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These notebook excerpts from Robert Fulghum are so wise. Take a minute to absorb them all. Two of my favorites: You may never get all that you want – but you are free to want what you get. Opportunity knocks, but it doesn’t nag.

Finished reading: The Hustler by Walter Tevis 📚 A fun read for anyone with a passing interest in pool or gambling or gritty city life. Or if you’ve seen the movie with Paul Newman and Jackie Gleason. ★★★★☆

Finished reading: The Best American Essays 1986 by Elizabeth Hardwick (editor) 📚 The inaugural volume of the Best American Essays showcases the essayistic talent of some literary icons in their heyday: Joyce Carol Oates, Stephen Jay Gould, Julian Barnes, and Cynthia Ozick. ★★★☆☆ Full Review.

Finished reading: John Adams by David McCullough 📚 A riveting history of the people and events of the American Revolution from the perspective of arguably our most important forefather. ★★★★☆ Full Review.

💙📚 How is it I’ve lived in Phoenix for four years and am just now learning about the annual VNSA used book sale? It’s far and away the largest used book sale I’ve ever attended. 600,000 books for sale at ridiculously low prices, and the proceeds go to well-deserved charities. I …

Finished reading: The Best American Essays 2025 by Jia Tolentino (editor) 📚 Continuing my essay kick with the latest “Best American” collection. A few missed the mark for me, but most were pretty good, and a few were extraordinary. ★★★☆☆ Full Review.

Finished reading: The Running Man by Richard Bachman 📚 Published in 1982, Stephen King (as Richard Bachman) envisioned a 2025 America that feels eerily familiar. I won’t spoil the ending, but it’s a scary example of King’s uncanny ability to predict future events. ★★★★☆ Full Review.

Finished reading: Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland by Patrick Radden Keefe 📚 A meticulously researched history of the Troubles in Northern Ireland. Ultimately, the book is a tale of tragedy and woe for both sides of a pointless war. ★★★★☆ Full Review.

Finished reading: Foster by Claire Keegan 📚 Another masterpiece from Claire Keegan, the master of the emotionally-charged short novel. The language is economical, yet lyrical. And moving. I did not want this one to end. ★★★★★ Full Review.

Finished reading: Vera, Or Faith by Gary Shteyngart 📚 Set in a near-future NYC, we follow Vera, an exceptionally gifted yet anxious child, through a dystopian landscape of far-right extremism, absentee parenting, cultural diversity, and hilarious yet ominous technology. ★★★★☆ Full Review.

Finished reading: A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens 📚 A warning that the corruption of power, the awful propensity for human barbarity, and the refusal to address legitimate grievances can lead to catastrophic consequences. This old classic offers modern day lessons. ★★★★☆ Full Review.

Finished reading: Stillness Is the Key by Ryan Holiday 📚 Important lessons here on leading a better life, but not a lot of depth. ★★★☆☆ Full Review.

Finished reading: Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell 📚 How is anyone ever to shut the eyes of their dead child? How is it possible to find two pennies and rest them there, in the eye sockets, to hold down the lids? How can anyone do this? It is not right. It cannot be. ★★★★★ Full Review.

Finished reading: The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill: Alone, 1932-1940 by William Manchester 📚 This second volume of William Manchester’s epic Winston Churchill biography covers the years preceding the Second World War. ★★★★☆ Full Review.

My Year of Reading in 2025: robertbreen.com 📚

Finished reading: The Adventures of Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi 📚 Timeless literature masquerading as a children’s story. ★★★★★ Full Review.

Finished reading: My Friends by Fredrik Backman 📚 I loved A Man Called Ove, but this one missed the mark for me. ★★☆☆☆ Full Review.

Finished reading: Chess Story by Stefan Zweig 📚 A good chess story, but an even better story of the psychological dangers of extreme isolation and single-minded focus. ★★★★☆ Full Review.

Finished reading: Rosemary’s Baby by Ira Levin 📚 What a fun, creepy book! I loved the slow build of suspense and the unexpected twists. And the ending … Whew. ★★★★☆

Finished reading: H Is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald 📚 A professor with a background in amateur falconry retreats from public life after the death of her father to train a goshawk. ★★★☆☆ Full Review.

Finished reading: Things in Nature Merely Grow by Yiyun Li 📚 A heart-breaking memoir about losing two sons to suicide. There’s often little you can say to parent who’s lost a child. But sometimes the words from a fellow sufferer can get through. This book was one of those. ★★★★★ Full …

Finished reading: The Bullet Journal Method: Track the Past, Order the Present, Design the Future by Ryder Carroll 📚 Yes, it’s about bullet journaling, but also how daily reflection can help you make time for those important but not necessarily urgent things in your life. ★★★☆☆ Full Review.

Finished reading: A Century of Fiction in The New Yorker by New Yorker Magazine Inc 📚 I’m wanting to read more short stories and what better source than this mammoth treasure of short fiction from the New Yorker Magazine’s first hundred years? Some terrific stories here. ★★★★☆ Full …

Finished reading: New York Sketches by E.B. White 📚 A collection of witty commentaries, short stories, poems, and essays, all originally published in The New Yorker, and each an ode to what I’m sure White would agree is the greatest city on earth. ★★★★★ Full Review.

Finished reading: The School of Life by Alain De Botton 📚 A crash course in emotional maturity through art, literature and philosophy. ★★★☆☆ Full Review.

Finished reading: Bag of Bones by Stephen King 📚 A reread of a classic ghost story set on a remote lake in western Maine. Like most King novels, the true horrors are all too human. ★★★★☆ Full review.

Finished reading: Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner 📚 I’ve read four Stegner novels, saving this one, his Pulitzer, for the last. I thought Crossing to Safety was his best, and Big Rock Candy Mountain absolutely gutted me. Still, this one will stick with me for a long time. ★★★★☆ Full Review.

