iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Sam Sacks @ssacks.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

For National Poetry Day "Jamesian" By Thom Gunn (From 'The Man with Night Sweats,' which has just been reissued by FSG.)

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Sam Sacks @ssacks.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Out today is Laura Kolbe's 'The Decadent Movement,' a poetry cycle about pregnancy, birth and motherhood organized in reverse chronology. It's beautiful, intimate and destabilizing, somehow strange and familiar all at once. I strongly recommend it. bookshop.org/p/books/the-...

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Sam Sacks @ssacks.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

All the excellent Anita Brookner coverage has reminded me of one of my favorite works of literary criticism, this Mary Hawthorne piece on 'Hotel du Lac' and the Brookner oeuvre, from a 2011 essay anthology. Here's the opening paragraph. www.google.com/books/editio...

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Sam Sacks @ssacks.bsky.social · 21/08/2026

"Players are the only honest hypocrites. Their life is a voluntary dream; a studied madness. The height of their ambition is to be *beside themselves*. Today kings, tomorrow beggars, it is only when they are themselves that they are nothing." -William Hazlitt, from today's fun bargain cart find.

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Sam Sacks @ssacks.bsky.social · 07/08/2026

Strongly considering stopping at this French tourist attraction

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Sam Sacks @ssacks.bsky.social · 01/08/2026

Our AirBnb has a Technics turntable and an LP collection that’s mostly stuff like this. this trip is going to be entirely subsumed by teenage nostalgia.

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Sam Sacks @ssacks.bsky.social · 17/07/2026

Made my annual visit to this place and bought this Pelican

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Sam Sacks @ssacks.bsky.social · 12/07/2026

Saw a pretty cool stag beetle

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Sam Sacks @ssacks.bsky.social · 10/07/2026

My tired children cosplaying the Pietà in St. Peter’s Basilica

Tired kids slumped together in the loggia of St. Peter’s Basilica

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Sam Sacks @ssacks.bsky.social · 08/07/2026

"Here in the Villa, around that chapel of Canopus where his cult is celebrated in Egyptian fashion, I have encouraged the establishment of various pleasure pavilions" (Marguerite Yourcenar). We saw no pleasure pavilions on today's visit to Hadrian's Villa in Tivoli, but it was exceptional even so.

A statue of a Roman soldier viewed from the rear, framed by marble pillars and placed before a long pool with more ruins in the background. This is the Canopus in Hadrian's Villa.

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Sam Sacks @ssacks.bsky.social · 28/06/2026

My son at the Panini Sticker trading hub. Humanity at its most pure, imo.

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Sam Sacks @ssacks.bsky.social · 18/06/2026

I also like Versailles, but that's because I went during Covid and the place was so empty they let my 2-year-old slip the rope and sprint around the Hall of Mirrors.

Chandeliers hang over the wood flooring in the long Hall of Mirrors in Versailles, where a little boy in overalls is happily running

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Sam Sacks @ssacks.bsky.social · 11/06/2026

Now I've received this social media consultant's email intended for @anathanwest.bsky.social. Honored and esteemed by the company of writers the rogue AI bot is placing me in.

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Sam Sacks @ssacks.bsky.social · 11/06/2026

Here is Alden Whitman, looking delighted by the chance to eulogize your death

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Sam Sacks @ssacks.bsky.social · 11/06/2026

"I have a recollection of Graham Greene meeting me at the door of his Paris flat and saying, 'Oh, so you're the young man who's come to write my obituary, are you?'" From yesterday's unnecessary used bookshop purchase.

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Sam Sacks @ssacks.bsky.social · 11/06/2026

Just received an email intended for Vivian Gornick pitching me on opportunities to boost my social media presence

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Sam Sacks @ssacks.bsky.social · 08/06/2026

Whatever her reputation as a reviewer may be, this 1988 collection of Michiko Kakutani's artist profiles (Mary McCarthy, David Byrne, John Gielgud, etc) is excellent. Apropos of having just referred to it again, something I do more often than I would have guessed.

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Sam Sacks @ssacks.bsky.social · 28/05/2026

I love you, dear little dove, but you need to make your nest somewhere else.

