Hey y’all,

Here are 10 things I thought were worth sharing this week: 

1. Drawing has to come out of your body.
    
2. I’m currently reading Matthew Walker’s Why We Sleep. (I wrote about sleep, making art, and trying to hold onto last night’s dream.)
    
3. I’m also reading Lydia Davis’s Essays. (Here are 10 of her recommendations for good writing habits.) If you want to squeeze in some reading before the end of the year, here is a list of my favorite books you could finish in a long afternoon.
    
4. The Mister Rogers no one saw. (“A lot of this — all of this — is just tending soil,” he said. I wrote more about the seed and the soil.)
    
5. I had a really nice conversation on the podcast Crazy Good Turns. 
    
6. Music: I’ve been listening to a lot of Aphex Twin, especially Selected Ambient Works, Volume II. If you need an intro, here’s a list of his best songs made into a Spotify playlist to get you started.
    
7. Movies: Errol Morris says there are no good movies, but I loved Knives Out. I recommend you skip the trailer and reading anything about it and just go see it. (Speaking of trailers, I had never heard of Portrait of a Lady on Fire, then I saw it was number one on David Sims’ year-end list. It looks great.)
    
8. Year-end list season is definitely upon us, and I feel it is my duty to remind you how much of the year is left. (That said, you know I love lists, so here are some from my favorites: John Waters’ top ten 2019 films, Stephanie Zacharek’s 10 best movies of 2019, Michael Silverblatt’s best books of 2019, Ted Gioia’s 100 best recordings of 2019, Amanda Petrusich’s favorite music of 2019 and the decade, and Jason Kottke’s list of lists of the best books of 2019.) Luckily I’m not a book critic and I don’t have to make my year-end list until the year’s end, but as an experiment, I’ve been sharing my favorites season by season.
    
9. Feel-good link of the week: How watching Jeopardy! together helped Sam Anderson say goodbye to his dad. 
    
10. Today is the last day to order signed, drawn in, and personalized copies of my books from Bookpeople for shipping in time for the holidays. I’ll sign as many as you want — they make great gifts for co-workers, students, your weird uncle, etc. (If you don’t need them signed and just want ’em cheap, head here and get them from your favorite retailer.)