Month: April 2017

Books, CPB7 Comments

The Carnegie-Morrissey Connection

vicky

​Yesterday Elise and I had this text exchange: I’d been sick the entire day and all I did was lay around reading, snacking, and napping. After this exchange I ending up thinking about all of these business plans I have. In addition to that brilliant scheme for middle-aged shower products, I have pretty well developed ideas for the following: a luxury spa designed for working women a cleaning service with citizenship support for recent-immigrant cleaners a tinder-like book recommendation app a plus-size bicycling and outdoors clothing line I’ve been obsessing over business ideas for the past five or six years, … Continue reading The Carnegie-Morrissey Connection

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Shitloads of sand all over the place

elise

I’m at a little bit of a loss as to what to write, as my thoughts about my commonplace book are not very defined right now. As I had suspected, the lack of organization – i.e., an index of some sort – does bother me somewhat. I do still like the “let me just leaf through it and see what I find!” idea I had for it originally; that does still appeal to me quite a bit. I like the idea of rediscovering a quote or a poem or what have you when I don’t expect to. But then, what … Continue reading Shitloads of sand all over the place

Non-book CPB Stuff2 Comments

Insta-poetry and Insta-piration

vicky

I’m sitting in the Phoenix airport waiting for my sister’s plane to arrive. We’re spending a long weekend together, living it up in Sedona with a little side trip to the Grand Canyon, a present I gave her months ago for her 50th birthday. I’ve been so torn about this trip. I adore my sister and absolutely don’t get enough time with her. (This will be the first time I will spend more than a couple of hours alone with her in more than 25 years.) I love the desert southwest and am in sore need of some exercise and … Continue reading Insta-poetry and Insta-piration

Words3 Comments

Tighty-Whities: A Tangent

elise

I’ve been editing books for coming up on twelve years now. And I like to think that this far into the game, I’m good at it. Strike that–I know I am. Editing is one of the few things in my life   I am strongly confident about. (Yes, it’s okay to end a sentence with a preposition.) I am a nitpicker, a noticer of the tiniest details, two qualities that are essential to the job; one might call me a grammar Nazi, though I hate that phrase with all my heart. I can see extra spaces between words without visible spacing … Continue reading Tighty-Whities: A Tangent

CPB, Non-book CPB Stuff1 Comment

​The Dunning–Kruger Effect

vicky

This weekend we were driving down to Tacoma and because it’s a long and boring ride we listened to a This American Life podcast on the way. Ira Glass talked to two researchers, David Dunning and Justin Kruger, who conducted some very cool studies. They gave a bunch of college students some quizzes — on grammar and logic and humor — and then asked them how they thought they did. They found that students who did poorly consistently thought they did better than they did. If a student was in the bottom 20% in terms of scores, they almost always … Continue reading ​The Dunning–Kruger Effect

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Human Wreckage

elise

 That was my entry in my commonplace book today. I heard the phrase in a song and liked the sound of it, so I wrote it down. Morbid, yes, but to quote Lydia in Beetlejuice, “My whole life is a dark room. One big dark room.” My point here is that I think my commonplace book is going to be strange and unusual because, to quote Lydia again, I myself am strange and unusual. Some of my entries will be comprised of whole sentences, others just phrases. Sometimes they will be just words, as I have a strange (there’s that … Continue reading Human Wreckage

CPB2 Comments

A Kick Ass Commonplace Book

vicky

An early mind map from Vic I’ve been dreaming of a commonplace book for quite some time now, ever since seeing a fantastic exhibit at Seattle’s Henry Art Gallery by Ann Hamilton that featured gorgeous vintage commonplace books. These books have been around for centuries and they vary greatly in design and use, but ultimately they are a collection of quotes and ideas that a user gathers over time. Historically they have been handwritten but there are many instances of digital commonplace books online these days. As a voracious reader, I often come across lines of text so beautiful or … Continue reading A Kick Ass Commonplace Book