Thanks to Austin Kleon for telling us there was a word for this: tsundoku. I work at my kitchen table, so here is the pile that sits just behind my work laptop.
Posts in: Books
I really enjoyed looking through this collection of random pairings of books from Robert van Vliet’s library. There’s something very appealing about his method.
Started reading Four Thousand Weeks by Oliver Burkeman. 📚 Quoting Seneca, Charles Eisenstein, and Marilynne Robinson all in the introduction? He’s singing my song.
Washington Post: “An 8-year-old slid his handwritten book onto a library shelf. It now has a years-long waitlist.”
I received my order from Half Letter Press, which focuses on booklets and independent publishing. Check them out, lots of interesting stuff there.
I love books and lists - and book lists most of all. This post by Mario Villalobos brought two books in particular to my attention: How to Write One Song and How to Resist Amazon and Why. I’m listening to the former on audiobook (via Audible - so much for resisting Amazon) and reading the latter as an ebook through my local library. As I opened up How to Resist Amazon, I noticed that the publisher Microcosm is based in Portland, OR 
which my family and I visited in June 2021. One of the best vacations we’ve ever taken. Absolutely fell in love with the parts of the state we were able to visit.
Microcosm, it turns out, publishes/distributes a lot of zines, which I’ve taken an interest in lately. So naturally I bought the zine version of the aforementioned How to Resist Amazon plus their zine superpack.
Sometimes the internet doesn’t suck.
📚 What I Read in 2021 📚
While I read fewer books in 2021 than in prior years, those books had a large impact on me. The main themes were silence, technology, and Zen Buddhism. (I wrote about my exploration of silence and solitude in this post.) My favorite books of the year were Less is More, Opening the Hand of Thought, The Wild God of the World, and Breaking Bread with the Dead. China Root: Taoism, Ch’an, and Original Zen by David Hinton Less is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World by Jason Hickel Work Won’t Love You Back by Sarah Jaffe Dark Matter by Blake Crouch How to Shit in the Woods by Kathleen Meyer The Yoga of Eating by Charles Eisenstein The Provisioner by Rhyd Wildermuth Ned Ludd and Queen Mab by Peter Linebaugh The Wisdom of the Desert by Thomas Merton Greening of the Self by Joanna Macy Road to Heaven: Encounters with Chinese Hermits by Bill Porter Hermits by Peter France The Mountain of Silence by Kyriacos Markides Solitude by Anthony Storr Lost in Thought: The Hidden Pleasures of an Intellectual Life by Zena Hitz How to Destroy Surveillance Capitalism by Cory Doctorow Opening the Hand of Thought by Kosho Uchiyama Privacy is Power by Carissa Veliz Refining Your Life by Dogen and Uchiyama The Wild God of the World by Robinson Jeffers Breaking Bread with the Dead: A Reader’s Guide to a More Tranquil Mind by Alan Jacobs
One of the things I’m most grateful for this year is the opening of an independent bookstore nearby. Actually it is a re-opening: the owner was originally put out of business (as I recall) when Borders and Barnes and Noble came to town in the 90s. The Borders closed several years ago and the Barnes and Noble closed during the big wave of closing in the last couple of years. Now Morgenstern’s is back, complete with a cafe, lots of seating, and a clear investment in promoting the local community.
My family and I have had a lot of fun hanging out there weekly since it opened. I have discovered so many books that I never would have come across through my usual ways - and I’m a person who actively seeks out books! I’ve had to start a whole new book list to keep track of them. The joy of bookstore serendipity! 📚
Several days ago I watched Bright Star, Jane Campion’s film about the final period of John Keats' life. While I enjoyed it, I didn’t expect it to hang around in my mind for very long. But it did. I even bought a copy of the complete Keats in order to get more familiar with his work. I also found a list of the best biopics about poets, none of which I’ve seen (apart from Bright Star). I’m most interested in the film about Oscar Wilde, since I like both Wilde and Stephen Fry. Anyone want to recommend a biopic about a poet, whether on this list or not? 📚
I’ve had my eye on this series at my local bookstore. They’re great books, obviously, but they also look good. I’ve read a few pages here and there when I’m at the bookstore and Fromm’s is particularly compelling. 📚
