Lately I have been drawn to books that do exactly that. Different genres. Different voices. Different worlds. But all circling the same human questions about belonging, truth, power, and what it really means to be alive right now.

Here are five that have stayed with me and quietly changed the way I think and move through the world.

“Frivolity at its best”

The smartest Bond villain, might be a parody of the very idea of Bond itself, and that’s where Percival Everett has the most fun.

2023’s Dr No isn’t trying to be a great Bond story. It’s something stranger and lighter, and it succeeds so completely that the only sensible critique is: nothing.

This is a review that isn’t really a review. I can’t pretend to be objective about a Bond‑adjacent book; I’m too far down the rabbit hole. We also don’t cover bad or mediocre things here. What I can do is talk about a story that lives near 007 and stubbornly refuses to be a Bond book.

Spoiler alert: Bond doesn’t show up. At all. He’s only ever glancingly referenced, and the plot touches his world in a way that’s loose enough not to trouble any IP people. The book is stronger for it.

Instead, Everett takes what we think we know, tweaks the characters and offers a masterful remix from the perspective of the afterthought: the self‑actualised Black man. Our main character, Wala, lives in that space. He’s not Bond, he’s a reluctant villain after all. He’s also a hero of sorts. Wala doesn’t try to be Bond, and isn’t interested in much. If he shares anything with 007, it’s a kind of mathematical “butt‑kicking ability” that runs under the surface of the story.

As readers of my work already know, I’m the Bond fan who actually tries to pay the cost of the lifestyle, not just watch it. So a book that exists in the 007 “world” and gives us interesting Black characters moving through that universe is rare enough to feel almost impossible. Wala may not be Bond, but the villains around him? They are perfectly 007.

The plot, in it’s loosest terms: a mathematician, more philosopher than lab‑rat, and a physicist are paid a kingpin’s ransom to help a deliberately blaxploitative villain get into Fort Knox. John Sill.

They are in search of “nothing,” which also happens to be Wala’s speciality. Nothing as concept. Nothing as object. Nothing as power.

Nothing is powerful here precisely because it is nothing, and that’s the joke the whole book dances around. The story unfolds in a world of limerick, riddle, absurdity, and deliberate literary frivolity. That mode is going to be majorly off‑putting to some readers. The sing-song villain sections remind me of Tolkien.

There are spies and government functionaries, including a version of Bill Clinton wandering through the pages. There are explosions. Talking dogs. Dreamy swings into mania. And, most importantly for me, Black angst and self‑questioning set against a backdrop of luxury.

The only way this book could resonate more with me is with nothing—more of that empty centre it keeps circling.

At the risk of rambling, I’m landing this non‑review right as rumours of Callum Turner stepping into the role of James Bond swirl across the internet.

I like Callum for Bond. People have sent me his name in DM’s and ask what I think, and based on what I’ve seen, he’d be a strong choice.

He’s engaged to Dua Lipa, who I’d happily keep far away from 007 on screen. Argylle told us most of what we needed to know there. As a potential Bond theme artist, though, that’s a different story. A quick look at the Kanye leaks from Donda tells you she has the range. She has more cultural weight than just “Levitating” on repeat.

Interested to read other thoughts on this book and the state of 007.

She also did a sharp conversation with Percival Everett that I’d recommend tracking down. It’s part of the same through‑line: the Bond world, and the orbit around it, are expanding. Things are getting weirder, cooler, and less comfortable at the edges. And we’re better for it.

It’s not happening in the ways we’d usually expect, or always in ways fans are ready for. But that’s exactly why books like this matter: they show us what happens when you take the trappings of 007 and hand the centre of the story to someone like Wala instead.

From the outset, the book signals that this is a fun read, not a light one. The subject matter, the focus that it requires to read certain tricky portions of this book, the subtle jab at Fleming’s depictions of Bond girls. Sedated. Robotic. Solely there as incapable damsels in distress who serve the male gaze and please.

