What a document, and statement, from Darwin: “I think.” From “The Notebook: A History of Thinking on Paper” by Roland Allen.

From the delicious new hardback “The Look of the Book: Jackets, Covers, and Art at the Edges of Literature” by Peter Mendelsund and David J. Alworth: Announcing the text and creating a conduit between imaginary and real space are two key tasks of the book cover. They are what the book cover does, …

Monocle’s new-issue promos are exceptional examples of how to use photos + VO to produce compelling video.

Lovely, gentle new album from Clem Snide: “Oh Smokey.”

“Jesse Eisenberg Has a Few Questions” — An excellent interview at The New Yorker’s website. I can still remember seeing him for the first time in “Roger Dodger” in the early 2000s. A committed, inquisitive art-maker.

From “Our Strange New Way of Witnessing Natural Disasters,” by Brooke Jarvis in the NYT: Suddenly, some experience that previously seemed distant or impossible becomes something we’ve watched happen — not with distance or solemnity on the evening news, but mixed into the jumble of images of …

From Ta-Nehisi Coates’s “The Message,” which I just finished: Great canons angle toward great power, and the great privilege of great power is an incuriosity about those who lack it.

“The Zone of Interest” was an astonishing film. How it shows what it chooses to show; the sounds we hear of what it chooses not to show — it’s just an incredible work of art made with deep sensitivity by everyone involved. If you’ve already seen it, I recommend this Vanity Fair interview …

Just finished a quick read of “Character Limit: How Elon Musk Destroyed Twitter,” by Kate Conger and Ryan Mac. A single sentence from the final third, describing yet another moment of chaos and spite, revealed something larger about the repugnant title character’s worldview: “And yet, Musk enjoyed …

From “I. M. Pei: Life Is Architecture,” a beautifully designed new volume by Shirley Surya and Aric Chen, a story of insistence driving invention: Wary of the greenish tint characteristic of commercially available glass, Pei insisted on using a completely clear alternative for the Louvre’s …

Happened to read this passage from “The Diaries of Franz Kafka” about 10 minutes after checking in with my Day One app and reviewing the (unsunny) “On this day” diary entries I’d left on other October firsts one, seven, and eleven years ago. Grateful for that space.

Excellent recent interviews with Ta-Nehisi Coates by Jon Stewart and Terry Gross. Have ordered “The Message” and can’t wait to start reading.

New Poems from Carl Phillips: Spent a lovely few weeks making my way, intentionally slowly, through Carl Phillips’s new book of poetry, “Scattered Snows, to the North”. A huge fan of his sensitive, fluid-with-pauses work. A few lines I was especially struck by (though reading the original in print, with line breaks, is …

“Muse retrospective” — Though I wasn’t a committed user of the Muse app, I used to enjoy listening to the intelligent podcast put out by the team. Here, and I’m late to this, Muse’s Adam Wiggins offers a perceptive, considered look back at the ups and downs of building a new “tool for thought.”

Toni Morrison, in a 1975 lecture, quoted by Ketanji Brown Jackson in her new memoir, “Lovely One”, which I’m reading now: The function, the very serious function of racism … is distraction. It keeps you explaining, over and over again, your reason for being. Somebody says you have no language and …

“Studio Culture Now”: Paging back through the Kickstarter-backed “Studio Culture Now” from Unit Editions and realized I neglected to note it here. It’s an enjoyable volume featuring indie design studio heads talking shop. A few themes: There’s freedom in staying small. Having a nice workspace is a plus, but too much …

“On Cancer and Desire”, by Annie Ernaux: A superb and probing piece of writing, with accompanying photographs.

“Phoenix Is a Vision of America’s Future”: A typically sweeping and sensitively observed George Packer cover story for The Atlantic.

Tina Brown: “America needs editing.” : What pure pleasure this book was to read: The Vanity Fair Dairies: 1983 - 1992 by Tina Brown. I love on-the-job memoirs/journals, especially anything rooted in the editorial world. The entries are zippy, yet considered — a decade of moments jotted down after whirlwind days. Brown’s a sharp observer …

From How Design Makes Us Think, by Sean Adams: Film director Billy Wilder enjoyed daily naps limited to fifteen minutes. Friends Charles and Ray Eames designed a chaise lounge for Wilder to assist with the fifteen-minute rule. The chaise has a narrow profile. If Wilder began to sleep longer, his …

Low, “The Plan” (Can I hold it?): This rich new New Yorker piece on Alan Sparkhawk — about the death of his late wife and Low partner Mimi Parker and the music he’s been making since — sent me back to band’s incomparable catalogue. There was a stretch of months in 2003 when I’d started a new writing job at the Saint Louis Art …

Good timing from the NYT — I’ve been wondering about the story behind the day-improving @artbutmakeitsports account. (No, he doesn’t use AI.) In the spirit of doubles, his work brings me back to reading Lawrence Weschler’s wonderful “Everything That Rises: A Book of Convergences” 15 years ago.

Year in Review: 2023: Continuing a 23-year tradition of rounding up cultural highlights from the past 12 months, here’s a recap for 2023: 15 Books I Especially Loved This Year An Additional Batch I Enjoyed (That first hard-to-ID book is “Pentagram: Living By Design," which I had to scramble to procure …

“The Lost Voice,” a new two-minute short film from Apple, directed by Taika Waititi. A richly told story about a single, powerful accessibility feature.

Interrogating Privilege: From Nick McDonell’s new book “Quiet Street: On American Privilege”: Such skills arose not from any extraordinary talent or discipline but from the enormous resources invested in each child. And though I have here emphasized traditionally highbrow skills, we were groomed to be comfortable at every …

Fantastic, instructive book: “Scaling People: Tactics for Management and Company Building," by Claire Hughes Johnson. She’s a real-deal practitioner, and many of these lessons trace back to her infrastructural work at Stripe, which she helped grow. The book’s focus is on the …

Prompted by this Jarrett Fuller post, I scooped up and quickly read “Two-Dimensional Man: A Graphic Memoir” by Paul Sahre. Funny, poignant at times — a great read for any creator. The memoir includes a good deal of striking work shown between prose pages, including several book covers I’ve long …

“‘My Body Is a Clock’: The Private Life of Chronic Care,” a moving and arresting photo series + essay by Sara J. Winston: Every 28 days, I point the camera toward myself to document my illness and care. I have used my time as a patient in the infusion suite, a place where I sometimes feel …

One of the best books I’ve read this year: “The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer," by Siddhartha Mukherjee. What an immensely impressive person: a first-class physician-scientist who’s also an exceptional storyteller with a deeply literary sensibility.

In love with just about every one of these Janet Hansen-designed book covers.

Cormac McCarthy, RIP: After learning that Cormac McCarthy had died, I went back to my squiggled-up copy of “Suttree,” which of all his novels is the one that moved me most. I first read it in the fall of 2002, right after being whalloped by “Blood Meridian,” and it’s never left me. Here’s the title character, assessing …

“A. G. Sulzberger on the Battles Within and Against the New York Times”: I was very impressed with Sulzberger during this extended conversation with David Remnick. Brought to mind the scenes in the Ben Smith book noted below, in which the NYT transforms from an org that appears to seek advice from …

I found a good amount of Ben Smith’s briskly paced new book “Traffic: Genius, Rivalry, and Delusion in the Billion-Dollar Race to Go Viral” disheartening, in considering the vast amount of energy often bright (not always cynical) people were putting into voraciously attracting and retaining eyeballs …

I feel behind not having heard of the Gartner Hype Cycle, which charts the rise, fall, and settling-in adoption of emerging technologies. One of the hosts of the “People vs. Algorithms” podcast referred to it in a recent conversation about ChatGPT. Seems apt. We might be getting closer …

Our little group paused in front of “Woman in Blue Reading a Letter,” and it was so beautiful that my heart almost stopped. The paint keeps to a narrow range of hues: The wall is off-white with blue undertones; the large map of the regions of Holland and West Friesland is light brown with a hint of …

“A Korean American connects her past and future through photography”: A lovely first-person piece by Arin Yoon, published by NPR. Beautiful work.

“What business are you in?”: I recently finished and enjoyed Frank Rose’s “The Sea We Swim In: How Stories Work in a Data-Driven World,” which focuses on the power of narrative, particularly for brands. There’s a nice collection of what might be called ancillary brand communications initiatives, including MyJohnDeere, described …

Fantastic interview on the Time Sensitive podcast with a writer I admire: “Jelani Cobb on 50 Years of Hip-Hop and the Future of Journalism.”

I have a few minor quibbles with Cormac McCarthy’s recent sharp and memorable novel “Stella Maris”, but listening to the audio version — two characters in dialogue throughout — was the ideal way to take it in.

Thought-provoking piece by Ted Chiang: “Will A.I. Become the New McKinsey?”

We modern-day humans tend to exaggerate our differences. The results of such exaggerations are often catastrophic. — From “The Dawn of Everything,” by David Graeber and David Wengrow

“The New New Reading Environment” — A sharp survey from the editors at n+1.

“How Much Does ‘Nothing’ Weigh?” — A fantastic, strikingly photographed feature in Scientific American. The experiment aiming to measure the void of empty space will be conducted in an abandoned mine in Sardinia.

