Isak's Blog

Happy Friday,

Cue the music, brew that pot. It’s officially summer, and I’m soaking up LONG and HUMID summer days here in Minnesota and making plans for the summer solstice.

Here are 10 interesting things worth sharing this week:

1. A new PBS documentary about the Mississippi River looks SO good, can’t wait for this to come out.
2. I love following Dave Fogler’s YouTube channel for his time-intensive, pointless house modifications — but also for the midcentury vibes and fun vlogging, and his latest on eliminating corporate logos on his truck is a fun watch.
3. “I have faith that these typewriters are going to lead me somewhere. I don’t know where, but I hope somewhere interesting.” In which Ruth Ozeki discovers the joys of a typewriter. I also enjoyed learning about her writing process journal to aid her writing process.
4. If you’re having trouble writing, try reading, watching movies, going to a museum, or going out with a friend. Austin Kleon’s book “Don’t Call It Art” came out this week, and Chapter #7 is “Problems of output are problems of input.” (He’s making the book tour rounds, and I was happy to see him on the “A Reading Life” substack, too.)
5. I’ve been carrying a Field Notes journal in my back pocket since 2019, and I immediately ordered both sets of their new “Explore America” series, which reminds me of their fantastic “National Parks” series.
6. Larry McMurtry would write five pages a day on his Hermes 3000 typewriter, even stopping in the middle of a sentence to avoid going over his daily limit. I loved reading the Tracy Daugherty biography on him last summer, and the new “Western Star” bio is on my desk now.
7. My Big Summer Book pick right now is “Bag of Bones” (my version is 736 but it’s a small mass market paperback), and I am loving the eerie, summery tension laced throughout this one. I’m only 20% in, but I’m curious why this hasn’t been held up as one of his better books?
8. Resonated this TikTok about how creative backlogs can be a block. I’ve had a bunch of creative ideas rattling around in my head for too long, and doing them and moving on sounds easier and more fun than thinking “I really should do that soon.” Should!
9. There’s a plethora of book clubs and read-alongs on Substack that I’m finally going to give one a try and join Many Meetings on a read-through of The Silmarillion — a book I’ve read a few times but never feel like I quite grasp! Third time’s a charm?
10. “Doing the thing every day is easier than not doing the thing every day.” I regret that rigid consistency helps me do the things I want to do but I do wish I was less all-or-nothing about it.

See you on down the dusty trail,

Happy Friday,

It’s finally feeling like spring: the sun is melting, migratory birds are chirping and flying through the trees in their little flocks, and a fox left prints in my yard.

Here are 10 interesting things worth sharing this week.

1. I love looking at flow charts of how different genres of art — from types of books to genres of music — have changed and morphed over time. So I had a blast scrolling around Music Map this week, but I wish it were way, way more in-depth.
2. I got into typewriters during the pandemic: I needed to write without distractions. But using it always put me in a much different headspace than the one I had writing on a computer. So I really enjoyed this video about another guy who’s come to love typewriters.
3. RIP to Chuck Norris. I feel like Chuck Norris jokes were one of my earliest internet meme memories? I printed out a bunch of Chuck Norris jokes and taped them to my school locker in junior high, and we’d all memorize and parrot them to each other like one-liners.
4. Loved this profile of Willie Nelson. My very first concert was a Bob Dylan-Willie Nelson show! It ruled. I love reading about artists that live to make their art, spending their entire lifetime committed to the craft. Inspiring.
5. Really love this Instagram account sharing daily David Byrne dances.
6. I went to the Mall of America this week (I am still sad it’s not named Camp Snoopy!) and hadn’t yet heard that the MoA Hooters restaurant is closing — and people have thoughts.
7. I never thought I’d feel so understood by Charles Darwin? Turns out there were a lot of days he’d rather stay home in bed than go do science?
8. This week I nearly caught up on my stack of unread New Yorkers. I finally got current, only to discover a few long reads that are, ahem, very long: The Atlantic gave $100k to a staff writer to gamble on the NFL season, and Reuters spent a lot of resources tracking down the identity of Banksy. I kind of like the mystery of not knowing about Banksy though!
9. I’m sad about the downfall of the mass market paperback. There’s something very nostalgic and accessible about them, like something you don’t have to treat as precious or high-brow, but something that can carry around and love and beat up and share with a friend with folded, torn covers. In the meantime, I’ll keep ordering 70’s mass market paperbacks from bookfinder.
10. I finally caved and ordered this beautiful illustrated edition of Lord of the Rings to match my Silmarillion edition I got a few years back. I went back and forth between this and the newer Alan Lee box set, the 2000 set I had, the 1973 set my dad had, and the hilarious 1993 set my friend Tom has. I finally relented that I’ll probably collect them all eventually.

See you on down the dusty trail,

Happy Friday,

I turned 33 years old which means I am officially of age in Hobbit years; I celebrated by staying up until 4 a.m. after saunaing with my dad — which was apparently too much fun because I’m still behind on sleep.

Here are 10 interesting things worth sharing this week:

1. I have a few print magazine subscriptions: “Adventure Journal,” an outdoorsy quarterly I signed up for when I quit my job to freelance write to get major inspiration from. And “The New Yorker,” which I bought this year to spend less time reading the news on my phone. Analog is all the rage these days, but I my favorite part is receiving something nice in the mail instead of bills. Try it!
2. If you do subscribe, “The New Yorker” fully digitized its entire back catalog. I went back and read issues from the week I was born, then my dad, then my grandpa. The fun thing about history is how all this has always been going on.
3. I may or may not have watched this video about hobby tunneling and thought to myself: how hard could it really be to dig my own tunnel from my basement to my detached garage?
4. A new Bob Dylan book is came out in January about his later career, which might inspire me to get into more of it than just “Modern Times” and, yes, “Christmas in the Heart.”
5. The internet is better with RSS, and I missed the days of Google Reader so much I got a subscription to Feed.ly (like don’t love) a few months ago. It seems there’s a bit of a resurgence lately — Austin Kleon and Cory Doctorow both blogged recently about how much it improves your web browsing. I use it for work to track clean energy/climate news plus a bunch of writers and blogs I like.
6. I got my hands on the newest edition of Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, the first update in 20 years. Cloth binding, nice pages, a thumb index — I’m in love, and it looks great next to my thesaurus and usage dictionary.
7. I’m still in a book rut (this is a recurring theme apparently) and have been daydreaming reading Proust’s “In Search of Lost Time” after loving Knaussgaard’s “My Struggle” series a while back. So while I haven’t cracked the first book yet, I did discover the Proust FM radio website that plays the entire series on a loop forever.
8. If you feel like there’s maybe not much to celebrate for the U.S.’s 250th anniversary this year, well, you’re not alone — it seems like that’s how people have felt for every major anniversary of the U.S. (And yes, I read this in print with a cup of coffee Tuesday morning instead of scrolling BlueSky.)
9. I’ve been poking around books instead of reading them all the way through this year. Last night I cracked open this beautiful edition of “The Silmarillion” and played Andy Serkis’ narration to read the Beren & Luthien chapter, and it was a WAY better night that scrolling Reddit, BlueSky, and Instagram.
10. I’ve been low-contact with podcasts since the pandemic because they just started to feel too noisy, but I might have to dive into the “Exploring the Lord of the Rings” podcast series with the Tolkien Professor based on this BlueSky thread about the Mines of Moria.

See you on down the dusty trail,