Hi! 👋🏿

I'm trying to change how I read.

Now, in addition to "processing" the text privately (I save quotes and ideas in a way that allows me use them later as mental compost), I'm trying to discipline myself into writing public reading notes as a chance to linger on specific ideas in the text.

I borrowed this idea of reading notes from Mandy Brown's A Working Library blog, and the goal is to better digest and understand what I read.

🌄 Reading notes on Landmarks by Robert Macfarlane

• Noticing and naming ↗ pokes at the idea that if you give enough careful attention to anything, it will reveal itself to be richly layered

• When writing style mirrors its subject ↗ pokes at a curious quality of some of the best writing, to "enact the terrain it describes"

• Caring deep vs. caring wide ↗ pokes at the idea that caring deeply about a small, chosen place does not make you less

🌘 Reading note on Convergence in Chorus Architecture by Dare Segun Falowo

• A person is an ecosystem of moods ↗ began as poking at a specific beautiful sentence in this novelette (currently my favourite work of African speculative fiction), and ended as a rumination on the idea of a person as an ecosystem of moods

🏡 House update

We aim to mobilise the contractor and break earth before the end of September, but there are a few last-minute refinements we need to make to the program.

We're still processing the design and development implications of the changes, but I hope to share the detailed deep dive into the final design of the house in October, or worst case November. (If you're a recent subscriber, you can catch up here)

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How do you read? If you have a reading ritual, please share it with me (even if it's an ideal ritual you don't follow as consistently as you would like)

ok bye!

Love,
Emmanuel

(leaps onto a coal-black eshinemi, galloping across a sky full of stars)