In Esquire, “Behind the Scenes of Barack Obama’s Reading Lists”: The question of how the most powerful man on the planet found time to read Fates and Furies amid major world events like the Arab Spring and the killing of Osama bin Laden is a perfectly valid reason for skepticism—the guy was and is …

Sometimes Copilot will be right, other times usefully wrong — but it will always put you further ahead. From Microsoft’s announcement for Copilot, an (impressive-looking) AI assistant for M365. “Usefully wrong.” Such a striking phrase, so confidently delivered.

We Will Not Be Entertained Enough: From Megan Garber’s astute, unsettling cover essay in the current issue of The Atlantic, “We’re Already in the Metaverse: Reality is blurred. Boredom is intolerabe. And everything is entertainment”: Dwell in this environment long enough, and it becomes difficult to process the facts of the world …

From “Super-Infinite,” Katherine Rundell’s new book on John Donne that’s got all kinds of verve: He wanted to wear his wit like a knife in his shoe.

“Pentagram: Living by Design,” the exquisite-looking 50-year history of the iconic design studio, has landed at my house. Published by United Editions. Can’t wait.

Favorite new TV show find of the year: “Slow Horses,” streaming on Apple TV+. Great characters and acting, absorbing plot, good humor. After downing seasons 1 and 2, I’m excited to hear there are more to come.

At Fast Company, a look at what Frank Lloyd Wright’s unbuilt designs would look like today. The Illinois is quite something.

Rick Rubin, talking with Tyler Cowen, gets to the heart of what we lose as streaming music fans: I’ll say the most difficult thing about it now is that all of it has a disposability that it didn’t have before. In the old days, you would buy a piece of music, you would own it, and you would be …

“After Yang” was a beautiful, sensitive, and contemplative movie. Quiet, unrushed. The characters' world is strikingly, confidently created — of the future, but earthy, calm. Written and directed by Kogonada, whose “Columbus” I also loved. He’s got a singular vision and …

At Brand New, a new logo and identity for Catskill Art Space designed by Athletics. Lovely.

ChatGPT: BS FTW?: Speaking of ChatGPT, the recent “Ezra Klein Show” episode with A.I. expert Gary Marcus was insightful. This seems concerning: Klein: And what unnerved me a bit about ChatGPT was the sense that we are going to drive the cost of bullshit to zero when we have not driven the cost of truthful or …

Media keeps falling in love with technology and finding out it’s a really bad boyfriend. Super hot, but it just takes your money. From “The Death of the Link," the latest episode of “The People vs. Algorithms” podcast. Some good discussion on ChatGPT and how it may impact media. (That …

“A Tweet Before Dying”: Paul Ford, perceptive and funny and deep yet again, writing in Wired. Here he is on stepping away from his social stream to dive into curious PDFs unearthed from decades past: But the seeking is important, too; people should explore, not simply feed.

In the NYT, "‘Snow Fall’ at 10." I can clearly remember when this immersive multimedia piece came out — discussing it with my agency colleagues, trying to figure out how we could get clients on board.

Speaking of year-end traditions, I enjoyed this 2022 retrospective episode of the “Conversations with Tyler” podcast. A lot of podcasts have a year-end episode of curated guest segments, but here Cowen and one of his producers have an entertaining chat about surprising or memorable …

Since 2000, I’ve been publishing a kind of year in review — mainly cultural highlights from the prior 12 months, along with a few personal notes. Here’s my post for 2022.

Julie Blackmon and Convergences: In the mid–2000s, I was completely taken by the book “Everything That Rises: A Book of Convergences,” written by Lawrence Weschler and beautifully published by McSweeney’s. Weschler surfaced “strange connections” between images and wrote about them intriguingly. I still think of the book when I come …

“The Power Broker”: Book-wise, I will remember 2022 as the year I read (and listened to) Robert Caro’s massive and magisterial (and long-lauded) biography of Robert Moses, “The Power Broker,” first published in 1974. It’s not just the scale and depth of the research, but the skill with which Caro builds sentences and …

Franklin Foer writing after today’s incredible World Cup final: “The Lionel Messi Guide to Living”. Sharp contrast drawn vs. Ronaldo.

Astute, probing, and personal: A recent Sally Rooney address on “Ulysses,” published on The Paris Review’s website.

Rewatched Andrei Tarkovsky’s “Mirror,” a dozen years after first seeing it. Some unforgettable moments, meditative and life-enriching.

“The E-Mail Newsletter for the Mogul Set”: Fascinating NewYorker.com piece on Puck, the new digital media brand that impressed me enough — strong brand out of the gate, intriguing framework — to count me among its paying subscribers.

Elegant and welcoming: Picnic, a new piece of office furniture inviting collaboration, designed by +Halle.

Nice detail from Emily Heyward’s “Obsessed: Building a Brand People Love from Day One”, which I enjoyed: When her Red Antler agency helped develop a brand for home essentials company Snowe, the team photographed the line of pillows — soft, medium, and firm — with a potted plant atop each one, to …

Learned today in the NYT that there is an active “unofficial Tumblr historian” who is no longer on Tumblr, and who is also 22.

It took several days — and a few sections floated past me without comprehension — but what a treat it was to take in Matt Levine’s 40,000-word feature “The Crypto Story”, which took up an entire recent issue of Bloomberg Businessweek. Liked this bit: Crypto, in its origins, was about abandoning the …

Everything is brand now, and everything is storytelling now…. People want to know more about these things [that a company is doing]… There’s more interest about the story behind things than ever. And brands have the means to be able to connect that to audiences directly, both in their consumer …

Thanksgiving with the Incandenzas: Revisiting an oldie from David Foster Wallace’s magnificent novel “Infinite Jest”: At Joelle’s first interface with the whole sad family unit – Thanksgiving, Headmaster’s House, E.T.A., straight up Comm. Ave in Enfield – Orin’s Moms Mrs. Incandenza (‘Please do call me Avril, Joelle’) …

Knoll: Our Work’s Worth Waiting For: Charming and savvy detail from Ana Araujo’s new book on the work of Florence Knoll, “No Compromise”: In 1964, the company Knoll released this letter it says it received from one of its textile suppliers, running it as a print ad (one assumes full-page): Dear Sir, Thank you for your letter of the …

Since Michael Bierut stepped away from co-hosting the DBBD podcast, I’ve been missing audio access to his insights and opinions. I was excited to learn tonight of a new 90-minute+ interview with Bierut on the Time Sensitive Podcast. Eager to dig in. (Relatedly, I was bummed to have juuust missed the …

Nice detail from the recent WSJ profile on Jony Ive, about his move from Apple to the creative collective LoveFrom: One of the first employees hired by Ive was a full-time writer. (There are now more than 30 employees, many of whom worked with him at Apple.) Ive says LoveFrom is the only creative …

In The New Yorker, Margaret Talbot explores the “melancholy grandeur” of Weyes Blood, my favorite new find of last year.

A 1975 entry from Anne Truitt’s “Daybook: The Journal of an Artist”: For years and years I was baffled by Cézanne’s work. I grasped his principles and pored over the way he constructed his paintings and thought and thought about what he must have experienced to be able to put color down so …

Ezra Klein talks with George Saunders: Saunders just nails the sudden inner-life, world-expanding improvements that reading good fiction can provide.

What a match: Remnick on Dylan.

So sad to learn that Mimi Parker has died. I’ve spent 1,000+ hours over two decades gratefully listening to Low and Parker’s exquisite, ethereal voice. Here’s “The Plan,” from the masterpiece “The Curtain Hits the Cast”:

Memorable paragraph from Glenn Adamson’s “Fewer, Better Things: The Hidden Wisdom of Objects”: Interestingly, young people do seem to realize that they are missing out on something. My brother’s family lives in Munich, but last summer they came to see me in New York. During their visit, I noticed …

For the generation that has listened to music only in earbuds, intimacy is the new punk rock. Bono, speaking generally but also of Billie Eilish specifically, in an engaging NYT Magazine interview.

Agency work, without the ta-da: While there may be a scenario where this approach isn’t ideal, I appreciated these quotes (respectively) from Highdive’s co-founders and co-chief creative officers Chad Brodie and Mark Gross, published in the current CommArts: [Chief marketing officers] like to work with us because we’re very …

I’m just catching up with Björk’s podcast, Sonic Symobolism. One album per episode. Unsurprisngly, it’s excellent. On a few walks today I listened to a deep dive into the lush and intimate “Vespertine”, which she made after acquiring her first personal laptop. Loved …

Content in Flight: I said Wow out loud while listening to this epic media move via The Rebooting Show podcast: The new owners of the 95-year-old publisher Flying are building a 1,500-acre air park to center itself in the lives of its pilot-readers. They’ve already pre-sold $27 million worth of property. Not bad for an …

This passage from a NYT article about LinkedIn and oversharing reads like it could have come from a novel: “I had a post that went absolutely viral on LinkedIn,” said the influencer, who uses the name Natalie Rose in her work. The post, a crying selfie with a caption about anxiety and the …

“Directed by James Burrows: Five Decades of Stories from the Legendary Director of Taxi, Cheers, Frasier, Will & Grace, and More” — Really enjoyed James Burrows’s memoir slash advice book on comedic storytelling. So much to learn from the crackling, short-sentence dialogue sprinkled throughout. …

The US Open with Sagi Haviv — A Change Of Brand: An enjoyable episode of what’s become one of my favorite podcasts. Interesting to hear how confidently (and, ultimately, triumphantly) the experienced Haviv answered a prospective client’s unreasonable request.