Percival Everett knows exactly what he’s doing, he’s tied this entire story into an earlier novel from his bibliography.

I haven’t read Glyph yet but that’s next on my list. I’d also recommend the exceptional, White Teeth by Zadie Smith for a less frivolous, lower stakes satirical book tackling adjacent themes.

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Join us for a run down of what we watched, a chat around a special time piece… a Tag Heuer… and our song of the year choices.

Winter Essentials Guide

Tragedy as Reset, Book Review

Winter Essentials Guide

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GQ - Rules for Modern Gentlemen

Simon Critchley writes philosophy like it’s a casual act. He somehow finds the way to make the high tower ideas of texts seem relatable to the everyman. I read this book during the summer of 2025 while going through a divorce, running a business, raising sons, and traveling around in Germany with family. It came at a time when I myself felt like I was not only experiencing personal tragedies to my own ideas of where my life was going but it seemed like a daily occurrence if you looked anywhere online as well.

I was a philosophy minor in college and often return to thinkers and texts like a lost lover looking for warm arms to hold me. The recommendation that drew me to this book after reading his book on Mysticism was “Pay attention and you can reinvent your life” by The New Yorker. It’s written on the books cover under the title. Seemed too obvious.

A far too simple explanation of this book’s premise is that tragedy is “disorientation” that reorients one to life as what it is. Tragedy itself is disorienting and can spin one out of context. You can be forced into finding your way again which is the work after tragedy. Life has a way of going about on its own. No matter how much habit, practice, creation, will, or even discipline, life has a way of reorienting or disorienting you to the realities of what a day presents.

Here are some examples of what I wrote in the margins of the book:

“Tragedy can be transitory - a new beginning”

“Share what you know of the past.”

“How can one stay in the traditional ways of thinking when the tragedies that befall them point to a lack of reasoning?”

“Hero = Villain - same coin.”

“We are all of us a part of this machine and must acknowledge our place for there to be any foundation that could lead to peace.”

“Tragedy is a lie revealing the Truth.”

Those were only from the first four chapters. The premise of this book is taking the idea of tragedy in literary form and how the Greeks hold a mirror up to us, “in which we see all the dissolution and illusion of our lives but also the terrifying beauty and intensity of existence.”

Tragedy can expose the reality of being alive because it shows us that we can be snuffed out, exposed, or even made weak by the realities of living in a world that regularly seems indifferent to our desires.

This book came at a time when most of our world seems thrown into division, despondency, and even outright pathological insanity. I regularly hold an optimistic and even defiant hope that we bend towards justice, but even my somewhat stoic, mystical worldview has fallen victim to the nonsensical happenings of the age we exist in.I’ve had to deal with the shortcomings of a worldview that can’t seem to make sense of so much that makes so little sense.

Simon takes a course he has taught in universities for years and makes it somewhat approachable to those who are willing to face the tragedies they witness on a day-to-day basis. We all have seen them. From our social media feeds to our personal lives. From the sprawl of nihilism to how democracy seems to mean nothing at all anymore. It’s very easy to think, feel, and even experience that a lot of this seems pointless.

However, the book never lets up in its undying turn of possibilities. Even in plays that are as ancient as Plato, Greek thought, and the birth of tragedy as a written or played out medium. Western thought has absolutely let the world down yet, when have humans not come short? This isn’t some review of a book that signals that there is some larger entity that is yet still guiding it all - it’s more of an acknowledgement that somehow life has the ability to find a way. Even when we are in our darkest moments, we can actually look at whatever experience that is befalling us and decide what to do with it.

Even if you or I are heartbroken beyond measure, we can still choose to act with grace or understanding or even goodness because the tragedy of the event itself does not have to define us.

