What I Read This Week: August 23, 2013
About What I Read This Week: I read a lot. All the time. Too much. I’d like to be held accountable. During my day-to-day, I keep a Google doc that I update with an article name, URL, and a quote of everything I read or watch. I blog the list every Friday.
Sunday morning took me by the throat and shook me awake with an unwelcome sore throat. After that nasty little head cold moved in on Monday, I did what most intelligent, capable adults do and watched 10 episodes of Law and Order. That basically sums up this week, which moved wildly from productive, to terrifying, to mopey, touching on jubilant now and again.
Real, Actual Books
- I don’t think I actually read any this week: Manage Your Day-To-Day: Build Your Routine, Find Your Focus, and Sharpen Your Creative Mind by Jocelyn K. Glei
- Sipping, chapter by chapter: Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within by Natalie Goldberg
- Color wheelin’ it up: Color by Betty Edwards: A Course in Mastering the Art of Mixing Colors
- I just can’t. Done with this one: Geometry of Design by Kimberly Elam
- Loving: Barry McGee by Alex Baker
- Finished: Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal by Mary Roach
- Finished: Ignore Everybody: and 39 Other Keys to Creativity by Hugh MacLeod
On the Internet
- Got a big dream? Start with one room. by Alexandra Franzen, “Hold the big vision, but focus your love + attention. Don’t start with a skyscraper. Start with one room.”
- Watched: Amy Sedaris on David Letterman from 9/11
- Learning To Make Mistakes by Laurie Wagner, “What I want to ask Brene is, can you be fabulous, but without stress? And what does that look like? I know we’re all supposed to be down with “making mistakes” and showing up messy – holy shit – I teach that – but I’m still struggling – maybe not so much on the page, but in life.”
- Chefs+Tech 8.27.2013
- The Killing of Lisa Steinberg on CrimeLibrary.com (read after a Law & Order reference)
- Bill Watterson on life and money, “Creating a life that reflects your values and satisfies your soul is a rare achievement…”
- Live Like a Hydra by Buster Benson on Medium, “Goals, habits, and resolutions are often crafted with ambitious expectations that are then susceptible to the first rainy day, sick day, vacation day, holiday, grumpy day, low-energy day, or otherwise non-standard day. Most goals and habits try to ignore the fact that chance occurrences will disturb their best laid plans. And by trying to ignore this random factor, they become extremely vulnerable to them.”
- In ‘Gone Home’ video game, a family mystery to solve
- Victorian Fixer-Upper Hits the Market in the Mission
- Square ready to occupy serendipitous new headquarters in San Francisco
- The Spark File by Steven Johnson, “ But the key habit that I’ve tried to cultivate is this: every three or four months, I go back and re-read the entire spark file. And it’s not an inconsequential document: it’s almost fifty pages of hunches at this point, the length of several book chapters. But what happens when I re-read the document that I end up seeing new connections that hadn’t occurred to me the first (or fifth) time around: the idea I had in 2008 that made almost no sense in 2008, but that turns out to be incredibly useful in 2012, because something has changed in the external world, or because some other idea has supplied the missing piece that turns the hunch into something actionable.”
- WHAT EVER HAPPENED TO THE BEST MUSIC WRITING SERIES?
On Television
Rosemary & Thyme – finished Series 3. No more, weh!
Project Runway – Season 12, whatever episode was next
Annika Bengzton – Studio Sex
Law and Order – Season 1, episodes 1-11
