Want to remember more from your reading? Use Day One as a private book journal with an Apple Shortcut that logs notes, ratings, quotes & covers—automatically. New post: why it works + how to set it up. Keep a Book Journal with Day One and Apple Shortcuts 💙📚
Revenge of the Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell
Sunday, April 20, 2025
★★★★☆ | Psychology | Audio | Borrow | StoryGraph | Goodreads Another great Malcolm Gladwell read. I think I’ve read all his books now and even took his Masterclass on writing. I listened to the audiobook, which was the perfect format for this one. Gladwell has an engaging reading voice and employed his podcast artistry by including recordings of his interviewees in the audiobook. I love how we weaves together diverse topics into a central theme.
Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway
Thursday, April 10, 2025
★★★★★ | Literature | Print + Digital | Own | StoryGraph | Goodreads Rereading a book you haven’t read in 40 years is an interesting experience. I remembered only the bleakness but little of the story itself. I enjoyed most of the book, though all the decades of Hemingway parodies and copycats stole some of its luster. Still, it is a timeless classic that reinvented the novel. Makes me want to go back and read all those books I read when I was young.
Currently reading: The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany by William L. Shirer 💙📚
Seems timely.
Crossing to Safety by Wallace Stegner
Friday, March 28, 2025
★★★★★ | Literary Fiction | Print + Digital | Own | StoryGraph | Goodreads | You can plan all you want to. You can lie in your morning bed and fill whole notebooks with schemes and intentions. But within a single afternoon, within hours or minutes, everything you plan and everything you have fought to make yourself can be undone as a slug is undone when salt is poured on him.
Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking by Susan Cain
Thursday, March 27, 2025
★★★★☆ | Psychology | Print + Digital | Own | StoryGraph | Goodreads
Fascinating deep dive into the world of introversion and extroversion. Some meaningful parts of our temperament are genetic and passed down from our parents. If you’re a fussy, highly sensitive baby at four months, there’s a good chance you’ll grow up to be introverted. There seems to be a biological connection between high physical sensitivity and introversion.
Highly sensitive people also process information about their environments—both physical and emotional—unusually deeply. They tend to notice subtleties that others miss—another person’s shift in mood, say, or a lightbulb burning a touch too brightly.
According to Cain, bloggers are almost always introverts. We’ll share personal details with an online multitude they would never disclose at a cocktail party. This is me.
The U.S. is one of the most extroverted countries in the world, while countries in Asia rank among the most introverted. The difference relates in part to genetics but mostly to cultural norms.
Social anxiety disorder in Japan, known as taijin kyofusho, takes the form not of excessive worry about embarrassing oneself, as it does in the United States, but of embarrassing others.
Best takeaway: An introverted/extroverted couple likely has a conflict in their degree of shared sociability. Cain recommends a “Free Trait Agreement” where each partner agrees to a balance of activities in their free time, i.e., a wife who wants to go out every Saturday night and a husband who wants to relax by the firework out a schedule: half the time they’ll go out, and half the time they’ll stay home. Helpful for this INTJ.
Currently reading: Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking by Susan Cain 📚💙
This has been an eye-opening book for the ways that extroverts and introverts differ. Bloggers, who Cain suggests are almost all introverts, will share personal details with an online multitude they would never disclose at a cocktail party. This hits close to home!
Laozi’s Dao De Jing by Lao Tzu
Thursday, March 20, 2025
★★★★★ | Philosophy | Digital | Own | StoryGraph | Goodreads This short book oozes with wisdom with the help of Ken Liu’s wonderful translation and notes. Read this one slowly and set aside time for reflection. So much of the advice is contrary to conventional western views that it can seem non-sensical. But try, you must. ★★★★★ Can you open yourself to your senses—quieting the mind like water?
Om Malik recently launched a separate “daily” blog, which looks like a subdomain off his Wordpress site. For folks who keep a Wordpress blog, have you considered this as an alternative to separate Wordpress/Micro.blog sites for short and long posts? Puzzling through a longer term solution to POSSE.
Currently reading: Laozi’s Dao De Jing by Laozi 💙📚
To solve the hard you must begin with the easy; To do something big you must start very small. All difficulties must be resolved through simple steps. All grand deeds must be performed through tiny details.
Creative Nonfiction: The Final Issue by Lee Gutkind
Saturday, March 15, 2025
★★★★☆ | Essays | Print | Own | StoryGraph | Goodreads An interesting selection of essays from the print run of the Creative Nonfiction literary magazine. There were some essays that appeared to stretch the boundaries of truth, but that’s the creative part I guess. Highlights If things could be undone, if time could be wound back, like a film, if the past could be kept alive to compensate for the deficiencies of the present: these are the wishes that form character, that grow out of events that form character.
One of my minor complaints about the Matter read-it-later app was addressed in a big way today. “Co-Reader” provides AI assistance at the paragraph level. Tap any paragraph in an article and to see AI-generated questions and answers. All within the app. Immersive reading at its best.
The Age of Napoleon by Will Durant
Monday, March 10, 2025
★★★★☆ | History | Digital | Own | StoryGraph | Goodreads The eleventh and final volume of the Story of Civilization, covering the years from the beginning of the French Revolution through Waterloo. Napoleon’s rise, dictatorship, stunning victories and ultimate defeat were thrilling to read.
The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
Wednesday, March 5, 2025
★★★★★ | Literature | Audio | Borrow | StoryGraph | Goodreads Donald Sutherland did a wonderful job narrating this audiobook. It was nice to reacquaint myself with Hemingway’s short and simple sentences, yet so full of energy. Made me yearn for the ocean.
Babel by R.F. Kuang
Wednesday, March 5, 2025
★★☆☆☆ | Fantasy | Digital | Borrow | StoryGraph | Goodreads I tried to like this book. It has all the elements of a book I would love: etymology, 19th century England, a diverse set of characters, magic, and an academic setting (Oxford, no less!). But I found it slow and repetitive, filled with one-dimensional, unlikable characters, and lecture after lecture on how the rich and powerful mistreat the poor, especially those who aren’t white and British, except for those that are poor and British.
Question for @manton: I notice that sometimes when I make small changes to my site, like changing the category of a post, my website won’t reflect the change. I’ve switched devices, browsers, etc. No difference. The only thing that works is rebuilding the site. Is this normal or a sign of a problem?
Wisdom from Kevin Kelly:
Productivity is often a distraction. Don’t aim for better ways to get through your tasks as quickly as possible, rather aim for better tasks that you never want to stop doing.
Apple is launching a new product this week — probably an iPhone SE. But what if they unveil an e-reader and a subscription reading service? Books are in the cross-hairs of the intersection between arts and technology. Amazon and e-readers are ripe for Apple-style disruption. A man can dream!
I love my Kindle Oasis, but Amazon is sure making it hard to stay loyal. Maybe Kobo will save the day and release an updated black and white e-reader to replace its discontinued Libra 2. This should be the golden age for e-reader innovation. Kobo? Apple? Sony? Anyone?
Wednesday, February 12, 2025 →
Ah, Patrick O’Brian. He was truly one of a kind. If you haven’t discovered Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin, there’s not a moment to lose. 💙📚
