Nate Meyvis

The Norton anthology lifestyle

Here are two thoughts I couldn't shake recently:

  1. I've gotten a lot of value from having huge anthologies (especially a Cambridge anthology of British poetry and a complete works of Shakespeare) in my Kindle account; digital versions aren't heavy and don't fall apart after a couple years.1 The cost per quality-adjusted page-year is very low.
  2. Terence Tao (on an episode) of Dwarkesh Podcast, said that he needs plenty of semi-random inputs to stay creative, and that when he has a seemingly perfect research lifestyle with tons of focus time, the temperature (so to speak) isn't high enough.

So, I bought a Kindle version of the Norton anthology of English literature ("Package 2," from the Romantics on) and have been reading semi-randomly from it. A few notes:

  1. I'm struck (probably more than I should be) at how good the average "famous enough for the Norton but less of a household name" entry is. T.E. Hulme,2 Katherine Mansfield,3 and William Morris4 are all exciting and are all happy, seemingly durable additions to my mental life.
  2. I've modified the software I use to track my reading to (i) better support reading different kinds of works and sections of longer works and (ii) encourage me to take notes consistently on what I read. More and more of my daily life management occurs not only in software but in modifying that software.
  3. The project involves more nostalgia than I expected. I spent two years of high school working out of a Norton reader in English class; those memories are remarkably vivid, and there's a Norton feel that's still there, even in a Kindle edition 25+ years later.

Recommended! I'm having a great time with this project.

  1. This all happened before the recent Kindle end-of-support news, but I'm quite happy to replace my e-reader at least once every fourteen years. It's a testament to Amazon's reputation for consistency and long-term support that people find this news surprising.↩

  2. ...whose characterization of the distinction between "romantic" and "classical" conceptions of human agency is arguably useful for thinking about big tech companies, but that's another post.↩

  3. Specifically, "The Daughters of the Late Colonel."↩

  4. Especially "The Defense of Guenevere."↩

#reading