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 portrayal of grief and loss was really well done. ★★★★☆
Thank you @Annie for the recommendation!
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 initial impressions of Bear have been quite positive. Here is an app with a calming, minimalist design, yet in many ways, has more power and capabilities than Craft. And best of all, it intuitively works like you’d expect. Like a Mac app.
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 volume, and the rapture of of being transported to the wood beyond the world.
… and
Entering our library should feel like easing into a hot tub, strolling into a magic store, emerging into the orchestra pit, or entering a chamber of curiosities, the club, the circus, our cabin on an outbound yacht, the house of an old friend. It is a setting forth, and it is a coming back to center. Borges, of course, thought it was entering Paradise.
Sometimes a book feels like it was written just for you. May we all find ourselves Book-wrapt this holiday season. ★★★★★
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 musical instruments as the ears, and such a fabulous arabesque of nerves as the brain can experience itself as anything less than a god?
Currently reading: Wednesday’s Child by Yiyun Li 📚
Finished reading: The Vagabond’s Way by Rolf Potts 📚