Everything has been saved from a wreck

10 things worth sharing this week

“Domination,” newspaper + marker, 2018

Hey y’all,

This letter is brought to you by 120mg of pseudoephedrine. Here are 10 things I thought were worth sharing this week:

1. “When I play with my cat, how do I know that she is not passing time with me rather than I with her?” I finally finished book two of Michel de Montaigne’s The Complete Essays. I’ve been reading 5-10 pages every morning of 2026, and every morning Montaigne tells me something about his life in the 16th century that speaks directly to mine in the 21st. (Pro-tip: Break bread with the dead!) Here’s what my chonky Penguin Classics paperback looks like:

   

2. That stuff I’ve penciled on the pages is called an edge index. It’s a great way to make a book your own and better understand its structure. Here’s a video of how I make one in my logbook:

   
   

3. How to play my favorite drawing game: Exquisite corpse!
   
   

4. I subscribed to The Onion in print and the first issue we got in the mail was a gigantic hit with my teen and tween. They spent all of dinner reading the headlines out loud to each other and laughing. My favorite sound in the world.
   
   

5. Filmmaker Penny Lane shares 5 funny documentaries for dark times.
   
   

6. Film critic Stephanie Zacharek lists the 50 most underappreciated movies of the 21st century. (A few of my favorites: American Splendor, Only Lovers Left Alive, and Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World.)
   
   

7. Tobias Wolff reading his short story “Bullet in the Brain.” (From his marvelous collection, The Night in Question.)

   
   

8. “When in doubt, play insane.” RIP actress Catherine O’Hara. She was great in everything I’ve seen, but the stuff that jumps to my mind: Home Alone, Beetlejuice, Schitt’s Creek, The Studio, and, of course, Best in Show. On the importance of having a sense of humor, she said: “My husband and I laugh about everything all day long… My parents were blessed – they laughed until the end. That’s the best way to live, because there’s so much sadness. You’re really lucky if your sense of humor is encouraged, because I think we’re all born with it, and if it’s encouraged in your life, that’s a gift.”

   
   

9. Novelist Edan Lepucki’s 45 notes to self on life, parenting, and writing.

   
   

10. G.K. Chesterton: “It is a good exercise, in empty or ugly hours of the day, to look at anything, the coal-scuttle or the book-case, and think how happy one could be to have brought it out of the sinking ship on to the solitary island. But it is a better exercise still to remember how all things have had this hair-breadth escape: everything has been saved from a wreck.”
    

Thanks for reading. This hand-rolled, ad-free, AI-free, anti-algorithm publication is made possible thanks to the kind support of readers like you. To keep Friday free for everyone and get an exclusive email from me every Tuesday, become a paid subscriber:

xoxo,

Austin

PS. I had a ball with the teachers attending @theartofed conference. (Hit me up if you’re looking for a speaker for your event!)