While it isn’t impossible to get work done, I am worried about getting used to how slow(er) this whole thing is.

Updating this while it is still ReadingDay (19th).

I read and logged more books than ever before, last year. This is perhaps thanks in part to starting the year off with a reading-trip to the far north and in part to the many teaching trips before the really personally significant ones. There are large gaps in equally large chunks of the world where the stories are from (even after considering the many stories in anthologies guarantee quite a varied geography) and a disturbing dearth of comics and graphic narratives. (There is just that Gipi one; brilliant and alone.) The most memorable and appropriately quote-worthy is The Overstory. (Followed far enough behind by the Calvinos.) This is also the year a lot of people recommended me things that ended up tourdeforcing their way into my life. I look forward to more.

The quarantine has made us self-reliant of sorts, in the vegetables department, at least. R’s tomato seeds have fruit-ed and jackfruit is aplenty, in all stages of ripeness (there is no such thing as too much jackfruit in the menu). There are yams and all kinds of leafy stuff and bananas to pluck off the earth and the sky and in-between. I realise not everyone is this sorted in the entertainment department during lockdown. The downside to all this is that little work gets done in the middle of figuring things out and distractions. Hope all of you are well and well-fed. Here is something worth a read: Ken Liu’s Bookmaking Habits of Select Species.

Plus, the ungg leaves after a shower are like polished cheenachattis. They glow.

Cleaned up and refilled five of my most favourite pens because procrastination. (Three old V SignPens and a couple of Hero 339s.) I love how the SignPens age. The more one wears the nib down, the better it gets. I think I’ve had one in black since Ahmedabad (somewhere between 2007 and 12) and the tip is a flat-ish stub that takes a little getting used to before it gives one a thick-thin stroke. In spite of being metal (or because of it being metal) the 339s age disastrously and flat-nib-temperamental-calligraphically.

The question of whether you pursue change or whether you maintain your own distinct form becomes difficult. We have all seen the work of illustrious practitioners that suddenly look old-fashioned or, more precisely, belonging to another moment in time. And there are sad stories such as the one about Cassandre, arguably the greatest graphic designer of the twentieth century, who couldn’t make a living at the end of his life and committed suicide. But the point is that anybody who is in this for the long haul has to decide how to respond to change in the zeitgeist. What is it that people now expect that they formerly didn’t want? And how to respond to that desire in a way that doesn’t change your sense of integrity and purpose.

— Ten Things I Have Learned, Milton Glaser. The bracketed title is copypasta from the PDF essay.