Recent Reading, Spring 2020

Hello hypothetical readers,

Life here is a notch or two up on the difficulty scale here at Broadhead Cottage. We’re safe and healthy overall but there’s certainly a weight over things, like a weighted blanket you’d love to get out from under. I’m going to put all that aside, as I said, we’re safe and healthy, we’ve still got jobs.

What have I been reading you ask?

Email, of course, some of it deeply good. I love Craig Mod’s newsletters. I already felt them to be a major balm for my life & mental health and lovely encouragement to walk more. Here’s a brief excerpt from his most recent edition of Ridgeline:

The route had almost nothing but the fields — no restaurants or places to stop aside from some sad wayward convenience stores. I made the mistake of eating the wrong convenience store thing, realizing I had done so twenty minutes later, and coming within seconds of fertilizing some unsuspecting farmer’s patty. Instead I saw yet another convenience store off in the distance, sprinted, and then realized I had also found the saddest toilet in all of Japan.

Ridgeline 070: Kodomo-no-hi

I’m also, slowly, reading both Moby Dick and 3 Musketeers.

I’m planning a writing retreat for myself in July & August, I have a block of twenty vacation days and I’m going to spend a couple of hours sitting at a computer, writing. (or, in a hammock in the shad of the hundred-year-old white pines that we share our yard with.) I got a copy of what looks to be a very good book on fiction writing, one that balances as it says in its introduction the analytical and creative requirements of fiction writing. I’m very much looking forward to it.

I’ve inevitably got 4 or 6 other creative projects of one kind or another I’m also working on, so I’ll reserve afternoons this summer for those pursuits as well. I’ve got a couple of websites I’d like to build and a publishing project or two I’d love to get off the ground this month.