Before I begin — if you need a last-minute gift for someone on your list, I’m offering 20% off subscriptions to this newsletter until Dec. 25th. No need for a special code or anything.
It’s bleak and rainy in Texas. Yesterday was the shortest day of the year. “I look out the window and it’s so drab,” my son said. “But then I look at the Christmas tree and it’s so cheerful.” That’s the spirit! This is the season when we need more light.
Here are 10 things I thought were worth sharing this week:
“Reading is first and foremost non-reading. Even in the case of the most passionate lifelong readers, the act of picking up and opening a book masks the countergesture that occurs at the same time: the involuntary act of not picking up and not opening all the other books in the universe.” After I posted my list of 20 books I didn’t read this year, I remembered Pierre Bayard’s book, How To Talk About Books You Haven’t Read.
KUTX here in Austin starts their 3 days of holiday music today. I was delighted that several of you wrote to me about how much you enjoyed it last year. I am also delighted by this inside look at the recording of one of my favorite holiday treasures, Bob Dylan’s Christmas In The Heart. (I snuck “Must Be Santa” on a playlist I made for my 3rd grader’s classroom holiday party.)
Two hours of gravel-voiced joy: Tom Waits and Iggy Pop spinning records. (The BBC Sounds app is pretty excellent by the way: It actually shows you the individual tracks being played while the podcast is playing.)
TV probably not on Phillip’s list: Despite several attempts, I’ve never been able to crack Lee Child’s Jack Reacher books, but we binged the first season of Reacherwith glee. Think Road House meets Rambo meets Sherlock Holmes. Dumb, violent fun. (I’m also, I admit, a fan of the first Tom Cruise movie — he’s totally wrong for Reacher, but Werner Herzog is perfect as the villain.)
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