A bravura passage of science history from Bill Bryson’s “A Short History of Nearly Everything”: If you imagine the 4.5 billion odd years of Earth’s history compressed into a normal earthly day, then life begins very early, about 4 A.M., with the rise of the first simple, single-celled …

A Beethoven mic drop, as chronicled in Stuart Isacoff’s new book, “Musical Revolutions”: The fiery Beethoven fared better in 1800 against challenger Daniel Steibelt (1765–1823), a man known for depicting storms at the keyboard by means of broad tremolos (quivering chordal effects executed with a …

“Knowing Wink”: Being a decade-long Monocle subscriber and a fan of exploring how agencies document their work, I was happy to get my hands on Knowing Wink, first published in 2018 by Winkreative, the media org’s sister agency. Turns out it was as easy as sending them a nice email and asking how I could order …

In his concise and incisive book What Tech Calls Thinking, Adrian Daub examines and punctures a range of tech proclamations and tropes that many of us have just gotten used to hearing in recent decades. That may sound sober, but it was an engaging read. Here’s Daub — a Stanford professor who’s …

Venice: I’d been told I’d be wow’d by Venice, and I was. The light, the water — everyone was right. The textures, the weathered colors. Everything snug. The dimensions of every view. Already, just two weeks home, I’m thinking of how and when we can return.

There’s such a world in this poem: “An Ordinary Morning”, by Joy Harjo.

Creativity, Not Chaos: Really enjoyed Rethink the Business of Creativity by Ian Grais, Tom Shepansky, and Chris Staples, of Canada-based Rethink agency. Smart, crisply written guidance on how to lead a profitable, good-hearted creative organization. Especially valued these lines on the conditions for valuable work: …

Enjoyed the new book “Build” by Tony Fadell, of Apple and Nest. He’s got strong, proven points of view on management (“Being exacting and expecting great work is not micromanagement”), communication (“Honesty is more important than style”), the importance of having a beginner’s mindset when tackling …

"What's Good: Notes on Rap and Language”: What a supremely fine and lovingly crafted book this was. Astute, admiring, and entertaining scrutiny of decades of rap lyrics. Huge kudos to author Daniel Levin Becker. A few especially great passages I drew circles around in my copy: I will go to my grave wishing my self-conscious rhetorical …

“An Ode to Hotel Rooms” — Terrific studied riff by James Parker for The Atlantic, in which he explores that “sense of your self-in-waiting”: The old gravity asserts itself, the old you-ness; you spread out your things, you build your shrines, you start making your little traditional messes. You …

“Why the Past 10 Years of American Life Have Been Uniquely Stupid” — Jonathan Haidt’s bleak, incisive essay in The Atlantic about social media and society. (Interestingly, the print piece I read in my issue this evening has the less clickbaity headline “After Babel.” Was that replaced because …

Favorite recent podcast find: The Rebooting show from Brian Morrison, who was president and EIC at Digiday Media. Informed, in-depth conversations about media and publishing, from start-ups to the HBRs of the world.

BxW

Continue to be highly impressed with Puck. In such a short time, they’ve established an upper-tier, intelligent, vibrant brand, one where the sum and the parts (elite writers heading up the various sections) coexist so nicely. Seems likely I’ll be another one of the readers willing to pony up $100 a …

Still impressed with this luxury mattress company’s choice of positioning: Let’s not lead with sleep — let’s lead with what it leads to.

A Few Recent Movies: I was very impressed with “The Lost Daughter,” based on the Elena Ferrante novel, streaming on Netflix. An absorbing, assured, sensitive directorial debut from Maggie Gyllenhaal. Incisive comments here from her about how the material’s meant to expand the spectrum of the parental behavior we …

I was knocked out by Teju Cole’s Blind Spot in 2017. Just finished Black Paper: Writing in a Dark Time, and it’ll surely be a highlight of 2022. Sensitive, probing essays about humanity and the humanities. Such a privilege to be in his close-looking company. 📚

Year in Review: 2021: Since 2000, I’ve had a year-end tradition of sharing my cultural highlights of the past 12 months. For this year’s post, I’ll first note the major life change I had in 2021. After eight years leading comms and marketing for the nonprofit conservancy Forest Park Forever, I re-entered the agency world …

Enjoyable read — indie design studio heads talking shop in “Studio Culture Now”. A few common themes: There’s freedom in staying small; having a nice workspace is a plus, but too much overhead’s a crusher; your design output matters, but so do process, leadership & owning your POV; social posts …

From my Christmas wish list to under the tree: Self-Reliance. That “I” is just perfection. Designed by Jessica Helfand and Jarrett Fuller. 📚

Finished The Morning Star by Karl Ove Knausgaard. Did not hit the heights for me of My Struggle, bit there’s always something special about being inside his sentences. I found myself losing some interest 70% of the way through, then was absorbed completely in that final section. 📚

Smart thoughts here from Benedict Evans: “Notes on newsletters.”

Compelling reading this holiday: A Civic Thanksgiving - by James Fallows.

Enjoyed The Chancellor by Kati Marton. Qualities vital to Merkel’s rise and 16-year tenure: endurance, humility, steeliness, patience, calm. (She once described herself, as she stood next to the high-energy, publicity-seeking Sarkozy, as an “energy-conserving lamp.”) 📚

How to write an engaging, smart e-newsletter opener, by the editorial team at Massive Science: For the past few years at Massive, we’ve tried to avoid a gee-whiz attitude towards scientific discovery. It’s a little * flips open dictionary * reductive, shrinking complex stories into neat …

Learned of comedic writer Simon Rich on Conan O’Brien’s terrific podcast and picked up his new book, New Teeth. The opening story, about two pirates coming to care for a stowaway baby, was just perfect. Here’s a version on The New Yorker’s website. 📚

Nice line from Kelefa Sanneh’s “Major Labels”: Unlike many virtuosos, Eddie Van Halen had a knack for making virtuosity seem like a good time, and all the early Van Halen albums sound as if they were recorded at house parties, with the party noise somehow edited out.

“Fewer have more”: This phrase and passage from Cullen Murphy’s April Atlantic essay, “No, Really, Are We Rome?”, have stuck with me: But resilience does not prevent calamity. And being blindsided in slow motion is the hardest fate to avoid. The historian Ramsay MacMullen once distilled the long arc of the Roman …

“Invisible does not mean uninterested.” — Jim McKelvy in his smart, highly readable book “The Innovation Stack," on finding previously ignored markets (as he and Jack Dorsey did with Square)

“Astronomers take the position—an incidentally ethical one—of knowing.” — Rivka Galchen in The New Yorker, on the James Webb Space Telescope

Enjoyed and was impressed by Jim McKelvey’s “The Innovation Stack." I expected the smarts, but it’s also consistently funny. Great pacing, light on its feet. The STL connections are an added bonus.

Jeff Tweedy’s new Substack newsletter, Starship Casual, is unsuprisingly great — at turns goofy and thoughtful, just like his books and interviews. Today’s post, “Heart of Glass (Rememories 5), was especially memorable. He’s a slyly penetrating artist.

“Theodicy,” by Nick Laird. What a phenonomal poem, with a vivid, piercing close.

Year in Review: 2020: *Sylvie, sipping through a backyard quarantine concert by a friend and SLSO musician* Year 20 of my annual cultural-recap tradition was quite something. Thus far my family’s had good fortune amid the global pandemic, so we’re spending most of our time feeling grateful, yet exhausted, then grateful, …

Latest rave: the new Aleksandar Hemon book, "My Parents: An Introduction / This Does Not Belong to You." Moving, funny. You get the sense Hemon has thought deeply about the moments he puts to paper.

Weeknotes #02: Odds and ends from the past few weeks: What a fun treat to see Forbes spotlight ListenForestPark.org, an audio microsite my team launched a few years ago as a side project. It’s found a new audience these days. Finished “Devs” on Hulu. Dug the style and performances; so-so on the ultimate substance. …

Weeknotes #01: Borrowing the structure of a few other online writers whose websites I enjoy (Paul Robert Lloyd and Mark Boulton, among others), I thought I’d start weekly low-key look-backs on the week, bullet list-style. Perhaps weekly is aspirational. We’ll see. Greatly enjoyed Emily Nussbaum’s long New Yorker …

Toni Morrison's Exquisite Nonfiction: I just finished Toni Morrison’s The Source of Self-Regard: Selected Essays, Speeches, and Meditations (2019), and every few pages or so, I thought to myself: it’s rare I’m taking in prose this rhythmically perfect, this deeply intelligent. From “Peril” (2008): How bleak, unlivable, insufferable …

Playing Haley Heynderickx: Thanks to a chance moment listening to KDHX in the car, I’ve now had Haley Heynderickx on repeat — especially her record “I Need to Start a Garden,” and especially the song “Oom Sha La La.” Looked it up, and sure enough, there’s a Tiny Desk concert in the books as well, with that tune kicking …

How Basecamp Communicates: Thoughtful and clear series of internal communications principles from the (distributed) team at Basecamp, which strives to be a calm, intelligent and profitable company. Loved #6 especially: Writing solidifies, chat dissolves. Substantial decisions start and end with an exchange of complete …

Anne Enright: “The Gathering”: Dimly, I had never read a word of Anne Enright’s before recently hearing her recommended by Stephen Metcalf on the Slate Culture Gabfest. Based on my gobbling up of The Gathering, I’ve been missing a lot. The prose was utterly controlled and evocative, with surprising, perfect dichotomies …

“The weather is no longer small talk”: Ayana Elizabeth Johnson speaks with Ezra Klein about climate change and the oceans.

