All The Things (October)
You may have missed these reads -- here they are
The gist: I put together links / recs every week, but you may have missed a few or forgot to go back or whatever.
So here they are for the month of October, all nicely organized (kinda). Let’s go…
Newsletters You May Have Missed
Article Links
The TikTok Girl is Right: Modernity and the 9 to 5 by
I don’t agree with everything here, but a good topic I’m always interested in
When your son loves your favorite band too by Barnabas Smith at Medium
I liked this piece because Barnabas likes one of my favorite bands.
The Makings of a Literary It Girl at Nylon
This story about the Nashoba County Fair in Mississippi is well done, but not exceptional. What was exceptional is that I had never heard of this annual fair pilgrimage until now despite living in 2 states that bordered Mississippi. Rickety fair sheds? It’s like the Delta Burning Man.
Medium articles (from others and me)
“12 Lessons from 7 Years of the Daily Stoic” by Ryan Holiday.
“How to Create Content 10x Faster by Combining Note-Taking & ChatGPT” by Matt Giaro
“Leaving Twitter Had No Effect on NPR’s Traffic” by Cory Doctorow
“Work On Your Writing Before Finding The Right Tools” by Josh Spilker
“What Should You Do With Your Ideas?” by Josh Spilker
“9 Irrefutable Laws of Notetaking” by Josh Spilker
Substack articles from others
“My 12 Favorite Problems” by Ted Gioia
“My Nathan Fielder Night” by Jason Diamond
really wish I would have known about this!
“How Millennials Grew Up and Got Old” by Anne Helen Petersen
“Noted: James Baldwin’s Doodles” by Jillian Hess
Other Things
Freddie deBoer on House of Strauss podcast
When these guys talk about media and culture, thumbs up. Interesting points about unbundling and then David Foster Wallace + mimetic desire?
Started and finished watching “The Gold” on Paramount Plus. Heard good things, and I needed a new TV show. I really enjoyed the variety of British accents.
New albums by Sufjan Stevens and Short Fictions, let’s go.
“American Made” with Tom Cruise is on Netflix, and I needed something fun and went with it. Had a “Catch Me If You Can” vibe. Probably my favorite Tom Cruise airplane movie.
Interview with Chad Gardner from the band, Kings Kaleidoscope. Compelling young guy who hasn’t given up on his faith despite so much church baggage. Just getting into this band, but I enjoy this song called “Prayer - Live”.
Book-ish Things
I’m currently reading “Chronic City” by Jonathan Lethem because it feels like one of the most New York novels ever.
A few weeks ago I wrote about my kids finding Calvin and Hobbes. Turns out Bill Watterson is coming out with new work for the first time in a long time. Doesn’t look like my thing, but I may buy my children this 6x9 new Calvin & Hobbes compendium.
Reading / listening to the audiobook of “Number Go Up” by Zeke Foux. To be honest, I was more interested in the Michael Lewis book on FTX but it’s been getting hammered in the reviews, and I heard a good interview with Zeke so I went with his.
I re-read 300 Arguments by Sarah Manguso. I’ll collect a few of her quotes and post them. So good. I love novels/books/essays like that.
Picked up “Wanting” by Luke Burgis and I’ve read a few chapters. It’s about the idea of mimetic desire, or essentially wanting things because other people want them. Yes, you have to fight that to be content as a mediocre success. More on this one to come as I get further in.
Finished “The Very Last Interview” by David Shields. I generally like David Shields and how he tries different things even if they’re hard to categorize. For this book, he went through all of his interviews and only pulled out the questions asked to him, sans the answers. The fun is trying to guess what David’s answers were while gaining small hints about his life. Good experiment. I’m interested in reading his book called “Remote” from the 1990s which is about celebrity.
Last Thing
“‘Classic’ – a book which people praise and don’t read.” — Mark Twain
Keep going,
-Josh Spilker