Read: Catastrophe star Rob Delaney tells how a brain cancer diagnosis for his 1-year-old son upended his family in A Heart That Works, a story of love and grief. 📚
I believe I’m very good at what I do, but/and I’m exquisitely aware that if a few things had broken differently for me, I’d never have enjoyed this opportunity to write as my only job. … The question is whether people should have fits over my success itself, as opposed to all the substantive reasons to dislike me. It’s difficult for any of us to really grasp abstract problems like inequality or corporate domination, and the temptation to nominate some individual people as the receptacles for your anger is understandable. Understandable, but not helpful, least of all to the people who get perpetually enraged in this way.
The Anomaly by Hervé Le Tellier (Translated by Adriana Hunter). To say even a little is to give away too much in this novel about the passengers on a mysterious flight from Paris to New York.
The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank (Translated by Susan Massotty). Re-read before a trip to Amsterdam. It still stands out as a powerful work of nonfiction.
Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner. Zauner recounts growing up as a Korean American kid in Oregon and her path to a music career. I read it in Feburary and it has come up in conversation in almost every month since.
Ballad for Sophie by Filipe Melo. This graphic novel is a beautiful look at one man’s life.
Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin. The story of the fame, drama and tragedy that follows two friends who start a video game company. 📚
One fun use for AI-generated art is to create custom lock screen images for my phone. Here is an image I created of a poodle astronaut. (This likeness to our dog is remarkable.)
This image was created with DALL-E and extended at the top using their edit tool to add the planet. I cleaned up the final image a little in Photoshop before uploading to my phone.
According to Spotify’s year in review the top two artists I listened to this year were musicians I’d never heard of before this year: Joy Oladokun and Ashe.
I’m discovering Amazon’s Prime delivery promise is not longer valid at my address. Everything is now delivered in 7 to 9 days. A couple of conversations with Amazon customer service has led to no resolution. They won’t even acknowledge it’s a problem, so I’m not sure why I would continue to pay for Prime, let alone purchase from Amazon rather than another online retailer.
If you’re experiencing a similar problem, this article from September explains a little of what’s going on.
The complaints from Amazon customers are similar and popping up across the US. From western New York to central Missouri to rural Washington state, some Amazon Prime members are asking a version of the same question: What happened to Amazon Prime’s two-day shipping?