Finished reading: On Boxing by Joyce Carol Oates 📚 Joyce Carol Oates might be the least likely person ever to write a book about boxing. And yet she did. Like me, she developed a lifelong appreciation for the sport, ultimately growing to love it, by watching fights with her father as a child. But …

Finished reading: Self-Reliance and Other Essays by Ralph Waldo Emerson 📚 What a treasure. I’ve read most of these essays before, but never so deeply or with such illumination. Emerson’s wisdom is simple to understand, yet difficult to practice in a world of popular opinion and distracted …

If you want to write, practice writing. Practice it for hours a day, not to come up with a story you can publish, but because you long to learn how to write well, because there is something that you alone can say. — Ann Patchett, This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage

Finished reading: We Live Here Now by Sarah Pinborough 💙📚 The premise and setting had terrific potential, but one-dimensional characters, plot holes, and poor editing hobbled the story. It felt like a book written under the pressure of an unrealistic deadline. ★★★☆☆

We talk of choosing our friends, but friends are self-elected. Reverence is a great part of it. Treat your friend as a spectacle. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

This is the way.

There is nothing so often condemned, and so deeply loved, as the past. — Will Durant

Finished reading: The Best American Essays 2024 💙📚 I’m on an essay kick, and the latest “Best American” series provided a wide range of thought-provoking takes and introduced me to some new voices. I share my five favorite essays in the full review. ★★★☆☆ Full review.

Rats are invading strollers in and around Central Park: They’re bold. You can stomp your foot all you want, but they’re New York City rats. They are not afraid. Those many years on an island in Washington state taught me all about rats. But here in NYC? They really are something else.

What absurd victims of contrary desires we are! If a man is settled in one place he yearns to wander; when he wanders he yearns to have a home. And yet how bestial is content — all the great things in life are done by discontented people. Christopher Morley

The 15” M4 MacBook Air: I upgraded to the M4 MacBook Air last month during one of Amazon’s big sales. I chose the larger 15” model with 16 GB of RAM and a 512 GB SSD drive. This replaced a five-year-old 13” M1 MacBook Air with the same size drive but a miserly 8 GB of RAM. This MacBook Air is a fantastic laptop, and …

Nancy Pearl’s Revised ‘Rule of 50’: When you are 51 years of age or older, subtract your age from 100, and the resulting number is the pages you should read before you can guiltlessly give up on a book … When you turn 100, you are authorized (by the Rule of 50) to judge a …

I’m late to the discovery of @annahavron’s wonderful Analog Office blog. Her Lumpers vs Splitters post on whether to keep one notebook for everything or many specialized notebooks is pure gold. Anna could write about staplers, and I would read it. Full disclosure: I am and forever will …

The Kobo-Instapaper integration has officially launched, replacing the now defunct Pocket app for reading articles on the ereader. I’m curious to know if highlights made on Kobo sync back to Instapaper (and thus to Readwise). If so, this could be the tipping point for this long-time Kindle …

To see a thousand objects for the first and for the last time, what can be deeper and more melancholy? To travel is to be born and to die at every instant. — Victor Hugo from Les Misérables

Finished reading: On the Calculation of Volume (Book I) by Solvej Balle 💙📚 It’s Groundhog’s Day but with an existential slant on the meaning of self, time, mortality, sustainability, and the inevitable progression of love and marriage. ★★★★☆ Full Review.

You would think after three months, I would be tired of all the crowds, noise, and concrete. But I couldn’t shake the feeling during a walk through the East Village last night that I was on an elaborate movie set or maybe the holodeck on a starship. NYC might really be the center of the …

If you only wished to be happy, this could be easily accomplished; but we wish to be happier than other people, and this is always difficult, for we believe others to be happier than they are. — Montesquieu

I look forward to these Sunday morning walks in Manhattan. The city empties out over summer weekends. Fewer people out walking, even fewer cars. An hour’s walk along these streets and avenues is therapeutic for the body and soul.

Finished reading: On Tyranny by Timothy Snyder 💙📚 A concise summary of the tactics used by totalitarian governments to suppress freedom and democracy. Clear examples from twentieth-century despots support each of the twenty lessons. ★★★★☆ Full review.

Finished reading: The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany by William L. Shirer 💙📚 I’m glad I read this hefty tome. I can put current events and government decisions into the context of what happened in Nazi Germany. I know better what to look for. ★★★★☆ Full review.

Finished reading: Maximum Bob by Elmore Leonard 💙📚 A recent New Yorker article by Anthony Lane prompted me to read this one, my first Elmore Leonard book. I enjoyed the pacing and dialogue and colorful cast of characters, all set in languid south Florida. ★★★★☆

America has been a terrific country for investors. All they have needed to do is sit quietly, listening to no one. — Warren Buffett, 2023 Berkshire Hathaway Shareholder Letter

Take gratefully any pleasures the world provides, but don’t curse God when they fail. Nobody in the universe ever promised you anything. Most things break, including hearts. The lessons of a life amount not to wisdom but to scar tissue and callus. Wallace Stegner, The Spectator Bird

Good news for Kobo readers or those looking to escape the Amazon ecosystem: Instapaper Read-It-Later comes to Kobo e-Readers later this summer.

David Barber returns to Evernote after a dalliance with Bear: When I’m using Evernote, it becomes my central repository for receipts, travel plans, info that came to me via email, desk scraps, web-clips, and quick thoughts. I don’t even have to think about it. I used Evernote from 2008 to 2016, …

@amylouise on Madame Bovary: I hope that when you pay attention to the world, see every flower on every oat-stalk and every bumbling country doctor, you find that you can look them into loveliness. I hope that even being bound to a dull community of foolish people could bring unexpected graces. I …

Finished reading: The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald 💙📚 See my review for notes and favorite highlights. Still and always ★★★★★.

