So far in 2023 I have stuck to my resolution of publishing a new episode of my Monthly Audio Newsletter on the first day of each month:
I’ve decided that my Monthly Audio Newsletter, Mostly About Nothing will, for now, not feature my voice but only feature dead writers. Only dead writers will be featured.
In 2023, I am launching a new, experimental audio experience called “Monthly Audio Newsletter, Mostly About Nothing.”
Episode 1 on Anne Sexton is now live.
Episode 2 coming soon! Please like and subscribe, etc.
I first discovered Paul Collins via McSweeney’s and his imprint there: the Collins library, which is an odd assortment of out-of-print Victorian novels and other oddities. However, Collins’ own books are phenomenal, filled with some of the best nonfiction writing I have read, period. Collins has the ability to bring history to life and infuse it with his own personal perspective. I’m making it sound blander than it really is.  He appears on NPR Weekend Edition as its “literary detective” on odd old books. I don’t think Collins gets enough credit as one of the best essayists in the US. The feeling you get from reading his books is that he is genuinely curious about old things and deeply loves books. Here are three of his best books.
1. Banvard’s Folly: Thirteen Tales of People Who Didn’t Change the World
This collection of 13 mini-histories focuses on people who could have been great – but failed. Banvard’s story alone is incredible. He painted a mural that was to-scale panorama of the entire Mississippi River shoreline. Banvard produced shows on the scale of P.T. Barnum, but made one tragic folly.
2. Sixpence House: Lost in A Town Of Books
If you’ve ever dreamed of owning your own used book store or of going to the Hay-on-Wye Book Festival, this is your chance to live vicariously through Collins who up and moves to Hay.
![hay-on-wye-2[2]](http://www.mattbucher.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/hay-on-wye-22.jpg)
3. The Book of William: How Shakespeare’s First Folio Conquered the World
The First Folio is without a doubt the most valuable book in the world and yet most book lovers likely don’t know much about its genesis and history. It is one of the few books printed in the 1620s that still has a definitive history. This narrative is one of the best books about book collecting and Shakespeare’s world.
From the Foreword to The Early Stories:
“Though spared many of the material deprivations and religious terrors that had dogged our parents, and awash in a disproportionate share of the world’s resources, we continued prey to what Freud called “normal human unhappiness.†But when has happiness ever been the subject of fiction? The pursuit of it is just that—a pursuit. Death and its adjutants tax each transaction. What is possessed is devalued by what is coveted. Discontent, conflict, waste, sorrow, fear—these are the worthy, inevitable subjects. Yet our hearts expect happiness, as an underlying norm, ‘the fountain-light of all our day’ in Wordsworth’s words.”