Robert Breen

"If you want to write, practice writing. Practice it for hours a day, not to come up with a story you can publish, but because you long to learn how to write well, because there is something that you alone can say."

— Ann Patchett, This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage

"We talk of choosing our friends, but friends are self-elected. Reverence is a great part of it. Treat your friend as a spectacle."

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

An iPhone screen displays the "Display & Text Size" settings menu, with options for bold text, larger text, button shapes, on/off labels, transparency reduction, contrast increase, and color differentiation.

This is the way.

Uggh.

What????!?!

"There is nothing so often condemned, and so deeply loved, as the past."

— Will Durant

The Best American Essays 2024 by Wesley Morris (editor) - Robert Breen 📚 ★★★☆☆ | Essays | Digital | Borrow | StoryGraph | Goodreads I’m on an essay kick, and this annual “Best American” series always provides a wide range of thought-provoking takes. Unlike past years, where I tended to pick and choose what I read, for this latest volume, I read each essay in order, skipping none. […]

Finished reading: The Best American Essays 2024 💙📚

I’m on an essay kick, and the latest “Best American” series provided a wide range of thought-provoking takes and introduced me to some new voices. I share my five favorite essays in the full review. ★★★☆☆

Full review.

Rats are invading strollers in and around Central Park:

"They’re bold. You can stomp your foot all you want, but they’re New York City rats. They are not afraid."

Those many years on an island in Washington state taught me all about rats. But here in NYC? They really are something else.

"What absurd victims of contrary desires we are! If a man is settled in one place he yearns to wander; when he wanders he yearns to have a home. And yet how bestial is content — all the great things in life are done by discontented people."

Christopher Morley

The 15” M4 MacBook Air: https://robertbreen.micro.blog/2025/09/02/the-m-macbook-air.html

Nancy Pearl’s Revised ‘Rule of 50’:

"When you are 51 years of age or older, subtract your age from 100, and the resulting number is the pages you should read before you can guiltlessly give up on a book … When you turn 100, you are authorized (by the Rule of 50) to judge a book by its cover."

💙📚

Micro.blog - @annahavron

I’m late to the discovery of @annahavron’s wonderful Analog Office blog. Her Lumpers vs Splitters post on whether to keep one notebook for everything or many specialized notebooks is pure gold. Anna could write about staplers, and I would read it. Full disclosure: I am and forever will be a lumper.

Rakuten Kobo Integration is Live! Rakuten Kobo Integration is Live!We’re excited to share that Instapaper is now live on all Rakuten Kobo eReaders. Now you can log into Instapaper on your Kobo, download your list of articles, and read...

The Kobo-Instapaper integration has officially launched, replacing the now defunct Pocket app for reading articles on the ereader. I’m curious to know if highlights made on Kobo sync back to Instapaper (and thus to Readwise). If so, this could be the tipping point for this long-time Kindle owner.

The mental health benefits of not knowing any history right now must be massive. Moving through your day with total equanimity. What happens next? Who knows? Maybe something good

"To see a thousand objects for the first and for the last time, what can be deeper and more melancholy? To travel is to be born and to die at every instant."

— Victor Hugo from Les Misérables

I love this! Congratulations!

On the Calculation of Volume (Book I) by Solvej Balle - Robert Breen 📚 ★★★★☆ | Literary Fiction | Digital | Borrow | StoryGraph | Goodreads  This insightful review by Adam Woods of On the Calculation of Volume (Book I) intrigued me enough to read this puzzling book, the first of a planned seven-volume series. Five books have been published in Balle’s native Danish with just the first two […]

Finished reading: On the Calculation of Volume (Book I) by Solvej Balle 💙📚

It’s Groundhog’s Day but with an existential slant on the meaning of self, time, mortality, sustainability, and the inevitable progression of love and marriage. ★★★★☆

Full Review.

A city intersection in The East Vollage of NYC features pedestrians crossing the street, surrounded by historic and modern buildings under a clear sky.

You would think after three months, I would be tired of all the crowds, noise, and concrete. But I couldn’t shake the feeling during a walk through the East Village last night that I was on an elaborate movie set or maybe the holodeck on a starship. NYC might really be the center of the universe.

"If you only wished to be happy, this could be easily accomplished; but we wish to be happier than other people, and this is always difficult, for we believe others to be happier than they are."

— Montesquieu

Mornings in New York: https://robertbreen.micro.blog/2025/08/12/mornings-in-new-york.html

Park Avenue looking south in Manhattan on a Sunday morning.

I look forward to these Sunday morning walks in Manhattan. The city empties out over summer weekends. Fewer people out walking, even fewer cars. An hour’s walk along these streets and avenues is therapeutic for the body and soul.

On Tyranny

Finished reading: On Tyranny by Timothy Snyder 💙📚

A concise summary of the tactics used by totalitarian governments to suppress freedom and democracy. Clear examples from twentieth-century despots support each of the twenty lessons. ★★★★☆

Full review.

The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany

Finished reading: The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany by William L. Shirer 💙📚

I’m glad I read this hefty tome. I can put current events and government decisions into the context of what happened in Nazi Germany. I know better what to look for. ★★★★☆

Full review.

Maximum Bob

Finished reading: Maximum Bob by Elmore Leonard 💙📚

A recent New Yorker article by Anthony Lane prompted me to read this one, my first Elmore Leonard book. I enjoyed the pacing and dialogue and colorful cast of characters, all set in languid south Florida.

★★★★☆

"America has been a terrific country for investors. All they have needed to do is sit quietly, listening to no one."

— Warren Buffett, 2023 Berkshire Hathaway Shareholder Letter

"Take gratefully any pleasures the world provides, but don’t curse God when they fail. Nobody in the universe ever promised you anything. Most things break, including hearts. The lessons of a life amount not to wisdom but to scar tissue and callus."

Wallace Stegner, The Spectator Bird 💙📚

Instapaper Rakuten Kobo Integration Instapaper Rakuten Kobo IntegrationWe’re excited to announce a new integration that will bring Instapaper to all Rakuten Kobo eReaders. The integration will provide Kobo readers with a seamless way to...

Good news for Kobo readers or those looking to escape the Amazon ecosystem: Instapaper Read-It-Later comes to Kobo e-Readers later this summer.

David Barber returns to Evernote after a dalliance with Bear:

"When I’m using Evernote, it becomes my central repository for receipts, travel plans, info that came to me via email, desk scraps, web-clips, and quick t... https://robertbreen.micro.blog/2025/07/16/david-barber-returns-to-evernote.html

Love this. Very creative!

Amy Crouch (@amylouise) on Madame Bovary:

"I hope that when you pay attention to the world, see every flower on every oat-stalk and every bumbling country doctor, you find that you can look them into loveliness. I hope... https://robertbreen.micro.blog/2025/07/07/amy-crouch-amylouise-on-madame.html