Irreverent take on why the internet hates ‘performative reading’: We’re told by college professors that students can’t read entire books any more, that gen Z parents don’t like reading to their kids, that smartphones ruined our ability to focus on anything longer than 30 seconds, that AI slop will …

The Rose Reading Room at the New York Public Library. It’s just a few subway stops from our apartment, so I’m able to spend time here often. What an inspiring place for a reader or writer!

City Dogs: Living in Manhattan with dogs near Central Park has proved to be a surprisingly pleasant experience, allowing both the pets and their owner to thrive despite initial concerns.

A Return to Micro.blog: After an eight-week break, a return to Micro.blog reaffirmed its value and the supportive community it fosters, contrasting sharply with the overwhelming nature of other social media platforms.

Finished reading: Brightness Falls by Jay McInerney 💙📚 McInerney’s great American novel: flawed characters grappling with timeless themes, set in what is arguably the greatest city on earth. I loved it. ★★★★★ See my full review for notes and favorite highlights.

Finished: Nightmares and Dreamscapes by Stephen King 💙📚 ★★★★☆ Not King’s best short story collection. I think that award goes to You Like It Darker from last year. But any collection of stories by this generation’s master storyteller is still pretty great. Full review.

Four Years of Sobriety: I passed the four-year mark of quitting alcohol today. Where I once struggled with days or weeks, now the years are piling up. As I shared on my third anniversary, the key for me was ruling out any thoughts of future moderation. It took many failed attempts before I accepted this simple truth.

Finished: London Rules by Mick Kerron 💙📚 ★★★★☆ Another brilliant volume in the wonderful Slow Horses saga. Jackson Lamb is as disgusting and brilliant as ever, with his Slow Horses saving the day yet again from ineptitude of the intelligence service bosses. These are comfort books to savor. Full …

The Greatest: We’re in the middle of a cross-country car trip from Phoenix to New York City. We’re traveling with two dogs, which has put a serious crimp in our sightseeing options. We are living on truck stop coffee, fast food, and DoorDash in dog-friendly hotel rooms. As we near Louisville, I know we have to …

The Cost of Adventure: As we get set to start a new adventure in New York City, we’ve closed the chapter of our short RV life. We bought this Winnebago EKKO new and owned it for just under two years. We explored some amazing places in the Southwest and beyond in its diminutive 23 feet. We visited many National Parks, …

Bear is a fantastic notes app if you're on Mac and iOS. I use it for my reading notes, commonplace book and linked backup of my Day One journal. I wrotea post about Bear last year, but this video does a great job of showcasing its features if you're curious. I Ditched Apple Notes for Bear — …

Savor the Moments: One of the things I love about keeping a journal is how a past entry can transport me so completely back in time to that moment. Here’s a passage from my journal on this day eight years ago: I try to soak this in - the goldfinches perched on the feeders, fluttering and pestering one another for the …

Systems, Not Goals: So much of my work in strategy revolved around the achievement of goals: quarterly goals, annual goals, and five-year goals. All of these were tied to a specific metric, which often produced an unintended counter-result. Focus on the inputs that will make you smarter and stronger. Do the workouts, …

After poking and prodding the capabilities of Micro.blog for the past 18 months, I have decided to consolidate my online writing on Wordpress where I’ve kept a blog for more than a decade.

This wasn’t an easy decision. Micro.blog is an innovative, capable, affordable service run by a smart, …

Finished: A Short Stay in Hell by Steven Peck 💙📚 ★★★★☆ A genre-bending novella with a mix of fantasy, horror and magical realism that pushes the ‘library as heaven’ story by Borges to its logical conclusion. Full review.

Finished: Gerald’s Game by Stephen King 💙📚 ★★★☆☆ Stephen King must have felt he needed a challenge when he started this one. How about a horror novel with just one character handcuffed to a bed with the only way to move the story along is through inner dialogue. Oh, and let that character be a …

Finished: Revenge of the Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell 💙📚 ★★★★☆ 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 …

Finished: Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway 💙📚 ★★★★★ 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 …

Currently reading: The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany by William L. Shirer 💙📚 Seems timely.

Finished: Crossing to Safety by Wallace Stegner 💙📚 ★★★★★ What a beautiful and poignant book. Hopeful and joyous at the possibilities of life, but bookended by the realities of disappointment and loss. You can plan all you want to. You can lie in your morning bed and fill whole notebooks with …

Finished: Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking by Susan Cain 💙📚 ★★★★☆ 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 …

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 …

Finished: Laozi’s Dao De Jing by Lao Tzu 💙📚 ★★★★★ 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 …

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 …

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.

Finished: Creative Nonfiction: The Final Issue by Lee Gutkind 💙📚 ★★★★☆ 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. Full Review.

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.

Finished: The Age of Napoleon by Will Durant 💙📚 ★★★★☆ 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. From the …

Finished: The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway 💙📚 ★★★★★ 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.

Finished: Babel by R.F. Kuang 💙📚 ★★☆☆☆ 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, …

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 …

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?

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. 💙📚

💬 You learn to dance with the limp. Sometimes I’ve thought of grief as missing an amputated limb, but walking with a limp is better. Thank you @chrisheck for sharing this.