Charles and Ray, Designers From the Near Future: Loved this passage from Sam Jacob’s essay “Context as Destiny: The Eameses from Californian Dreams to the Californiafication of Everywhere,” published in the satisfyingly chunky The World of Charles and Ray Eames (2016): For architects and designers like [Peter and Alison Smithson, who were …

Tweedy + The Beasties: Two relatively new music books I enjoyed this summer: Jeff Tweedy’s Let’s Go (So We Can Get Back:) A Memoir of Recording and Discording with Wilco, Etc. (honest, often funny; really enjoyed the sections about his sons) and the bluntly titled Beastie Boys Book (their mischief has been carried over to …

I was impressed and moved by Ocean Vuong’s debut novel, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous. Poetic, searching, deeply affecting. Highly recommended. Related reading/listening: Jia Tolentino in The New Yorker; Kat Chow in The Atlantic; and this Politics & Prose conversation with the author …

Paul Ford's Latest: Any new Paul Ford piece is a must-read for me. No one else I know of writes about technology with such a combination of literary style and wit and hands-on knowledge. (Once the Web Editor of Harper’s, he’s now the CEO of the digital product studio Postlight.) Here’s the opening to Ford’s latest …

Jia Tolentino: “Ecstasy”: One of the finest personal essays I’ve read in years — poetic, precise, expertly set up and brought to a close.

Three episodes into Decomposed, a fabulous new podcast about classical music hosted by Jade Simmons. Loving the storytelling, Simmons’ narrative style and the use of music throughout.

George Packer on Richard Holbrooke: Packer’s recent cover story for The Atlantic — “Elegy for the American Century” — is an exceptional piece of longform reporting and vivid narration. Excerpted from his new book, Our Man: Richard Holbrooke and the End of the American Century.

Teju Cole on Embedding Hesitation: Really enjoyed this substantive recent conversation on Krista Tippett’s “On Being” podcast. At one point, Tippett quotes Cole’s Blind Spot, one of my favorite books from the last few years: “To look is to see only a fraction of what one is looking at. Even in the most vigilant eye, there is a blind …

Remnick on Buddy Guy and the Blues: While not personally a blues guy, I loved every paragraph of David Remnick’s terrific New Yorker feature exploring Buddy Guy’s long career, the change of blues’s place in culture and what the future holds, if anything, for the genre as Guy’s been playing it. Toward the end of the piece, Remnick …

Recommended 🎧: The new Lomelda record, “M for Empathy”, 11 songs and just 16 minutes long. Unlike anything else I’ve heard.

Finished “What We Lose," the debut novel from Zinzi Clemmons about a young woman living through the death of her mother. It’s been a while since I’ve seen a debut with four-plus pages of major press kudos at the start — good for Clemmons. I was not as thoroughly wow’d as …

We binged “Russian Doll”. Absorbing and original. Killer soundtrack. Streaming on Netflix.

Liked this this quote/pic posted by a company I really enjoy following online.

Favorite song of the year so far: “Dylan Thomas” on the Bridgers/Oberst combo record (Spotify).

Crib crasher

Finished and really enjoyed the BBC’s recent four-part “Howards End” adaptation. Streaming on Prime.

Dana Goodyear: “Blurred Lines” — Fantastically interesting and smartly plotted New Yorker profile of filmmaker Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck and his new Gerhard Richter-related project.

Enjoyed this Kara Swisher interview with executive recruiter James Citrin, who’s working at the highest levels of tech and media.

Basecamp's Public Post-Mortem: In an episode of the company’s “Rework” podcast, Basecamp staff look back on their five-hour outrage in November. Savvy framing of one of the company’s worst days.

Terry Theise on "a Fine Kind of Melancholy": From the wine importer’s crisply written and life-philosophy-framing book Reading Between the Wines, a favorite of mine from last year: Such wines are not easy to find. We drink them just a few times in our lives. But we never forget them, or the places they lead us to. A few weeks before writing …

Craig Mod on the Future of Books: Thoughtful piece at Wired from someone who’s been thinking and writing about this subject for quite some time: “We have arrived to the once imagined Future Book in piecemeal truths.”

Ta-Nehisi Coates on the Essential Role of Great Editors: At the close of Coates’ recent interview with Chris Hayes, the host asks him if he’s working on a new book. The dodge Coates gives, not wanting to discuss a project-in-process, ends up being a terrific toast to the necessity of sharp, tough early readers and editors: I do, I do have a writing …

“Will Oldham: Unmasked” — For GQ, Alex Pappademas gets unusual access to one of my favorite songwriters.

New Knausgaard Interview @ NewYorker.com: From a substantive new interview with Joshua Rothman: I had felt for many, many years that the form of the novel, as I used it, created a distance from life. When I started to write about myself, that distance disappeared. If you write about your life, as it is to yourself, every mundane detail is …

"Succession": Finished season one. Stopped midway through, for its sourness, then continued through the finale. Moneyed, nasty fun that leaves a lousy aftertaste. Great performances. Nicholas Braun as Cousin Greg steals every scene he’s in.

Late thanks to EQ for having me on as a guest on the Bourbon Friday Show. Enjoyed talking about Forest Park and Forest Park Forever.

“Maybe the ocean is nothing / except the sound of being born.” — From Ben Purkert’s poem “News”

“A Black Rear Extension Was Added To A 1960’s Brick House In Sydney“ — Stellar and surprising.

Forest Young on The Design of Business, The Business is Design — Terrific interview with this Wolff Olins designer. Fun to hear some self-deprecating stories from his getting-started years.

“How I Built This” on Betterment — I’ve been impressed with this offering in recent years and enjoyed this conversation with its young CEO.

In The Atlantic, Nathaniel Rich on “William Vollmann’s Brutal Book About Climate Change”. Sounds fascinating and utterly Vollmann.

Link of the day: the International Institute of St. Louis. Grateful it exists. Proud to support it.

Finished season one of “Succession." Stopped midway through, for its sourness, then continued through the finale. Moneyed, nasty fun that leaves a lousy aftertaste. Great performances. Nicholas Braun as Cousin Greg steals every scene he’s in.

“A man’s work is nothing but this slow trek to rediscover, through the detours of art, those two or three great and simple images in whose presence his heart first opened.” Hadn’t seen this Camus quote before. (It appropriately closed a new profile on Sam Mendes in TNY.)

“Losing Earth: The Decade We Almost Stopped Climate Change”: Nathanial Rich’s whole-issue article in the NYT Magazine. I read it in one punch-in-the-gut gulp on a car trip unusually free of kids and other responsibilities. Can’t recommend it more highly.

Our house suddenly feels warmer with the recent arrival of this 1963 Wurlitzer Spinet. Props to the kind folks at [http://www.jacksonpianos.com](Jackson Pianos).

Wearing Mama’s black jacket for warmth, Leo turned curator, leading the way.

Connected

Paul Ford on Microsoft Buying GitHub: From the piece: That’s how code happens in 2018. The process used to be the sort of thing people did in slow and ad hoc ways, a few times a year, and only after a lot of infighting over email. Now the same process might happen 10 times a day, and the infighting is right there in the pull requests. …

Four Recent Pieces on Parenthood: On this Father's Day, here are four terrific recent pieces I've been lucky to come across — two very short essays, two short poems — that capture this part of life so well:  "Mum's the Word," by Rivka Galchen"What is Possible," by Mohsin Hamid "To White Noise," by Carrie Fountain"Poem …

Leadership St. Louis 2018-19: I'm honored and grateful to have been selected to be part of the 2018-19 class of Leadership St. Louis. Here's how FOCUS St. Louis describes the program: Leadership St. Louis is a highly respected program for established and emerging leaders who have demonstrated a deep commitment to improving the …

More Great Listening: Batuman & Sow: The Longform Podcast's new episode with Elif Batuman is fantastic. I've enjoyed her writing for a few years, and in this interview you can just feel her thinking deeply about literature and writing and gender and observing in cities around the world and much more. As interviewer Max Linsky tweeted …

Lucky Podcast: "The Choice": I don't think I've ever been more moved by an audio story than I was listening to this two-part podcast episode called "The Choice":  In April of 1992, Nada Rothbart was living happily in Sarajevo, Bosnia, with her husband and two young sons–till the night the Bosnian Civil War broke out on the …

Michael Chabon on Being a Writer + Parent: In an essay for GQ, he provides a decades-later response to an esteemed literary figure’s advice not to have kids, if he wanted a serious career as a writer. The piece closes: And those four “lost” novels predicted by the great man’s theory all those years ago? If I had followed the …

Mona Hatoum’s “Hair Necklace,” shown in a slide from her packed-house talk today @pulitzerarts.

Aleksandar Hemon on “Katastrofa”: A superb and insightful essay on language and family. 

