Isak's Blog

Happy Friday Sunday,

Cue the music, brew that pot. I spent a few days at a lake in Minnesota floating and listening to loons a c fireworks, so this newsletter’s coming a few days later than scheduled (someday I’ll code a “publish in future” option on my website).

Here are 10 interesting things worth sharing this week:

1. Typewriters acted as a “meeting technology that enabled White women to marry above their socioeconomic backgrounds and achieve upward mobility.”
2. Twice a year LitHub publishes a long list of upcoming books, and great for 1) finding interesting new books (obvi), 2) guessing which ones will be mega-popular prize winners, and 3) finding niche titles I’d never encounter otherwise.
3. All of us contain a variety of selves, and “a piece of writing succeeds when the writer invokes the best self to tell the particular story at hand.”
4. Very excited for Peter Heller’s “The Dog Stars” to hit the big screen this August. His literary wilderness thrillers are a go-to beach (lake?) read for me, and this is one of his best (I just hope the movie doesn’t lose the emotional tenderness of the protagonist!)
5. Goth Babe on why luxurious RVs can never capture the same experience as simplicity and companionship of camping with friends.
6. I think that semi-myth about writers writing in a frenzied bout of inspiration so intense the rest of your life recedes to a small echo is that state we all aspire to be hijacjed to - no matter how real or fleeting it might be. The dream: to be inspired with such certainty no doubt or judgement gets in the way of output!
7. “There are such obvious benefits to not scrolling your life away, and yet we do it all the time.” I think phones suck our energy, curiosity, and agency away from our interests and self-expression, but I still find advice like “find moderation and intention” to not be ass effective as I’d like.
8. This video from 10 years ago still crops up in my mind as on of my favorite examples of good (unexpected) storytelling.
9. There’s purpose and peril in daydreaming of “could be’s” in your future and “could have been’s” in your past — and this book sounds like an excellent teacher for not becoming too weighed down in the latter.
10. Still videos of nature doing its thing set to chill music like this invariable 1) calms me down, and 2) simultaneously gives me an existential crisis about how we’re spending our existence in this place.

See you on down the dusty trail,

Happy Friday,

I had a few days off work and enjoyed the unseasonably warm weather in Minnesota weeding the landscaping, detailing the car, and scrubbing my basement clean while listening to Peter Heller’s “Celine” and drinking a lot of Bustello coffee.

Here are 10 interesting things worth sharing this week:

1. “It was good to lie there in our bags watching the glow of our dying fire and the deeper glow of sunset beyond; but most of all it was good to feel the ground again and to know we were back in a country we loved,” said Sigurd Olson. It’s been a tough year for Minnesotans — and the latest attack on our Boundary Waters is enraging.
2. Big fan of making lists, and love these archive photos of Richard Feynman’s notes, including a “Notebook of Things I Don’t Know About.”
3. “The feeling that the work is magnificent, and the feeling that it is abominable, are both mosquitoes to be repelled, ignored, or killed, but not indulged.” Annie Dillard always has great, no-nonsense writing advice. I think if I spent 1/10 the time just creating stuff instead of feeling and thinking about creating stuff, I’d have a much better time.
4. On that note: “Worrying isn’t writing, and you can only revise drafts, not worries.” Advice I need to remind myself over and over again. Writing with Andrew’s speaking and presentation style is so similar to Technology Connections I googled if they were brothers or something.
5. Speaking of creative procrastination and typewriters: I’ve been oggling the different distraction-free writing set-ups at r/writerdecks. (For now, it’s my keys-to-go keyboard and Notion against the world.)
6. David Byrne has a magical, weird way of making everyday routines and items feel unique and creative and interesting to me, so of course this long interview with Nardwuar — who has a unique interview style of his own — has been a delight to watch.
7. I’ve been missing the bologna sandwiches, PBR, and Moonpies of Robert’s in Nashville, so I’ve been listening to old country music like Ernest Tubbs all week.
8. I generally don’t mind spoilers for books and movies, but I was flabbergasted at reading a book about the Transcendentalists, finding Margaret Fuller to be the coolest of the bunch, and then being gutted to learn she and her book manuscript were lost in a shipwreck so early in her career.
9. I liked Richard Powers’ “The Overstory” (and loved Anthony Doerr’s “Cloud Cuckoo Land”), and both feel very similar to this essay from Robert Moor’s upcoming book about climate activists that lived in a treehouse for months to block an oil pipeline. Been thinking about it for a month.
10. Twice a year LitHub publishes what I call “the big list of cool, new books,” and I discover lots of interesting books I wouldn’t otherwise find.

See ya on down the dusty trail,