Archive • Liner Notes • Buttondown

Liner Notes #17: Terrible Twos

Today is Pi Day! It’s also World Sleep Day, graduation day for Japanese high schoolers, Purim, and, oh yeah, the second anniversary of Bitter Medicine’s...

Liner Notes #16: The Memory Hunters Cover Reveal

February 13, 2025

If I do the math, The Memory Hunters has been with me in one form or another for nine years. For seven of those years, it was beast of a manuscript hovering...

Liner Notes #15: Beliefs and Applied Dissonance

January 20, 2025

I first encountered Shostakovich’s fifth symphony in high school, when I occupied the pianist position at the Greater Princeton Youth Orchestra. Our...

Liner Notes #14: Medley

January 5, 2025

A photograph of a small shrine made of wood, with a blue Virgin Mary in the center. A figure of Jesus on the cross is above her, a two-dollar bill curled...

Liner Notes #13: Announcements and sundry

Image description: A picture of Lençóis Maranhensis National Park, Brazil, with “Liner Notes #13” superimposed in blue text Each time I think, “Self, you’re...

Liner Notes #12: Birthday Edition

A cropped version of the Bitter Medicine cover, with "Liner Notes #12" and "birthday edition" in blue script with a white outline Welcome to Liner Notes #12,...

Liner Notes #11: Bibliographies

October 24, 2023

Image description: the Liner Notes no. 11 header; the background is a picture of card catalogs, with one card catalog drawer open, "no, 11" pasted on the...

Liner Notes #9: Canon Events

Image description: A header featuring Miguel O'Hara from Spider-Man: Into the Spiderverse, with comic speech bubbles saying, "Liner notes...number 9!!" Once...

Liner Notes #8: Updates and a BOOK OF TONY excerpt

Hello and welcome to another belated Liner Notes. The above photo is one I took while in San Diego on book tour. It's been almost three months since Bitter...

Liner Notes no. 7: Updates and appearances

To Ty and Lauren, as you can see, I have squeezed the Lit Hub thing into the newsletter. Hello to everyone, and my apologies for a three-month silence!...

Liner Notes #6: Just Prog Rock Thoughts

December 19, 2022

Hello, and welcome to Liner Notes #6. I'd like to start with a correction from Liner Notes #5, where I asserted the person who stomped on the Club Q shooter...

Liner Notes #5: Mixtape

November 23, 2022

Alt text: An image in light pink and blue with a picture of a cassette tape. On the tape is the text "Liner Notes" and "Mixtape no. 5." On either side of the...

Liner Notes #4: The Value of Revisiting Work

August 22, 2022

Hello and welcome back to a very belated Liner Notes. I am very late on this, and I'm sorry. I had originally begun drafting this in late August, when I had...

Liner Notes #3: Années de pèlerinage

If you see the bad Photoshop job, no you didn't. I hope this isn't copyright infringement, first of all. Secondly, I am not so pretentious as to...

BITTER MEDICINE cover reveal

Mic check, mic check . . . is this thing on? Okay! For those of you who subscribed to Buzzfeed Books, I apologize for sending the cover out twice (they're...

Hello everyone, and welcome to Liner Notes, where I'll be sharing news and updates, behind-the-scenes goings-on, perhaps some photographs or compositions,...