Writing
Essays, notes and reading notes, newest first. Some in Chinese and Japanese.
2026
On Marginalia, or Reading with a Pencil
Why the margins of a book are the most honest record of reading we have, and what a website could learn from them.
EssayReading notes: The Mushroom at the End of the World
Notes on Anna Tsing's book about matsutake, precarity, and the art of noticing.
Reading noteA small rule for footnotes
If a footnote would make sense read aloud in the middle of the sentence, it is not a footnote.
Note
2025
Why I keep a commonplace book
Copying out other people's sentences by hand is the slowest and best way I know to read.
EssayReading notes: Essays in Idleness
Kenkō's fourteenth-century miscellany, read slowly over one spring.
Reading note