Conversations with Friends

This book by Sally Rooney was genuinely recommended once in the episodes we index, on Tim Ferriss. The people who vouched for it on air: Soman Chainani. It comes up in conversations about depression & mood, psychedelics, relationships. Every quote below is verbatim, attributed, and linked to the exact second it was said. Sourced expert opinion, not medical advice.

Frances is a coolheaded and darkly observant young woman, vaguely pursuing a career in writing while studying in Dublin. Her best friend is the beautiful and endlessly self-possessed Bobbi. At a local poetry performance one night, they meet a well-known photographer, and as the girls are then gradually drawn into her world, Frances is reluctantly impressed by the older woman’s sophisticated home and handsome husband, Nick. But however amusing Frances and Nick’s flirtation seems at first, it begins to give way to a strange, and then painful, intimacy.

• “I always tell them Secret History by Donna Tartt, A Little Life by Hanya, Conversations with Friends by Sally Rooney. Those are my first three recommendations.”

  Why it counts as a recommendation: “there's this category of book that I can recommend to anybody... Conversations with Friends by Sally Rooney. Those are my first three recommendations.”
  Soman Chainani · The Tim Ferriss Show · Feb 202401:28:59

  Said during "A Masterclass in Riding the Waves of Life, “The School for Good and Evil” Creator Soman Chainani". The episode features Soman Chainani: Bestselling young-adult fantasy author of The School for Good and Evil series (six books, adapted into a 2023 Netflix film) and Beasts and Beauty; former longtime tutor and self-described specialist in the teenage mind. Fantasy author Soman Chainani talks creative flow, ketamine therapy, worst-case worrying, cross-collar dating, and reinventing your career like Madonna.