Ahoy,
It’s been quite a month. Last month I quit my gig at Gizmodo for various reasons (ask me over a beer) and now I’m doubling down on building something for myself. I spent two years with “actual” companies with good insurance and, while I enjoyed the opportunity, I’m kind of done. Why am I building things for others when I can build something for myself and my family and friends?
As an aside, it’s nice to burn things down once in a while. And it was super easy! The whole thing takes a few days at most and as long as you have the right mix of stress, familial issues, and internal struggle you can really bust things up like bank robbers on PCP. I once quit a toxic boss over Slack at 2am in Barcelona and the feeling free-fall was amazing and simultaneously awful. Anyway.
To that end I’ve built a few things I’d like to share. First, my friends and I built Rare.Market. It’s a physical art gallery that is digital first and gives you the actual art alongside an NFT. It’s one of the most interesting of its kind and we even have a Banksy! I think NFTs as a fad are stupid but I’m all in when it comes to the melding of digital and physical art.
Second, I’m going to be offering startup advice and offer pitch coaching. It’s something I love to do and it’s something I’ve missed. I think a lot of startup coverage is saccharine and useless so I’ll try to change that. You can subscribe here.
Ok. Onto the books.
by Jessica Brody
I’ll be working on a few novels this summer and I’ve fallen in love with tools like this that let you learn how to build novels using detailed outlines created by experts. Why do I like these things? Because writing is really hard, and using the simplest methods and beats makes it way easier to create compelling plots to write books people want to read. I should have listened to a lot of these when I was writing my older books but I guess I can use this book - which is extremely popular with screenwriters - for my next novel.
The Map of Knowledge: How Classical Ideas Were Lost and Found: A History in Seven Cities
by Violet Moller
I’ve been thinking a lot about the growth of knowledge and the problem of “Western Chauvinism.” Why? Because history and knowledge grew out of the Middle East in ways that are quite unique and most Western thought stemmed from a group of Arabic scholars who translated Greek classics and made them available to the Europeans in translation. This book is a fascinating read and really worth the price. It’s a pretty rare book but Moller writes wonderfully.
by William Gibson
I reread this book almost every year because it is so prescient. William Gibson is my favorite author and it’s amazing that he wrote this book - a book about a hacker who cracks AIs in a weird spaceport populated by the rich and famous - in 1984. Gibson wrote the damn thing on a typewriter and had never seen a computer. Check this out:
Gibson writes lovely books about horrible things and he’s well worth reading - over and over.
As always, I welcome recommendations. Just email me at john@biggs.cc.