Levi Stahl
LightNews LightNews
banner
levistahl.bsky.social
Levi Stahl
@levistahl.bsky.social
4.6K followers 1.2K following 12K posts
Editor of The Getaway Car: A Donald Westlake Nonfiction Miscellany and The Daily Sherlock Holmes. Marketing Director at the University of Chicago Press. Board member of the Uptown People’s Law Center.
Posts Replies Media Videos
levistahl.bsky.social
This panel from 1985 never gets old.
The final panel from a 1985 Peanuts comic strip. Marcie says to Peppermint Patty, “We could go into the book store.” Patty replies, “Are you out of your mind?!”
November 28, 2025 at 9:12 PM
levistahl.bsky.social
Look where we are! Haven’t been here since like 2010 or 2011.
The sign for the Charles Schulz Museum, with a statue of Charlie Brown in front of it.
November 28, 2025 at 8:17 PM
levistahl.bsky.social
Continuing my quest to make sure the nieces and nephews on both sides of the family are among the top 1% of their age cohort in Burt Reynolds Awareness.
Me in a black t-shirt that features an image of Burt as the Bandit on it.
November 28, 2025 at 5:31 PM
levistahl.bsky.social
Re-reading what may be my favorite non-Parker Donald Westlake novel, Somebody Owes Me Money. How could you stop reading after this opening line?
Text: I bet none of it would have happened if I wasn't so elo-quent. That's always been my problem, eloquence, though some might claim my problem was something else again. But life's a gamble, is what I say, and not all the eloquent people in this world are in Congress.
November 28, 2025 at 3:49 PM
levistahl.bsky.social
This is specifically about building dry stone walls, but it’s broadly applicable, & something I have to remind myself of. I find it most often with piano or running—some days, you just suck and it’s hard. For some reason, it’s just not going to go, & you might as well give up and do something else.
Text from the book Craftland: Wallers, like the rest of us, have good and bad days at the office. Sometimes the stone slots into place effortlessly, as if it's been waiting millions of years for that moment. Other times it resists, like a child refusing to be bundled into a buggy. Every waller has endured projects when nothing quite fits, when every stone needs to be laboriously reshaped, when a day's work ends un taking a week.
November 28, 2025 at 3:44 PM
levistahl.bsky.social
#1 reason to own a vacation rental property: Solid excuse to get and use a label maker.
A photo of the edge of a shelf that holds towels, with a label that says “Hot tub towels.”
November 28, 2025 at 1:33 PM
levistahl.bsky.social
Good morning, friends, from Bodega Bay, California!
The Pacific seen from a bluff, with green meadows in the foreground.
November 28, 2025 at 1:25 PM
levistahl.bsky.social
Not much can match California, man.
Sunset over the ocean seen from the land just south of Bodega Bay.
November 28, 2025 at 1:18 AM
levistahl.bsky.social
Went around the table and everyone said how thankful they are for my sweater.
Me, a middle-aged white guy with a shaved head and glasses with this black frames, wearing a brown sweater that has a sort of bustier pattern on it. Behind me is the ocean, unimpressed.
November 27, 2025 at 11:50 PM
levistahl.bsky.social
Japanese American Thanksgiving means homemade inari sushi.
A tray of inari sushi, which is seasoned rice in tofu pouches.
November 27, 2025 at 7:43 PM
levistahl.bsky.social
Our haul from Point Reyes Books. Which, as always there, includes a couple of books they had face out that I’d never seen before.
A stack of books: Mary Oliver’s Devotions James Fox’s Craftland Kenobe Purvis’s The Hounding Hugh Raffles’s The Book of Unconformities Daniel Kehlmann’s The Director Tom Gauld’s Physics for Cats
November 27, 2025 at 5:26 PM
levistahl.bsky.social
Patrick O’Brian, Post Captain.
Text: "And tell me, who of the officers is the most remarkable for taste?" "For taste, sir?" cried Simmons. "Yes, yes, artistic taste. You know, a sense of the sublime." "Why, sir, I don't know that any of us is much gifted in that line. I do not remember the sublime ever having been mentioned in the gun-room."
November 27, 2025 at 3:03 PM
levistahl.bsky.social
The bathroom in this rental house just screams “Do cocaine in here.”
An all-white bathroom with, atop a shelf over the toilet, a piece of driftwood wrapped in a cord of white LED lights.