My blog had its tenth birthday last July, and I forgot to celebrate: Why Blogs Matter

Think different. 💬

Finished reading: Storyworthy by Matthew Dicks 💙📚 An entertaining book filled with practical advice on how to improve your storytelling, whether in front of a live audience, on a date, or in a written essay. Dicks shares examples of his own stories, then breaks down why they work. ★★★★☆ <img …

Incredible update to the Readwise app today. You can now “chat” with your highlights, which uses AI to find connections you probably overlooked or forgot from your reading. Since it only draws from the highlights you saved, the results are astonishingly personal. This is my kind of AI! …

Finished reading: Fallen Leaves by Will Durant 💙📚 In 208 eloquent pages, Durant shares his views on death, religion, education, war, politics, spirituality, and, through it all, the meaning of life. Truly a gift to humanity from a scholar who devoted his long life to the study of history. ★★★★★ Full …

Connor would have turned 23 today. The very prime of life. There’s not a day that goes by that I don’t miss him, but these birthdays are tough. Hug your kids. #forever20

Finished reading: Just After Sunset by Stephen King 📚

Read: 2025-01-27 | ★★★★☆ Horror

On a quest to read the few Stephen King books I missed along the way. I forgot how great of a short story writer King is. Probably some of his novels should have been short stories! Gingerbread Girl and N were my …

Finished reading: The Godfather by Mario Puzo 📚 Read: 2025-01-13 | ★★★★☆ | Mystery-Suspense I read the book during a recent visit to New York City and watched the movie on the plane ride home, which made for an immersive experience. The movie stayed very true to the book, though some big sections …

Finished reading: The Notebook: A History of Thinking on Paper by Roland Allen 📚 What a delightful book. The first chapter reeled me in with the story of how the Moleskin notebook exploded in popularity in the 1990s. The author clearly has been bitten by the same notebook fetish bug. He cites brand …

New post with my favorite books from 2024 along with updates to my reading system. My year in books for 2024.

Finished reading: Rousseau and Revolution by Will Durant 📚 The tenth volume of the Story of Civilization by Will and Ariel Durant. This one provides an immensely readable history of Europe leading up to the French Revolution. This series has been such an education. ★★★★★ Full Review.

Finished reading: The Work of Art by Adam Moss 📚 Full Review.

Finished reading: The Comfort of Crows by Margaret Renkl 📚 Full Review.

Finished reading: The Wood at Midwinter by Susanna Clarke 📚

Finished reading: Thinking on Paper by V.A. Howard, J.H. Barton 📚

Finished reading: James by Percival Everett 📚

Finished reading: A Rage in Harlem (Special Edition) by Chester Himes 📚 What a crazy rollercoaster ride through Harlem in the 1950s. I’m just now catching my breath! ★★★★☆

Finished reading: Needful Things by Stephen King 📚 This one missed the mark for me. Too many characters — almost the entire town of Castle Rock. With so many, I had a hard time connecting with any of them. Any other author would get a two stars, but King gets a pass. ★★★☆☆

Finished reading: A System for Writing by Bob Noto 📚 A guide to the Zettelkasten method of note-taking. Writing and linking atomic notes feels so non-intuitive and…nutty? The examples late in the book of the poor quality of published books compiled from atomic notes did not help the cause. ★★★☆☆

Wrist pain prompted me to set aside my Magic keyboard and Mighty Mouse for more ergonomic options. Enter the KeyChron K15 Max Alice mechanical keyboard and a Logitech vertical mouse. I love the clicky keyboard and more comfortable layout, but sheesh, it’s hard for this old dog to learn a new …

Finished reading: The Age of Voltaire by Will Durant 📚 Continuing my quest to read all eleven volumes of Will Durant’s Opus, The Story of Civilization. Volume IX centers on science and philosophy overtaking religion through thinkers like Voltaire and Diderot. The church did its best to stop it, but …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

Book-wrapt — that beneficent feeling of being wholly imbooked, beshelved, inlibriated, circumvolumed, peribibliated … — The Private Library by Reid Byers 📚

What’s the best way to ask for @help on Micro.blog? I tagged @Manton in this post, but didn’t get a response. I know he’s busy, so I posted my question as a reply to the closest topic on the help forum. My reply triggered a temporary account suspension – four days ago. I …

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 …

Currently reading: Somehow by Anne Lamott 📚

Finished reading: The Public Library by Robert Dawson 📚

Currently reading: The Public Library by Robert Dawson 📚

Currently reading: Table for Two by Amor Towles 📚

Finished reading: The Queen’s Gambit by Walter Tevis 📚 Who knew a book about Chess could be so intense! This was a great, great book. ★★★★★ Review.

Currently reading: The Queen’s Gambit by Walter Tevis 📚

Finished reading: City of Glass by Paul Auster 📚 A strange meta-detective novel with an unreliable narrator who slowly dissolves into insanity. I followed maybe half of the literary and Biblical allusions. Not at all what I expected, but oddly satisfying.

Currently reading: The Age of Louis XIV by Will Durant 📚

Finished reading: The Age of Reason Begins by Will Durant 📚 My quest to read all eleven volumes of Durant’s Story of Civilization continues. Volume VII has returned to the shelf with hundreds of scribbles and notes and many, many exclamation marks. If you think the world is crazy now, you ought to …

Finished reading: Here is New York by E. B. White

Finished reading: Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver 📚

Finished reading: Move on Down to Mexico by 📚

Finished reading: Real Tigers by Mick Herron 📚

Currently reading: Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver 📚

Currently reading: Real Tigers by Mick Herron 📚

Finished reading: You Like It Darker by Stephen King 📚 This is a wonderful collection of short stories and novellas by our generation’s master storyteller. I enjoyed every piece, but particularly liked Rattlesnakes, a sequel of sorts to Cujo. It’s meditation on the persistent grief of …

Finished reading: Dead Lions by Mick Herron 📚 My second Slow Horses book and just as good as the first. There were a few more departures in this book frm the TV version, which kept me guessing. Herron is a talented writer.

I’ve seen so many beautiful postcards and photos of Crater Lake over my life. None of them, including this one I took today from the crater’s edge, capture the true beauty of this place. Yowza.

