I am enjoying Zen teacher Thich Nhat Hanh’s Mindfulness Essentials series of small “How to” books. How to Love is one I revisit often. Right now I am reading How to Eat — short meditations on connecting with the Earth, enjoying your food and eating with others. Below are three excerpts. — CD

• Wait without waiting — Standing in line at grocery store or a restaurant, or waiting for the time to eat, we don’t need to waste our time. We don’t need to “wait” for one second. Instead, we can enjoy breathing in and out for our nourishment and healing. We can use that time to notice that we will soon be able to have food, and we can be happy and grateful during that time. Instead of waiting, we can generate joy.

• Our ancestors are in the soil — In the soil are many people who have died, have been transformed, and have become part of the soil. Maybe in this mouthful of rice are also the bones of hundreds of generations as well as many leaves, worms and animal’s bones. Maybe in a previous life you had been there and died there, and your own bones have disintegrated in that land. During the time of eating, your practice is to look deeply into that grain of rice and enjoy all that has gone into its creation. There are so many things to enjoy and to discover in each bite.

• Eating and smiling — Sitting at the table and eating with other people is a chance to offer an authentic smile of friendship and understanding. The most important part of the practice is to look at each person and smile. Upon finishing your meal, take a few moments to notice that you have finished, that your bowl is now empty, and your hunger is satisfied. This is another opportunity to smile and be grateful that you have had this nourishing food to eat, supporting you on the path of love and understanding.

I’ve been predicting that the next big thing after smart phones are smart glasses at work in a Mirrorworld or a Metaverse. That still has not happened, and it doesn’t seem like it’s going to happen in the next few years. But I’m sticking with my prediction that it will be the next big thing. The best case I’ve seen for how this will be built is this very long technical essay by Matt Ball, which serves as the Metaverse Primer. — KK

Poetry is my true love. The imagery of poetry and abstract concepts ignite new connections in my brain. A creation of mine is Phantom Kangaroo — an online and print poetry journal. Over the last decade I have published 300+ poems by poets who write about the surreal, supernatural and occult. I chose these subjects because the otherworldly is what awakens me. This year, I stitched together issues 1 through 23 and published them in a hardcover anthology that you can thumb through whenever you need to break out of the mundane. Issue 24 is free to read online and features a creepy rhyming poem about cats, canonization of women, and incarnating into a body that feels like kiwi. Check it out here. — CD

My wife and I both devoured a series of graphic novels penned by a French-Arab cartoonist Riad Sattouf. In a five-volume set (so far), called The Arab of the Future, Riad recounts his family’s time in Lybia, Syria, Saudi Arabia and France. A graphic novel is the perfect format for this intimate, yet cinematic, and at times, disturbing story. It superbly conveys the texture and details of everyday life in the Arab world with the unfiltered gaze of a child. And it reads very fast, perfect for my current short attention span. I can’t wait for more volumes. — KK

Charles Platt is a science fiction writer who was also a staff writer for Wired magazine. He is not well known, and does not have an extravagant life story, but for some reason I could not put down his multi-volume self-published autobiography which is subtitled: “How I Failed at Almost Everything.” I found his nearly day-by-day memoirs of his struggles to be a writer and zine publisher to be page-turning exciting because he had just enough success so that his inevitable personal failures would make a rollicking roller coaster ride, like a good sitcom. How will Charles screw up next? Despite the stack of unread bestsellers on my table, I’ve read Vol1, Vol 2, and Vol 3 of his An Accidental Life, and look forward to the soon to be published Vol 4 and 5. — KK

“I love it when someone wakes me up to see what I was sleepwalking through. Adam Roger does that in this book. He showed me that the colors we see everywhere today are technologies we invented! Invented colors! Head explodes!” That’s the blurb I wrote for Roger’s new book Full Spectrum. Reproducing the colors of nature is not easy, yet despite being surrounded by manufactured colors in our modern lives, the story of these inventions are invisible. This is one of those books that opens up a world right in front of my nose. — KK

Wewritehere.com welcomes and publishes creative writing from students in 6th to 12th grade. Every month they award $25 gift cards for selected works and share them in a monthly newsletter that you can sign up to receive. Since it is based in Oakland, California, a lot of the perspectives are from Oakland youth, but they welcome submissions from students all over. I’m enjoying their email digests, the poems are both sobering and delightful. — CD