I don’t know how to recommend this book outside of sharing a journal entry while I was on a beach in Germany because Tragedy, The Greeks, and Us was at the top of my mind while I was there:

6/20/25 - “The Beach” I just did a 1 ½ front flip for the first time in over 2 years into a river in Germany. Dillon and his friends vaulted me in the air at a nude-friendly beach in Berlin, Germany. I interviewed Brendon this morning while my siblings went to a memorial for the Holocaust. I’ve seen enough of that devastation. I see it daily in Gaza. The world has been a witness to it for over a year. How does one keep living and making things in the face of so much heartache? How can we all see blown-up kids in between ads on social media? I never imagined I would be here - finishing a book about tragedy at the beach and fully alive while also going through a divorce. Life has a way of surprising us even in the times of great joy and great heartache. Life’s experiences of joy and sorrow are like a pretzel. Never just one thing. I’m smoking a cig while writing - I haven’t done this exactly since my late 20s. We got to go backstage at the Palask, which is a world-renowned theatre where my brother Dillon has been performing for the last two years. This is all a gift. I am happy and melancholy and joyous while carrying the weight of sorrow. Maybe this is the point ultimately. To be alive and aware. To be alive while also fully sad with the realities of what it means to be human in a complex, unjust and inhuman world that puts money above all. Tragedy exposes our humanness, and we all are that at the end of the day.

The whole idea of Time2LiveAgain is to put into practice that which needs to happen to be fully alive. We are striving to shine a little brighter, to offer alternatives to the gloom, the nihilism, and the despondency that creeps in. This book helped me do just that and if you have the patience, it will reward you too.

-Caton Vance

Purchase via Amazon : https://amzn.to/4q5kE1j

[purchasing via the link above supports our work directly][which is good] - Brendon

Tonight was a celebration. Family came over to pop a Freixenet as I accepted an offer this week. Tech again. But incredible money. And here’s the thing: I’m actually excited about going back. Tonight was Canapés. Bubbles. Age statement port. Great company. Dubai chocolate. General happiness. It reminded me this needs to happen more often. “It really is a good life.”

What 2025 Taught Me

The elephant: I’ve been absent here. I like breaks and the space to get perspective. It’s not what algorithms reward, but who’s reading this with that in mind?

2025 was experimenting: structured podcasts, different collaboration models, various formats. All to see what lands. Here’s what I know now:

I love writing. That’s my why for this project. Primary function. Video can be fun. Collaborating is super fun. But my battery is low for structured content. That’s what I do in the day job after all. I have two young kids who deserve the best me… Short-form video or unstructured long-form. That’s where I live.

It should be someone’s job to promote on social, but probably not what should I be doing in the long run, but more on that to come…If you’re looking for me… I’ll be outside, touching grass.

Collaboration is Key

Collaborating with Vance and Company has been a major highlight. The guys have been incredible and we’ve ended up with a polished product. We’ll do more, even if it looks different given time zones and daddy duties. Season 1 of the podcast was a win.

2 more episodes to drop in 2025.

Shedding the Filter

Christmas rocks. It’s an opportunity to shed all cool and just be a fun dad and husband. A proud Disney adult, which brings me and the kids closer together. In trying to connect with people, I have filtered what I wasn’t comfortable sharing or selling. And that’s the passion points so I got middling results. I’m doing it differently. I keep distance but stay honest. That’s my voice. I don’t value hot takes or lists of five. I’m Bourdain meets Bond.

The likely outcome is I grow this by doing what I know how to do: working within an existing system and building it properly.

Hired Gun

There’s a massive but muddied difference between being an entrepreneur and an investor. I am the latter. The fact that I long to be the operator is why I’m good at what I do. An executor with vision…thats why I win in the market. No more apologies. I’m a hired gun and a damned good one.

The through line is : My wife watching Bond without prompting. Me being excited about tech again, and the compensation that fuels the lifestyle. The realization that I’ve been filtering myself in trying to be something that fits this new digital realm. All of it points to the same truth: stop apologizing for what works.

I write. I show up radically honest, for better or worse. Always more better than worse. I grow things my way, and succeed. I fail or get middling results when I do them someone else’s.

