Stop At The Tavern #2

Listen (3 min) | Announcements, featured notes, recent posts, and this month's reading

Welcome fellow travelers,

I hope winter is treating you well, or summer, if you’re in the southern hemisphere.

In my hometown, it’s been a cold month. In this season, hibernation feels natural. It makes it easy to write. Now, the weather is warming up, and all that necessary time indoors will soon be gone.

How do you convince yourself to write through the spring?

My plan is to plant all the flowers and take all the walks I like, trusting that they’ll feed my creativity in a different-but-equally-valuable way.

Announcements

First, I’m considering having a paid option for my Substack, probably beginning in the summer. Nothing will ever be behind a paywall. This would be available for those who want to patronize my work out of the goodness of their hearts, though I’d like to have something to offer them as a thank you. More on this later.

Second…

What can I say? I’m humbled. I’m grateful. Thank you for being on this adventure with me. It’s always better to walk the path with friends.

Featured Notes

Recent Posts

This Month’s Reading - One Sentence Book Reviews

Shakespeare’s King Lear

A descent into the loss of control and independence at the end of a life that has been marked by power.

Shakespeare’s Macbeth

There’s no peace in winning your greatest desire if you destroyed your soul to attain it.

“A Girl Made of Time: A Short Story” by

Tiffany Chu

(for sale here)

Asks how much of me is still a child, how much of me is the person that will exist when I take my last breath, and how do those different selves take care of each other.

Shakespeare’s Othello

I can’t stop wondering what kind of person lives a heroic, adventurous life, marries the woman of his dreams, and then throws it all away with both hands.

Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet

This is some of the bard’s most beautiful writing, but so many times I wanted to slap the characters and tell them all to get a hold of themselves.

If you’d like to see what I’m reading in real time or you’d like to share what you’re reading, you can follow me on Story Graph under username jjamesreading. Story Graph is a great way to track what you read and get recommendations, both from those you follow and from the website itself. If you’re not on Story Graph, I’d love to hear what you’re reading in the comments section below.

Thank you all for joining me on this stop at the tavern. See you next time.

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Painting is Interior of a Tavern with a Blind Fiddler by Hendrik Leys (1815–1869)