My 2nd gen Kindle seems to finally be dead. Now what do I get?!

Just finished up Demon Copperhead. What a ride. My first Barbara Kingsolver fiction book, if you’re wanting to make a recommendation.

Listening to the preview of The Power Broker podcast and felt intrigued enough to consider reading the 1,200 page book. And now I’ve learned that it’s not availablee in digital formats?! Wow! Perfect book to not buy physical, for weight and highlighting reasons. Will have to think on it.

Wondering if anyone has this workflow (readflow?)?

Subscribe to site via RSS > Skim feed reader to decide what to/what not to read > Send “want to read” things to a read-later service (like Matter) > Only actually read via the read-later service

i.e. never read things in your feed reader.

For the rest of the month I’m going to try things like Play (https://marcosatanaka.com/#play) and Matter as a way to consume, adding things that I run into via blogs or conversations. That and the feed reader. Maybe I’ll get rid of some of these tabs as well…

I somehow finished reading White Noise by Don DeLillo. Is the movie better?

Where do you pick up audiobooks? I don’t listen at a fast enough pace for Audible, but I’m running out of reasonable options at the library (Libby). Either the wait is months or the books are 18 hours, which I can’t finish before they’re due.

I picked up an iPad Mini. I plan for it to be a thoughtful consumption device. NetNewsWire, Matter, and Libby installed, among other things. Any recommendations?

I adored Hasan Minhaj’s Homecoming King. That makes this story especially disappointing. Sure, make up stories. But when you include real people, identifiably, and keep “emotional truthing” the lies you told about them?! Come on.

Japanese nail houses: lonelyrobottheme.substack.com/p/japanes…

Interesting in light of the saying “the nail that sticks out gets hammered down”: https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/the_nail_that_sticks_out_gets_hammered_down

Just passed The Many Masks of Andy Zhou by Jack Cheng to my seventh grader. If you have a middle schooler in your life, I highly recommend picking up this lovely, real, and introspective book up for them. And for you.

Finished reading: Recursion: A Novel by Blake Crouch đź“š

Pretty, pretty, pretty good!

I ran into thehtml.review for the first time and plan to peruse it soon. Interesting!

I like to print articles from time to time in order to read them on paper. I wish macOS’s booklet printing option rearranged the pages for you. This article references my options. It appears the Booklet app is no longer available. Don’t think I can stomach $19.99 for Create Booklet 2.

Let’s see what everyone is going on about.

And what is love in the end? Except the irrational desire to put evolutionary competitiveness aside in order to ease someone else's journey through life?

– Alabaster, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin

Was about to order a book last night, but then I searched my email and found I had ordered it a year ago. I wonder where I put that thing…

I’ve been reading the short stories that Robin Sloan has available on the Internet. Two that particularly caught my mind were In the Stacks with its musical toy intro and The Writer and the Witch with its Neil Gaiman vibes. Give ‘em a read! đź“š

Finished reading: The Night In Question: Stories (Vintage Contemporaries) by Tobias Wolff đź“š

A master.

Knowing how bad some picture books are, I think something like this could take off: AI storybook generator. Cheap okay stories are better and more convenient than expensive, bad stories. These are the types of writing jobs that AI will eat.

Finished reading: Sourdough by Robin Sloan. Didn’t enjoy this as much as Mr. Penumbra’s. I kind of got lost in the last quarter of it. đź“š

Finished reading Project Hail Mary: A Novel yesterday. The first half was a bit slow for me to work through, but I sped through the second half. đź“š

Read No Time Like the Future by Michael J. Fox đź“š

Two MJF bios in one year seems like a bit much. I didn’t find this one quite as engaging as Lucky Man, but a worthwhile listen from my library.

So I have this idea. What if there were a service that combined your consumed things into one feed. It’d ingest RSS from, say, Letterboxd, Album Whale, and Goodreads. It would display this unified feed simply, and maybe allow some tagging. Perhaps it should be built…

Also read Job: A Comedy of Justice by Robert A. Heinlein đź“š