In partnership with

Turn Your Ideas Into Profit with a Book

At Lulu, you’ll find affordable, high-quality print-on-demand solutions that make book publishing easy, allowing you to grow your brand and audience while keeping 100% of your profit.

Create Your Free Account Today

Boom! This is Books & Biceps #347!

Welcome to our hundreds of new readers this week! We’ve crossed 23,000 sophisticated meatheads! If someone forwarded you this issue of B&B, you can join us right here:

(If you’re a new subscriber or missed my yearly book round-up, The 16 Most Memorable Books I Read in 2024, you can read it here.)

BOOKS

Savage Son by Jack Carr

A few weeks ago I brought the incredible book The Finest Hours, about one of the Coast Guard’s greatest rescues, on vacation and finished it in the middle of the trip. You can read my thoughts and book recommendation in Issue 345 here.

I’d brought a second book I planned on starting, which I’ll be sharing in a few weeks, but while cruising a small bookstore in the little town we were in I came across a section of $10 paperbacks and I happened upon Savage Son by Jack Carr.

Jack Carr is a literary juggernaut, a modern day Tom Clancy, with an iconic title character in James Reece and every book becoming an instant #1 bestseller. He’s also a terrific follow on Instagram because he’s a true student of the craft of writing, regularly sharing behind-the-scenes stories and info about your favorite thriller, military and action writers. He was also a member of the Navy SEALs for 20 years, so he knows his stuff when it comes to these subjects.

And yet, despite many people (and plenty of B&B readers) telling me I’d love this novels, I hadn’t read any of them - until now.

Why now? Two reasons:

1) Literary serendipity, for one. I found myself between books (despite like 40 stacked up at home to read, haha) and wanted to read something action-packed and awesome. So I cruised the shelves with nothing on my mind in particular and this book popped up.

2) The book was inspired by one of my favorite short stories, The Most Dangerous Game by Richard Connell.

If you don’t remember that short story, it’s about crazy General Zaroff who hunts humans on a private island.

Now imagine this in Carr’s hands. You’ve got a Russian military psychopath hunting humans on a remote island near Siberia and through a confluence of plot events, he intentionally lures in our very own bad ass SEAL James Reece and his equally tough best buddy, Raife on an off-the-books rescue/revenge mission.

Carr, who has studied one of my favorite writers heavily, First Blood’s David Morrell (a B&B Legend), has become an elite action writer in his own right, with impeccable details, tight pacing and specifics about strategy, weapons, hand-to-hand combat that he’s pulled from his years in the Teams.

I enjoyed the hell out of this book and you will too. Pumped there’s a bunch more of these to dive into. Grab it here.

BOOKS

The 1-Day Method: The Surprising Power of Winning One Day at a Time by Antonio Neves

Another book, dude? Yes, another book. An awesome one by my buddy Antonio that you should all go pick up because as soon as I read it I didn’t want to wait for the next issue to share it. I want you to grab it now for a bunch of reasons.

The first is that it’s short and impactful - the kind of read that you can flip through, highlight and go back to again and again. Each section is written in a powerful, almost poetic form. A less is more strategy that pays off big time. If you’re stuck creatively, read it. If you’re stuck emotionally, read it. Here are some of my favorite lines:

“Most spend their lives drowning in solutions to problems they never had.”

Man, I love that line. Feels so true for anyone caught doomscrolling social media influencers who make you think their system is all that’s keeping you from greatness.

“Your mind carries infinite possibility but finite energy. Every open loop drains it. Every competing priority splits it. Every unnecessary commitment weakens it. This isn’t philosophy. It’s physics.”

So damn true.

“Ten minutes of pure silence offers more wisdom than ten hours of pure noise.”

Another banger.

Like I said, I really enjoyed this book. Antonio does a terrific job of writing bite-sized, but profound thoughts to make you re-think how you go about your day.

The second reason I want you to read this book is because of why Antonio wrote it. I’ll share his words directly here:

“Jan 8th, the Palisades wildfire took our home. Turned everything upside down. Priorities, timelines, excuses. I’ve been rebuilding with The 1-Day Method. One day at a time. Defining success. Picking 3 essentials. Sweating, connecting, growing, unplugging, finishing. Tracking wins, even the small ones…

Losing it all clears the fog. You see what matters, what doesn’t. Today, my book’s out. No publisher, no big machine, just me and stubborn faith. Success isn’t sales or lists. It’s that I hit publish. Refused to wait. Started. Finished. One copy or a million, I already won.”

Love this mindset and the inspirational book that came from it. Grab your copy here.

BICEPS

Randy Orton, AKA, The Viper, AKA, the Apex Predator, is on my personal Mt. Rushmore of WWE wrestlers. His RKO finisher is my #1 finisher of all time. His family is also wrestling royalty and he’s been at the top of his game for over two decades. Partly because he’s a Hall of Fame talent and partly because he’s a beast, listed at 6’5” and 275.

A few weeks ago he was on Sheamus’s YouTube show, Celtic Warrior Workouts, which gave us a double hit. We not only got to see Orton’s full arm routine, but we got to check out his garage gym, complete with championship belts lining the walls. This was a little taste of meathead paradise. Check it out:

QUICK FLEXES

Every Tuesday I write a new column over at Midlife Male, the fastest-growing lifestyle newsletter for men 40+. I’m the Editor-in-Chief and this week I wrote about a recent epic battle between me and my brother in basketball. If you have a sibling rivalry, or any rivalry, you’ll want to read this:

STRONG LINKS

1) Do you have your OFFICIAL BOOKS & BICEPS T-SHIRT FOR SPRING? No? THEN WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR?

Let the world know that you’re one of the elite, sophisticated meatheads who reads Books & Biceps by showing off your actual biceps in this shirt. I live in this thing. Grab yours and support the B&B Crew today:

Are you craving 80s & 90s nostalgia?

ALL THESE GUYS WERE, SO THEY BOUGHT: GENERATION GRIFFEY!

If you still wear your hat backward like Griffey, think all the Prime flavors are dumb because Gatorade Citrus Cooler is the greatest sports drink ever, miss Blockbuster and Tower Records, destroyed your friends in Street Fighter, GoldenEye, and NBA Jam, can quote Tommy Boy and Billy Madison, and never missed Stu Scott on SportsCenter —this book, Generation Griffey, is for you.

I ranked 90 of the '90s things that made your dude childhood legendary. A rankfest, if you will. Ninety columns. By me. For you. For US.

Why Generation Griffey?

First, it’s a great name. We’ve got alliteration, “generation,” and the quintessential athlete of that era: Ken Griffey Jr.

Junior perfectly defines the era for late '80s and '90s kids because the apex of his career matches our childhood. From the day he joined the Mariners’ lineup in 1989 through the next decade, nobody embodied '90s style (the backward hat), swagger (the swing, the smile, the commercials), and coolness (the kicks, the cameos, the crossover stardom) quite like Griffey.
His reign atop the sports/celebrity pyramid (alongside Jordan) from his rookie year in Seattle to his move to the Reds in 2000 serves as the perfect bookend for all of us who grew up in the last decade of the last century.

See? Generation Griffey is a spectacular name for this book.

What are we ranking?

Everything. Well, noteverything, but the 90 most nostalgic things that make us dudes smile all these years later: the movies we quoted, the athletes we loved, the cards we collected, the foods we devoured, the shows we watched, and more. All of it. Got it? Good. Let’s go.