Ever-evolving recommendation list

People, art, stories, etc that I’ve found compelling, engaging and/or brilliant. Changes often & updated with new categories frequently

Currently self-care recommendation – The Japanese Citrus candle from Brooklyn Candle Co. If I could smell this all the time for the rest of forever, I would.

If you’re looking for more transient impressions, here’s a list of links I’ve been clicking, logged on the daily-ish

Newsletters

  • Charlie Lloyd’s 6 - occasional newsletter that regularly changes my life
  • Laura Olin - weekly newsletter with >10 excellent recommendations
  • Matt Bell’s Writing Exercises - monthly newsletter with writing prompt + book recs
  • Noah Kalina’s Newsletter - funny, earnest, small-adventure-driven newsletter e.g. visiting all the local carwashes, poppyseed bagels, gorgeous chickens, etc
  • Eamon Bell’s Opening the Red Book - occasional esoteric deep dive into some music tech
  • Edith Zimmerman’s Drawing Links - daily cartoon, very earnest, wry, creative
  • Conor Gearin’s Possum Notes – New England nature
  • Aatish Bhatia’s Rate of Change – rigorous, creative climate coverage
  • Lucy Keer writes Bucket Overflow - wildly smart monthly newsletter, one of maybe three where all the links are always worth clicking

Some art/artists I like and some of their stores

Just a few of the people I admire from afar

Books I’ve read in 2021

[ ] would not recommend
* fine, passable, ok
** good read, informative and/or entertaining
*** tremendous read, not necessarily for everyone **** would recommend whole-heartedly, moved me deeply, changed my thinking, gorgeous language, etc

*** Vampires in the Lemon Grove - Karen Russell (favorites include; The Barn at the End of Our Turn, New Veterans, Vampires in the Lemon Grove, and for sheer setting, Dougbert Shackleton’s Rules for Antarctic Tailgating) ** Annihilation - Jeff Vandermeer (while the characters feel quite flat to me, the uncanny, wild setting is the story, and Vandermeer gorgeously interweaves depictions of transitional ecosystems. i love that humans are absorbed into the landscape and continue to haunt this. For some of his thoughts on the anthropocene as a haunting, read this essay)

Books I’ve read in 2020 (incomplete list)

[ ] would not recommend
* fine, passable, ok
** good read, informative and/or entertaining
*** tremendous read, not necessarily for everyone **** would recommend whole-heartedly, moved me deeply, changed my thinking, gorgeous language, etc

**** Braiding Sweetgrass - Robin Wall Kimmerer
*** Daughter of the Earth - Agnes Smedley
** The Seep - Chana Porter
* The Great Believers - Rebecca Makkal
*** The Story of the Lost Child - Elena Ferrante’s Neopolitan Series
**** Pachinko - Min Jin Lee
*** The Tenth Of December - George Saunders
** The New Jim Crow - Michelle Alexander (audio book)
** The City We Became - N.K. Jemisen
*** The Fifth Season - N.K. Jemisen
** The Obelisk Gate - N.K. Jemisen
*** Basin and Range - John McPhee *** Weather - Jenny Offill **** Their Eyes Were Watching God - Zora Neale Hurston **** Lost Children Archive - Valeria Luiselli *** Fever Dream - Samanta Schweblin *** Parable of the Sower - Octavia Butler ** The Future of Another Timeline - Analee Newlitz ** Good Talk - Mira Jacobs ** Mating in Captivity - Esther Perel

Notes mentioning this note

An overview of Digital Gardens
Digital gardens are a overarching term for sites that take advantage of digital spaces to link thoughts and generate ideas....

Here are all the notes in this garden, along with their links, visualized as a graph.