Long time reader Holly Mthethwa writes:
This summer, I read Bandersnatch on your recommendation and it became one of my all time favorite books. I loved everything from the thorough insight to the practical structure.
Soooo many revelations and kicks in the tush. A few months ago, I finally started a weekly (don’t screech it’s not daily) email newsletter to women and am working faster on my yeaaaars-in-the making book, realizing “Oh my gosh, I’m slow and sidetracked on hobbit talk like Tolkien.”
Fast forward a bit, and a group of about 6 of us women between Virginia, Kansas, and Washington state decided to gift the book to a friend. We each took turns reading it, writing our notes in it, and passing it along until we gifted it to her.
Rather than “The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants,” it became the sisterhood of the traveling book.
If you’ve ever wondered how influential your book recommendations are—well, you might just have a Ben’s Book Club in the making.
Thanks for always giving great recs.
Holly ain’t the only one over the years to request a Ben Settle book club.
And while I do talk about certain books in these emails and in the paid Email Players newsletter and in my free Settleheads Facebook group at times, the reality is, most of the books I currently read would be of zero interest to the rank & file in my Horde.
Take, for example, these books from the past year or so:
* “Sargon The Magnificent” – about Cain (from the Bible) and his wanderings that fills in some “gaps” – Biblical, archeological, historical, cultural, etc. “Politically incorrect” doesn’t even begin to describe it.
* “Tracing Our Ancestors” which’d definitely be banned by ICE protesting librarians.
* “The Abrahamic Covenant” – which I’ve seen some Christians with foreign flags in their bios call abhorrent, but they never call it incorrect.
* And the Bible itself – which I read cover-to-cover 3-4 times per year, and often a different version each time
So as you can see:
A Ben Settle book club wouldn’t be of much interest to most on this list.
Nobody opted-in to hear about those topics, after all.
I do still sometimes dip back into business/marketing/copywriting books like Eugene Schwartz’s Breakthrough Advertising, or Ken McCarthy’s System Club Letters, or Joe Vitale’s 7 Lost Secrets of Success (original version from 1990 only), or a Joe Girard book, and a few others I revisit, but rarely any new ones.
If I did have a “book club” though?
I’d shamelessly & egotistically make it for my Enoch Wars novels.
They ain’t exactly Tolkien-level writing or even Stephen King-level writing. But I daresay they’re fast paced, entertaining, and born from my childhood love of 80’s action movies, esoteric Biblical interests, and years of mindlessly playing Dungeons & Dragons and other RPGs as a teenager.
They’ve also been gaining a small, but rabid, fanbase, over the years.
And it’s big enough where they inspire me to keep spreading the word.
So that’s that.
As for business?
You can learn more about the paid Email Players newsletter here:
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