The calendar is full again. Rejoice?
The Washington Post reports another wave of covid is coming to America. Well, it certainly came to our household. And much like the first time around, I got it days after a vaccine — just my luck. At least this time it’s only 3 days of sore throat and runny nose, and not a full week of high fevers.
Calendar interoperability is underappreciated. I use iCloud for home, Google for the University and Office365 for work, all from a single app, which also handles invites and scheduling. Other people can see my various calendars in their own software, seamlessly. We should make everything a calendar.
Feature suggestion for a microblogging service: a “Do Not Post” button. Get all those poison darts and built-up steam out of your system together with the satisfaction of a button click, without the anxiety or guilt.
Oh no, wait, it already exists.
My list for the year, ordered by similarity. All are physical prints already on the bookshelf, just waiting to be snubbed for whatever else catches my attention.
- The Books of Jacob by Olga Tokarczuk
- In Other Rooms, Other Wonders by Daniyal Mueenuddin
- Too Like the Lightning by Ada Palmer
- Neuromancer by William Gibson
- That We May Live by various authors
- Liberation Day by George Saunders
- You Should Come With Me Now by M. John Harrison
- Dark Gods by T.E.D. Klein
- False Dawn by John Gray
- A Theater of Envy by René Girard
- Philosophy and the Real World by Bryan Magee
- Order Without Design by Alain Bertaud
- Seeing Like a State by James C. Scott
- Toxic Exposure by Chadi Nabhan
- The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt by Edmund Morris
- A Man of Iron by Troy Senik
- The Man from the Future by Ananyo Bhattacharya
- Metamathematics by Stephen Wolfram
- Statistical Consequences of Fat Tails by Nassim Taleb
- Towards a Theoretical Biology by C.H. Waddington
- Deep Simplicity by John Gribbin
- Seeing with Fresh Eyes by Edward Tufte
- A Guide for the Perplexed by Werner Herzog
- Cinema Speculation by Quentin Tarantino
Here are the wishlists for 2022 and 2023, and the respective outcomes.
Luke Burgis on prolific Substack writers:
At some level, the pure volume of writing—especially if you’re halfway decent at it—is perceived by some people as actual knowledge, even if you’re not saying anything at all, or even if you’re making ridiculous arguments riddled with fallacies.
Every once in a while, some 6,000 word word salad will land in my inbox from a figure like Freddie deBoer or Matty Yglesias or Richard Hanania—and I stay subscribed, just so I know what’s going on (maybe I shouldn’t)—and I think, “Lord, have mercy. Who has time to respond to all of these things? Or who would actually want to make themselves that miserable? I sure don’t!” And then I get back to work.
Feeling the same, I unsubscribed from most newsletters long ago.
Writing and editing are distinct skills. As I gaze into a stream of text that someone else wrote and several more people edited, as I try to make sense of the reds and the greens and the teals of Word’s tracked changes stacked on top of the red squiggles and the double underlines, as the nested comments flow one after another until my (aging!?) M1 MacBook Air begins to stutter, I realize that, at heart, I am a writer.
Happy New Year!
At the beginning of the year, I set out to read 23 books. Mission accomplished? As expected, my favorite of the year was not on that wish list.
Here are all 23, ordered by some semblance of category.
- The Sunken Land Begins to Rise Again by M. John Harrison: Harrison at his best, just don’t expect a neat resolution.
- Empty Space: A Haunting by M. John Harrison: a fitting end to my favorite sci-fi trilogy.
- The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida by Shehan Karunatilaka: if Harrison awards someone a Booker, I’d better read their book.
- Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino: the translation was good, but I imagine the original was even better.
- 1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed by Eric H. Cline: I think about the Bronze Age collapse more than I do about the Roman Empire, actually.
- On Bullshit by Harry G. Frankfurt: the year of LLM-generated garbage was a good time to refresh BS knowledge.
- The Revolt of the Masses by Ortega y Gasset: prophetic.
- Debt: The First 5,000 Years by David Graeber: bad.
- The Dao of Capital by Mark Spitznagel: investing should be left to the professionals.
- Whole Earth Discipline by Stewart Brand: half of the book is good, but only time will tell which half.
- How to Listen to Jazz by Ted Gioia: got me to buy an actual CD player, just so I could listen to this anthology.
- Against Method by Paul Feyerabend: his statement that in science “anything goes” could have been controversial only to those who willfully misunderstood.
- Fundamentals of Clinical Trials by Lawrence M. Friedman: too pedantic.
- Antinet Zettelkasten by Scott Scheper: almost a year in and I am still using index cards, although not in the way Scott intended.
- Writing with Style: The Economist Guide by Lane Greene: more fun than a style guide should be.
- Zombies in Western Culture by John Vervaeke et al: true and unnerving.
- The Formula: The Universal Laws of Success by Albert-László Barabási: don’t be fooled by the self-help title, it is a good book.
- Wanting: The Power of Mimetic Desire in Everyday Life by Luke Burgis: the most influential of the books I’ve read this year as it led directly to my favorite.
- I See Satan Fall Like Lightning by René Girard: the best book I’ve read this year, and one that I’ve been thinking about the most.
- Orthodoxy by G.K. Chesterton: I should read it again.
- I Am a Strange Loop by Douglas R. Hofstadter: how a scientist deals with grief.
- A Severe Mercy by Sheldon Vanauken: how a Christian deals with grief.
- Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard: I still can’t believe she was in her 20s.
Not too bad, considering we had a flooded basement and our second move in three years, with some writing wedged in between. And here is last year’s list.
