Steven Johnson is one of the rare writers whose Substack newsletters I follow, and his most recent post will give you a good idea why. It is nominally about “The Infernal Machine”, his new book out today, but it is also about how he writes, and why, and has room for a story and a poem which both pack a punch. Recommended.

“Unputdownable” is a real word, but it has been a while since I’ve read a book that would fit the definition. This year’s books all had me put them down quite often, some from sheer shock, others (like this one from Longinus) to pause and reflect.

📚 Finished reading: On Great Writing (On the Sublime) by Longinus, fragments of a 2,000-year-old book which are as relevant as ever:

One should realize, my friend, that, as in everyday life, nothing is noble which is noble to despise.

And also, bringing to mind Nassim Taleb’s stance on nitpickers):

Preciseness in every detail incurs the risk of pettiness, whereas with the very great, as with the very rich, something must inevitably be neglected.

And many more!

This page from Carl Sagan’s The Demon-Haunted World was common sense when it first came out almost 30 years ago. Today it reads like a revolutionary screed.

I don’t usually pick up books from the local little free library, but after the last summer I couldn’t miss out on this one about Smith Island. It’s time to maker another bookshelf.

Slow Productivity is a book that could easily have been a blog post but the three sub-heading of that hypothetical post are sound and worth adopting. They could also fit on a fortune cookie:

1. Do fewer things.
2. Work at a natural pace.
3. Obsess over quality.

These are as obvious as they are short. Of course, you don’t need a book to learn and understand them — it’s enough to see what people who do great things are doing themselves, like Nassim Taleb, or Stephen Wolfram, or any good writer who writes their own books. But if you are too busy to learn by example and dig into people’s work habits described peacemeal and without a big red arrow pointing to the things that everyone should do, well, then, this is the right book for you.

It is also a bit of a cuckoo’s egg, ready-made for wide distribution through book clubs and large corporate purchases, which it says right on the copyright page. But then if you are a large American corporation with a large American corporation’s goals and values, maybe having your employees all becoming part-time flaneurs may not be the best idea. The American number go up because of quantity not quality, and you get to quantity by grinding it out, not by taking long walks.

So, there may need to be an intermediate step there, another airport book for Newport to write for the executives and the board members about short-term goals not reigning supreme. Good luck with that.

📚 Finished reading: Liberation Day by George Saunders, who is the conscience of the Baby Boom generation. What have we allowed to happen to this world? is what most of his protagonists ask, as their brains are washed, heads are hung up on walls, bodies are pelleted by hail. This is similar to the Tenth of December, his last short story collection, only this time some of his characters do, eventually, with much hemming and hawing, grow what under a certain light could be interpreted as a spine. It was high time, George.

Glenn Fleishman has a new book project on Kickstarter, and it is the easiest backing decision I’ve made in years. I mean, just look at that sample chapter. It’s called How Comics Were Made: a Visual History of Printing Cartoons and here’s hoping it makes it.

“Maybe that’s why young people make success. They don’t know enough. Because when you know enough it’s obvious that every idea that you have is no good.”

This was Richard Feynman per the James Gleick biography, and he was correct! Biomedicine is now in this position, as I wrote yesterday.

Related to my previous post: 27 reading tips from Nassim Taleb. My favorites:

A good book gets better at the second reading. A great book at the third. Any book not worth rereading isn’t worth reading.

Books are not read by the majority because they read the Internet, which is like junk food for the mind.

The unread books on your shelf are like a universe of alternate possibilities waiting to be explored.

A novel you like resembles a friend. You read it and reread it, getting to know it better. Like a friend, you accept it the way it is; you do not judge it.

And here is his favorite.