Summer Fridays and a Check List
Summer Fridays and a Check List
Publishing Rituals and Whale Law
Front Matter: Summer Fridays
With May approaching and the temperature consistently hitting over 60, it’s nearly that magical time of year in book publishing where every weekend turns into a long weekend. In publishing we observe a weird old ritual from the publishing-as-leisure-profession era and take half days off on Friday for the entire summer. It is a fantastic time to get out of work at 1pm and go to the park or have a nice lunch or God forbid read a book. It’s a glorious time to pretend you have the afternoon off and then work Saturday or Sunday instead: this article from 2013 gets it. Like with unlimited vacation plans, the freedom is an illusion (turns out “take any time off you want, just ask your manager” turns out to be a greater deterrent than a finite number of days to take off, who would have guessed that?). Likewise, I cherish summer Fridays and try to respectful observe them, but it’s ultimately just kind of a goofy way to reorganize the work week in practice. This has been the longest possible way to say that Dear Head of Mine will be coming to you once a week, Thursdays, starting next month and over the summer, for old times’ sake.
A great summer read and one of the memorable books from my first summer in New York publishing, where every Friday was a summer Friday…because I wasn’t gainfully employed. This isn’t my hand or my copy of the book.
A Page at a Time: Moby-Dick by Herman Melville, or The Reading of a Daunting Classic
Progress: Days 90, Pages 450
The calendar reads three months past since we started Moby-Dick. In honor of the whale tangents Melville has taken thus far, this is an incomplete list of the things you can expect to learn if you decide to one day take this venture to Nantucket and beyond:
Whale Law
Monarchical Whale Law
Medicinal properties of whale fin gunk
The Tail
The Spout
The Head (Don’t worry, Sperm and Right Whale both covered separately)
The Jaw
The Nose
Famous People of History who Have Battled Whales
Whale Butchery
Whale Economics
Sharks and Whales
Squids and Whales
Fish and Whales
Whale Meat
Whale Tools
Whale Art
Whale Types
Whale Rankings
Whale Anatomical Renderings
Whale Science
Whales, White
Back Matter: Links and Other Happenings
A fun Buzzfeed retrospective. Trouble in the heartland as a massively costly Yellowstone production drama unfolds. More Taylor Jenkins Reid adaptations coming. 1880s copy of Little Women for sale, surprising “affordable.” It’s better to have been laid off from your NPR show host duties at 23 rather than not to have had the opportunity of being laid off from your own NPR show at 23. Taylor Swifts breakup: some fans don’t want to let him go. Cringeworthy marketing of the LA book festival.