Isak's Blog

I’ve been reading a bunch about the Transcendentalists this year. My favorite story so far has been when Thoreau, that venerated essayist whose writing championed simple living and a closer relationship with nature, accidentally started a wildfire that threatened to burn down his village.

In 1844, Thoreau and his friend were camping and fishing along the Concord River and stopped to cook them for lunch. Soon after lighting it, the fire spread through the dry grass and burned out of control as the warm, southwest wind fanned it along faster than they could put it out.

Happy Friday,

Cue the music, brew that pot. This week I learned my plumber plays the hurdy-gurdy at the Rennaissance Festival, so I guess that’s as good a reason as any to go for the first time?

Here are 10 interesting things worth sharing this week:

1. I listened to this interview with Maria Popova of “The Marginalian,” one of the few blogs I’ve followed for over a decade — and I eventually realized I needed to pull it up and transcribe the entire thing for myself: her lack of productivity, no editorial calendars, why archives are deeper than the internet, walking four hours a day to think (making her writing merely transcribing) — there’s just so much packed into this interview.
2. I’m on a roll, because I also listened to Michael Pollan on the same podcast talk about how writing is like a compost heap, laundry lines as narrative, why what we read before bed matters, and so much more. I loved that Pollan’s influenced by Hoaglund’s nature writing — I read his essay collection “On Nature” in 2014 and it had a big impact on me.
3. This letter on nostalgia reminds me of that line from Patricia Lockwood: “You’ll be nostalgic for this, too, if you make it.”
4. My favorite niche, hyper-specific thing biographies do is when they go way, way back to explore how an area’s geologic history affected the person they’re writing about.
5. If you’re a writer, maybe you can relate to this short article about the importance of deadlines? This Friday Favorites post would never make it without a weekly, firm deadline holding me accountable (my Tuesday blog post got deferred to today, in no small part because the deadline was less firm!).
6. This 1:43-minute video of all the weird sounds David Brynes makes in the Talking Heads discography is hilarious and something I’ve long wanted to create myself.
7. Really relate to Carmen Maria Machado in how her writing happens in short, concentrated bursts. As alluring as a disciplined writing practice is, it’s always a fantasy to me!
8. That said, a lot of authors know to show up even when they don’t feel like it.
9. One Main Character of the Day on BlueSky this week was a writer at Axios (the place that writes news for short attention spans) who described how he uses AI to help him read books his attention span can’t handle. But more interesting is this Defector article responding to it about why we read.
10. If you like books and maps, boy do I have a website for you.

See you on down the dusty trail,

It’s pretty common for cradle-to-grave biographies to open with a few chapters of the subject’s parents or grandparents so readers have a full picture of background. But my absolute, favorite niche thing in two biographies I love is when the author decided that to really understand their subject, they had to go way, way back.

That in order to truly understand a person, you first need to understand the geologic history of where they grew up.

Happy Friday,

Cue the music, brew that pot. I’ve been listening to Charli xcx all week and soaking up the dog days of summer before it’s pants season.

Here are 10 interesting things worth sharing this week:

1. A few years ago I watched “Adaptation” and became really interested in how Hollywood and writers can use “The Hero’s Journey” to structure stories, which led me to read Vogler’s “The Writer’s Journey” and Joseph Campbell’s “The Hero with a Thousand Faces.” So I really enjoyed this 90-minute interview with Steven Pressfield on “How I Write”, who talks a lot about structure, Hollywood, writing good stories, and why we like The Hero’s Journey so much.
2. I’m still listening to nothing but “No One Lasts Forever.” Voice samples in music are nothing new, but it is interesting how the speech-to-song illusion can make certain statements feel so musical.
3. I wrote about my love for vintage mass market paperbacks — those gorgeous, portable books I recall from 60s and 70s lit classics and 80s horror — and why I think they’re the best book format.
4. This Tuesday was August 4, 2026 — the day of Ray Bradbury’s 1950 short story “There Will Come Soft Rains,” which makes it as good a time to read it as any.
5. I have a few meals I’ve made several times a week for years (popcorn, bean bowls) — and beans are a hot food item this year — so I’m thinking about that time Beau Miles ate nothing but canned beans for 40 days then ran 50 kilometers. (If I did this I would consider coffee a form of bean and have a better adjustment.)
6. Every couple years a local news station will talk about why people still like typewriters, and I’ll watch them every time. This one’s about Gramercy in New York City, the same store Ruth Ozeki got hers.
7. “I can’t dance, I’ve got two left feet!” “I thought he was kidding.” “But I wasn’t, I was born with two left feet.” “Best In Show” is a really funny movie, and after talking with a few people older than me, a once-popular movie that’s not talked about much anymore!
8. Sorry, this newsletter is becoming a place I share everything I see about typewriters, but Andrew Loura’s restoration of his family’s 1919 Underwood was very satisfying.
9. I finished Stephen King’s “Duma Key” about a painter grieving a life-altering event who moves to a vacation community and slowly uncovers its dark past as it impacts their creative process. Which is exactly the same premise as “Bag of Bones,” which I read earlier this summer. I love when writers return to the same well to explore the same idea in new ways.
10. I relate to a lot in this video essay about ordinariness feeling boring, being stuck in the past or future, and overthinking instead of experiencing your life.

See you on down the dusty trail,

Annie Dillard died on Wednesday, who’s been one of my top influences, inspirations, and mysterious benefactor of writing wisdom for the past 10 years.

Her book, “The Writing Life,” is one of my favorite books about writing, but because she’s such a good writer, it doesn’t even rank in my Top 3 Best Dillard Books. Maybe Top 5. Maybe. Because each of her books is so good, and teach you so much about life and nature and philosophy and writing — her book about how to write and how to live is just the surface.