The Frog Garden

Today's Articles (21/2/2026)

So Long to Cheap Books You Could Fit in Your Pocket

Still, the format makes less and less financial sense. There is only about a 30 cent difference, Abboud said, between producing a mass market and a trade paperback of the same title — but the trade version could easily sell for $6 more.

Text Is (Still) King

Gallup surveys suggest that some mega-readers (11+ books per year) have become moderate readers (1-5 books per year), but they don’t find any other major trends over the past three decades.

The Imperfectionist: Nobody's ever ready

The moment of invulnerability never arrives. Even if you were to find a way to feel like a winner, technology-wise, by 2027, there’d be 2028 to worry about. Even if you felt completely secure in your career, there’d be your health, and the health of those you love, to worry about. And even if you and your family were the healthiest people alive, you might get hit by a bus tomorrow. Uncertainty is our basic state of existence, not something to be got through to the certainty beyond.

The reason “you’re not ready for what’s coming next”, in other words, is that we’re never ready for what’s coming next.

But it can free you up sufficiently to notice a different way of approaching life: not by anxiously bracing against impending doom, but by taking a deep breath and settling down a bit into the basic uncertainty of it all. And then, in that tremulous and vulnerable state, to navigate from one day to the next by choosing, from the paths available to you, whatever seems to lead in the direction of more aliveness.