In Mobile Services, we love recommending titles to our customers while on the road. During the pandemic, interactions with some of our biggest readers has been limited. So rather than just telling our co-workers what to read, we thought we should share some of those recommendations with all of you.

A Very Punchable Face

By Colin Jost

eAudiobook   |   eBook

A young smart-mouthed kid from Staten Island goes on a journey that takes him from the Harvard Lampoon to the Staten Island Advance to Saturday Night Live, with a wildly funny Russian study abroad experience thrown in there as well. It’s very funny and a striking insight into life as a writer at SNL. Jost often makes fun of himself, telling anecdotes of some of the more unusual experiences of his lifetime such as falling asleep in a Norwegian graveyard. It also has more sobering moments, like his mother’s experience on September 11^th, working as a medical professional for the New York Fire Department.

Don’t Skip Out on Me

By Willy Vlautin

A man pursues his dreams of becoming a championship boxer but begins to realize he’s not cut out for the life. The book is fun to read and the boxing scenes are filled with excitement and action. Vlautin’s language is spare and it serves his characters well. You’ll root for the people in this book. It is altogether heartbreaking and beautiful. This book is great for anybody who had a dream they wanted to follow, but that dream didn’t pan out for whatever reason.

Terry Jones' Medieval Lives

By Terry Jones and Alan Ereira

This book sheds light on the “Dark Ages.” Terry Jones and Alan Ereira clear up misunderstandings and misrepresentations about this period that many have overlooked or just taken at face value. They focus on the peasant class right up to the kings, and everyone in between. Usually history, though interesting in theory, is dealt with in a very dry and borderline inaccessible manner, often voiding any possible interest from casual readers. Terry and Alan manage to deliver this material in a very reader-friendly way and provide many eye-opening revelations to what is usually considered a backward and overly dirt laden part of English history. This a great book for anyone with even just a passing interest in history. I would also definitely recommend this book to people who are in a reading rut and/or having a harder time focusing on longer reads these days.

When one person, for whatever reason, has the opportunity to read an extraordinary book, they have no right to keep it to themselves. My apologies to Jacques Cousteau for the reimaging of this quote. For the original, and other great quotes.

 

Until next time, happy reading and happy exploring.