Self-expression

10 things worth sharing: what art’s all about, copying quotes from library books, ear and eye candy, and more...

Hey y’all,

Tuesday I shared a page-by-page video walkthrough of my diary. If you’d like to join our Tuesday fun and support these free Friday newsletters, I’m offering 20% off paid subscriptions through the weekend:

Here are 10 things I thought were worth sharing this week:

1. Is art about self-expression?
   
   

2. My May pick for our Read Like an Artist book club is one of my all-time favorites and a bonafide classic: Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics.
   
   

3. For the first time in a few years, we returned to our civic cathedral last weekend and took the boys to the downtown branch of the Austin Public Library. (I love being a tourist in my own town.) As happens when you experience “the serendipity of the stacks,” I found a book on the NEW shelf I’d never heard of: writer/artist James Hannahan’s strange but compelling Pilot Inspector, inspired by air disasters and Richard Zenith’s translations of Fernando Pessoa and Co. (I previously wrote about Pessoa’s heteronyms.) 
   
   

4. How I copy quotes from a library book. (I’ve been experimenting with Reels on my Instagram to trick the algorithm into caring about me. For a thoughtful rise-and-fall tale of the algorithm, see Dean Petersen’s video, “I Went Viral on TikTok.”)
   
   

5. John Hendrickson just revealed the striking cover (designed by Oliver Munday) for his forthcoming book, Life on Delay: Making Peace with a Stutter. (Disclosure: Meg and I are featured in the book, talking about being the proud parents of kids who stutter.)
   
   

6. Other good-lookin’ books: Liana Finck’s Let There Be Light, an adaptation of the Book of Genesis with a female God, and Grace Ferris’s Mom Milestones. (I’m interviewing Grace later this month at Bookpeople here in Austin, Texas.)
   
   

7. Assorted eye candy: the Show Your Work!-style posts of woodcut artist John Vasquez Mejias and these mini zines by Charlotte Brontë.
   
   

8. Moving pictures: I loved the first episode of Tokyo Vice directed by the great Michael Mann. (The other episodes were good, too.) The whole family enjoyed Luca during pizza night. (Relevant to my interests, as they say.)
   
   

9. It was a great week for music. I loved this “best of” playlist that Jim O’Rourke made of his production work for Drag City. (A few pointed out the absence of “Ghost Ship in a Storm.”) The great Billy Nomates released a new single! I blasted Nirvana: Live at Reading while cleaning my office. And like everybody else, I like Wet Leg’s debut, Wet Leg.
   
   

10. Mark Twain said, “It is better to take what does not belong to you than to let it lie around neglected.” What about proplifting?
    
    

Thanks for reading! If you want to help keep this newsletter going, buy my books, hire me to speak, shop for some of my favorite gear (I get a cut), or take advantage of this weekend’s deal and become a paid subscriber:

xoxo,

Austin