Last week, Ted Gioia wrote a good article about Barnes & Noble’s recent turnaround, and in it, he quotes James Daunt, the current CEO of Barnes & Noble:

Back when he was 26, Daunt had started out running a single bookstore in London—and it was a beautiful store. He had to borrow the money to do it, but he wanted a store that was a showplace for books. And he succeeded despite breaking all the rules.

For a start, he refused to discount his books, despite intense price competition in the market. If you asked him why, he had a simple answer: “I don’t think books are overpriced.”

I don’t think books are overpriced. Books, to me, have always been the one exception I’ve made when it came to my budget and how I spent money. If I really wanted a book but I really didn’t have the money, I bought it anyway. I understand how irresponsible this sounds, and it is… or was. I’m fortunate to be in a position where I can afford to do this now without amassing any form of consumer debt, and in fact, the one reason why I’m not buying books all the time is because I live in a small apartment and I don’t have the space to keep them all. So I have to be a bit judicious about it (says the guy who bought more books yesterday).

I don’t think books are overpriced. And they’re not. Most paperbacks cost somewhere around $10-15, and hardcovers are maybe $10 more than that. For what books offer, that’s relatively cheap. I like buying paper books because I like writing in them (see here), and I like holding them. I’m not opposed to eBooks—hell, at the end of 2020, I wrote about Standard eBooks, and just yesterday they released about half a dozen new books, some of which just entered the public domain, and I downloaded many of them. Elmer Gantry by Sinclair Lewis sounds AMAZING. I simply prefer holding my books and writing in them. There’s a simple pleasure whenever I start a book for the first time and I bend the front cover behind the back of the book and I hold it in place as I read the page on the right, then as I get deeper into the book, I do the same but with the back cover—ahhh, I love doing that. Anyways.

I don’t think books are overpriced. Even though I only read 10 books last year, I spent $1,273.84 on books anyway. That’s a helluva lot more than I spent on music, I can tell you that much. I spent most of that money on Bookshop.org, and yeah, they charge more for books than a place like Amazon, but again, I don’t think books are overpriced. I’m happy Barnes & Noble is doing well. Whenever I make my way to Missoula, I usually try to stop at the local Barnes & Noble (after first checking out Shakespeare & Co., the best bookstore around), and I usually come away with something good (they had Spanish versions of Don Quixote and One Hundred Years of Solitude last time I was there, so I bought those).

I love books, and I love spending money on things I love… so yeah, that’s how I spent $1,273.84 on books last year. Fuck’s sake, that’s crazy, lol.

What a way to ring in the new year than by watching this incredible, incredible movie.

I went into The Banshees of Inisherin not knowing anything about it, something I’ve learned is the best way to approach movies nowadays, and I’m glad I did. I’ve never gone from laughing my ass off one second to literally crying the next.

I want to watch it again, to really study it. I don’t know how long it’s been since I’ve rewatched a movie. I’ve been so caught up in the chase of the new that I need to remember to slow down, that we’re all going to the same place anyway, so why not enjoy the journey until then?

If you haven’t watched it, I highly highly recommend it. If you have, then you know. “There goes that dream.”

May you burn in hell forever.

But also, not really because 2022 wasn’t that bad of a year. Here’s to an even better 2023. 🍻

Happy New Year everyone!

I love music (who doesn’t?), and in America, you show how much you love something by how much you paid for it, so how much did I spend on music this year?!

I spent $937.22 on music this year. Is that a lot? I feel like that’s a lot. That’s an average of $78.10 a month, which, yeah, feels about right. That’s also about 93 to 94 albums in a year, or about 7 to 8 new albums a month, which, yeah, also sounds about right. I think one of the main questions some people will have is: why not subscribe to Spotify or Apple Music or another streaming music service? And my answer to that is:

Fuuuuuuuuuuuck streaming music services. Fuck them all to hell.

I used to subscribe to Apple Music. For a few years, actually. I paid for their $99 annual plan, which came out to $8.25 a month. For $8.25 a month, I could listen to all the music I wanted. It was great! I listened to everything, and I discovered many great new artists. All in all, I had a great time with Apple Music… until I canceled it during one fire season. I had plans to renew it later, but I wouldn’t need it during fire season because I would be in the mountains where service was spotty and where I wouldn’t really have the time or the energy to listen to music anyway. And when I canceled it, I saw the last few years’ worth of music—music I’ve spent time listening to and curating and rating—vanish. Of course it vanished, but I still felt like a big part of me just died. All my new artists, all my playlists, all the work I did to curate my library to my tastes—all gone. So what did I actually pay for? All those hundreds of dollars?

For limited access to an infinite number of songs. I was renting this music—it wasn’t mine. And right then it hit me:

Fuuuuuuuuuuuck streaming music services. Fuck them all to hell.

