The joy of reading old books

We are tempted to only read new books. Books on the NY Times best seller list, if you are American.

But consider reading old books. Books that have been around for some time. That have proven their value and are still being recommended.

Not necessarily Greek Philosophers, but also books like Moby Dick (from 1851), One Hundred years of Solitude (1967), Catcher in the Rye (1945), Catch-22 (1961), Alice in Wonderland (1862), The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (1968), Meditations (ok that’s old – 170-180 AD), Gödel, Escher, Bach (1979), On Writing (2000), Maus (written 1980-1991), Antifragile (2012).

On Antifragile, the approach to read old books probably much aligns with Nassim Taleb’s conviction to prefer grandmother’s wisdom over the opinions of self-appointed intelligentia. And also take the Lindy effect into account, and you are ensured you can enjoy the read much longer.

Thought of humility for modern day “geniuses” (video)

… genius isn’t the result of the great men that Carlyle proposed. Instead, the genius stands atop the shoulders of those that came before, whose small incremental advances led to the genius’ breakthrough.

…

It’s not brilliance, it’s simply progress “obtained naturally and cumulatively as a consequence of hard work, directed by intuition, literature, and a bit of luck.”

Melvins – Night Goat

Can’t stop listening to this song. This live version is cool.

Taylor Pearson’s illegible margin

Taylor Pearson wrote a great article on the limits and dangers of rationalizing complex phenomena, and the opportunities of illegible ‘fat tail’ margins.

Some other gold nuggets in the article:

  • The joy of reading (and logic of preferring) old books.
  • Follow fingerspitzelgefühl – grandmother’s wisdom, Nassim Taleb, would say instead of modernist rationalizations.
  • A tinkering budget (low downside, high upside) for the things we are exploring that are hard to see.

Internet besties

I love these places on the internet. In no particular order, for now.

Austin Kleon – Drawing writer with a great blog.

Brain Pickings – Maria Popova’s labour of love on books and other beautiful things.

Mr Motley – Great Dutch site about art.

Beeple-crap – Wonderful artist, became known for selling digital works as art with NFT’s. I think his daily work is immensely inspiring.

Boing Boing – Despite being somewhat North-America oriented, a beautiful site by my favorite internet person Mark Frauenfelder. (You will have to accept too many too disgusting ads, that are apparently needed to keep the site alive.)

booooooom – A beautiful art platform. Scrolling around cheers up your mind.

Swissmiss – A design blog it says, but it is much more. Run by Tina Roth Eisenberg. I would say it is her personal “thing that delight me on the web” log.

https://www.dirtyharrry.com – For a visual orgasm.

Seth Godin – Well, guess it needs no elaboration – Seth Godin’s blog. All about making a ruckus.

The Correspondent – Probably the most refreshing journalistic platform in the world, focusing on “unbreaking news”. Here the original (even better) Dutch De Correspondent.

Derek Sivers – Slow thinker comes to unique points of view. Now redirecting to https://sive.rs/. Hope he will re-start posting.

kk.org – A wealth of Kevin Kelly interesting initiatives, thoughts, articles, stuff.

elsadorfman.com – The website of Elsa Dorfman, 20×24 Polaroid portait photographer. An relatively old website I found recently after she passed away. This site keeps engaging me.

B – Blake Andrews’s long running blog. On (street) photography, and other interests from Blake.

Recomendo – another site/newsletter by Mark Frauenfelder.