For 40 years I’ve been photographing the disappearing traditions of Asia. This week I launched a Kickstarter campaign for my oversized 3-volume book set that captures this wonderful otherness. I crammed a continent of images into 1,000 pages. The book, Vanishing Asia, is a time machine that will take you to a place where everything is done differently, before the world was all the same. I guarantee it will inspired you. My goal is to maximize the number of fans who get the book rather than maxing revenue, so I’ve discounted the Vanishing Asia Kickstarter way below the retail price. I hope you join me in this adventure and back the book. — KK

The book The Good Ancestor is my pick for presenting the best practices of long-term thinking. It makes the case for why generational-scale thinking is beneficial, and summarizes what we know about implementing this framework. The aim is to make sure future generations succeed, which sometimes works against the easier goal of succeeding right now. For a teaser, you can watch a 30-minute talk the author, Roman Kzrznaric, did for the Long Now Foundation (which I co-chair). — KK

If you’re going to click on an exposé about exploitative companies who discriminate against BIPOC, you should start here. CC Paschal’s essay about her experience as a producer for Gimlet called “Hidden in Plain Sight” is beautifully vulnerable and powerful to read. It is also incredibly infuriating, so be warned: it will crack your heart open. — CD

Every week for the past 4 years we’ve recommended 6 things. We went through all those, selected the best 1,000, grouped them by subject, and created a book. That book, Recomendo: The Expanded Edition came out in paper, but is now available as a full color PDF. Each recommendation has active hyperlinks and a QR code. The PDF book is easily searchable and very browseable. Recomendo: The Expanded Edition PDF costs $2.99. It’s a no brainer if you like this stuff. — KK

I launched my subscriber-supported newsletter, The Magnet, in August of this year, and I’ve been amazed by the response so far. Until December 31, I’m offering subscriptions for $25 a year forever. That’s 50% off the regular subscription price, and you’ll get the same deal every year you resubscribe. — MF

One thing I have to be grateful for is that this was the year I got better at making myself happy. For me, that meant creating an ideal work-life balance, carving out creative time, hiking with my dog, mastering the art of relaxation, and finding new ways of showing my family and friends I love them. Here are the “things” that helped me accomplish that. — CD

I was not in the mood for assembling our annual Gift Guide for Cool Tools this year. Instead I felt moved to simply make a list of any purchases that made me happy in this past year. I call it my Happy List. None of these things may be of any interest to anyone else, but I get persistent joy from them. (Mark shared his list last week and Claudia will share her list next week.) — KK

Every year for the last seven years, Cool Tools has published an annual holiday gift guide (you can check them out here). This year, we decided to make lists of things that made us happy in the year 2020. You can read my list here. Kevin and Claudia’s lists will run in the following weeks — MF

Good news. We’ve rounded up the best recomendos from the past four years of this newsletter and have organized 1,000 of them by subject, and illustrated most of them, in a 217-page book. This book, Recomendo: The Expanded Edition, is a better way to search for past recommendations, browse for cool stuff you missed, or catch up if you are a new subscriber. This hefty paperback is available in two flavors: a $13 B&W version, and $30 for a color version. It makes a great gift, too, with neat, uncommon, and useful things for almost anyone. — KK

Enter a location in The Booktrail and it will find books set there. You can refine the search by selecting a setting from a pull-down menu (e.g., a bookshop, factory/office, prison). I searched Chicago in a factory office setting and got Girl in Disguise, about a female Pinkerton agent in the 1850s. — MF

I crave insider knowledge. This Reddit thread feeds my desire to hear what’s really going on in everyday businesses. It simply asks people “What’s an industry secret in the field you work in?” There’s a  couple hundred responses, like: Goodwill throws away most of what is given to them; in vodka, the bottle costs more to make than the vodka; it’s easy to get library fines waived; bouncers make up the rules; there is way more butter than you think in almost every dish at fancy restaurants; etc. — KK

The premise of this book, Time Off, is that you can’t maintain a great work ethic without having a great “rest ethic”. You have to take time off, vacation, go on sabbatical, pause, rest, sleep, slack, play, and goof off in order to be and do your best. I’ve long been a champion of slack time and mandatory time off, and I am delighted all the arguments and evidence for this take are presented in this hefty book. Includes examples of very productive people, and the latest scientific evidence. Time off is not only essential to a good life, it is something you can get better at. — KK

If you are a “person of influence,” particularly when it comes to books, and you’d like to read books before they are published (so you can rave about them when they are), you can sign up at NetGalley and get digital “advance reader copies (ARC)” of upcoming books. This is an early ebook edition used to promote the book. Most titles are available to all members, but some books need to be requested. For avid readers who like to talk about what they are reading, NetGalley is a handy service. — KK