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The Writing LifeBook

by Annie Dillard

Who uses, recommends or left The Writing Life, in their own words: each a verbatim quote with a link to where it was said.

1 person

Dan Shipper
Co-founder and CEO of Every; writes the Chain of Thought column on working with AI tools and hosts the AI & I podcast.
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Um obviously Annie Dillard. Um I Everyone at Every has to read The Writing Life. Like when you join you get a copy and you have to read it. Uh you only have to read the last chapter though. I think the last chapter is incredible and it is at the intersection of writing, technology, and the future and it's like it's relationship to the future and to time and I think that's like it's it's everything about every like wrapped up into like a very tight chapter.

Lenny's Podcast, "AI predictions: Job markets, Codex beats Claude, and the death of org charts", lightning round, asked for the books they recommend most; the guest's own spoken answer (YouTube captions). Every is the company the guest runs.

2026-05-24·youtube.com ↗

Every entry is a verbatim quote and a link to the public post it came from. Nothing is paraphrased. If it is not on record somewhere public, it is not here.

The verdict is what they actually said: loved and liked are explicit; recommended means they told others to get it; uses means they only say they use it; read is a book on their public shelf with no verdict; mixed and disliked are kept too.

A dashed affiliate link, sponsored or their own label means the post disclosed a relationship. It is shown, never hidden.

The shading behind a date shows how dated a recommendation is for its kind of thing.

The shading behind a date shows how dated a recommendation is, for its kind of thing. Fully green is recent. It drains a quarter at a time as the post gets older, and is empty once it reads as dated.

What counts as old depends on the thing. A laptop praised four years ago has been replaced twice; a book loved twenty years ago is probably still loved. The shading is gone after about:

Stripes mean the post carries no date and the date shown is an estimate. No date at all, no shading.