Cultural Notes: February 2018: Continuing for month two of this recent effort to note the cultural intake of the prior month:  Read Medardo Rosso: Experiments in Light and Form, Pulitzer Arts Foundation — (Disclosure: Married to a contributor) (A)Yes!: 50 Scientifically Proven Ways to Be Persuasive, Noah J. …

Cultural Notes: January 2018: With a nod to Kottke's monthly "Media Diet" posts, I'm experimenting this year with short monthly recaps of interesting things I've read, watched or listened to. (This is as much for myself, as noting what I took in can help me better recall it.) Read Paula Scher: Works — Terrific, from …

Abbott Miller on the "Content-Based Studio": From the intelligent and beautifully made monograph Abbott Miller: Design and Content, which I devoured in early January, here is the designer/writer talking about the firm Design Writing Research, which he co-founded with Ellen Lupton:   During this time [perhaps mid-1990s], DWR moved …

Year in Review: 2017: Continuing a 17-year tradition, I’m happy to share my Annual Favorites list for the year 2017: Family Let’s start with the best thing that happened to my family this year, which is the arrival of Sylvia Huremović Schenkenberg in late April. We’re still smiling at her the way Leo …

SLAM’s impressive German collection has this effect on a lot of visitors

Discussing Gass on St. Louis Public Radio: I was honored to join Lorin Cuoco last week on Don Marsh’s “St. Louis on the Air” to discuss the life and work of William H. Gass. The audio is embedded in the station’s obituary. 

On Meeting & Knowing William Gass: I wrote this piece, “Words of William H. Gass touched readers around the globe," for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. It was published this past Sunday. (The anecdote at the beginning — which in a way launched my relationship with Gass — almost didn’t happen. I went to that literary …

William H. Gass, Rest in Peace: A great fortune of my life has been to know this once-in-a-generation writer and be transformed by his work. At ReadingGass.org, I’ve begun sharing the many memorials coming in, including the St. Louis Post-Dispatch obituary, which includes a few comments from me. I send my deepest condolences …

Family fun in KC. Thanks for joining us, @fourletter — and for the 📷!

Tim Carmody on Bill Callahan: With this terrific Kottke.org guest post — “Bill Callahan, the only sad man worth loving” — Carmody had me immediately returning to the handful of albums I own. (As Carmody points out, Callahan’s not on Spotify, my own daily streaming service: “This means his legacy risks …

George Saunders on Monocle 24: A does-the-heart-and-mind-good interview with Georgina Godwin.

When Lapham Played Beethoven for Monk: Thanks to a surprise purchase by my wife, I’ve been enjoying the new issue of Lapham’s Quarterly, which takes music as its cover-to-cover subject. I’ve enjoyed reading Lapham for years, but hadn’t known that he’d studied piano as a youth, or that he’d spent time …

Karl Ove Knausgaard Walks Central Park: For The New Yorker Radio Hour, Joshua Rothman walks Central Park with one of my favorite living writers. I especially loved this bit, which comes after Knausgaard is asked about the differences between the way children and adults go through their days: I have four children, and maybe when I spend a …

Nick Paumgarten Profiles St. Vincent: Following his exceptional profile of Father John Misty, Paumgarten goes deep with the intriguing, shrewd and self-aware St. Vincent:  When she listens to a playback, she often buries her head in her arms, as though she can hardly bear to hear herself, but, really, it’s just her way of listening …

STL Public Radio Remembers Agnes Wilcox: I was very sad to learn about the sudden death of a woman I was lucky enough to know while serving on the Prison Performing Arts Board. Agnes opened many eyes, including mine. She prized art, championed underdogs, fostered resilience, brought joy. Hers was a world-improving life.

Teju Cole in Words & Pictures: I loved every minute I spent with this beautiful, poetic, searching, confident book.

Fascinating, entertaining profile of Father John Misty in The New Yorker.

Lethem on Knausgaard: "My Hero": After discovering this short appreciation in a Jonathan Lethem essay collection on bookish things, I just read it aloud to my wife, who'd been curious about why I've been so utterly taken by this series and increasingly hungry for each subsequent volume. Lethem nailed it ("Knausgaard's approach is …

Gregory Crewdson: : I can still remember encountering Crewdson’s work for the first time in The New York Times Magazine more than a decade ago. Original, absorbing and haunting. Today’s “Monocle Weekly” interview with him had me heading to his website, which alerted me to this documentary. 

Demo of Low’s “Will the Night.". Among the most beautiful three minutes of music I know. 

An inspiring New Yoker profile of Steidl by Rebecca Mead.

"A Father's Final Odyssey": A special piece by Daniel Mendelsohn about Homer's epic, his father and a journey they took together.

Song Exploder: Where have I been to miss this marvelous podcast for its first 101 episodes? Hrishikesh Hirway interviews musicians and asks them to break down a single song, which we hear in bits … and bits … and then in its entirety. It’s a fantastic idea executed with great polish, …

Remembering Robert Silvers: What a rich life to have lived, at the helm of the New York Review of Books, to have these warm, admiring, vivid remembrances follow your passing: An array of writers at the NYBOOKS blogAn array of writers at Newyorker.comAdam Gopnik at Newyorker.com One of his longtime assistants at …

Jack White's World: Insightful and entertaining New Yorker profile by Alec Wilkinson. I can still vividly recall seeing the White Stripes at The Pageant in 2002, a blazing tricolor duo that owned that room from start to finish. 

Exit West: What a time for this deeply affecting Mohsin Hamid novel to appear. Here’s Jia Tolentino on The New Yorker’s website: The novel feels immediately canonical, so firm and unerring is Hamid’s understanding of our time and its most pressing questions. Whom are we prepared to leave behind in …

Hilton Als on “Moonlight”: Finally saw this extraordinary movie, piercing and tender and unforgettable. Catching up on some interesting pieces about it, including this one.

Upcoming Talk: "Refreshing the Forest Park Forever Brand": I'm pleased to be speaking to the St. Louis chapter of the International Association of Business Communicators on February 23 about the refreshed messaging and identity platform my team introduced for Forest Park Forever in 2015.

"Home and Away: Writing the Beautiful Game": I've really been missing new Knausgaard material, as I've been waiting for the next translation... and suddenly I saw this new book being reviewed. Grabbed it from the library and gobbled it up in a few nights. Knausgaard and fellow writer Fredrik Ekelund exchange emails during the most recent …

A Country Richer For It: I have endless gratitude for and pride in the America that welcomed refugees I would be lucky enough to get to know and love, with my wife and her parents at the top of the list.

Anil Dash w/ Krista Tippett: Intelligent, upbeat conversation about how Dash is working toward a more humane engagement with technology.

Loved this World Book Club episode, with informed and curious readers asking Karl Ove Knausgaard about one of my favorite works of literature in several years. We shouldn’t be surprised that he’s a thoughtful and candid interviewee.

Jason Fried: "Restoring Sanity to the Office": I'm such a believer in how Fried and his Basecamp colleagues position themselves for productive work. (Also great: this blog post about how the team made decisions about what Basecamp can solve and chooses not to solve.)

Michael Bierut on Honesty, Taste & Intelligence: I loved this book: a visually rich and smartly narrated collection of case studies exploring all parts of creative communications (logos, naming, typography, photography, illustration, messaging, client presentations…). Bierut is an intelligent thinker and a terrific, crisp writer (beyond his …

Enjoyed this short essay by Elif Batuman: “How to Be a Stoic."

Alan Burdick on Time: From "The Secret Life of Time," published in The New Yorker: Years ago, long before I had children or was even married, a friend with children said, “The thing about having kids is that after a while you forget what it was like before you had them.” The idea was shocking. Busy enough with my own …

The William H. Gass Symposium: In September of this year, I was honored to be part of “The William H. Gass Symposium: International Writing” at Washington University in St. Louis. I joined Lorin Cuoco, who co-founded the International Writers Center with Gass in 1990 and was its associate director until 2001, in giving some …

Studio Gang to STL: Exciting news here in St. Louis: Studio Gang-designed residential tower to go up just east of Forest Park. Love knowing the architect from this 2014 New Yorker profile I enjoyed will be enriching my home city.

James Wood: “Lessons From My Mother”: Lovely essay.

Knausgaard & Zadie: [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FvvjWhFlV38?feature=oembed&enablejsapi=1&origin=https://safe.txmblr.com&wmode=opaque&w=500&h=281] Yes, please. 

“Fractured Lands”: An extraordinary, deeply affecting single-article issue of The New York Times Magazine. Unforgettable.

Roz Chast's Deeply Poignant Memoir: I’ve long chuckled at Roz Chast’s cartoons in The New Yorker. This graphic memoir, the first such book I’ve read, was so much more than a chuckle: funny, yes — but direct, deeply poignant, sharply observant. It’s hard to think about someone more perfectly born and raised to write (and draw) one …

The Refugee Nation: The official flag for The Refugee Nation, a team of ten refugees currently competing in the Rio Olympics, draws its colour scheme and design from lifejackets. Designed by Syrian artist and refugee Yara Said, the flag is a vivid orange with a single black stripe. Learn more about this beautiful …

Tadao Ando: The Idea of a Center: From Michael Auping’s Seven Interviews with Tadao Ando: The idea of a center is an interesting one, and one that is more of a Western concept. Roland Barthes made a comment on visiting Japan that it is a country that doesn’t seem to have a center; great depth, but no center. I think I …

Listenforestpark.org: Fun audio project our Forest Park Forever team launched this summer.

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“The Monocle Guide to Cozy Homes”: Really enjoyed this book, which eschews icy, spacious luxury and celebrates lived-in warmth and often modest SQF. The choices on the first few pages (shown below) are representative of the book’s distinct point of view. (That kitchen towel is telling.) <div class=" image-block-outer-wrapper …

Paul Kalanithi Writes To His Daughter: From his extraordinary book, When Breath Becomes Air: When you come to one of the many moments in life where you must give an account of yourself, provide a ledger of what you have been, and done, and meant to the world, do not, I pray, discount that you filled a dying man’s days with a sated …

"Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl": Really enjoyed Carrie Brownstein’s impressive, observant, terrifically titled memoir. 

