Finished reading: This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage by Ann Patchett 📚
I came for the essays on the craft of writing, but stayed for her views on RV life, dogs, opera, marriage, friendship, etc. An eclectic collection, but all Ann Patchett. What a writer. ★★★★☆
Finished reading: The Spectator Bird by Wallace Stegner 📚
A poignant novel on retirement, the fleetingness of life, and all those many paths not taken. One to savor. ★★★★★
Finished reading: The Elephant Whisperer by Anthony Lawrence 📚
I enjoyed these episodic adventures in the wilds of South Africa amongst elephants and the incredible struggle to preserve and cohabitate with these massive and intelligent animals. An Immense World by Ed Yong introduced me to the ways in which elephants see the world from a scientific basis. Here, the author tells the story from practical experience.
Anthony is a good storyteller. Much of the book feels more like a suspense novel than memoir. The writing isn’t great, but the stories are good enough to look past that.
What I didn’t expect was the sadness mixed in with the joy. There were hard losses sprinkled throughout the book that spoke to the necessary interchange between growth and decline, life and death. I was pretty emotional at the end with the loss of two brave souls, one then the other.
I was saddened to learn that Anthony passed away a few short years after publishing this book. May he rest in peace with the knowledge of the incredible legacy he left behind.
Currently reading: This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage by Ann Patchett 📚
Finished reading: Spook Street by Mick Herron 📚
The fourth Slow Horses book was fun. These books follow a formula, yet are so well written. Now I can watch the Apple TV version … ★★★★☆
Finished reading: The Age of Louis XIV by Will Durant
Finished reading: The Age of Louis XIV by Will Durant 📚
My straight-through reading of this mammoth 11-volume history continues. Volume VIII shares a detailed view of Europe in the 17th Century. So much war and bloodshed and atrocity, and yet brilliance too.
From Durant:
Let us agree that in every generation of man’s history, and almost everywhere, we find superstition, hypocrisy, corruption, cruelty, crime, and war: in the balance against them we place the long roster of poets, composers, artists, scientists, philosophers, and saints. That same species upon which poor Swift revenged the frustrations of his flesh wrote the plays of Shakespeare, the music of Bach and Handel, the odes of Keats, the Republic of Plato, the Principia of Newton, and the Ethics of Spinoza; it built the Parthenon and painted the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel; it conceived and cherished, even if it crucified, Christ. Man did all this; let him never despair.
From this week’s release notes from journaling app Day One:
By streamlining the app’s features, we can focus on delivering a better overall experience for all users, regardless of the device they use.
Day One has been under fire for removing features and mucking up their intuitive user interface. This problem pervades all indy software firms that expand beyond their core platform (i.e. 1Password). Developing for Android and Web will increase their potential customers, but hurt quality as their capabilities and UX as they stoop to the lowest common denominator.
New Index Card Organizer for Notes
I’m trying out a new note-taking method. I’ve switched from Field Notes to this custom index card holder. I prefer taking notes on index cards, but I’m always misplacing them or can’t find one when I need it. This “book” solves that. I moved the ring to the top right side to accommodate my left-handedness, so it’s comfortable for writing. I take notes on books or writing ideas, and when I’m ready to process or write, I pull out the cards and arrange and rearrange them on my desk. I’ve always loved the tactile and visual creativity of note cards for deeper thinking and structure. And now I don’t have to scan through my notebook scribbles to find all the various notes I’ve taken on a project or a book. So far, so good!
Does anyone else use index cards this way?
Finished reading: Somehow by Anne Lamott 📚
I loved Lamott’s Bird by Bird memoir on the writing craft. The writing here was good, but forced. Too many similes, too many quotes from others. Great life advice: be kind to yourself & others, all we need is love, etc., but too much hand-wringing. ★★★☆☆
“Book-wrapt — that beneficent feeling of being wholly imbooked, beshelved, inlibriated, circumvolumed, peribibliated …”
— The Private Library by Reid Byers 📚
Finished reading: Table for Two by Amor Towles 📚
I’ll read anything that Amor Towles writes. He’s one of my favorite living writers. This collection of six short stories and a novella hit the mark, though each left me wanting more, to know happens next. A master storyteller. ★★★★★
Community is a body of people crying for one another, working together for a common cause, enjoying and overlooking (or grimly tolerating) each other’s foibles; it’s a rough and beautiful quilt sewn of patches that don’t seem to go together at all, and then do.
Anne Lamott, Somehow
I was getting tension headaches from too many hours of looking down at a book at night, so I bought this Levo book stand. It holds the book securely and rotates into any position I need, even fully reclined. Expensive, but worth it. Headaches are gone!
For fun, I asked ChatGPT to create a cover image for an essay I wrote. The essay mentions old books and a Kindle: note the hybrid book/eReader lit by candlelight, and how the leather wing chair barricades the door. “Don’t bother me, I’m reading,” it seems to suggest. ❤️❤️❤️
Whenever you feel like criticizing anyone, just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had.
Enduring and grounding advice from The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald.
From Are Bookstores Just a Waste of Space? (New Yorker):
Two-thirds of the books released by the top-ten trade publishers sell fewer than a thousand copies, and less than four per cent sell more than twenty thousand.
I knew that bestselling authors dominate book sales, but these are humbling statistics for anyone contemplating the Herculean effort of writing and publishing a first book.
Bookshelves Completed Date vs. Date Read
A question for @manton about using the bookshelves feature in Micro.blog: I’ve noticed that the bookshelves finished date for about 20% of the books I’ve read this year is showing date from last year. For example, I posted that I finished Dead Lions by Mick Herron on July 13, 2024, but the bookshelves record shows March 21, 2023. I’m keeping track of the books I read this year to share one of those cool book cover posts at the end of the year. Is this a bug or am I missing a step in how I should record a book?
Thanks for all you do!
Finished reading: The Public Library by Robert Dawson 📚