We’re one week into a six-week circuit from Arizona through Nevada and Oregon to Washington State, then down the coast through Oregon and California. We’re staying primarily in National Parks in our little self-contained RV, but we’re not rushing: three days at each stop. We’re at 6,000 feet …

Currently listening: The Fellowship of the Ring: Being the First Part of The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien 📚 How could it be that my wife of 27 years, a bookworm like me, has never read The Lord of the Rings? We’re heading out on an extended roadtrip in our little RV, and we were struggling to …

Currently reading: Dead Lions by Mick Herron 📚

Finished reading: Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt 📚 I enjoyed the setting of the fictional small town on Puget Sound. I liked the premise of the story. I loved the octopus. But, in the end, the author was too young/naive to be inside the head of a grief-stricken 70-year-old woman. It …

Finished reading: Consolations by David Whyte 📚 Ah, what a treasure. Two to three page poetic essays on 52 commonplace words or themes like Curiousity, Heartbreak, and Forgivness. I’ve been ruminating on this definition of Beauty for the past month: Beauty is the harvest of presence. Whyte often …

Currently reading: Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt 📚

David Whyte: A life’s work is not a series of stepping-stones, onto which we calmly place our feet, but more like an ocean crossing where there is no path, only a heading, a direction, in conversation with the elements. Looking back, we see the wake we have left as only a brief glimmering …

Finished reading: The Regulators by Richard Bachman/Stephen King 📚★★★☆☆ Continuing my quest to read every Stephen King novel … The Regulators was published on the same day as Desperation. Many of the same characters bedeviled by the same evil spirit Tak, but set in a parallel universe. The …

There are 10,000 books in my library, and it will keep growing until I die. This has exasperated my daughters, amused my friends and baffled my accountant. If I had not picked up this habit in the library long ago, I would have more money in the bank today; I would not be richer. — Pete Hamill

Finished reading: Frankenstein by Mary Shelley 📚 This book was nothing like I expected. Frankenstein (the scientist) is arrogant, self-absorbed, and makes incredibly bad decisions. The story itself is unbelievably far-fetched. There were times I wanted to throw my Kindle on the floor at the …

Currently reading: Frankenstein by Mary Shelley 📚 Slow to post this, but I’m doing a group read of this classic on BlueSky (#hotfranksummer).

Currently reading: The Regulators by Richard Bachman 📚

Finished reading: David Copperfield by Charles Dickens 📚 I had an idea that this was a story about the trials of an orphan in Dickensian London. It was about that, but so much more. This novel has warmth and sadness and joy and despair. Characters that will stick with me for a long, long time. I’m …

Currently reading: The Age of Reason Begins by Will Durant 📚 One of the great diseases of this age is the multitude of books that doth so overcharge the world that it is not able to digest the abundance of idle matter that is every day hatched and brought into the world. Barnaby Rich, known …

Reading a Book in 15 Minutes: Interesting and humorous article by Anthony Lane in the New Yorker about the book summary app Blinkist: Can You Read a Book in a Quarter of an Hour?. We’re reading fewer books as a society. Our ever-fascinating smart phones aren’t helping the cause: The most potent enemy of reading, it goes without …

Finished reading: 84, Charing Cross Road by Helene Hanff 📚 I know I’ve read this a long time ago, but it was nice to be reacquainted with Helene, the zany book-loving American, and Mr. Frank Doel, the reserved British bookseller. The abrupt ending catches you off guard, but it’s also …

The Booksellers documentary is so, so good. All the bookshelves, rare books, home libraries … and so many kindred spirits talking about their love of books. The whole documentary is beautiful and a little melancholy. Booksellers and librarians are my favorite people. Watch it on Amazon Prime.

Finished reading: Stories of Books and Libraries by Jane Holloway (ed.) 📚 A book of short stories, excerpts and essays about the love of reading and libraries? Of course I’m going to love it. A good father’s day gift for a dad who loves books. ★★★★★

David Copperfield and the Magic of Amazon WhisperSync: I’m currently reading the classic David Copperfield by Charles Dickens 📚 for the first time. I’m reading it on my Kindle with an add-on $3 splurge of the Audible audiobook. I experimented with WhisperSync many years ago when it was first released and found it buggy. For such a low fee, I thought I …

Currently reading: David Copperfield by Charles Dickens 📚

Finished reading: The Death of Grass by John Christopher 📚 A short 1950s SciFi novel about a virus that kills grasses. Starvation and violence breaks out. Governments fall. Civilization crumbles. Except for the very dated portrayal of women, the story felt current. ★★★★☆

Finished reading: The Reformation by Will Durant 📚

Currently reading: The Death of Grass by John Christopher 📚

📷 April 2024 Micro.Blog photo challenge, Day 30: Hometown Vashon Island will always be my hometown.

Finished reading: To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf 📚 An absolute masterpiece. Totally gutted by the end. I can’t believe it took me this long to read it. ★★★★★

Finished reading: Sibley’s Birding Basics by David Allen Sibley 📚 Ah, the inevitable slide into birdwatching. Great introductory guide to help me get started. ★★★★☆

📷 April 2024 Micro.Blog photo challenge, Day 29: Drift

📷 April 2024 Micro.Blog photo challenge, Day 28: Community Of all the communities I’ve been a part of - industry leader, islander, 55+ retirement living - liveaboard boat life was the most incredible. We all had a little extra salt water in our veins that compelled us to a life afloat. Good …

📷 April 2024 Micro.Blog photo challenge, Day 27: Surprise My all-time favorite Surprise. In fact, all twenty volumes of this Aubrey/Maturin series by Patrick O’Brian are wonderful. I am perpetually rereading them. I think I’m on my fourth circumnavigation after my first voyage some 20 …

📷 April 2024 Micro.Blog photo challenge, Day 26: Critters

📷 April 2024 Micro.Blog photo challenge, Day 25: Spine The spine of this tattered old book tells a story of how loved it is. I must have read these stories a dozen times over the past thirty years. Scribbles and underlines and exclamation marks scattered throughout. A life in marginalia.