A tubular metal heat shaft against a brick wall, with a mourning dove nesting between them

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Sam Sacks @ssacks.bsky.social · 25/05/2026

I think this is a pretty fair comment from a reader, unfortunately

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Sam Sacks @ssacks.bsky.social · 18/05/2026

I'm a park bench plaque connoisseur and this is the first one I've ever seen in code. If there's an Alan Turing out there who can decrypt it, let me know.

A park bench plaque with a message in code

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Sam Sacks @ssacks.bsky.social · 14/05/2026

I'm very happy to now own this print of one of Esther Nisenthal Krinitz's fabric pictures. Krinitz embroidered the story of her Holocaust survival--she and her sister hid at a farm in Poland--in 36 extraordinary stitched panels. They are displayed at the American Visionary Art museum in Baltimore.

Panel of a family on a boat looking at the Statue of Liberty. The caption reads "Coming to America, June 10, 1949 we arrived in New York. Max's cousin Clara came aboard the ship to greet us. As our daughter Brasia slept in her father's arms, Clara said to her, "My dear child, this will be your America!"

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Sam Sacks @ssacks.bsky.social · 28/04/2026

'What are “nonchalant Balliol voices”? What’s a “three pip emma”? Why is “General ffolliott” not a misprint? What does “napoo finny” mean, and is it even English?' Always a delight to find writing by Stephen Akey, here on the strange argot of High Modernism hedgehogreview.com/issues/human...

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Sam Sacks @ssacks.bsky.social · 27/04/2026

It has been a proud week for my father, who on Friday was inducted into the National Academy of Sciences. (His bio, for those interested in Leishmania parasites: www.nasonline.org/directory-en...). Here is a picture of him with Dr. Fauci when he received tenure in 1986.

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Sam Sacks @ssacks.bsky.social · 24/04/2026

I love this Royal Paulownia tree growing out of the wall in Morningside Park

A flowering Royal Paulownia tree growing out of a stone wall

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Sam Sacks @ssacks.bsky.social · 11/04/2026

A striking trio of books for this weekend’s WSJ Fiction Chronicle, including an astounding work of Zola-esque naturalism by the Tamil writer Jeyamohan www.wsj.com/arts-culture...

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Sam Sacks @ssacks.bsky.social · 26/03/2026

Slate's two-sentence "explainer" headlines have always been pretty obnoxious, but the main problem is that they end up repeating the same formulas

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Sam Sacks @ssacks.bsky.social · 24/03/2026

Timberdoodle in Bryant Park! Always crazy to see one here.

Fuzzy picture of an American Woodcock amid a patch of not yet flowering daffodils

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Sam Sacks @ssacks.bsky.social · 10/02/2026

I don't know from houseplants, but I really recommend this ZZ plant (short for Zamioculcas zamiifolia). Ours has thrived beautifully despite, or maybe because of, the most minimal care.

A flourishing ZZ plant in a gray pot on a blue window sill

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Sam Sacks @ssacks.bsky.social · 16/01/2026

At On the Seawall, Cory Oldweiler writes an evocative introduction to the "Bergmanesque" postwar Swedish writer Birgitta Trotzig, who is getting the revival treatment from Archipelago Books in Saskia Vogel translations www.ronslate.com/on-queen-a-n...

black and white photo of a young Birgitta Trotzig looking pensive

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Sam Sacks @ssacks.bsky.social · 16/01/2026

Much fine lit-crit elsewhere on the internets. At the Hudson Review, Robert Archambeau has a fun, meaty piece on the kinships between Fitzgerald's Gatsby and Petronius's Trimalchio, the most "honest representation of an individual" in all of Roman literature. hudsonreview.com/2025/10/trim...

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Sam Sacks @ssacks.bsky.social · 17/12/2025

Podhoretz's literary journalism is a lot of fun, by the way--opinionated and rangy in that omnivorous postwar fashion

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Sam Sacks @ssacks.bsky.social · 17/12/2025

Here's a brief thread of the fiction that has stayed with me most in 2025, a year in which I reviewed exactly 100 books, and was more grateful than ever for the chance to do so. First, these are screenshots of the three brilliant novels that made the WSJ Best Books list. www.wsj.com/arts-culture...

