Weekly newsletter: Favorite music and movies of 2018 (so far)

This week: favorite movies, TV, and music from the past six months... View this email in your browser Hey y'all, Here's some ear and eye candy I've enjoyed in the first half of this year:  Movies I actually went out of my way to see in the theater (good calls): Black Panther and Phantom Thread.   TV: Parts Unknown, The Good Place, Detectorists, Atlanta, Grand Designs, and Billions.   Everything directed by Taika Waititi: What We Do In the Shadows, Hunt for The Wilderpeople, Boy, and heck, I don't even like comic book movies and I enjoyed Thor: Ragnarok.   Other movies I liked: Faces Places, Sofia Coppola's The Beguiled, The Zen Diaries of Gary Shandling, and Coco.   Comedy: Ali Wong's Netflix specials Baby Cobra and Hard Knock Wife, Nacho Libre (I know I know), and the first hour of Girls Trip.   My record of the year so far: Parquet Courts' Wide Awake! Can't stop listening.   Favorite morning/writing music: harpist Mary Lattimore's dreamy album, Hundreds of Days.   Classical: KMFA, Jonny Greenwood's score for Phantom Thread, the string quartets of Debussy and Ravel, and the Balanescu Quartet's Possessed.   Reissues: the 50th anniversary remix of Sgt. Pepper's and the deluxe edition of Purple Rain. (The B-sides are better than most singles from other artists.)   Favorite songs: my 2018 playlist on Spotify. Thanks for reading! If you like this newsletter and want to support it, forward it to a friend, buy a book, or tweet me some love. If you're seeing this newsletter for the first time, you can subscribe here. xoxo,  Austin PS. Top image is the German musician Conrad Schnitzler, snapped from the documentary, Kraftwerk and the Electronic Revolution. Austin Kleon is the author of Steal Like An Artist and other books. Subscribe to this newsletter   Copyright © 2018 Austin Kleon, All rights reserved. My mailing address is: Austin Kleon 4301 W. William Cannon Dr. Suite B 150 #241 Austin, TX 78749 You're getting this email because you signed up for it at austinkleon.com. Want to change how you receive these emails? You can update your preferences or unsubscribe from this list. Amazon Affiliate links offset the cost of sending these missives. (And pay for diapers.)

Weekly newsletter: Favorite books of 2018 (so far)

This week: 10 great books I read in the first half of this year...

This week: 10 great books I read in the first half of this year... View this email in your browser Hey y'all, I usually waiting until the year is over to make a list of my favorite books, but it's been a pretty good year so far, so I thought I'd share my 10 favorite books from the past six months of reading, in the order I read them:  A.R. Ammons, Tape For The Turn of the Year In 1963, Ammons got a roll of adding machine tape from the hardware store and decided to write poems on it every day until the tape was used up. I started the book on December 6 of last year, and followed along with each entry until January 10th.     Denis Johnson, Largesse of the Sea Maiden Beautiful stories. A perfect swan song.    Paul Elie, Reinventing Bach Takes a look at Bach's work through the recordings of his works throughout the years. I especially liked reading about Glenn Gould and Pablo Casals.    Diane Ackerman, A Natural History of the Senses I originally thought my new book would have more about the senses in it, so I picked this up for research. Very dense, lush book.   Duane Tudahl, Prince and The Purple Rain Sessions A day-by-day play-by-play of Prince in the recording studio at the height of his powers. I did a lot of skimming and skipping around, but really enjoyed it.     Eleanor Davis, You & A Bike & A Road A comic diary of Davis's bike across the south. I love her work so much. This might end up my book of the year.   Lizzie Goodman, Meet Me In The Bathroom An oral history of NYC music from 2001-2011. How much you enjoy it will probably depend on your familiarity with the music — I was eighteen and a freshman in college when I saw The Strokes in Newport, KY, in 2001, so it made me pretty danged nostalgic.    David Sedaris, Calypso I mean, what's there to say? The dude makes me laugh out loud... and he keeps getting better and better.   John Berger, Confabulations Considering how much Ways of Seeing influenced me, I'm ashamed I haven't read more Berger. This was the last book he published before he died.   Chris Ware, Monograph A gorgeous, gigantic tome dedicated to the work of one of our great Midwestern artists. Thanks for reading! If you like this newsletter and want to support it, forward it to a friend, buy a book, or tweet me some love. If you're seeing this newsletter for the first time, you can subscribe here. xoxo,  Austin Austin Kleon is the author of Steal Like An Artist and other books. Subscribe to this newsletter   Copyright © 2018 Austin Kleon, All rights reserved. My mailing address is: Austin Kleon 4301 W. William Cannon Dr. Suite B 150 #241 Austin, TX 78749 You're getting this email because you signed up for it at austinkleon.com. Want to change how you receive these emails? You can update your preferences or unsubscribe from this list. Amazon Affiliate links offset the cost of sending these missives. (And pay for diapers.)

Weekly newsletter: I could do that

This week: the art of getting ideas, saying no, reading comics, and more...

This week: the art of getting ideas, saying no, reading comics, and more... View this email in your browser Hey y'all, Man, I had a rough one this week. Thank goodness for bourbon, soul music, and the bears. (One night I counted over a dozen on camera!) Here are 10 things I thought were worth sharing this week:  I got a bunch of good responses to this post I wrote on getting ideas and the creative process: "Ideas in cars, honking."   This week I finally got my hands on Chris Ware's Monograph, which is just a stunning book. (I posted some of my favorite parts on Twitter.) I'm in awe of Ware's work, but I'm not always the biggest fan of his longer narratives — but I love his gag strips, his design work, and his sketchbooks. This book really tied all that stuff together for me in a beautiful way.   Reading Ware made me dive into some other comics I had lying around: E.O. Plauen's Father and Son and Richard McGuire's Sequential Drawings. (Do check out his book, Here, and the original comic masterpiece... also, his bass lines for Liquid Liquid!)    Speaking of multi-talented people, did you know Tom Wolfe was a cartoonist?   This week in the "Art with Kids" folder: drawing side by side, visitor sketchbooks at the Rodin Museum, and the distance I can be from my son.   I'm making my way through John McPhee's Draft No. 4: On the Writing Process. I wrote about how his structure diagrams remind me of Paul Klee.   After I wrote about looking at things upside down, a reader taught me about reading right to left.   Why Mr. Bingo says "no" to most client work.   Why you should stop believing in genius and read books.   "I could do that." Thanks for reading! If you like this newsletter and want to support it, forward it to a friend, buy a book, or tweet me some love. If you're seeing this newsletter for the first time, you can subscribe here. xoxo,  Austin PS. I'm traveling for a bit, so next week will be my favorite books of the year (so far) and the week after that will be my favorite music and movies. "Regular" emails will return in August! Stay cool :) Austin Kleon is the author of Steal Like An Artist and other books. Subscribe to this newsletter   Copyright © 2018 Austin Kleon, All rights reserved. My mailing address is: Austin Kleon 4301 W. William Cannon Dr. Suite B 150 #241 Austin, TX 78749 You're getting this email because you signed up for it at austinkleon.com. Want to change how you receive these emails? You can update your preferences or unsubscribe from this list. Amazon Affiliate links offset the cost of sending these missives. (And pay for diapers.)