For too long, my reading and research have been scattered across too many platforms. RSS feeds from Reeder, then articles are saved in GoodLinks, ebooks in Amazon Kindle and Apple Books, PDFs floating in cloud storage, or Kindle and Apple Books. Each tool had its strengths, but juggling them all meant highlights and notes got lost, insights disconnected, and reading turned into an endless backlog instead of a fluid process. It was time for defrag, and past time to streamline everything into a single, efficient pipeline where information flows effortlessly from reading to annotation to long-term knowledge storage.
Enter Readwise Reader, the missing link that consolidates everything. Now, RSS articles, PDFs, and even EPUBs live in one place, ready for deep reading, highlighting, and seamless syncing to my Denbow Operating System. No more scattered notes, no more “I’ll get to this later” purgatory—everything I engage with is processed, annotated, and automatically archived where it belongs. GoodLinks remains my inbox for reference storage, but Readwise Reader is where reading happens, and the DenbowOS is where knowledge lives.
The result is a frictionless reading workflow that eliminates redundancy and maximizes retention. Instead of bouncing between half a dozen apps, I save, read, highlight and annotate in a structured flow, ensuring nothing gets lost in the shuffle. My highlights sync automatically, my PDFs are searchable, and my reading backlog finally feels manageable. The days of reading fragmentation are over.
A mixtape is a curated collection of songs, typically compiled for a specific mood, theme, or person. It originated in the cassette era, where people would record songs onto a blank tape to create a personalized music experience.
Similar to a music tape, a literary mixtape takes readers on a curated journey. Instead of songs, I’m using books, passages, and challenges—organized into Side A and Side B to create a flow and experience.
This isn’t just a reading list. It’s an interactiveexploratory challenge—a literary scavenger hunt where books and passages act as waypoints, clues, and creative catalysts.
How It Works:
Read each selection, but don’t just read—engage with it.
Wander beyond the words. Each reading comes with an exploratory challenge.
Notice something new—connections, hidden patterns, the way words shape your world.
Create—respond to the reading in a way that bends reality just a little.
The Tracks (Reading + Challenge Pairings):
Track 1: The Book You’d Never Pick Up
📖 Challenge: Go to a bookstore or library and choose a book entirely at random. Close your eyes, spin around, or grab something from a genre you never touch.
🔍 Why? This forces you to step outside of your reading habits and find something completely unexpected.
Track 2: The Found Sentence
📖 Challenge: Open a random book to page 42. Read the first full sentence on the page. Find a book that feels like it would fit that sentence as a title.
🔍 Why? This creates unusual connections between books, helping you discover titles in a completely new way.
Track 3: Steal Like a Reader
📖 Challenge: Ask a friend (or even a stranger) what book changed their life. Read that book, no matter what it is.
🔍 Why? Expands your TBR with deeply personal recommendations that might never have been on your radar.
Track 4: Read a Book Backward
📖 Challenge: Instead of starting from page one, flip to a random section and begin reading. Then go forward or backward as you see fit.
🔍 Why? Forces you to experience the book differently, paying attention to details in a non-linear way.
Track 5: The Mysterious Stranger’s TBR
📖 Challenge: Find a random annotated book—a used bookstore copy, a library book with marginalia, or an online forum where someone shares book notes. Read that book as if the annotator left it for you.
🔍 Why? Adds an extra layer of mystery and connection to the reading process.
Track 6: Judge the Book by Its Cover
📖 Challenge: Pick a book solely based on its cover, without reading the back or inside flap.
🔍 Why? Forces you to embrace instinct and aesthetics in choosing books, leading to unexpected reads.
Track 7: The Chain Reaction Read
📖 Challenge: Pick a book from your shelf. Look up a random review of it online. Find another book mentioned in that review—and read that one instead.
🔍 Why? Expands your reading list in a completely organic, unpredictable way.
Track 8: The One-Sitting Book
📖 Challenge: Choose a book that you can read in a single sitting—a novella, a short story collection, or a short nonfiction book. Dedicate a day to reading it straight through.
🔍 Why? Changes the pacing of your reading, making the experience feel immersive and cinematic.
Track 9: The Mixed Media Pairing
📖 Challenge: Read a book alongside a related movie, album, or visual art piece. Example: Read The Great Gatsby while listening to jazz from the 1920s,
🔍 Why? Enhances the sensory experience of reading and creates deeper connections.
Track 10: The Secret Book Swap
📖 Challenge: Swap books with someone else—either a friend, a coworker, or a stranger via a book exchange (Little Free Library, an online swap, etc.). Read whatever you receive.
🔍 Why? Introduces randomness, social connection, and an element of surprise to your TBR.
