I started this newsletter in January 2021. For a year, it consisted of sections: Podcasts, Nerdy Software, etc. I thought I had nothing else worth writing.

In January 2022, I wrote an introduction for the first time, and I've included one every month since. The total is now 48, including this one.

Some of you are new here. Few of you have been around since the beginning. Plus, no one should have to remember what I've written, even me. To save us the trouble, I published the introductions as a book: Disappearing Moment, 2021–2025.

Welcome to December 2025’s Disappearing Moment, an inventory of my introductions. I hope you enjoy it.

Podcasts

• Batting Around (I Liked It): “A show about baseball from people that not only love the sport but are also way too online and gay.”
• The Devil You Know (I Liked It): If the Canadian Broadcast Company asks you to do a podcast with them, say yes. Especially if you’re the unforgettable Sarah Marshall.
• The Roundtable (part of The Windup) (I Loved It): Sam Miller is my spirit podcaster.

Nerdy Software

I edited the epub file that you’ll view if you read Disappearing Moment, 2021–2025, with Sigil. It’s elegant, free, and open source.

Free Font

IBM Plex is a useful typeface with a terrible website. So very IBM.

Bougie Products

I’m new to skincare and find it intimidating. Which is why I like The Ordinary’s packaging, labeling, guidance, and prices.

Personal Finance and Investing

The I Bond Calculator saves you the effort of logging into TreasuryDirect. That’s a bigger selling point that it should be.

Reading

• Alex Chan, “The Palm Tree That Led to Palmyra” (I Liked It): “The Palmyrene alphabet is... what I call a ‘fractally interesting’ topic. However deep you dig, however much you learn, there’s always more to uncover.”
• Jason Dettbarn (Crucial Tracks), “Quitting Spotify, ethics, and pay per stream” (I Liked It): My kind of indie app, and their blog is good, too. Once they support albums, instead of only supporting songs, I'll become a customer.
• Casey Johnston, A Physical Education (2025) (I Loved It): A solid memoir. I wish it had been my introduction to lifting weights.
• Leon Paternoster, “On not choosing nice versions of AI” (I Liked It): “(I)f there is a point to our blogging... it is to express how we want the world to be through our choices about it….”

Literary Journal

Your Impossible Voice believes in its writers and trusts its readers.

Survey

To see the survey and respond to it, you have to subscribe via email and answer it through an email interface.

Last month’s prompt was, “I would have the hardest time living without.” It had ten responses, tied for the most response to one of my surveys. Results:

• Alcohol: 1
• Antidepressants (or equivalent): 1
• Caffeine: 2
• Cannabis: 3
• Games: 1
• Social Media: 2

Once again, I was off the board. I would have the hardest time living without Stimulants (for ADHD and related).

If I Were to Start My Own Standard Ebooks

• In honor of Public Domain Day.
• I would have a lot of work for translators, archivists, and scholars.
• For many writers I’ve listed, “Complete” means through 1930.