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Sam Sacks @ssacks.bsky.social · 13/12/2025

A recent used bookshop find I couldn't pass up. Avon did this rounded corners thing for a few years in the '60s. An article at the time claims (maybe jokingly) that it was to prevent dog-earing. I've seen Henry Roth's 'Call It Sleep' in this version. Show me yours if you have one!

Avon paperback of Muriel Spark's 'The Girls of Slender Means' with rounded corners. Images of cutout fashion figures on the cover.

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Sam Sacks @ssacks.bsky.social · 13/12/2025

"Dickens is infinitely greater than his critics." True, but in this case the critic comes very close. Remembering John Carey's work this morning by rereading one of my favorite of his books.

A copy of John Carey's book 'The Violent Effigy' with an illustration of Charles Dickens on the cover

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Sam Sacks @ssacks.bsky.social · 04/12/2025

It got a nice sturdy paperback edition too!

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Sam Sacks @ssacks.bsky.social · 02/12/2025

A great gift from a friend, this collects Broyard's deadline reviews for the New York Times between 1971-73. Authors known and unknown, all eloquently bantered over with energy and humor and pique. My favorite sort of book.

Hardcover copy of Anatole Broyard's 'Aroused by Books'

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Sam Sacks @ssacks.bsky.social · 08/11/2025

Now happening in Central Park

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Sam Sacks @ssacks.bsky.social · 08/11/2025

if you see this, post an album cover with a motor vehicle on it

Rap artist Grand Puba leans against a Lamborghini with open doors for the cover of his album '2000'

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Sam Sacks @ssacks.bsky.social · 07/11/2025

It's been a James Schuyler day. The Manhattan sublime, from his Payne Whitney poems.

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Sam Sacks @ssacks.bsky.social · 06/11/2025

In a starred review, Publishers Weekly calls Daniyal Mueenuddin's 'This is Where the Serpent Lives' a "masterpiece." And it's true, this will be one of the finest novels published in years. Out in January, put it on your radar! www.publishersweekly.com/9780525655152

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Sam Sacks @ssacks.bsky.social · 30/10/2025

My wife's relatives discovered a 1940 diary her grandfather wrote on parchment paper (he was a baker in Lille) during the German invasion of France. He recounts chauffeuring French officials, frantically fleeing Lille with his pregnant wife and three children and being taken prisoner.

1940 diary written on baking parchment paper

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Sam Sacks @ssacks.bsky.social · 27/10/2025

RIP to David Bellos, a great translator, teacher, scholar and popularizer. Here's a charming little essay about what he learned from his landmark translation of Georges Perec's 'Life: A User's Manual'. online.wsj.com/article/SB10...

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Sam Sacks @ssacks.bsky.social · 09/10/2025

Oh, you don't have the Cahiers Series chapbook of Krasznahorkai's 'Animalinside'? That's cool I guess, though it's kinda the skeleton key to the author's whole chthonic oeuvre.

photo of obscure literary pamphlet to accompany humorously pretentious lit-bro post

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Sam Sacks @ssacks.bsky.social · 08/10/2025

(And here are the mass markets)

wooden bookshelf with mass market paperbacks

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Sam Sacks @ssacks.bsky.social · 08/10/2025

I bought a new bookshelf--some kind of end-of-supply sale at the Container Store--and have finally made a little library of my literary criticism. I don't think any other kind of book has given me as much uncomplicated pleasure. (The Beckett is just a stopgap bookend, it will go elsewhere.)

photos of bookshelves filled with volumes of literary criticism

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Sam Sacks @ssacks.bsky.social · 21/09/2025

I currently have the best view in New York, on the staging area for the African American Day parade

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Sam Sacks @ssacks.bsky.social · 09/09/2025

This sign in Central Park about adult cicada killer wasps is raising a lot of questions already answered by the sign

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Sam Sacks @ssacks.bsky.social · 21/08/2025

Just got a great gift from a Japanese friend—sake in a juice box

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