The experimental website framework I want to build will exist in the space between what is known and what refuses to be known. A static HTML-only archive that resists explanation. It presents itself as something incomplete, something forgotten, or something deliberately obscured, leaving behind only classified remnants, misplaced coordinates, glitched anomalies, and misfiled receipts that hint at a larger, unseen structure. The layers go deep with hidden pages, cryptic labels peeling at the edges, references that lead nowhere, and timestamps that don’t quite add up.
Some things were removed. Some things never existed. Some things moved while you weren’t looking. It is an experiment in next-level mischief, a system designed to pull at the edges of curiosity while leaving just enough behind to make you wonder what’s missing.
This website will feel like you are trying to solve the Rubick’s Cube but it fights back, constantly,
Why create something deliberately obscure? Why build a digital labyrinth with no clear purpose? Why make a repository of fragments, half-truths, and lost thoughts instead of a structured, polished archive?
This new site will be a map of ideas except it’s unfinished, glitching, and missing pieces. I’m creating a mental terrain where the act of getting lost is the goal.
Inspired by The Cemetery of Forgotten Books, my Library of Unwritten Books is a deliberate archive of unfinished works—preserved not as lost projects, but as enduring records of creative exploration. Blending structured literary preservation with a sense of mystery, it stands as both an homage to my work and a reflection on the stories that remain untold.
Carlos Ruiz Zafón’s Cemetery of Forgotten Books is a vast, hidden library in Barcelona, safeguarding abandoned and forgotten stories from oblivion. Introduced in The Shadow of the Wind, it serves as both a literary mystery and a powerful symbol of storytelling’s enduring legacy.
The new E-reader is an improvement on my Kindle paperwhite in only a few ways. Obviously, the color addition brings a new dynamic. The display feels more like a tablet as opposed to an e-ink reader. The text and images render better, the colored highlights and notes are easier to see. The screen size is the same but the tablet itself is a little larger, easier to grip.
Sure, I can have the same quality on the Kindle app displayed on the phone but for my purposes, I need a dedicated reader.
The fact that Amazon threw in 3 months of Kindle Unlimited reading and 1 month of Audible audio books were very nice incentives too.
The 2025 Reading list is now out of whack with all of the new additions I’ll need to finish.
I just finished my first book of 2025 only five days in and it was called the Hemingway Thief. This book is based on the true story of Ernest Hemingway’s unfinished works that was stolen in Paris and then the book’s story kicks in after that. The missing briefcase contained drafts of “A Moveable Feast” that Hemingway eventually did have published but…well, I don’t want to give spoilers. An enjoyable read.
Up next is Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes in 1605. I don’t know what to expect but it has been labeled as one of the best books of all time. We’ll see!
“What an astonishing thing a book is. It’s a flat object made from a tree with flexible parts on which are imprinted lots of funny dark squiggles. One glance at it and you’re inside the mind of another person, maybe somebody dead for thousands of years.”
Back in December of last year, I set a reading goal of 24 books in 2024. Today I just wrapped that goal up with plenty of time to spare for the remainder of the year.
It was a fitting choice to complete the original classic of Dracula, by Bram Stoker in mid-October and Halloween coming up. I had intended to read other classic monster novels, but for now, I don’t know if my heart is into that.
It happened again, where I reserve multiple titles from the library and they are all 8-24 weeks out. And yet, they all, somehow, become available all at once.
For now, I have decided to read Stephen King’s book, On Writing. A non-fiction book that gives insights into his prolific style.
If interested, you can check out my Reading page to see what was on my digital nightstand.
Hell, you can even take a look at the screenshot too.
I love used bookstores, has it been mentioned? While in Oklahoma I decided to swing by the buy/sell/trade store and pick up some desired reference books such as a dictionary, thesaurus and an encyclopedia. Even the History of the National Geographic Society was grabbed.
Now I am on the look out for an atlas and a globe. These have all been on my list to add for the new study in the new home.
Since the early 1990’s I have had a fascination with the ancient Khmer Empire in modern day Cambodia. There is a story there waiting to be told. Over the years, I have researched and tried to keep up with the archeological news. Four years ago I offered a hypothesis regarding the Angkor Wat temple complex and another temple in the mountains to the north. I haven’t read or heard anything related to it so I still make my claim here.
In the meantime, I have decided to do a re-write on a story I started years ago regarding this area and its hidden secrets. The original ideas were too grandiose in my head and it was a challenge to sort it all out. I’ve kept some main ideas but simplified it somewhat. Also made it more relatable and relevant.
When wrapping up a chapter in my writing software (Ulysses), I noticed a feature that allows me to publish in various formats. “What the hell” I thought, so I exported my draft (NOT a final release) in the e.Pub format and figured why not, and sent it to my Kindle.
Moments later I was reading my own writing on an e-book reader!
This was a fun discovery and encourages me to keep going, press publish and read in its entirety. Someday.