1. Ryūnosuke Akutagawa (Complete Short Stories)
2. Caterina Albert (Complete Works)
3. Mário de Andrade, Macunaíma
4. Roberto Arlt (Novels and Short Stories)
5. Miguel Ángel Asturias, Leyendas de Guatemala
6. Jane Austen (Complete Works)
7. Djuna Barnes (Complete Works)
8. Natalie Clifford Barney, The One Who is Legion
9. Vicki Baum, Grand Hotel
10. Mary Elizabeth Braddon, Lady Audley's Secret
11. Romaine Brooks, No Pleasant Memories
12. Cao Xueqin, Dream of the Red Chamber
13. J. E. Casely Hayford, Ethiopia Unbound
14. Anton Chekhov (Complete Short Stories)
15. Kate Chopin, The Awakening
16. Colette (Complete Works)
17. Ivy Compton-Burnett, Pastors and Masters
18. Agatha Christie (Complete Works)
19. E. M. Delafield, Diary of a Provincial Lady
20. Margaret Deland, The Awakening of Helena Richie and The Iron Woman
21. Emily Dickinson (Complete Poems. Her original, unedited versions.)
22. Frederick Douglas (Complete Works)
23. W.E.B. DuBois (Complete Works)
24. Paul Laurence Dunbar (Complete Works)
25. Maria Edgeworth (Complete Novels)
26. George Eliot (Complete Works)
27. Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary and Sentimental Education
28. Rómulo Gallegos, Doña Bárbara
29. Mahatma Gandhi (Complete Works)
30. Ricardo Güiraldes (Novels and Short Stories)
31. Radclyffe Hall, The Well of Loneliness
32. Nathaniel Hawthorne (Complete Works)
33. Ichiyō Higuchi (Complete Short Stories)
34. Winifred Holtby (Complete Works)
35. Zora Neal Hurston (Complete Works)
36. Taha Hussein (Complete Works)
37. Juana de Ibarbourou (Complete Works)
38. Ibn Tufayl, Hayy ibn Yaqdhan
39. William James (Complete Works)
40. Franz Kafka (Complete Works)
41. Yasunari Kawabata, The Dancing Girl of Izu
42. Søren Kierkegaard (Complete Works)
43. Takiji Kobayashi, Kani Kōsen
44. Denji Kuroshima, Militarized Streets
45. Selma Lagerlöf (Complete Works)
46. Nella Larsen, Quicksand and Passing
47. Rosamond Lehmann, Dusty Answer
48. Anita Loos, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and But Gentlemen Marry Brunettes
49. Carlos Loveira (Complete Novels)
50. Lu Xun (Complete Works)
51. Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis (Complete Novels)
52. Thomas Mann, Death in Venice, Buddenbrooks, and The Magic Mountain
53. Katherine Mansfield (Complete Works)
54. Claude McKay, Home to Harlem
55. Gabriela Mistral, Sonnets of Death and Despair
56. Miyamoto Yuriko, Nobuko
57. Thomas Mofolo (Complete Works)
58. Sarojini Naidu (Complete Works)
59. Irène Némirovsky, David Golder
60. Amelia Opie (Complete Novels)
61. John Milton Oskison (Complete Novels)
62. Dorothy Parker (Complete Works)
63. Sol Plaatje (Complete Works)
64. Marcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time
65. Eça de Queirós, The Crime of Father Amaro
66. Horacio Quiroga (Short Stories)
67. Dorothy Richardson, Pilgrimage
68. Henry Handel Richardson, The Fortunes of Richard Mahony
69. José Rizal, Noli Me Tángere and El Filibusterismo
70. Will Rogers (Complete Works)
71. Mirza Hadi Ruswa, Umrao Jaan Ada
72. María Ruiz de Burton, Who Would Have Thought It? and The Squatter and the Don
73. Jean Rhys, Quartet
74. Vita Sackville-West (Everything!)
75. Saki (Complete Works)
76. George Sand (Complete Works)
77. Olive Schreiner (Complete Works)
78. Shahan Shahnour, Retreat Without Song
79. Mary Shelley (Complete Works)
80. Naoya Shiga (Complete Works)
81. Shim Hun (Complete Works)
82. May Sinclair, Life and Death of Harriett Frean
83. Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments and The Wealth of Nations
84. Natsume Sōseki (Complete Novels)
85. Luther Standing Bear (Complete Works)
86. Jun'ichirō Tanizaki (Complete Works)
87. Ida Tarbell, The History of the Standard Oil Company
88. Lucy Thompson, To the American Indian
89. Sigrid Undset, Kristin Lavransdatter and Jenny
90. César Vallejo (Complete Works)
91. Vyasa, Mahābhārata
92. Bertrand N. O. Walker (Hen-Toh) (Complete Works)
93. Sylvia Townsend Warner, Lolly Willowes
94. Ida B. Wells (Complete Works)
95. Rebecca West (Complete Works)
96. Oscar Wilde (Everything!)
97. Virginia Woolf (Complete Works)
98. Xu Dishan (Complete Works)
99. Marguerite Yourcenar, Alexis
100. Zitkala-Ša, American Indian Stories

Thank you for spending a few moments with me. I appreciate you and look forward to corresponding again next month.

Brett

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