Isak's Blog

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,

Happy Friday,

Cue the music, brew that pot. It’s been a long, hot week and I could use a lake.

Here are 10 interesting things worth sharing this week:

1. This New Yorker owns so many books in his studio apartment, his landlord is trying to evict him. (Goals?)
2. “I always loved this slogan used by the New York State Lotto: ‘Hey, you never know.’ As someone who’s taught writing for many years, I don’t know a better mantra for anyone involved in the arts.” This George Saunders article has so many good nuggets in it. Another: “Someone might have to live a long time before the thing they were born to say becomes fully formed and accessible to them.”
3. You can now browse every Criterion Closet pick in a virtual closet on this cool web app.
4. Today is the last day to bid on the American Library Association’s iconic READ posters of celebrities holding their favorite books. (Of course Nicolas Cage’s is Siddhartha.)
5. I like when people a) make arbitrary stupid goals, and 2) use them as an interesting hook for doing something, so I’m still thinking about how Beau Miles ran a marathon from home by running one mile around his house every hour for 24 hours straight and fitting in as many chores as possible in-between.
6. I wrote about Henry David Thoreau’s Type II Fun trip camping in the woods, foraging for food, and using some old lumber as a sleeping bag to stay warm at night, which reminds me of this old Dirtbag Diaries podcast episode about the three types of outdoor fun.
7. How I work isn’t all that different from a Large Language Model: I read a bunch, let the ideas simmer, and then draw on them all — consciously or not — to write. The problem is that now a bunch of stuff I read is AI-generated whether I know it or not, which is affecting the whole process like a genetic mutation.
8. I’ve been missing the fried bologna sandwiches and classic country bands of Robert’s in Nashville from this time of year last year, so I’ve been listening to this Vintage Country playlist on Spotify a bunch this week.
9. My Stephen King kick continues with “Different Seasons,” a collection of novellas including “The Body” — which is probably better known for its adaptation into the movie “Stand By Me.” I loved this movie when I was younger: a group of boys hiking, telling stories, getting into mischief and adventure — and I’m delighted how well it was adapted and sad it was banned in Utah schools this week. (I guess they also banned “Bag of Bones” which I also just finished?)
10. I like this idea of using a typewriter to write a cover of an essay/book you like, like a shorter version you make for yourself.

See you on down the dusty trail,

Happy Friday,

My furnace has been out for most of the week, but a boomer fixed it while complaining about the local city council. Not even mad about it, the sun’s been out.

Here are 10 things worth sharing this week:

1. “The boys and I started buying them because they’re sick,” explains St. Paul legislative aide. “They’re absolute compliment factories," Basgen continues. The St. Paul Resistance Dads are losing their minds over this corduroy jacket, and everyone else is either jealous or salty about it.
2. Bon Iver’s new VOLUMES album series will release live songs, demos, and unreleased recordings. Reminds me of Bob Dylan’s Basement Tapes.
3. Ok yes, we’ve all heard too much about AI. But here’s a bonkers story: Anthropic developers were testing Claude’s boundaries, and Claude began acting like a dystopic AI agent from a sci-fi thriller. They stopped the experiment, looked at Claude’s inner workings, and realized Claude had decided to play the part — it ingested sci-fi thrillers, recognized it was being tested, and output sci-fi thriller text. Kind of like The Chinese Room thought experiment, but also very different — this raises more questions than answers for me.
4. Is there a word when you’re excited for a new adaptation of something you love but also scared and nervous because it can’t possibly live up to the adaptation you love? This new Pride and Prejudice miniseries is giving me flashbacks to Rings of Power after the Lord of the Rings trilogy.
5. I normally read a ton, but I haven’t finished a book yet this year. Thanks ICE! Thanks doomscrolling! What’s interesting is that despite feeling overwhelmed and stressed out, I’ve had a weirdly very easy time writing this year? And so I’m curious if not reading has helped me, even just a little?
6. Have you ever Googled the definition of a word, and the definition is so abstract you still don’t know what it means? I think old dictionaries are MUCH more useful (especially as a book instead of on your phone!), and James Somers shares a lot of love for them and a handy $2 dictionary app I use often.
7. If I weren’t in a book reading slump I’d probably be joining this Tolkien Read-along Book Club on Substack, which looks absolutely delightful. Which has me curious: how different are virtual book clubs from IRL book clubs?
8. Very helpful tips for how to use Google better — especially important as algorithms and AI muck up information. The “index of” trick is a recent one for me, and I found a lot of cool retro Talking Heads tour posters I hadn’t seen before.
9. Brian Doyle is like a mix of Vonnegut and Ross Gay and Anthony Doerr, a writer who calms me down and speaks with a tenderness and sense of wonder I haven’t really heard since being a kid.
10. “If you’re bored as the writer, it’s probably a sign that the writing/story is boring.” My best writing is usually the writing I was excited about after editing (not necessarily drafting).

See ya on down the dusty trail,