The only music left in my music app was all the music I purchased before I subscribed to Apple Music, before I spent hundreds of dollars on… honestly? Nothing. It’s like spending $20 for a movie ticket—the cost is in the experience, and for $99 a year, I was allowed access to this musical experience for a limited time, and if I wanted continued access to it, I would have to spend more and more of my money. I would have rather spent that money on buying my music—for sure, far fewer albums than before, but at least I would own them.

And so, that’s why I’ve spent $937.22 on music this year, and why I will continue to spend more than $99 a year on music, more than $8.25 or $9.99 a month on music. Besides, the artists making this music deserve to get paid, and they get paid more when I buy their music directly rather than if I streamed it.

Do I recommend you buy your music, too? I don’t care. If you want, I guess. If you’re happy renting your music from these big companies, then more power to you. For me, though, I’m just fine spending almost $1,000 a year on music, and I will continue doing so for as long as I have money to spend.

Today was supposed to be the last day of school before the holiday break, but:

School was canceled yesterday and today because of this really really cold winter storm affecting “a broad swath of the country.”

When the high for today is -8°F and the National Weather Service is warning us that there’s a “possible threat to life or property,” you better believe I’m staying inside, blasting my heater, and snuggling underneath a warm blanket.

These old bones miss sunny San Diego. Be safe everyone!

Here’s an end-of-year recap I’m totally down for:

Some highlights I love:

• I watched 23,601 minutes of baseball, or 16 days
• My 23,601 minutes were more than 99% of Padres fans
• My viewing record was 80-66, dispelling this long held belief of mine that I was the reason the Padres lost

I’d much rather see people’s MLB.TV recaps than those Spotify or Apple Music ones.

Small update to note a new lowest heart rate. I want to link back to this later if I ever go lower than this, but if I do, I might be dead, so I won’t get that chance. C’est la vie.

Because my health is on my mind:

My heart rate hit 35bpm again last night.

This morning I woke up to 11—eleven!—low heart rate notifications. For context, yesterday I wrote that I had 12 all week.

Back when my friend first challenged me to a competition, I was worried, not that I might lose but that I wouldn’t be able to stick to any sort of fitness regiment again. I have had back issues for a few years, so I’ve been “taking it easy” for a while. A while means years. So I’m happy I could still push myself hard and have my body respond better than I had expected.

A few weeks ago, I texted my friend and said, “Thanks for pushing me out of my comfort zone! I was living on auto-pilot for a while and I needed this kick in the ass.”

I really did, and now I feel great.

It’s the holiday season, and a friend of mine gave me this delicious loaf of bread yesterday. She called it “friendship bread,” something I wasn’t aware was a thing. She gave one to another friend along with mine, and my other friend later told me that it was related to the Amish. So I looked it up, and yeah, it’s a thing. Huh. Did I say it was delicious? Because it was delicious.

Here are some notes from today, this 16th day of December, 2022:

You come at the king, you best not miss

On Wednesday, I beat my friend in yet another 7-day competition. This was our second straight competition, and my second straight victory. That’s 2-0. You know what she did the next day?

Challenged me to another competition. “I’m taking it this week 😂,” she said.

“This crown on my head is getting really heavy,” I replied.

“🖕🏼.”

“🤣.”

Health Trends

Because of these competitions, I’ve been pushing myself really hard, harder than I have in… shit… years? And my metrics don’t lie. For the past 17 days, I’ve been burning more calories than I had for the few weeks before. That’s on account of the fact I’ve been working out almost on a daily basis. I took off last weekend, though, and guess what? I was kinda miserable because I wanted to workout but I knew my aging boding needed rest. You best believe, though, that on Monday I was so happy to be working out again.

And I feel gooooooood.

And that’s where my 12 (!!!) low heart rate notifications from the last week come in. Before this week, my lowest recorded resting heart rate was 36bpm. I can now say 35bpm is my lowest. I hit that last night. The lowest threshold you can set the Apple Watch to trigger low heart rate notifications is 40bpm, and I triggered all of these notifications while asleep, so I’m not too worried about my heart and what these low averages might mean for my heart health. In fact, I believe my heart is healthy and strong, and I just take these metrics as proof that I’m on the right track.

I feel good, I’m eating well, I’m working out hard, and I’m sleeping really well. Because of this, I feel happy and feeling happy makes me happy.

Radiant Red

Speaking of friends and feeling happy:

My good friend Cherish Chen is the writer of Radiant Red, and the trade paperback collecting the first 5 issues of her book came out this week. I am so very proud of her! If you’re looking for some fun comics made by some good people, then go buy it and support good comics!

Received a new book haul today:

• The Antidote by Oliver Burkeman because I loved Four Thousand Weeks and I want to continue reading more of Oliver Burkeman’s stuff (he’s got a pretty good newsletter)
• The World of Urban Sketching by Stephanie Bower because when I do it, I love to sketch, but I’m admitting now that I’m probably lazy about it and I hope a book like this inspires me to get out there and sketch sketch sketch (doubt it but I never know)
• And, of course, The Passenger and Stella Maris by Cormac McCarthy, books I’ve been waiting on for a while

Y ahora, a leer.