Here we are, halfway through August
Good morning from Tacoma, City of Destiny—no, seriously, that’s what it’s called, without the least twinge of irony. I was at a gathering in Seattle twenty-some years ago when we were about to move here from Montana; a woman looked at me aghast when I explained our plan. Why would you do that?? she said, nose in the air. Well, you know, Seattle.
Around Portland you see little stickers that say, Keep Portland Weird. Ours say, Keep Tacoma Feared. In any case, here’s what you see looking east. Not so shabby. To be perfectly damn honest I love the Pacific Northwest. I love the climate—it’s dry all summer, then we have September, October, November, November, November, November, November, April . . . Admittedly,I’m something of a pluviophile. When it’s rainy you stay in, drink coffee, read books, pet the cats, and if you want you can stand at the window and listen to the rain on the tin canopy. I’m guessing that wherever you are this morning, there’s a good chance it’ll be hotter than in Tacoma . . . and it’s going to be in the low 90s here. So do what you have to do to stay cool and carry on, amici.
Thanks to some good-hearted fellow Stackers talking up David’s Lists 2.0, we’ve had a little flurry of new subscriptions this week—we’re within squinting distance of triple digits! Yay!
New subscribers: Welcome aboard! Back in the spring when I started this enterprise, the first three posts used cuttings from an essay called “Oblivion” to lay out the themes of this Substack (I recommend scrolling all the way down and having a look). I’ve had a great time cobbling together my posts. They make me feel useful, con-tributory, which is a good thing if you’re me (or anyone).
In the coming weeks, I’ll post more Reading Projects/Challenges [the next two are Speculative Literature and Reading the 1920s], along with a new feature called Dave’s Faves. In the meantime, I’d like to remind you about a couple of ongoing projects:
a) Birth Year Project: A standing invitation
You supply your birth year; I'll tell you what was published that year—a few popular/well-known titles first, then a few others that need mentioning, and finally some I recommend.
Notes:
The Birth Year posts have evolved—now that I’m more comfortable with Substack’s formatting/footnoting, etc., I’m able to add some background for some of the titles. Happily, putting the cursor atop the footnote number pops it up, no need to scroll down.
I’ve learned you can install sub-shelves on your Stack, so all new Birth Year posts will appear there (button on opening screen). I’d love to be able to move the older ones to this shelf, and put them in order, but thus far I haven’t sussed out how to do that, so for now they’re still mixed in among the main posts.
Extra credit: You read one of the books (ideally one you're unfamiliar with), then tell me what you thought. If we get enough of these, I'll aggregate and post.
b) Shelter from the Storm:
Each of us has a small cache of books we know and esteem that even other readers like us likely don't know—our discoveries, books we feel a special need to keep out of the clutches of oblivion. I invite you to recommend one.
The deets:
One per subscriber (for now anyway).
Say (in one sentence).
When there's enough for a list, I'll post.
You can have your name attached, or not—up to you.
[Note: How to put this nicely? Thus far, the evidence suggests that almost none of you have books like this . . . or maybe, contrarily, you feel about them they way people in Montana feel about their private huckleberrying spots?]
OK, that’s it for today. More soon. Stay hydrated, stay literated.
