There are so many links I come across and there is not enough time to write longer posts about all of them. Borrowing an idea from Ben Dowdy and his Misfill feature at The Pen Addict, I have started sharing these links in a blog post with a short description about why each article is interesting for authors.
- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, the Father of ‘Flow,’ Dies at 87 – Sad to hear the news of the death of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. You can’t read a business book or pop-psych book without bumping into his research into “flow” state.
- The Surprisingly Big Business of Library E-books: Increasingly, books are something that libraries do not own but borrow from the corporations that do (The New Yorker) – As the tension over pricing to libraries grows, pay attention to the companies in the middle selling the book.
- Ebooks are an abomination (The Atlantic) – A somewhat nerdy exploration of “bookiness” and why ebooks might not have worked for you.
- Steve Jobs’ Biography (Stephen Colbert) – Going back to the archives to get this one. This Colbert skit from his show on Comedy Central still best describes the tension we have between books and technology.
- What could e-bookstores look like? (Amazon Chronicles) – Tim Carmody covers Amazon as an independent journalist and in this piece, he talks about the trouble caused when one company has device lock-in and delivery lock-in.
- Recommendations using 40,000 HackerNews comments mentioning books, extracted using deep learning and AI (HackerNews Readings) – HN skews toward tech, but even with that knowledge, this is an interesting list to see what people are coming back to over and over on the site. Right now, Thinking, Fast and Slow, Pragmatic Programmer, and Dune are the top three titles.
- getAbstract International Book Award 2021 Nominees (getAbstract) – The year-end/awards season is starting. getAbstract has an interesting list that draws back to last year.
- You Won’t Find the Hardcover of Dave Eggers’s Next Novel on Amazon (New York Times) – Eggers released a indie bookstore only hardcover version of his latest book with 32 different covers. (h/t Kottke)
- What is MasterClass Actually Selling? (The Atlantic) – I think the question raised by the article is interesting and worth the read. Not sure I share their conclusion.
- Hundreds of Ways to Get S#!+ Done—and We Still Don’t by Clive Thompson (Wired) – This is a smart article on the challenge of being productive and the endless chase to find another, better way to be.
- Make a Book with Meat (or other atypical materials) ft. Ben Denzer (The Art Assignment) – Denzer looks at the book as a form to collect and catalog things in the world. In the video, he shows some of his work and some you how to make your own book.
