch up on, a never ending story line and a complex world of storylines to learn. Would it have become this popular without that pandemic blip moment? It’s hard to say. But twenty-five years is an impressive milestone that many invented worlds never hit. If you aren’t a fan yet, you could probably start now. Without another pandemic, though, it might take you the next twenty five years to catch up.

The Non-Obvious Book of the Week

STFU - The Power of Keeping Your Mouth Shut In An Endlessly Noisy World

Fresh from 48 hours of pundit cross examining and dissecting the first (and probably only) Presidential debate between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, it’s hard to imagine a more timely read than Dan Lyon’s modern classic STFU all about why we might all be better off if we could just get better at staying silent:

Learning to shut the fuck up will change your life. It will make you smarter, more likable, more creative, and more powerful. It might even help you live longer.

People who talk less are more likely to get promoted at work and more likely to prevail in negotiations. Speaking with intention—that is, not just blurting things out—improves our relationships, makes us better parents, and can boost our psychological and even physical well-being. Failing to shut the fuck up, however, will definitely fuck you up.

We live in a world that doesn’t just encourage overtalking but practically demands it, where success is measured by how much attention we can attract: get a million Twitter followers, become an Instagram influencer, make a viral video, give a TED Talk. Shutting up should be the easiest thing in the world. All you have to do is nothing, right? But, in fact, not talking requires a lot of concentration. It’s probably more difficult than talking.

In the book, Lyons explores what he calls the “six types of overtalkers” and diagnoses himself as having talkaholism, an apparently real condition defined as “a form of extreme, compulsive overtalking that is akin to an addiction.” More than the research, though, he’s a journalist and comedy writer (formerly writing for the HBO show Silicon Valley) and he brings his trademark wit to the topic and compellingly makes the point that perhaps the path to respect, sanity and just a little better world is for all of us to teaching ourselves to STFU.

About the Non-Obvious Book Selection of the Week:

Every week I will be featuring a new “non-obvious” book selection worth sharing. Titles featured here may be new or from the backlist, but the date of publication doesn’t really matter. My goal is to elevate great books that perhaps deserve a second look which you might have otherwise missed.

Even More Non-Obvious Stories …

Every week I always curate more stories than I'm able to explore in detail. Instead of skipping those stories, I started to share them in this section so you can skim the headlines and click on any that spark your interest:

How are these stories curated?