Hmmm. Sure did pick a perfect time to be back on the Avalon Peninsula.

For Georgia Review, I reviewed Maria Stepanova's extraordinary In Memory of Memory (in exquisite translation by @SashaDugdale). I have not stopped thinking about this book in months. thegeorgiareview.com/posts/on-in-me…

Ah, the river running gently over the rocks, the Atlantic waves lapping on the shore, the village chainsaw artist sawing merrily at full throttle…

It's the surrounding footnotes that make note 12 of chapter 1 of the new David Graeber (RIP) and David Wengrow just so very perfect (like the book itself, so far).

The best way I can figure to sum up the year just gone is this: that day I dragged all the microphones to my late mother's favourite cove, and tried as best I could to get the hugeness of the sound of those waves on those smooth rocks at low tide.

Been a little while since I made one of these mixes. This one's got some rattly hurricane recordings woven in. mixcloud.com/patrick-pittma…

Want to read every single one of these…

Summertime in Toronto

"I sit in the boat, pressed against the warm wood, the sun raining upon me, and I’m happier than I’ve been for weeks or months. I’m happy because I am suddenly whole and I know who I am: I am a man, sitting in a boat, looking at a landscape.” (Donald Ritchie in The Inland Sea 💖)

This has been an excellent project to work on, excited it's out and getting attention - more to say on it later, but Michèle's got all the good reading in this thread...

"Russell’s art accepts the mutual struggle; it’s at peace with the unholdability of longed-for things and the is-ness of what is. It elevates me, lifts me out of bad habits of mind, and helps me to meet the world on its own terms..." Alexandra Molotkow 🔥🔥 crushmaterial.substack.com/p/on-arthur-ru…

No better timing than my inevitable COVID weekend coinciding with the surprise release of Bosch: Legacy

Working on this book over the past many years has been such a joy – so excited to hear the thrum of the presses getting ready to roll... Can't wait to get it into the world!

Ok, yes, fair, it's a little behind schedule, but... buckslip.email/145-boats-get-…

The rarely observed wild bookmaker in his natural habitat, where he sleeps in a nest of sticky flags.

So proud of this. So excited it's done. You can buy, if you'd like!

Oof but the tears this has me in. “Despite what is being transmitted to us 24 hours a day, every day, you can actually be strong and kind at the same time; those qualities are not mutually exclusive. You can look for beauty and love and put that out in the world.”

I am so excited for this. I love it when the truly good and brilliant people—and Ted is both—get the New Yorker bylines they've always deserved.

Go through life being strong, she said. Wrote a new one of these! Subscribe if you'd like more! buckslip.email/featured/148-g…