Silverblatt & Knausgaard: Having just finished book three of Karl Ove Knausgaard’s My Struggle (I enjoyed the first two more, though this volume’s still captivating), I was eager to listen to both part one and part two of the author’s interviews on Michael Silverblatt’s “Bookworm.” It’s great listening. These insights from …

Year in Review: 2015: Continuing a15-year tradition (though one that’s gotten briefer with age and fatherhood), here’s a roundup of some of my favorite things experienced during the past 12 months: Books My Brilliant Friend, Elena Ferrante Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay, Elena Ferrante The Story of a New Name, Elena …

My Bubba: [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uzzVdi3HOfU?feature=oembed&enablejsapi=1&origin=https://safe.txmblr.com&wmode=opaque&w=500&h=281] My Bubba — great discovery for me via NPR Tiny Desk Concerts.

David Remnick on "CBS Sunday Morning": He continues to be near the top of my list of working professionals I admire. 

Adam Gopnik: "Practicing Doubt, Redrawing Faith": Terrific “On Being” conversation. 

"Status Update" — This American Life: The first segment on high school freshman and Instagram (“’Relevance’ is a big term right now…. In middle school, we were definitely really relevant… ”) is a pretty incredible window.

Ta-Nehisi Coates on Longform: Two of my favorites.

Ida: A film with gorgeous black and white shots from start to finish.

"I Was a Refugee": Veneta Rizvic, writing in the St. Louis Business Journal.

"Unfollow" — Conversion Via Twitter: Incredible story.

A Eulogy for Rdio: I’ve been a happy subscriber and many-hours-a-day listener for years. Bummed they couldn’t make it work.

Kjartansson in Central Park: Watching Ragnar Kjartansson’s “S.S. Hangover,” part of “Drifting in Daylight: Art in Central Park” from Creative Time.

Year in Review: 2014: Back before Tamara and I had our son in the summer of 2013, I used to keep regular lists of my “Annual Favorites” of the year — the best books, movies, TV shows, podcasts, exhibitions and so on that I’d consumed that year. To say my rate of cultural digestion changed with fatherhood would be an …

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"In Prison, Preparing for Home": In my first post on Medium, I write briefly about attending a performance of Prison Performing Arts, whose Board I’m on.

"On Becoming a Father": A lovely short essay by Alexis C. Madrigal. 

Life News: I'm Joining Forest Park Forever: This is an exciting week for me: I’m joining the staff of Forest Park Forever as the organization’s Strategic Communications Director. For those unfamiliar with St. Louis, Forest Park is my hometown’s larger-than-Central-Park gem that’s home to the Saint Louis Art Museum, the Saint Louis Zoo, the …

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Seamus Heaney: 1939 – 2013: Sad news: The great Irish poet Seamus Heaney has died at age 74.  When I was a freshman in college in the early 1990s, I was fortunate enough to take an upper-level English class with Dr. Ed Duffy, who dedicated a few months of the semester just to Heaney’s work. It was a remarkable immersion, …

The Unauthorized Marissa Mayer Biography: 22,000 words. A very interesting read.

Ramón Lobo Interviews David Remnick: From the lengthy Q&A: Coming back to the first topic of our conversation, how can we convince people that Internet is not enough to be informed? I don’t agree with you. I think the Internet is just a tool, a means of distribution. And it’s a radically more efficient means of distribution than …

My Father-in-Law, Profiled: “Artist’s wire trees free the mind, shape the future,” written by Doug Moore and published in this past Sunday’s St. Louis Post-Dispatch. With some nice photos to boot. To view (and buy?) his work, visit H-Omer.com.

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Q&A: GE Managing Editor Tomas Kellner: From this interesting interview at The Content Strategist: GE is one of the brands out there that’s done content really well. Do you think that’s because the topics are inherently interesting, or is it an internal attitude that allows the content to shine? What do you think? What GE does is …

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"Content Over Keywords" (or, SSO over SEO): I wrote this post for the TOKY blog.

The TOKY Friday Review: Today I published the second in a new series on the TOKY Blog — notable highlights from what the firm’s been reading, watching, and talking about.

"The Social Media Editor is Dead": At BuzzFeed, Rob Fishman on the widening out of this once-distinct role.

Bezos and the Six-Page Meeting Narrative: A Fortune profile on Jeff Bezos reveals how Amazon’s senior-executive team presents, consumes, and prepares to discuss plans and information: Meetings of his “S-team” of senior executives begin with participants quietly absorbing the written word. Specifically, before any discussion begins, members …

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On Launching The TOKY Research Library: A new post I wrote on the TOKY Blog.

Robert Silvers: Toward a "New Form of Criticism": At New York Magazine, the great journalist Mark Danner talks at length with The New York Review of Books’ Robert Silvers. Here’s one bit about online publishing and social media, which strikes me not as fuddy-duddy, but very considered: To tweet or not to tweet. And not to tweet is to …

CoDesign on Editorially: Excited to try this new online writing and editing environment, built by a few all-stars. 

Hemon: "The Book of My Lives": I’ve written before of the penetrating, often funny essays of Aleksandar Hemon, the Bosnian writer who, fortunately for us, calls Chicago home. His new collection, The Book of My Lives, is terrific, whether the subject is gravely serious (war, illness) or much more fun (pick-up soccer with a …

FT and the "Finite Read": From Folio’s “FT Relaunches Web App”: One of the biggest changes is offering readers both a static version of the morning paper along with a dynamically updated version that automatically updates throughout the day. “The big learning for us with the first app is how important the concept of a finite …

Reading William Gass: Lots going on at my other blog, perhaps most notably Cynthia Ozick’s review of Middle C, which carried the cover of the Sunday New York Times Book Review.

Karen Green: "Bough Down": BOMB offers an extraordinary excerpt from Bough Down, a volume by artist Karen Green, who is also David Foster Wallace’s widow: September again and I take your parents to the lighthouse, I do. There is nothing but September fog to cover our shame, and your father laughs just like you, at the …

Kevin Ashton: "Creative People Say No": Enjoyed this piece, especially Ashton’s quoting of composer George Ligeti's secretary, writing to a requester of some kind: He is creative and, because of this, totally overworked. Therefore, the very reason you wish to study his creative process is also the reason why he (unfortunately) does not …

Remnick: "A Scandal at the Bolshoi Ballet": Continually impressed by David Remnick, who, between serving as the bloody EIC of The New Yorker, has time not just to bust out whip-smart blog posts on Obama in Israel and Philip Roth, but to pen 11,000-word, richly reported pieces on, say, the Russian ballet. Here’s a characteristically wonderful …

"More commas, please": At McSweeney’s, Teddy Wayne’s “Feedback From James Joyce’s Submission of Ulysses to His Creative Writing Workshop.”

"William H. Gass: How I Write": Fun interview in The Daily Beast. Happily surprised to see my name pop up.

Stirring to John Ashbery: In this New Yorker podcast, the great Jane Mayer talks about food, kitchens, and using evening cooking time to let her mind relax and repair amid heavy reporting assignments:  Certain things were good to stir with, and certain things were not good to stir with … Certain poetry. I used to stir …

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Jason Fried on a Reader's Motivation:  Customers come to learn something, research something, consider something, buy something. If they are motivated, they may not mind spending 5 minutes reading. They want to read, they want to know. They’re OK investing their time to find something out if they really care about the answer.

The Ecosystem Known As Reading: Andrew Piper, writing in Book Was There: Reading in Electronic Times: Books will always be there. That is what they are by definition: there. Whether in the classroom, the library, the archive, the bookstore, the warehouse, or online, it is our choice, however, where books will be. It is time …

The Risks of Rereading: I really like this bit from Katherine Boo, taken from her interview for the New York Times Book Review’s “By the Book” series: I was working my butt off trying to investigate the violent deaths of some homeless children, under circumstances that had been covered up by the police, when I reached the …

Asimov: Why Wine: From Eric Asimov’s How to Love Wine, which I quite enjoyed: To assert that tasting notes amount to an “intellectual dissection” of a wine is to ignore the fact that the more specific the description of flavors and aromas, the less one is actually saying about a wine and what it has to offer. People …

Remnick: "Scenes from the Inauguration": Not content with being The New Yorker’s EIC, David Remnick remains — even in “a few thoughts” blog post sent from a returning train — one of its sharpest writers.

Yep, Retailers Can Have Editors-in-Chief: The Independent profiles Jeremy Langmead, the former editor of Wallpaper* and Esquire. For a little over two years, Langmead has been editor-in-chief of Mr Porter, the men’s fashion division of Net-a-Porter. It now produces a weekly online magazine, The Journal, in addition to a 40-page print …

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"How Tide Detergent Became a Drug Currency": A fascinating New York Magazine piece on an out-of-nowhere topic. Floral scents, for their part, have been known to evoke strong feelings of maternal love and kinship. (Home visits by Saatchi researchers have found that very ardent Tide fans sometimes carry bottles as if cradling a baby.)