📷 April 2024 Micro.Blog photo challenge, Day 24: Light Is there anything more mesmerizing than the shifting light and shapes of a campfire under a blanket of stars?

📷 April 2024 Micro.Blog photo challenge, Day 23: Dreamy

Currently reading: To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf 📚

Finished reading: The Storied Life of A. J. Fikry by Gabrielle Zevin 📚 Characters who love books and reading, lots of fun literary references, a bookstore set on an island … this one could have been written just for me. ★★★★☆

📷 April 2024 Micro.Blog photo challenge, Day 22: Blue Crossing the Strait of Juan de Fuca on a clear, calm day.

📷 April 2024 Micro.Blog photo challenge, Day 21: Mountain Mount Rainier while under sail in Commencement Bay (2006).

📷 April 2024 Micro.Blog photo challenge, Day 20: Ice The winter before we moved full time to Arizona.

Currently reading: The Storied Life of A. J. Fikry by Gabrielle Zevin 📚

Finished reading: Desperation by Stephen King 📚 Maybe not one of Mr. King’s best efforts, but it was entertaining, and the ending came together better than I expected. ★★★☆☆

📷 April 2024 Micro.Blog photo challenge, Day 19: Birthday A puppy for my son’s 13th birthday back in 2015. Happy memories.

📷 April 2024 Micro.Blog photo challenge, Day 18: Mood Tonight’s camp site here in the Mojave National Preserve has put me in a good mood. It doesn’t get much better than this.

📷 April 2024 Micro.Blog photo challenge, Day 17: Transcendence La Ventana Arch, New Mexico

📷 April 2024 Micro.Blog photo challenge, Day 15: Small I’ve never felt quite so small or felt part of something quite so large as when standing on the lip of the Grand Canyon. It truly is one of Earth’s wonders.

📷 April 2024 Micro.Blog photo challenge, Day 14: Cactus

📷 April 2024 Micro.Blog photo challenge, Day 13: Page A random page from The House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski. Definitely the trippiest book I’ve ever read, yet poignant and incredibly memorable. In sailing, we say it’s the journey, not the destination that matters. Same with House of Leaves.

📷 April 2024 Micro.Blog photo challenge, Day 12: Magic

📷 April 2024 Micro.Blog photo challenge, Day 11: Sky

📷 April 2024 Micro.Blog photo challenge, Day 10: Train Hobo bunnies waiting on a train in Ladysmith, British Columbia.

🥓 Day 9: Crispy | prompt submitted by @rom As an antidote to yesterday’s prevention theme, here’s a flashback to breakfast aboard our boat with crispy bacon and donuts from the Lyme Kiln Cafe in Roche Harbor. Yum!

📷 April 2024 Micro.Blog photo challenge, Day 8: Prevention

📷 April 2024 Micro.Blog photo challenge, Day 7: Well-being

Currently reading: Desperation by Stephen King 📚 Tackling the remaining Stephen King books I haven’t read. I usually read fiction on my Kindle, but I have the hardback of this one. I forgot how heavy and unwieldy some of Stephen King books can be!

📷 April 2024 Micro.Blog photo challenge, Day 6: Windy Gale force winds aboard MV Indiscretion.

Finished reading: Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan 📚 I loved this short, spare novella. In 109 pages, Keegan puts you squarely in the mind and body of its protagonist, Furlong. You feel the pangs of long-ago childhood angst, the chill of an Irish cold spell, the ugliness of small town …

📷 April 2024 Micro.Blog photo challenge, Day 5: Serene Toba Inlet, British Columbia, aboard MV Indiscretion.

📷 April 2024 Micro.Blog photo challenge, Day 4: Foliage

Currently reading: Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan 📚

📷 April 2024 Micro.Blog photo challenge, Day 3: Card A Father’s Day card from my son Connor in 2020 before he left home for college. He died in a motorcycle accident two years later. I usually toss cards, but I kept this one, and I treasure it. Hug your kids tonight.

📷 April 2024 Micro.Blog photo challenge, Day 2: Flowers

📷 Day01 : toy (@pcora)

Currently reading: Slow Horses by Mick Herron 📚 Lamb’s laugh wasn’t a genuine surrender to amusement; more of a temporary derangement. Not a laugh you’d want to hear from anyone holding a stick. I enjoyed the TV series, but the book is even better.

Finished reading: The Peace of Wild Things by Wendell Berry 📚★★★★★ Better than any argument is to rise at dawn and pick dew-wet red berries in a cup.

Currently reading: Sibley’s Birding Basics by David Allen Sibley 📚

Finished reading: Dune by Frank Herbert 📚 ★★★★★

There is no better teacher than history in determining the future. There are answers worth billions of dollars in a $30 history book.📚 Charlie Munger

Camped along the Colorado River here at Davis Camp on the Arizona-Nevada border. Smaller rigs can nose right up to the edge of the river. This is my kind of camping.

Currently reading: Dune by Frank Herbert 📚 Rereading ahead of seeing the movie. I had forgotten how much I loved this book.

Finished reading: I Let You Go by Clare Mackintosh 📚 ★★★☆☆

After three good years with Craft, I’ve moved my reading notes and PKM to Bear. I really love Bear’s simplicity and hidden power on both Mac and iOS. No futzing, just my words. Blog post: Bear 2 for Writing and Thinking.