New Adventures will carry us through December to mid next year. Luxury holidays on the calendar. Mounds of content to edit. Work resumes in mid January. This is good. Old school blogging again.

T2LA continues on my terms, starting with Luxe Christmas. Think Personal Blog +

I could grow this faster doing some other method…I’m always up for suggestions and pointers, but I have no apologies.

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A few posts got unexpected reshares across social. The most popular? The popping of a bottle of Taittinger. What were we celebrating? Nothing in particular. But the vampire of existential crisis has been in his coffin for the longest time in a long time, and that’s worth raising a glass to.

Nightcap : Indian Coca-Cola. The G.O.A.T., right alongside the Mexican one. The coke is an accompanied by a separate glass of Cuérvo. I don’t know my Reposado like that, but the Día de los Muertos bottle art got me. I’m a sucker for Mexican art (especially skulls). Youtube education in the background, L322 generation Range Rovers — of course.

It’s 1:30 AM now. Just Mustard’s latest album on the HomePod (c/o Dominic). My kids have a meeting with Santa in the morning, and I’m planning a surprise lunch and maybe a Christmas photo. Life’s calm…weirdly calm.

Then YouTube hits me with an ad for more tequila. Then an ad for a no-name knock off hoodie with an Andrew Tate clone. I’m offended at Youtube’s data mined assumption here. The algorithm’s tightening its aim, but missing. It sees a “watch guy,” a “kickboxing bro,” maybe a “high-performance man.” Unlike many of the people who occupy those spaces…

I’m not angry.

I’m not anti-woman.

and I’m not interested in watching a Toyota hill race a Range Rover. The Range wins by default. It’s an icon. Even the Evoque.

Aside : This week I wore the most hyped piece in my small collection. Shiny 39 mm Rolex, simple 3-6-9 dial with the numerals in full white gold because it’s better at looking formal. The Explorer. It earned more attention than any “nicer” watch I’ve owned. Icons don’t explain themselves. They just are.

That’s the filter I’m applying to everything I create. Cars, content, the whole machinery of ambition within this brand.

Does it work because it’s real?

Or just because the algorithm says it should?

The tequila’s back in its cabinet. The house is quiet. The (classic?) Range Rover shopping feels less like a compulsion now and more like a test: “Can I enjoy an icon with no expectation, no justification. Just pure appreciation?”

The Rolex Explorer and the Taittinger reminded me of the answer.

Complication does not equal connection.

It’s about what doesn’t need explaining.

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VANCE AND COMPANY

Hardly the most glamorous job I ever had, but it paid well (at the time) and taught me how the world worked. My office was in the least interesting part of town imaginable. The only saving grace? A few nearby boutiques run by friends, misplaced there just like me.

I didn’t identify with my coworkers, except for one. They thought I was an alien for demanding a Haworth chair in my blue-collar warehouse setting. I got it, stirred up a fuss, and continued driving a lift truck (begrudgingly), navigating a 24-foot box truck, and returning to the office with one AirPod in and pretending I didn’t work there.

Occasionally, I’d take it out to talk to Vic Johnson, the guy who ran the meter machine. Vic, now a lifelong friend, is the most technical and experimental DJ I’ve ever met.

Vic One

During this time, I threw a party called Rapid Fire. The tagline was simple: “Dance or Listen.”

We wanted people to dance, but we also wanted to challenge ears while curating music that fit the vibe of the night. Selfishly, it guaranteed a great turnout for my DJ sets when I was active in the scene. And it worked.

We had a core group. I headlined, with our friends Zac and Ben playing shorter sets before me. We had overlapping crowds, but we ensured that where we were was the place to be.

Our sets blended scenes, Vic Johnson kicked things off. 30 minutes, Boiler Room style. A rapid-fire mix introducing Grand Rapids to the sounds of LA, England, the Netherlands, and Chicago. Seth followed, delivering intricate, highly technical techno. Ben, Zac, and I rounded out the night with increasingly accessible selections.