"The sirens had hoarse throats": From William H. Gass’ forthcoming novel, Middle C: Joey … rails ran across France then, rails ran through the mountain passes and through tunnels into and out of the mountains, rails ran along the Mur, through forests of fir trees, because the war was over, the sirens had hoarse …

Virginia Woolf, Observing: A passage of exceptional precision in The Diary of Virginia Woolf, Vol. 1: On Sunday Lytton came to tea. I was alone, for L. went to Margaret. I enjoyed it very much. He is one of the most supple of our friends; I don’t mean passionate or masterful or original, but the person whose mind seems …

The Dish's Readers: At The Atlantic, Conor Friedersdorf recalls his days working for Team Sullivan: At The Daily Dish, I once asked readers in advance of a road trip across The South what I should see. I didn’t just get hundreds of suggestions; I didn’t just get extended essays on the geography, sociology, and …

TOKY's 2012 Annual Report: This was a fun piece to work on.

Year in Review: 2012: The Frank Lloyd Wright house in Ebsworth Park, which we visited in February This post is part of my “Annual Favorites” list I’ve been keeping for the past decade-plus. Favorite Books (Goodreads profile) The German Genius, by Peter Watson (choice passages) Journey to the Abyss: The Diaries of Count …

A recent work from my father-in-law, whose sculptures can be purchased here.

"Stories at Home, Contributions Away": I wrote this post — about content trends in 2012 — for the TOKY blog.

Towards the Gass Interviews....: I’m still at work editing The Ear’s Mouth Must Move: The Essential Interviews of William H. Gass. While I’d love for this to be published in a gloriously beautiful print version, I haven’t yet found an interested publisher. So it’s likely that, as with Abstractions Arrive, I will publish it myself …

Craig Mod: "Subcompact Publishing": An important and insightful essay. I hope Mod writes a part two that looks a bit more at how exactly (to continue his metaphor) the small vehicles would get made. Related: Mod’s round-up of coverage of his essay. This Jim Ray piece from the Mule blog isn’t on there, but I think …

Andrew Piper on E-Reading: The subtitle of this Slate piece is way too glib, but the essay from Piper — a literature professor at McGill — is worth reading. Thoughtful and thought-provoking. It’s excerpted from Piper’s book, Book Was There: Reading in Electronic Times.

Two Minutes On Video: A sliver of self promotion, as I link to a brief video portrait of me made by Greg Kiger and his Once Films crew for a series of TOKY portraits. You can watch the segments on my friends and colleagues Jay, Geoff, and Katy on the TOKY blog.

An Airborne "Abstractions Arrive": Have to say I like Lee Rice Epstein’s photo of the iBook, which he captioned this way on Twitter: “Gass + Eastman via @Schenkenberg at cruising altitude.” Glad you’re liking it, Lee!

"Small Presses & Self-Publishers: Enemies? Or Half-Siblings?": Interesting piece by Sean Bishop in the VQR blog. (And yes, I agree with this sentiment, and not just for literary publishers, but other groups in the arts: “There is still a contingent of presses and publishers who bristle at the idea of ‘branding,’ 'marketing’ and the lot. …

Evan Osnos: "Boss Rail": An exceptional piece of reporting in The New Yorker.

Steven Holl on Museum Architecture: From a profile of the architect in ArtNews’ 09/12 issue: There’s the neutral white box. We see that, if you take that too far, it sucks the light out of art. Then there’s the super-expressionist building by the signature architect. But if you take that too far, it totally squashes …

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"In Silicon Valley, Perks Now Begin at Home": Interesting piece about perks geared toward whole-life realities and peace of mind.

Chris Mills on Kickstarter: The other day, I tweeted some frustration about the news that a world-famous film director had turned to Kickstarter to fund a new project. Yesterday, I learned that one of my favorite (but maybe not yet financially set-for-life) singer-songwriters, Chris Mills, had too. That’s more like it. …

Monocle 24 Turns One: A short film about the radio station’s first year. Can’t say I’ve ever connected with the music they play, but I enjoy subscribing to a handful of podcasts, with The Stack, Section D, and The Entrepreneurs at the top of the list. 

"Drunk With Power": In the New York Times Magazine, an in-depth look at Jon Rimmerman’s $30-million-a-year wine-selling business. It’s a tale of “vivid stories” being told through “idiosyncratic e-mails.” Wine + content strategy = article made for me.

"The Self-Destruction of the 1 Percent": Interesting historical perspective from Chrystia Freeland, writing in the Times: The story of Venice’s rise and fall is told by the scholars Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson, in their book “Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty,” as an illustration of their thesis that …

Marco's "The Magazine": Really looking forward to checking out this new iOS magazine from Marco Arment. From his announcement: But just as the App Store has given software developers a great new option for accepting direct payment, Newsstand has given publishers an even bigger opportunity with subscription billing and …

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Kessler Continued: On Rilke, His Lips & War: Following up on my previous post about this extraordinary 900-page book — I finished it last night — here are a few more remarkable passages around which I drew my customary lines, stars, and exclamation marks: Paris, February 1905: With [Théodore] Duret to Mademoiselle Courbet, Courbet’s sister. …

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"50 Books/50 Covers" Winners for 2011: Some beauties in this annual competition, which is put on by Design Observer, AIGA, and Designers & Books. 

David Carr on Atlantic Media's David G. Bradley: From the NYT profile: What is the way forward for a 155-year old-magazine that once published Emerson and Longfellow? Digital first and last, with ancillary revenue from conferences. The magazine, edited by James Bennet, is still very much in the middle of the conversation, but these days it is …

"Lessons For Building A Tablet Magazine That's Actually Worth Using": From Co.Design: The New Yorker has seen success with its relatively straightforward digital edition, but there’s nothing that really differentiates it from the print version, except maybe that it’ll save you the embarrassment of having a tower of unread issues on your nightstand. Aside from …

Zadie Smith Profiles Jay-Z: Two of my favorites. At one point, Smith introduces another lyrical gem (“I got watches I ain’t seen in months / Apartment at the Trump I only slept in once”), then rebuts a likely critique: But asking why rappers always talk about their stuff is like asking why Milton is forever listing the …

Popping Up in the New York Times: Hey, there’s The New York Times covering Abstractions Arrive! The piece, written by David Streitfeld, includes a new interview with Gass about books and technology. Thanks for the nod, Paper of Record!

The Pussy Riot Closing Statements: Remarkable and brave. And here’s David Remnick, who spent years living in and covering Russia, on the scandal. His post includes video of Tolokonnikova reading her statement.

Reporting on NMPS 2012: At the TOKY Blog, I offer five key take-aways from attending the National Museum Publishing Seminar last June.

MATCHBOOK. bikinis meet their match: “Clever matches between bathing suits and books." Great idea.

“The Gass Sentences: A Top 50”: Today is William Gass’ 88th birthday. For the Big Other website, John Madera asked some writers, readers, and publishers to name their own “literary pillars,” as a tribute to Gass and his “50 Literary Pillars” project from the early 1990s. After being invited to …

"First of all, we don't publish slideshows": Great email from BuzzFeed CEO Jonah Peretti to his troops about why the site’s succeeding right now.

@KimKierkegaard:  KimKierkegaardashian: The philosophy of Søren Kierkegaard mashed with the tweets and observations of Kim Kardashian. Genius. 

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[vimeo 45784128 w=500 h=281] Reblogging myself from a new microsite for Abstractions Arrive: On a Saturday morning in July 2012, the esteemed writer and internationally collected artist spoke about the release of Abstractions Arrive: Having Been There All the Time. The video was made by Stephen …

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Discussing "J R": At Open Letters Monthly, Greg Gerke and Gabriel Blackwell have a long and interesting discussion about William Gaddis’ masterful novel.

n+1: Euro Cup 2012: Dushko Petrovich, both wrapping up the tournament so far and previewing today’s final, offers this sketch of Mario Balotelli: As a civilian, he is outlandish. Last year, his white Maserati was impounded twenty-seven times, accumulating £10,000 worth of parking tickets. He also accidentally set his …

Atul Gawande on the ACA Ruling: From the surgeon/writer’s impressive Daily Comment for The New Yorker: The major social advances of the past three centuries have required widening our sphere of moral inclusion.

"Study Reveals Dolphins Lack Capacity To Mock Celebrity Culture": This gem could have been a headline-only piece, but The Onion goes the full nine: Even when presented with softballs like production stills from The Proposal, the marine animals exhibited no discernable reaction.

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"Triple Canopy Launches Sarajevo Residency": Art in America reports on this very interesting project: On June 21, Brooklyn-based online magazine Triple Canopy will begin a two-week residency called Perfect Strangers, in Sarajevo. While in the Bosnian capital, where several of the country’s national cultural institutions were closed earlier …

Len Gutkin on "J R": I love seeing meaty new pieces on William Gaddis’ J R, which has just been released by Dalkey and remains one of the best novels I’ve ever read. Describing the book in one paragraph is tough, but Gutkin, [writing for Bookforum](https://www.bookforum.com/culture/-9277), does pretty well: J R follows …

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The Wire: An Oral History: Odd that it’s in Maxim, but I would have read it anywhere.

"The World’s First and Only Completely Honest Résumé of a Graphic Designer": A gem by Marco Kaye at McSweeney’s:  In my portfolio, you will see that unproduced package redesign for Squirtburst, inspired by kinetic typography popular in the West Coast concert posters of the 1960’s. In this designer’s opinion, it creates a visual appeal unprecedented in the beverage …

David Grann: "The Yankee Comandante": An incredibly absorbing 26-page article by David Grann about William Alexander Morgan and the Cuban Revolution. (This follows “A Murder Foretold,” Grann’s equally extraordinary piece for The New Yorker that ran last year at this time.) 