Currently reading: I Let You Go by Clare Mackintosh 📚

Finished reading: Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin 📚 This was a good book. I liked the characters and the storyline. The reasons Sam and Sadie found to be mad at the other were a little frustrating, but I think that’s ultimately the lesson they each needed to learn. The …

Mac-only Apps: 

I’ve been evaluating Bear 2 to replace Craft for my reading notes and quasi-Zettelkasten for the past few weeks. I’ve used Craft for over three years, but that tool has morphed into a team note-taking and document-sharing platform that doesn’t mesh well with my needs anymore.

My …

Finished reading: The Master & Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov 📚

Currently reading: The Reformation by Will Durant 📚

Finished reading: The Renaissance by Will Durant 📚

Steinbeck captures my basic attitude towards New Years Resolutions here in the third week of January: It is very strange that when you set a goal for yourself, it is hard not to hold toward it even if it is inconvenient and not even desirable.

It’s been a couple years since I finished In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust. I read all six volumes with an amazing Twitter book group over the course of a year. I struggled with the serpentine sentences and French society references at the time, but passages like these stuck with me. 📚

Currently reading: The Master & Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov 📚

Finished reading: Legends & Lattes by Travis Baldree 📚

Finished reading: Wednesday’s Child by Yiyun Li 📚 My 75th book of 2023, which is a new personal record for the most books I’ve read in a single year. Many of the stories in this collection touch on the hard to articulate grief of losing a child, which hit home for me. ★★★★☆

Currently reading: An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us by Ed Yong 📚

Finished reading: Holly by Stephen King 📚

I found this lovely bookmark in my Christmas stocking. Santa knows me so well! 📚

Finished reading: The Private Library by Reid Byers 📚 Book-wrapt — that beneficient feeling of being wholly imbooked, beshelved, inlibriated, circumvolumed, peribibliated … it implies the traditional library wrapped in shelves of books, and the condition of rapt attention to a particular …

Currently reading: Holly by Stephen King 📚

Finished reading: Writing Tools by Roy Peter Clark 📚 A slow read over the course of a few months, one chapter/writing tool per sitting. Lots of great tips and advice to improve your writing.

Finished reading: The Book on the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are by Alan W. Watts 📚 Another compelling argument for being present in our lives, and paying close attention to the marvels that surround us. How is it possible that a being with such sensitive jewels as the eyes, such enchanted …

Currently reading: Wednesday’s Child by Yiyun Li 📚

Finished reading: The Vagabond’s Way by Rolf Potts 📚

Finished reading: Christine and Blaze by Stephen King 📚 Continuing my quest to read the Stephen King books I missed along the way. With these two, I’ve now read thirteen King books this year. The 700-page Christine book flew by on my Kindle. Lots of supernatural fun mixed in with nostalgia for my …

The Age of Faith by Will Durant: Finished reading: The Age of Faith by Will Durant 📚 I finished this fourth installment of Will Durant’s Story of Civilization after three months of slow, careful reading. The Age of Faith begins with the fall of Rome and carries through the end of the Middle Ages. The writing is clear, …

Finished reading: Your Brain on Art by Susan Magsamen and Ivy Ross 📚 Your Brain on Art is the latest selection from the Next Big Idea Club. The authors did a nice job of gathering scientific evidence of how art making and appreciation physically changes your brain. I loved the part where a scientist …

Finished reading: The Art of Living: Peace and Freedom in the Here and Now by Thich Nhat Hanh 📚 Impermanence is something wonderful. If things were not impermanent, life would not be possible. A seed could never become a plant of corn; the child couldn’t grow into a young adult; there could never …

Currently reading: The Art of Living: Peace and Freedom in the Here and Now by Thich Nhat Hanh 📚

Finished reading: The Eyes of the Dragon by Stephen King 📚 Continuing my quest to go back and read the Stephen King books I’ve missed along the way. I listened to the audiobook of this one, narrated by actor Bronson Pinchot. I’ve listened to hundreds of audiobooks, but the narration of …

Finished reading: The Silentiary by Antonio Di Benedetto 📚 What a strange little book. The narrator is slowly driven insane by all the commercial sounds encroaching on his family home: an auto repair shop next door, a nightclub across the street, an idling bus outside his bedroom window, all told in …

Started reading: Your Brain on Art by Susan Magsamen 📚

Enjoying a pint of Athletic Brewing non-alcoholic beer tonight. I gave up alcohol a few years ago, but still enjoy great beer thanks to this wonderful brewer. I subscribe to their monthly club, which gives me a sample of their pilot beers - this month’s Oregon Strata Web Hop IPA is terrific. 🍻

Finished reading: Skeleton Crew by Stephen King 📚 Working through the few books of Stephen King I haven’t read. This is a collection of his early stories. A few are dated, and a few are exceptional. There is a bleakness that pervades many of these stories. I hoped for a good outcome for the …

Replace “book” with “blog” and you’ve captured what makes a community like Micro.blog so special: Even the oddest, most particular book was written with that kind of crazy courage—the writer’s belief that someone would find his or her book important to read. I was …

Fascinating article in The Economist this week about the effort underway by computer scientists to use machine language models and a particle accelerator (!) to decipher the petrified remains of 500 scrolls from a Roman library buried in the Vesuvius eruption. The impact on classical studies and …

🍿Went to see Killers of the Flower Moon last night. Parts of the movie were extraordinary. Such a sad, sad story. But gosh, the 3 1/2 hour length was too long. With better editing, this could have been a 2 1/2 hour movie that held me on the edge of my seat.

Currently reading: Skeleton Crew by Stephen King 📚 Working my way through the backlog of Stephen King books I haven’t read (I’ve read over 50 of his books!?!). What a gifted and prolific storyteller he is!

Getting some culture today at the Phoenix Art Museum. Since moving to the area last December, we try to see something new each week on what we call our Adventure Thursdays (and eat: lunch at Welcome Diner was delicious). Any Phoenicians here with recommendations on places we should visit?

