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Here are 10 things I thought were worth sharing this week:
Notebook nerds: I’m a keynote speaker at the virtual Wild Wonder Nature Journaling Conference next week! I’ve been preparing by thinking a lot about my notebooks and why I keep them. One thing I know for sure that my notebooks have taught me is that life is not linear. Life is more like a spiral. We travel around the sun and we live in meteorological, spiritual, and creative seasons.
“Live in each season as it passes,” Thoreau wrote in his own notebook in late summer of 1853, “and resign yourself to the influences of each.” (I would add: the more you deny the season you’re in, the more you suffer.)
When I visit myself in the pages of my notebooks — flipping through an old summer diary, for example — I see that my patterns are well-established and that I’ve been here before and I’ll be here again. (If I’m lucky, that is.) Keep going!“Work hard and say it’s easy...” Music writer Steve Hyden has a new book out called Is This It: The Never-Ending Rise and Fall of the Strokes (and Rock n' Roll). I’ll be chatting with him about The Strokes, rock music, and more on Monday, September 14th at 11 a.m. central. Join us live!
The highlight of my week: I got a tour of the stacks at the Henry Ransom Center here in Austin, Texas by Dr. Eric Colleary, who is giving a special reading and talk about his new book, Houdini’s Library next Thursday, September 17th. Highly recommended!
Another tour I’d like to take: behind the scenes at the Blackwing pencil factory.
“I don't know where I stand as a writer, but I am the greatest procrastinator of my generation,” says Marlon James, who just published what friend of the newsletter Dwight Garner calls “the novel of the decade, if not the century.” (On the subject of productive procrastination, here’s Robert Benchley: “Anyone can do any amount of work, provided it isn’t the work he is supposed to be doing.”)
A question from reader Nick K. in Winnipeg: I’d like to start a family movie night with my daughters, who are 12 and 10. Could you recommend 10 movies to get us started?
After a bit of deliberation, here are 10 pizza night hits from our house, tuned for tweens with a few more heroines in the mix: Jurassic Park, The Wizard of Oz, Kiki’s Delivery Service, Frankenstein, Raiders of the Lost Ark,