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Craig Mod: "Hack the Cover": As ever, Mod offers smart, forward-looking thoughts on books and publishing. His central question: [I]f so much of what book cover design has evolved into is largely a brick-and-mortar marketing tool, then what place does a ‘cover’ hold in digital books? Especially after you purchase it? But, more …

Tamara Looking at Art: clear"> <div class="slide"> <div class="margin-wrapper"> <a class="image-slide-anchor content-fill"> <img src="http://sschenkenberg.files.wordpress.com/2012/05/400be-tumblr_m4nd4tphxt1qaqkgvo1_1280.jpg" alt="Art Institute of …

"Not His Riches, But Ours": A member of the Wallace-L listserv posted this Pascal quote this morning, commenting (insightfully) on how it brings to mind many statements DFW made about reading and indeed love: When a natural discourse paints a passion or an effect, one feels within oneself the truth of what one reads, which was …

"A Different Puff Than Yours": Barack Obama, writing in his early twenties with confidence and style to girlfriend Genevieve Cook, as published in Vanity Fair: Moments trip gently along over here. Snow caps the bushes in unexpected ways, birds shoot and spin like balls of sound. My feet hum over the dry walks. A storm smoothes …

"Dilemma Protests": From “Protesters in Moscow Try New Tactics to Avoid Arrests,” in the NYT: The evolving tactics in Moscow are not novel. In a primer on nonviolent protest, “Sharp’s Dictionary of Power and Struggle,” Gene Sharp, an American intellectual, described a “dilemma protest” as a performance of an action so …

Gary Wills: "The Myth About Marriage": The Catholic writer, in a post at the New York Review of Books blog: Those who do not want to let gay partners have the sacredness of sacramental marriage are relying on a Scholastic fiction of the thirteenth century to play with people’s lives, as the church has done ever since the time of Aquinas. …

"Postscript: Adam Yauch": Terrific piece by Sasha Frere-Jones at The New Yorker’s website. Yauch’s transition from celebrated youthful knucklehead to enlightened (and hugely productive) grown-up was admirable. I can still remember listening to “Licensed to Ill” in 1987 for the first time, on a tape my …

Michael Silverblatt Interviews William H. Gass: The Bookworm host has previously referred to Gass as “our greatest living writer of prose in America.” Here, he calls him "one of my true living heroes.” Speaking of admiration, I love this interview bit from Gass about Henry James: James’ world is not to be found anywhere in the world. It’s too …

Paul Ford on Facebook and Instagram: At NYMag.com: First, to understand this deal it’s important to understand Facebook. Unfortunately everything about Facebook defies logic. In terms of user experience (insider jargon: “UX”), Facebook is like an NYPD police van crashing into an IKEA, forever — a chaotic mess of products designed to …

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3R1Eb92HfbQ?feature=oembed&enablejsapi=1&origin=https://safe.txmblr.com&wmode=opaque&w=500&h=281] Great new addition to YouTube: William Gass reads from The Tunnel and discusses literature and philosophy. Recorded at The Village Voice …

Skepticism in Montaigne's Day: A surprising and interesting passage from Sarah Bakewell’s How To Live: Or a Life of Montaigne in One Question  and Twenty Attempts at an Answer, which I’m reading now: There was only one exception to [Montaigne’s] “question everything” rule: he was careful to state that he considered his …

Craig Mod on Building an App (and a Book): As thoughtful and personal as his previous pieces. 

"Good Things About Twitter": I was actually in the early stages of writing a post about this same subject — that, contrary to what intelligent people like Jonathan Franzen and Tyler Brûlé have been saying or implying about Twitter (which they don’t use, and therefore don’t really know), it’s often not a …

Dwight Garner: "The Way We Read Now": Great piece in The New York Times, with clear-eyed (and entertaining) commentary from a writer and book critic about how technology has improved his reading life. This bit comes from his section on the smartphone: Keep an audio book or two on your iPhone. Periodically I take the largest of my …

Ezra Klein: "The Unpersuaded": A fascinating New Yorker piece — subtitled “Who listens to a President?” — about the limits, and even potential drawbacks, of even the most finely shaped rhetoric amid our two-party system.

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"Which Cover Would You Choose?": A behind-the-scenes post about how The New York Times Magazine chooses its covers (which are exceptional).

"Radiohead’s Runaway Guitarist": Great profile of Jonny Greenwood in today’s New York Times Magazine. Greenwood’s soundtrack for “There Will Be Blood” has been a favorite of mine on Rdio for the past year.

Joe Pollack Has Died: The hard-working, well-known, and friendly St. Louis dining, theater, and movie critic died Friday at age 81. The Post-Dipatch has an appropriately detailed obituary, and my friend George Mahe has a very nice post at his Relish blog, noting that Joe was at work the night before on five — five — …

"Tony Judt: A Final Victory": By Jennifer Homans, Judt’s widow, and published in The New York Review of Books. Lovely and sad.

"Instapaper Placebo": Brilliant.

Radiolab: Escape!: I can’t say enough about this episode of Radiolab: We kick things off with a true escape artist — a man who’s broken out of jail more times than anyone alive. We try to figure out why he keeps running… and whether he will ever stop. Then, the ingeniously simple question that led Isaac Newton to an …

H-Omer Design Featured on the Goodsie Blog: Hey, that’s my father-in-law. Well done, Omer!

The Ryan Lizza Diet: Part of The Atlantic’s “What I Read” series, which I’m always interested in. Two notable bits: His props for Twitter as the go-to, pre-any-kind-of-publication morning media spot (he’s taken to it in a big way) and his description of Newsweek as “very …

Mandy Brown: : Really like this post: Iteration in public is a principle of nearly all good product design; you release a version, then see how people use it, then revise and release again. With tangible products (hardware, furniture, appliances, etc.), that release cycle is long, just as with books. But when the …

Aleksander Hemon: "National Subjects": Another very good (and very dispiriting) non-fiction piece from the Bosnian-American writer, published in Guernica’s January 2012 issue.

5 Highlights from Germany & Spain: My post for the “Artful Travels” series at the TOKY Blog.

Tim Parks Defends E-Books: At the New York Review of Books blog, a refreshingly contrarian post: The e-book, by eliminating all variations in the appearance and weight of the material object we hold in our hand and by discouraging anything but our focus on where we are in the sequence of words (the page once read disappears, …

Steve Coll Remembers Anthony Shadid: At newyorker.com: When he came to the Washington Post about a decade ago to serve as a correspondent, I was working as an editor at the paper. I asked a standard job-interview question about his goals in the years ahead, and he provided one of the most striking, emphatic answers I can recall from …

John Gruber on Mountain Lion: Apple’s next OS — highly informed by iOS — introduced to Gruber in a private briefing by Phil Schiller himself.

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Harper's: "What happened in Vegas": An entertaining exchange, which the magazine introduces this way: From The Lifespan of a Fact, by writer John D’Agata and Jim Fingal, published in February 2012 by W. W. Norton. In 2005, as an intern at The Believer, Fingal began fact-checking D’Agata’s article on the 2002 suicide of Las Vegas …

This American Life: "Alien Experiment": Jack Hitt explores Alabama’s immigration bill, HB56. Great segment. 

David Carr: "At BuzzFeed, the Significant and the Silly": From this NYT look at the evolving Buzzfeed: As the consumer Web has matured, readers have become minipublishers, using social media platforms to share information they think will entertain and enlighten their friends. No longer is it just about so-called sticky content that keeps readers around, or …

Evgeny Morozov: "The Death of the Cyberflâneur": An interesting piece published in today’s NYT: As the popular technology blogger Robert Scoble explained in a recent post defending frictionless sharing, “The new world is you just open up Facebook and everything you care about will be streaming down the screen.” This is the very stance that is …

Dahlia Lithwick: "Colbert v. the Court": A sharp summing up. It’s interesting to learn that Justice Kennedy’s majority opinion stated, presciently, that “fiction and caricature can be a powerful force.”

Building a Mind Created in Words: Two passages, among many, that struck me in William H. Gass’ wonderful new essay collection Life Sentences: Literary Judgements and Accounts: From “The Literary Miracle”: Emerson’s essays build the mind that thinks them. It is that mind that is the miracle that interests me. Did he think the thinker …

Nicholas Carr: "Why publishers should give away ebooks": Kind of.  Readers today are forced to choose between buying a physical book or an ebook, but a lot of them would really like to have both on hand - so they’d be able, for instance, to curl up with the print edition while at home (and keep it on their shelves) but also be able to load the ebook …

Franzen on Books, E-Books, and Permanence: Jonathan Franzen, regretting the rise (and, it seems, existence) of e-books:   Someone worked really hard to make the language just right, just the way they wanted it. They were so sure of it that they printed it in ink, on paper. A screen always feels like we could delete that, change …

Emily Nussbaum on "Downton Abbey": Really liking Nussbaum’s work in her new role as The New Yorker’s TV critic: Like “Luck,” “Downton Abbey” arrives wrapped in the shiny foil of cachet TV (PBS, WWI, tea and corsets!). But the British series, about the aristocratic Crawley family and their titular home, goes down so easily that it’s a …