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📚 Read Slowly - Take Notes - Apply the Ideas ​ You're reading this with 7,821 other critical thinkers.🙌🏻

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I'm Building a Library with a Secret Room

👋 Hey Reader,

A little life update—because things haven’t gone quite according to plan.

As many of you know, I was recently under contract to buy a building for the bookstore. In anticipation of that move, I responsibly (and optimistically) canceled my current office lease. Unfortunately, once we got deeper into inspections, the building revealed a greatest hits collection of problems: extensive mold, structural issues, and enough red flags to make walking away the only sane choice.

So the contract was canceled… and suddenly I had no place to work.

Enter: opportunity disguised as inconvenience.

About a year ago, my oldest son headed off to college. His bedroom has been sitting quietly dormant ever since—waiting, apparently, for its true calling. With no office and an unused room under my own roof, the solution became obvious: it’s finally time to build a proper home office.

And because every self-respecting bookworm and woodworker knows you don’t do these things halfway, I’ve decided to do it right.

The plan?

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That room is becoming a full-fledged home office and library—built with my own two hands, putting the woodshop to good use. And yes… it will include a custom-built bookcase that opens into a hidden room. Because if you’re going to build a library, it should absolutely contain a secret.

Over the coming weeks, I’ll be sharing more about the build, the process, and what comes next. What started as a frustrating detour has turned into one of the most fun projects I’ve tackled in a long time.

Sometimes plans fall apart so better ones can be built—preferably behind a secret bookcase.

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📚 Until next time, read slowly - take notes - apply the ideas.

-Eddy

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New This Week: ​

Book Recommendation Kindred by Octavia Butler Listen to the Podcast Timothy Schaffert on The Titanic Survivors Book Club | EP 122 | EP 122 Book Club Update What We're Preparing to Read Next

Book Recommendation

Kindred by Octavia Butler

Our book club just finished Kindred, and I can’t stop thinking about it.

At its core, Kindred tells the story of one woman’s experience with slavery—but Octavia Butler does something far more unsettling and powerful than a traditional historical novel. Dana is a modern Black woman living in the 1970s who is inexplicably pulled back in time to a pre–Civil War plantation. That alone makes this book technically science fiction, but Butler uses the time travel not as a gimmick, but as a lens.

What fascinated me most was watching Dana’s modern attitudes, assumptions, and sense of self collide head-on with the brutal realities and social rules of the past. She knows how things should be. She knows how things end. And none of that protects her.

The book refuses to let the reader keep slavery at a safe historical distance. By forcing a contemporary character—and by extension, us—into that world, Butler makes the horror immediate, personal, and deeply uncomfortable in the best possible way. It’s a novel that asks hard questions about power, survival, complicity, and what it really means to endure.

Kindred is one of those rare books that crosses genres effortlessly: part historical fiction, part science fiction, part psychological exploration—and entirely unforgettable.

If you haven’t read it yet, I can’t recommend it enough.

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Get Your Copy at Edgewater→

Listen to The Podcast

Timothy Schaffert on The Titanic Survivors Book Club | EP 122

In this episode, I sit down with novelist Timothy Schaffert to talk about The Titanic Survivors Book Club and the quiet, sustaining role books play in a life. We discuss how readers can slow down, pay better attention, and get more from challenging texts—especially when reading starts to feel like work. Timothy also shares what he believes separates good fiction from fiction that stays with you for years.

Listen on Apple Podcasts 🎧 Listen on Spotify 🎧

Update From Book Club

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What We're Getting Ready to Read

Edition: Gawande, Atul. Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End. Picador, 2017. ISBN 978-1-250-07622-9

​Get Your Copy Here​

Reading Pace: 10 pages / day

Dates: 1/13/2026 to 2/10/2026

Online Meetings Held: Tuesdays at 8:30 EST – [Click here to join]​

Being Mortal is surgeon Atul Gawande’s reflection on how medicine approaches aging and death. Combining research, narrative, and personal insight, Gawande explores the limitations of medical intervention and argues for a more humane, person-centered view of care at life’s end.

Three questions to consider while you read:

1. How does Gawande challenge conventional wisdom about aging and death in modern healthcare?
2. What stories or examples in the book most affected your thinking about end-of-life decisions?
3. How can we apply the book’s lessons to improve our conversations and care around mortality?

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📚 Ready to Join Book Club?

If you want to read deeper, remember more, and meet people who love late-night philosophical conversations as much as you do… come read with us.

You get:​
✓ All weekly notes
✓ All recordings
✓ Access to our live Tuesday discussions
✓ A thoughtful community of readers

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📚 - Join us here →

Hi, I'm Eddy. How Can I Help? Feel free to respond to this email. Let me know how I can make your experience in our reading community better, or if you have questions, I'm all ears. ​ As always, read slowly - take notes - apply the ideas. -Eddy

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