what i’ve been reading
1. Keepers of the Secrets by James Somers. Really interesting article in the Village Voice about the archives division of the New York Public Library. Little excerpt: “But the real gem of the library, in Lannon’s view, is the stuff that you can find only in boxes like the ones now strewn across the table. ‘You can get a book anywhere,’ he said. ‘An archive exists in one location.’ The room we’re standing in is the only place that you can read, say, the week’s worth of journal entries in which New York Times editor Abe Rosenthal contemplates publishing the Pentagon Papers. It’s the only place where you can read the collected papers of Robert Moses, or a letter T.S. Eliot wrote about Ulysses to James Joyce’s Paris publisher, Sylvia Beach.”
2. How to become a person who drinks good wine and isn’t annoying about it by Jenni Avins in Quartz last month. A couple words she uses to describe wine: dusty bougainvillea, minerally, wet gravel, funky, and my fave – MAGICAL.
3. Shitty First Drafts by Anne Lamott. Part of my job involves writing – writing bylines for CEOs, writing company manifestos, writing blog posts, writing PR plans. I was struggling to put pen to paper a couple weeks ago and a colleague (who heads our content division) sent this essay to me. “Make it shitty,” she told me. Last weekend I was at SF Public Library’s giant book sale down at Fort Mason and I found an Anne Lamott novel among the thousands of books. I opened to the first page – it was signed! I took it home.
4. The Bhagavad Gita, translated by Graham M. Schweig. GEEZ LOUISE. I’m trying to get in touch with my roots (when am I not...), trying to understand why I’m so obsessed with yoga but not that married to the actual postures themselves. Reading this book to find out! It’s considered the Bible of India, which is true in that it’s a guiding text, but it’s actually just one tiiiiiny section of an epic tale called the Mahabharata. Essentially the Bhagavad Gita introduces a seemingly irresolvable ethical challenge: should a warrior kill his family, friends, and gurus for the greater good. “Indeed, the Gita informs us that there always will be ethical conflict in the outer world ... We have an opportunity to live a life of dharma – a godly life promoting true happiness in relation to our worldly responsibilities and ultimate spiritual goals – or an ungodly life, in which forces destructive to dharma constantly prevail.”
