Tag: What I’m Reading
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August 1, 2026 GO BRI! Updated Brianna’s page on The Phoenix Desertsong that has actually gotten her calls! Buying a House in Erie PA? Call Brianna Virgils! … “The Story of My Life” is the introductory post to my “The Unmasking of a Phoenix” collected works series I’m posting on Substack. Also, yes, I did…
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This is one of the best books I’ve read in a long time, and certainly the best on economics. I thought Morgan Housel’s book was good, but this one went so much deeper and more in depth about the real problems facing our world. And I agree with about 95 percent of what she says,…
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I became intimately familiar with Whitney Hanson’s poetry recently, thanks to an Instagram reel I was shown by the Algorithm. I IMMEDIATELY pre-ordered her newest poetry book “the love of my life” and it arrived on the evening of its release day, July 7th, 2026. It showed up while I was taking a much needed…
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This poem by Sav Brown is absolute fire: how i make you feel is who i am – savannah brown … Preach, Anthony, preach! Seriously, this interview confused me in many places at the time it came out. And I have nothing against sombr (neither does Anthony) but what Taylor is saying is utter bullshit.…
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… Emily asked me to share this, so I did. Really important topic, actually: Being a Queer Girl Isn’t Something You Decide. AI needs to stay out of ripping off music! And music adjacent. And just content in general. We are all just training shit… Anthony Fantano, I totally agree with you. … Sav has…
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As familiar as I am with the concept of the Trumpet of the Swan I never actually read it before May 2023. The Library of Congress summary: Louis, a voiceless trumpeter swan, finds himself far from his wilderness home when he determines to communicate by learning to play a stolen trumpet. The book opens in…
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Concerning the viewing habits of one oddball Vermont citizen in the timespan that is regarded by the commonly adopted calendar as June the 9th, 2026. in defense of gathering by Anna Howard (Won’t let me embed. Fair enough, YouTube.) The ‘Wild Geese’ podcast just keeps getting better. Anna said something amazing. She has a theory of…
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I never finished reading this book and I don’t think I even have my copy anymore. But I feel these quotes are worth sharing for further perusal. On Absurdity: “… as Albert Camus observed, we humans are creatures who spend our lives trying to convince ourselves that our existence is not absurd.” I gave up…
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The book comes with high praise from Anna Howard from Wild Geese. It opens with a lot of praise, too. And that always makes me skeptical, how pushed this book is. But I already like that one of them used the term ‘relationshipping’ over networking. That is a good sign. The quote that opens the…
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If you missed part one… you can find it here at Barnes and Noble: rescuegirl557.com/darkhorse You can find Volume 2 here on B&N: rescuegirl557.com/darkhorse2 This is the second volume of my wife Emily Slatin’s autobiographical essay series. I’ll be taking notes on this book just like any other. I will return to cover part one…
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I will finish this book at some point this year, hopefully. There’s just so much here and I’ve been in a terrible reading slump. I’ve gotten so much from just the introduction, written by Michael C Fisher. “A man of letters knows only a little about some major human concerns, but insists on relating what…
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Fun fact. I actually searched for the unabridged version of this book. Apparently I missed the joke at first… got me there. The inside of the book jacket starts with this: “Despite our clever linguistic abilities, humans are spectacularly ill-equipped to comprehend what’s happening in the universe. Our senses and intuition routinely mislead us.” And…
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John Koenig starts his 2021 book with a Steven Wright quote (the comedian not the knuckleball pitcher) The book is divided into six sections, likely how I will study this book is to give an overview of each facet of the human experience underrepresented by our common vocabulary: Koenig notes that these words he’s coined…
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The introduction goes into the math of if we celebrated Christmas every day. It’s obviously meant to be tongue-in-cheek. If I were in a better mood, I’d probably be chuckling. The part about how much room it would take to have free range turkeys for turkey dinners everyday was actually pretty hysterical, though. It goes…
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I’ve read four books by Rob Sheffield. Two were excellent (“Turn Around Bright Eyes” about Karaoke and “Love is a Mix Tape” about, well, mixtapes), one was OK (On Bowie), and the one on Taylor Swift (Heartbreak is the National Anthem) was honestly mediocre. I have some notes on Heartbreak is the National Anthem live…
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From “Poetry and History” This is brilliant: “…it is not the poet’s function to describe what has actually happened, but the kinds of thing that might happen, that is, that could happen because they are, in the circumstances, either probable or necessary.” He continues, “The difference is that the one [history] tells of what has…
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I remember reading this before and it’s still so true. Here’s what literary agent Noah Lukeman says about an MFA program in creative writing. “Take the $35-50K you’re going to spend ont he degree, buy yourself a good laptop and printer and a bundle of paper, and go off to a cabin and write. At…
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The introduction is called “Surviving Usefulness” which is a fascinating title. It begins with this great quote: “Redemption preserves itself in a small crack in a small crack in the continuum of catastrophe.” – Walter Benjamin The whole first paragraph is excellent. I’d copy down the whole thing, because I have things to say every…
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Great essay by Anu Atluru on the concept of “Franchise Thinking.” Atulru writes: “Franchise thinking is the tendency to fit everything into ideas that already have names, audiences, and tribal alignment rather than to look for new ones.” The big bold point in this essay: “Too many people are making something already known more known…
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Henry David Thoreau About Wasting Life on Details : “Our life is frittered away by detail.” I believe by this he means details that don’t actually matter, like minutiae and trivia, such as is stuffed into every extra neuron of my poor, rotten brain. On a Deacon’s Personal Effects Being Auctioned Off: “Not long since…