Thinking in Notes

and joining book clubs

I’ve started to pay for Substack subscriptions. Oh dear.

This is because I’ve finally capitulated to joining two book clubs for the year, Venkatesh Rao’s and Jeff Rich’s. You can find a whole host of other options for joining a reading club, especially if it’s fiction-oriented, at Simon Haisell’s highly regarded reader fellowship and helpful page: Book Group Directory.

Not only am I beginning to read the scheduled books, I’m reading accompanying essays and beginning to think about and comment on them. This is mostly happening in Substack Notes.

I should, of course, try to pull together the themes that strike me, and write substantive explanations and arguments, but my thoughts are all still pretty inchoate. Taking it piecemeal and putting my immediate sources out there is maybe a better place to start, and an invitation and entrée, in any case.

Since Notes tend to fly by in their feed — or not find you at all, given the Algorithm — and since they quickly lapse ephemerally into the void, I thought I’d collect a few here, which are either on point or at least adjacent to being on point.

Would love to hear your comments.

Note: if you subscribe and read by email vs. the Substack app, and this post has gotten too long, you’ll need to click to read in full — and then click again to open each Note to read in full. Sorry about that!

And here is a bonus read, which I didn’t re-stack into Notes (yet), but which I’ve found delightful and worth starting a trial subscription to access behind the paywall.

I wish I had received this advice, and followed it, 40 years ago:

Advice for Young Writers

PS. It turns out I can comp a few free one-month subscriptions to Burning Archive and Contraptions if you DM me your email address. Happy to do that. And to have Pose Ponder subscribers join me in reading.

If any of these musings interest you, stay in touch to receive whatever is forthcoming. 🤪

Photo by Jan Mellström on Unsplash