The first lesson of philosophy is that we cannot be wise about everything. We are fragments in infinity and moments in eternity; for such forked atoms to describe the universe, or the Supreme Being, must make the planets tremble with mirth. Will Durant, The Story of Civilization Volume III: Caesar …

Finished reading: The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store by James McBride 📚 A good premise perhaps weakened by too many characters and side stories. The depression era setting, poor living conditions, and the horrors of racism and cruel treatment of people with disabilities felt Dickensian. McBride …

The English word lost derives from the Old Norse los, which refers to the disbanding of an army. This etymology implies that losing one’s way is less about being in the wrong place than it is about letting go of planned endeavors, and embracing surprises rather than avoiding them. Rolf Potts, The …

The Curiosity of Micro.blog: 

How I fell into a trance with the Indy blog service, Micro.blog, is a curious story.

I received a renewal invoice from HostGator notifying me that the cost of my bi-annual web hosting service was going up 58%. Quick math informed me that I was paying too much for a personal blog. Surely there …

Finished reading: Small Mercies by Dennis Lehane 📚 Mary Pat Fennessy is one of the most compelling characters I’ve encountered in a while. She made the bleakness of the story worth it. And yes, the story is bleak! Dennis Lehane is a terrific storyteller.

Currently reading: The Age of Faith by Will Durant 📚

I’ve wanted to see the Grand Canyon for as long I could remember. I think it was a Brady Bunch episode from the early 70s that first caught my imagination. They described the canyon as mountains lying down. Last week, we drove up from Phoenix and camped on the South Rim. We took our electric …

Is there anything better in life than being the captain of your own little ship? Is there any better way to greet the day than casting off at dawn?

An Early morning departure across the Strait of Juan de Fuca. Watching the sun rise from the wheelhouse is a unique trawler life delight. Calm seas, light wind, a favorable current. Feeling especially blessed this morning.

Our first ever stern tie aboard Indiscretion here in Prideaux Haven! That was quite the experience. We learned so much about what not to do! Oh, and swear words come through loud and clear on our wireless Eartec headsets even when one member of the crew is on shore.

We’ve lived aboard Indiscretion now for 75 days. Other than the comical annoyance that anything you need is ALWAYS under or behind other awkward things that you must first haul out, life on this trawler has been amazing. And now that we’re underway, home takes on a richer meaning. In one …

We had such good intentions … We left Shilshole Marina on 6/1 with the northern reaches of British Columbia on our minds. This is the year to revisit Canada: the Sunshine Coast, The Broughtons, a slow cruise down the West Coast of Vancouver Island. We’d skip the San Juans altogether. …

Shilshole Marina on Sunday night.

Fall cruising in the Pacific Northwest brings such a variety of weather conditions. Full sun, clouds, rain, blustery winds, even hail and thunderstorms. We canceled many cruising opportunities on our sailboats when the forecast was iffy, but not anymore. This trawler provides a comfortable sanctuary …

Sometimes all it takes is a few quiet days and nights at anchor in some secluded bay. Any stress you might have brought aboard fell away in the wake of the voyage, but soon you rediscover a deeper level of relaxation and peace that you only seem to find on a boat. You slip into that easily misplaced …

Back to reality: the lawn needs mowing, the deck needs pressure washing, the bills need paying … but a part of me is still afloat, feeling the gentle sway and rock, marveling at the colors and hush of twilight on a boat in the islands.

I can’t tell you how lucky I feel to be adventuring with this beautiful woman. She’s been putting up with me for almost 25 years, raising children, managing a career, and making the best of the challenges in life. Through it all it seems like she’s always smiling. I snapped this …

It’s that moment before a cruise when you sit back and consider. Everything is stowed. We have more food than we will likely have a chance to eat. My maintenance list is checked off. The engine room check just now was fine. All systems are go. The boat is literally tugging at her lines to go. …

We said goodbye to this young man this morning and have started our drive back home - 1,400 miles away. Every parent must face this, but holy smokes this was hard. Felt like a punch in the gut to walk out of that dorm room. It’s a new chapter for all of us and I know I should be excited, but …

What an amazing Father’s Day present! MV Indiscretion at anchor captured by the amazing artist (and my niece!) Sara Breen. Whoa!

These two. My pride and joy. What amazing adults they have become, right before my eyes. In the midst of this pandemic with the whole world out of balance, they are both set to achieve big milestones in their lives without the fanfare they deserve. Connor, a high school graduate bound for the …

Our Nordhavn trawler can take us to incredibly remote parts of the world. But what if something breaks down so far away from everything? I’ve spent most my life believing that outsourcing tasks to experts is the best model for life. Shoot, I even lead the strategy function of a multi-billion …

There is nothing so magical and comforting as the wheelhouse of a trawler at night. Words fail. Pictures can’t capture it. The gentle rocking, the warm light, the sense of adventure and impending expedition, the saltwater soaking into already salty veins. Some people spend their whole lives …

With all our usual park trails now off limits, Franklin and I have taken to the backroads of Vashon for our daily constitutional. I am reminded that most of this island could be considered one giant park, andI feel especially thankful to call this our home in times like these. On today’s five …

This for me is what’s great about boating. Anchored in a small bay surrounded by wilderness, birdsong, cackling geese, a faint cooling breeze. Far, far away from bustle and strife. Fellow boaters passing by in dinghies with smiles and waves. A sense of shared fraternity that we all found this …

Luana Beach Road. Or maybe the Shire.

Not many sailing nights like this left this year. Beautiful moon. Feeling blessed.

I’ve been playing baseball with Connor since he was five years old. First tossing baseballs underhanded into a tiny red mitt, later playing catch out in the yard, most every night in the summer. A couple years ago we started a Sunday routine of taking a bucket of baseballs up to the high …

Downwind sailing