November 27, 2025 at 2:52 PM
levistahl.bsky.social
This seems unfair to Hitchcock, as well as to Novak and Kelly and Hedren. Nuzzi is a De Palma blonde at best.
Text from Brian Phillips’s article on Nuzzi for the Ringer: Olivia Nuzzi: Former New York political reporter. Current Vanity Fair West Coast editor (for now; more on this in a minute). She's 32 years old. Born on January 6, yikes. Recently called "the modern iteration of a Hitchcock blonde" by The New York Times.
November 27, 2025 at 1:29 PM
levistahl.bsky.social
Zoom in on the roof of the house next door.
A house in late afternoon California golden light with a bunch of starlings perched atop it.
November 27, 2025 at 1:21 PM
levistahl.bsky.social
Good morning, friends, from Bodega Bay, California! (Photo from last night; sun don’t rise over the water.)

Hope your Thanksgiving is restful and full of good company.
The Pacific seen from a hill just south of the town (and bay) of Bodega Bay. In the foreground are low shore grasses.
November 27, 2025 at 1:04 PM
levistahl.bsky.social
The books at this rental house are near the very upper end of what is reasonable to expect. I count 11 I’ve read, including Robert Penn Warren, some Faulkner, an Anita Brookner, Jeffrey Eugenides’s Marriage Plot, Toni Morrison, some Sarah Waters.
Two two-shelf bays of books in a rental house.
November 27, 2025 at 3:25 AM
levistahl.bsky.social
Point Reyes Books is among my very favorite bookstores in the world. Every time I go, I find books I have never seen in another shop. It’s lovey and distinctive and suited to its clientele. Totally worth a trip if you are anywhere near.
Point Reyes Books from outside. It’s in a small wooden building with beige siding and big display windows.
November 26, 2025 at 10:09 PM
levistahl.bsky.social
Good morning, friends, from San Jose! Always nice to be able to step outside and see a mountain.
A suburban San Jose street with evergreens in the foreground and a low mountain range on the horizon.
November 26, 2025 at 2:44 PM
levistahl.bsky.social
Nancy Drew–ass street name.
A street sign reading Shadow Mountain Court.
November 25, 2025 at 10:56 PM
levistahl.bsky.social
Stacey Shintani, Untitled (1991. Pen and ink, colored pencil, paper.)
A somewhat browned and worn piece of paper taped to a wall. It says “1991 Breakfasts 1992” at the top, and below are the days of the week in a row. For each day there is a line drawing of the breakfast served that day: Cereal, eggs, waffles, oatmeal, French toast.
November 25, 2025 at 3:19 PM
levistahl.bsky.social
Good morning, friends, from San Jose! (Photo from 2023. It’s still dark here. But I should get some California photos later where the ratio of scenery to subdivision in America’s best state is better.)
A photo of a suburban street with some evergreens in the foreground and the foothills of a mountain range in the background.
November 25, 2025 at 1:40 PM
levistahl.bsky.social
but why did god put your car into the river in the first place aimee
Text from Sister, Sinner: He would fish for food and work odd jobs to pay for supplies. Aimee would stay at the camp with Rolf and type her sermons. The small details of their life on the road in her memoirs are given as evidence of destiny. The farmer who miraculously appeared to tow their car out of the river, the donated food and clothing that arrived just when they were penniless—for Aimee, all of this felt providential.
November 24, 2025 at 4:56 PM
levistahl.bsky.social
Ted Gioia, The Jazz Standards.
Text: Finally a Duke Ellington song that is easy on the singers! So many of his melodies ("Sophisticated Lady" "I Got It Bad (and That Ain't Good)" "Do Nothin' Till You Hear from Me") are filled with leaping and skipping intervals that sound as though they were written at the piano, and not necessarily with vocalists in mind. But "Mood Indigo" strikes me as a song that might have been composed while singing in the shower or humming during a lazy afternoon stroll. It only requires a little more than an octave range, and the phrases move with the rightness and directness that I associate more with hymns and folk music than with big band charts-at least until the B section, when Duke offers a sprightly contrast to his melancholy main theme.
November 24, 2025 at 12:43 PM
levistahl.bsky.social
Good morning, friends! Bringing Juggernaut energy into the holiday week.
A small plastic figure form the Heroclix game depicting the Juggernaut, a mutant with super strength who wears an armored outfit that includes a big round helmet covering his whole head.
November 24, 2025 at 11:26 AM