A Signed Copy of Neil Gaiman’s, “What You Need to Be Warm”

I went and fulfilled an old dream of mine. A signed copy of Neil Gaiman’s, What You Need to Be Warm. Click to see bigger A New Year’s Gift! From me, to me 😂 I got mine from The Golden Notebook, an indie bookshop in Woodstock New York, who are kind and prompt and ship world wide.1 Feedback on this post? Mail me at feedback@janusworx.com P.S. Subscribe to my mailing list!...

January 14, 2024 · Mario Jason Braganza

Read, Read, Read, Everything

With eternal gratitude to Bruinhilda the Librarian, for writing this. And with lots of apologies for stealing it wholesale and making it my new reading manifesto :) As a library worker, there’s something I want to say to you. You do not have to apologize for the books you choose to read. At all. To anyone. You owe nobody any explanations; you need no excuse or “good reason” to be reading the book....

January 10, 2024 · Mario Jason Braganza

My Year in Reading, 2023 Edition

I normally hide Easter eggs or just random comments into my footnotes. And so normally it does not matter if you folk read it or not. But this post was really off the cuff and there are some details that have snuck into the footnotes. So, please do give ’em a peek courtesy, Tom Gauld Reading is my one thing. The thing that most people I know, can say without reservation, that I do....

December 31, 2023 · Mario Jason Braganza

A New Hole Hawg, the Kobo Elipsa 2e

Update, 2024-02-16: Six months later … A couple of years ago, around this time, I upgraded to the best reading experience I could afford at the time. I got me a Kindle Oasis. I called it my Hole Hawg. And boy, has it served me like one. And while it has done, everything it promised it would do, I found myself outgrowing it and needing something more powerful. What I need A device that could handle nearly every format that I could throw at it....

July 10, 2023 · Mario Jason Braganza

Mandy Brown Celebrates Fifteen Years of Her Blog

This was a thread on my fediverse account, that grew too long. Posting it here, all together, the way my thoughts spilled out. All I knew about Mandy Brown when I began following her a year ago is she has a doggie called Furiosa she thinks about books the way I do she reads books and then writes about reading them, the way I always dreamed I could she’s a prominent member of my circle of the Eminent Dead Today, as she celebrates the quinceanera of her blog, I realised that she also:...

June 15, 2023 · Mario Jason Braganza

Books Saved My Life

This post was first sent to my newsletter on January 27, 2023. You really ought to subscribe :) From A Velocity of Being. Art by Yara Kono An extract from the page I read today from A Velocity of Being. Dani Shapiro writes … My Dear Future Friend, I will probably never know you. We may not ever walk this earth at the same moment. But listen carefully. Books saved my life....

February 10, 2023 · Mario Jason Braganza

What I Learned Today (2nd of February, 2023)

Long day today1. I thought I got nothing much done, until I wrote this post. So, more incentive to keep writing these. Python Learning about how to make keyword arguments stick. And how to think about structuring programs Devops Deep dive into how to add prow job listings to the dashboard and viceversa; how to go about looking for the job from the dashboard Urdu / French Lots of practice with vowels and the ‘jiim’ group of letters....

February 2, 2023 · Mario Jason Braganza

Some Books

This post was first sent to my newsletter on January 19, 2023. You really ought to subscribe :) Art by Ricardo Siri Some books are toolkits you take up to fix things, from the most practical to the most mysterious, from your house to your heart, or to make things, from cakes to ships. Some books are wings. Some are horses that run away with you. Some are parties to which you are invited full of friends who are there even when you have no friends....

February 2, 2023 · Mario Jason Braganza

I Should Write Down and Summarize What I Did

I did a lot of research the other day about what I’d need to build a contact form for my website. I bookmarked lots of pages. And today, I come and look at this mountain of videos and sites and pages and woneder what exactly it is, that I am supposed to tackle. Nothing makes sense. I know I ruled out Sendy as an option. Or did I? Do I need Javascript?...

January 23, 2023 · Mario Jason Braganza

Reading Page a Day Books

This post was first sent to my newsletter on January 10th, 2023. You really ought to subscribe :) I took close to a year to finish two of the books from last years reading list. That’s because I was reading them, in tiny bits, in small chunks, a day at a time I was already reading a poem a day and then some time early last year I serendiptioustly ran into this Ryan Holiday post, which spoke to the virtues and pleasures of page-a-day books and daily wisdom....

January 17, 2023 · Mario Jason Braganza