Vic’s sets, though, were something else. He composed and played Chicago Juke. A chaotic, niche genre with a cult following. Repetitive syncopated drums between 150-160, chopped up soul samples and the house, rap and soul blended. It’s a harsh genre though, step brother to rap – more like ghetto tech. It’s like black metal: if it’s not for you, it really isn’t. And it never will be.

The Return: I Got Joints 3: The Final Boss

Now, Vic is back with his most accessible and warm project to date. I’m here to talk about it, not to review it. I’m not qualified to critique this genre.

So, why am I writing about it on Time 2 Live Again?

Because above all, T2LA is about fun. I want people to listen to something different, to enrich themselves. Just like a luxury watch or an unforgettable sushi experience in central London. It’s not for everyone. And that’s exactly the point.

Track-by-Track Breakdown. Not a review

1. Synergy Spaces

Chaos. The snapping snare, the signature triple tom, and an 8-bit synth feel like a Hudson Mohawke arcade game. I’m drinking a Macallan 12 while tidying my office. Its complexity matches this track perfectly. That’s high praise if you appreciate The Macallan.

2. Color Coded

A choppy, haunting sample kicks things off, reminiscent of Wu-Tang Clan. This feels less experimental and more like The Alchemist producing within this genre. The detuned sub-bass is warm and sits beautifully in the mix. I’m listening on Bowers & Wilkins Px7 S2s, and the soundstage is impressive.

Then, a switch-up…Crispy and southern-fried. Think styrofoam cups and deep-fried Chicago soul food. Anyone else miss Honey’s Chicago?

3. Native Tongues

The build-up to a final boss moment. Randomized delayed arpeggios dance over a heavy open hat and complex snare patterns. It feels like heavy rain hitting a window, cascading droplets, pavement roars in the background.

This track becomes a sensory experience. Imagine Brian Eno meets Yeezus.

4. Gladiator Standup

The tracks blend seamlessly now. I first heard this on a foggy walk. It felt eerie then, and it still does. A sweeping deep bass alters the drum syncopation at 4:12, shifting into a Project Pat-style groove. And that’s a very good thing.

5. Let Me Cook

Spooky. Like a merry-go-round that’s jumped off the track, but the kids are still on it.

At 1:25, nostalgia kicks in. This reminds me of the Midwest urban roller-skating scene. Just as I settle in, Vic throws us back into the Haunted Mansion. Then it clicks: he’s taking us back to the eerie carnival setting of Jordan Peele’s Us.

Or at least, that’s my interpretation.

6. Touched by God

Rumbling bass. A divine sample. Warm, golden, yet still haunting. Heaven and hell are on full display. I’m here for the heavenly portion and the drum rhythm.

7. Hyphenated

A departure. A high-pitched synth pierces through…haunting, but expensive. When the drums hit, it’s Massive Attack meets dream techno.

This could score an Iris Van Herpen show. That should be Vic’s next goal.

8. I Took the Mask Off

Buffering…

No, wait, that’s just the complex sampling. I’m trying to catch the pocket, then the snare hits. I lose it. Find it. Lose it again.

A haunting old sample brings us back to reality. This is Kid Cudi Moon Man nightmare territory. An experience. Not something I’d play while working. There’s too much going on. But in this case, that’s a good thing.

9. This is Automatic

At first, it’s a conventional Vic track. But the journey up to this point has been anything but conventional.

At 2:30, I’m not convinced. But the ambition is there. The distorted bass isolates, grounding us in what we came for: complex dance music for people who actually know how to dance.

As the bass cuts out, Vic pieces it all back together. Then, just when you realize he’s pulled it off—the track ends.

That’s the genius of any good movie or video game:

Leave them questioning the ending.

Keep them wanting more.

Bravo, my friend.

Final Thoughts

Vic Johnson’s I Got Joints 3: The Final Boss is a masterclass in genre-blurring. It’s not just Juke—it’s an experience. So, take a listen. Challenge your ears. And most importantly, have fun.

Check out the album here :