What is Endnotes?
Endnotes is a fortnightly newsletter turning overlooked quotes in books into ideas for better living. I follow my curiosity as to what topics to discuss, some of which I find fascinating and return to often, others come to me in the moment.
I believe it’s important to work on something that you find interesting, while at the same time bringing value to others. I love this quote from Richard Powers in The Overstory:
She needs some impossible trifecta: hopeful, useful, and true… But hope and truth do nothing for humans, without use.
My goal for this newsletter is for us to discuss passages of hope and truth, while making it useful at the same time.
About Me
I’m Benjamin Spall, co-author of My Morning Routine: How Successful People Start Every Day Inspired. Originally from the UK, I’ve lived in the United States for almost a decade, first in San Francisco and now in New York City.
I’ve been blogging since 2009. While little survives from that time, if you scroll to the bottom of my articles archive on my personal website you’ll find posts I wrote from 2011 onwards. I’ve also written for outlets including the New York Times, Entrepreneur, CNBC, Business Insider, New York Observer, Quartz, and more.
One thing I noticed while interviewing more than 300 people for my book on morning routines was how many themes came up again and again. In Endnotes, I pull quotes from my collection of tens of thousands of highlights copied from hundreds of books (both fiction and non-fiction), covering everything from work (creative and otherwise), to love, to personal growth, to—ultimately—how to be a person in this world.
I’d love to turn Endnotes into a community of like-minded folks who enjoy not just reading but digesting what they read and pulling ideas out of the most obscure passages. Much like My Morning Routine collected the morning habits of a wide variety of individuals, I look at this newsletter as a way to explore a small fraction of the knowledge that has been gifted to us in the form of books.
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. But one glance at it and you’re inside the mind of another, maybe somebody dead for thousands of years.
Carl Sagan went on to note that books allow an author to speak clearly and silently inside a reader’s head:
Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people who never knew each other, citizens of distant epochs. Books break the shackles of time. A book is proof that humans are capable of working magic.
Why Subscribe
I send Endnotes once every two weeks. Newsletters are typically short, so you can read them in just a few minutes.
Subscribe for free to get full access to the newsletter and publication archives.
Comments Welcome
Be part of the community! Participate in the comments section or send me a message to let me know what you liked about a particular post. I’m all ears!
Affiliate Links
I sometimes use affiliate links when linking to products (mainly books) on Endnotes. As an Amazon Associate, I earn a small commission from qualifying purchases.
