Reading Is A Great Way To Restore Balance From Super-Sized Social Media Consumption - Here Are Some Novel Recommendations

"Fiction, like art and music, is good for the soul," says Roger McNamee, musician, VC, and advocate for restoring balance to our lives and to our politics, who has been highlighting the harmful effects of our addiction to social apps.


Plunging temperatures and windchill that cuts like ice make for an excellent time for staying indoors and curling up under something warm reading a book, with the added advantage that reading will also reduce time spent on social media consumption.

Having read 54 non-fiction books last year, Roger McNamee walks the talk when it comes to reading, and recently shared his reading list for 2017. These novels make for some excellent reading recommendations, and are ranked in order of his preference:

- Paris in the Present Tense - Mark Helperin
- The Weight of Ink - Rachel Kadish
- The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
- The Elegance of the Hedgehog - Muriel Barbery
- After On - Rob Reid
- Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk - Kathleen Rooney
- Exit West - Mohsin Hamid
- Sourdough - Robin Sloan
- Spoonbenders - Daryl Gregory
- The Stars Are Fire - Anita Shreve
- The Spectator Bird - Wallace Stegner
- A Gentleman in Moscow - Amor Towles
- A Man Called Ove - Frederik Backman
- Snow Falling on Cedars - David Guterson
- Let the Great World Spin - Colm McCann
- Midnight at the Bright Ideas Bookstore - Matthew Sullivan
- Truly Madly Guilty - Liane Moriarty
- 4 3 2 1 - Paul Auster
- Celine - Peter Heller
- The Women in the Castle - Jessica Shattuck
- Homegoing - Yaa Gyasi
- The Chilbury Ladies' Choir - Jennifer Ryan
- Rules of Magic - Alice Hoffman
- The Wolf Road - Beth Lewis
- The Orphan's Tale - Pam Jenoff
- Golden Hill - Francis Spuford
- All the Birds in the Sky - Charlie Jane Anders
- The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O - Neal Stephenson and Nicole Gaiulland
- Manhattan Beach - Jennifer Egan
- The Ninth Hour - Alice McDermott
- Possession - AS Byatt
- Little Brother - Cory Doctorow
- Standard Deviation - Katherine Heiny
- Mister Monkey - Francine Prose
- La Belle Sauvage - Philip Pullman
- Practical Magic - Alice Hoffman
- Swimming Lessons - Claire Fuller
- Afterlife - Marcus Sakey
- All the Little Live Things - Wallace Stegner
- The Sleepwalker - Chris Bohjalian
- Daughter of Fortune - Isabel Allende

Fun stuff:
- Dead On Arrival - Matt Richtel
- Dark Matter - Blake Crouch
- Coconut Cowboy - Tim Dorsey
- Sycamore - Bryn Chancellor

With regard to art and music to further feed the soul, Roger has a solo acoustic show coming up on 18 February - Beatles For Brunch - at Sweetwater Music Hall in Mill Valley, CA. Everyone who attends the show will receive a free poster created specially for the occasion by a prominent rock-poster artist.

The video below of Roger performing one of his original songs, gives a taste of treats to come on the 18th.

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