Isak's Blog

Happy Friday,

Cue the music, brew that pot. A wood thrush (rare!) can to our yard yesterday — and if you’ve ever heard their ethereal, flute-like song, you have some idea of how excited I was.

Here are 10 interesting things worth sharing this week:

1. I spend a lot of time reading book recommendations instead of just reading books. So maybe reading Emma Reads Too Much’s list of books about books will entice me to finish a few more?
2. Plug-in solar laws are being passed in different states, my social feeds are full of gardening and DIY, and I think the time is ripe for solarpunk optimism. I love this solarpunk animation from years back (yes, it’s a Chobani commercial; the irony is not lost on me) and think we could all benefit from imagining better futures we can build rather than doomscrolling.
3. “And what a pleasure that is; to be, on the page, less of a dope than usual.” Really enjoyed George Saunders writing about his creative process, especially the small incremental changes he makes that end up making his writing more compassionate.
4. Oh to be gifted a well-serviced typewriter from the patron saint of typewriters himself, Tom Hanks.
5. “Somehow, before personal computers and email, they managed to collaborate on an entire book—drafts of pages written on typewriters were placed in yellow envelopes and mailed across continents and ocean.” There’s a lot to love in this creative advice from Anna Brones’ mom, but I am fascinated people used to write books without computers.
6. I have way more ideas for creative projects than finished products — so I really enjoyed this video about how you can get stuck in it. Time to make a few zines and short stories!
7. It’s the season of commencement speeches: I prefer Harrison Ford’s to the viral AI one going around. But DFW’s “This Is Water” speech and Baz Luhrmann’s sunscreen speech are my two all-time favs.
8. We’re on the Zara Larson hype train in our household, and the viral clip of her being very tired (and relatable) doing a 5 a.m. sound check for The Today Show is how I feel being on a video call before 10:30 or so.
9. Western AF introduces me to a lot of great music, but I’ve come back to “Wishing Bone Blues” by Cristina Vane so many times over the years, I think I’m responsible for 1/10th of the views. Such a good guitar solo.
10. I wrote about the four reference books I keep on my writing desk and had a great time paging through my usage history again — another encouragement from DFW!

See you on down the dusty trail,

I wrote in my last post that I keep four reference books on my writing desk: a dictionary, a usage dictionary, a thesaurus, and a copy production book.

Sure, you can use Google to answer questions while you write. But opening the internet invites too much distraction for me. I already procrastinate way too much of my writing (don’t ask about my Screen Time stats!), so I’d rather open a book than the internet. Then when I do procrastinate, at least I’m reading about writing instead of scrolling an algorithm.

Happy Friday,

I haven’t gotten nearly enough sleep this week, but I have had really good coffee with my new-to-me drip machine and burr grinder.

Here are 10 things worth sharing this week:

1. Love these photos of Bob Dylan’s notebooks while writing 1975’s “Blood on the Tracks” (me and my dad’s favorite Dylan album). And it looks like a 1964 Royal Caravan typewriter? Maybe one to add to the collection.
2. Agree with all of Andrew’s reasons to use a paper dictionary instead of a search engine. You learn more and you remember better! It’s also more fun.
3. If you like words, you should check out a usage dictionary to understand what words to use when, too. I’m not a “keep books in the bathroom” guy, but David Foster Wallace said usage dictionaries make great bathroom books.
4. “When we read fast, we experience nothing. The book does not have a chance to burrow into our heart.” Gamifying reading might help you read more, but it also changes how you read. I tracked the number of books I read for a while, but it incentivized me to read shorter books instead of longer books I actually wanted to read. So I changed to tracking pages read a year, but I started listening to audiobooks at a fast speed while doing chores and hardly paying attention. This year I’m not tracking ANY reading, and while I’m still in a reading funk and haven’t finished a book, I’ve been reading snippets here and there in many books — something I haven’t done in years. “We are addicted to data and intent on improving ourselves over enjoying ourselves.”
5. There’s a huge, heavy, old CRT TV that I’ve been using to watch SNL, tv, and movies on through my computer using this HDMI-to-RCA converter, and there’s something really fun about watching Weekend Update or Heated Rivalry on a fuzzy 4:3 curved screen. Maybe I’ll get some retro shaders this summer and watch Unsolved Mysteries.
6. Speaking of dictionaries and reading, here’s a timely quote from Samuel Johnson, the English writer of the 1700s who worked on the first Oxford English Dictionary: “A man ought to read just as inclination leads him; for what he reads as a task will do him little good.”
7. I appreciate that Tyler Cowen invited a Lit guy to talk Shakespeare on his podcast and not a dozen minutes in they were reading Shakespeare line by line. I’ve only read a few Shakespeare plays I was forced to read in high school and college. Maybe a good Big Summer Book this year would be a Riverside edition?
8. Sometimes when I think about how much of my life I’ve wasted on my phone, I daydream about typewriting or transcribing an entire book by hand. Bethany Collins is doing it with “Moby Dick,” and Van Neistat did it with “Breakfast of Champions.” I feel like I’d want to do it with a special book, but maybe it’d be a fun (long) exercise to pick a book off the shelf at random?
9. “I’m not saying my phone has caused the same problems I’d have with, say, heroin or alcohol. But maybe it’s worth asking: How much fun am I having? Or: How much fun am I missing out on when I’m on my phone?” I’ve followed Brendan since 2012 and totally agree with how weird it feels to not pull out your phone and instead just sit there doing nothing - especially in public.
10. To that end, you can pay $60 to brick your phone to keep you from using it. Or you can do what I did: download the Foqos app (totally free), set the unlock to an NFC tag (<$1 online), and use that instead. Not that I’ve been doing it lately, but it is nice when I want to buckle down on no-phone time.

See ya on down the dusty trail,