The Bar Book / The Very Persistent Gappers of Frip

Issue No. 139

THE BAR BOOK GIVES YOU A 360-DEGREE EDUCATION IN BARCRAFT

The Bar Book: Elements of Cocktail Technique
by Jeffrey Morgenthaler (author) and Alanna Hale (photographer)
Chronicle Books
2014, 288 pages, 7 x 9.5 x 1 inches

Buy on Amazon

As someone who spent many misguided years of my youth drinking poorly-eyeballed gin and tonics out of coffee mugs, I never really understood: How exactly can you make cocktails “well” or “poorly”? Isn’t it a simple matter of ratios – of pouring the right amount of the right things into a glass, chucking in an ice cube or two and calling it a day? Where is the mysterious opportunity in that simple process to either mess it up or do it exceptionally well? Jeffrey Morgenthaler’s The Bar Book is a masterclass on that very subject.

The Bar Book is not a recipe book. Instead, it is a techniques book. Morgenthaler elevates making cocktails into a craft, focusing on finding the right recipe, using the best ingredients, and executing it all using effective techniques. While the author does include expertly curated recipes for some must-know cocktails, instead of focusing on what to mix (which can always be found with a quick Google of “how to make a Cosmopolitan”), it focuses on how, why, and when to mix it. He gives you a 360-degree education in barcraft, from what shapes cocktail shakers come in and what the differences mean to why the shape and size of your ice is important and how to make it so that it comes out of the tray clear and beautiful. He’s a big proponent of making things like mixers, garnishes and even liqueurs from scratch, so the book offers up recipes for making things like flavored syrups, infusions, and even tonic water. Even if you’re not the type who relishes taking the time to create something you can easily buy from a store, seeing and understanding the DIY processes behind these ingredients is fascinating and demystifying.

The book is peppered with stories, some steeped in niche-y barcraft history and delightful tradition, some from Morgenthaler’s own bartending days. Striking, minimalist photography guides you from the easiest recipes to the most hardcore. A perfect blend of science, theory, philosophy, history, and personality, The Bar Book is a must-read material for anyone who wants a deeper look at what exactly it means to be a good bartender. – Michelle Kaatz

---

THE VERY PERSISTENT GAPPERS OF FRIP – CREEPY MULTI-EYED CREATURES TORMENT A VILLAGE

The Very Persistent Gappers of Frip
by George Saunders (author) and Lane Smith (illustrator)
Random House
2015, 96 pages, 5.8 x 9.6 x 0.5 inches

Buy on Amazon

Gappers are creepy little orange, multi-eyed, round creatures that love nothing more than to hang out on or near goats, shrieking all the while. As you might imagine, this is very stressful to the goats. They stop eating; they stop giving milk. If your family gets its livelihood from that milk, you’re in bad shape when the gappers are around. They emerge from the ocean, find the goats, and wreak their shrieking havoc.

The village of Frip is made up of three ocean-side shacks. The girl Capable and her widowed father live in one. Mrs. Romo and her sons live in the second. Sid and Carol Ronson and their daughters (who “sometimes stood completely motionless in order to look somewhat pretty”) lived in the third. In Frip, the children must check on the goats eight times per day in order to remove the gappers and return them to the sea (from which they will reemerge again and again).

The Very Persistent Gappers of Frip is a fable about the perils of putting oneself before the community and the ultimate merits of sharing amongst a community. The gappers have bothered the three families’ goats equally for ages, until one of the smarter gappers realizes that Capable’s goats are slightly closer than the others. Once the gappers converge, Capable is unable to keep them away. She asks for help, but she is refused:

“We feel strongly that, once you rid your goats of gappers, as we have, you will feel better about yourself, and also, we will feel better about you. Not that we’re saying we’re better than you, necessarily, it’s just that, since gappers are bad, and since you alone now have them, it only stands to reason that you are not, perhaps, quite as good as us.”

Capable is, in fact, quite capable – she takes care of those around her and solves problems for herself. The illustrations are lush and whimsical. The book is a lovely parable for children, but the tale and visuals are engaging for readers of any age. – Meagan Rodgers

---

Books That Belong On Paper first appeared on the web as Wink Books and was edited by Carla Sinclair. Sign up here to get the issues a week early in your inbox.

10/13/26

Straps

Tools for Possibilities: issue no. 211

Quick strong tie downs

NRS Heavy Duty Cam Straps

These straps are incredibly strong. The tensile strength of these 1.5 inchers is 2000 pounds. With their cam locks these NRS straps are easily and infinitely adjustable and can be cinched down very tight. They have almost no flex/stretch and can be used in situations where a bungee would be too weak or stretchy and would not be “bomb-proof” like a cam strap.

If you are a river runner you are already familiar with these straps. They hold your boat, frame and oars on your truck for the drive to the put-in. You then use them to hold the frame to the boat, your bags, spare oar and rocket boxes to the frame. The originals are 1″ wide and come in sizes from 1 foot up to 20 feet. As a commercial boatman I used these for everything from bundling firewood collected for that nights campfire to pulling a truck out of a ditch.

NRS has come out with a 1.5″ model that is the perfect width. I have even been using one for several months as a belt. In a pinch it can be used (at the risk of my shorts heading south) to strap/bind/tow just about anything. I keep two of the twenty footers in my truck at all times. These straps are a permanent part of my kit, right next to the duct tape, bailing wire and channel locks. — Topher Stephenson

---

Strap supplier

Strapworks.com

You can see all the different strap types and strap hardware (buckles, tie downs, keepers, clips, etc.) in use on all sorts of stuff swirling around us in daily life. But if you want to get some for your own projects?

Strapworks.com has pretty much all of it. Metal or plastic hardware. All sorts of strap and webbing material.

Inexpensive, easy to work with. Helped me a few times, and I know I will continue to use them when the need arises. — Wayne Ruffner

---

Extra Large Rubber Bands

Rubber Bands

I have been buying one pound packs of rubber bands from LFSMarine for over five years now (along with their cheap and tough nitrile gloves and barge glue). My first buy was an impulse one. I thought, “It’s hard to find this size rubber band (3/4″ x 6″) and, besides, I wanted to make some slingshots so…” I got a one pound bag. When you get them, you realize a pound of these is a lot of banding material. With that abundance, you don’t stint their use.

I love them for binding together papers and books (I teach so I always have a few in my desk.) I have used them to hold wood in place for gluing. I use them along with barge glue and duct tape to splice materials together in the garden. And I use them for sling shots., too. In fact they are always in mind and on hand for any kind of kludge. I usually buy a couple of pounds of them at a time for less than ten bucks.

It’s fun to give them as gifts just for the odd looks you get now and the thank-yous you continue to get as they too discover that these bands are handier than a pocket on a shirt. Perfect for the maker/tinkerer in you and yours. — Terry Elliott

---

Gigantic twist ties

Griptwist

I picked up four of these at my local container store, not knowing exactly how I’d use them, but guessing they’d come in handy. Within 48 hours I’d already used them twice-once to secure the barrel of my telescope to its collapsed tripod for easy transport to a remote location, and then to stabilize a table and chairs in the back of my car for a trip across town-both times with great success. These giant, rubberized “twist-ties” were much more efficient and easier to use than a bungee cord in both cases.

Griptwist offer several advantages over bungees in particular. First, they provide “point-to-point” stability, rather than “tie-down” or “net-like” attachment. For example, when moving dining room furniture in the back of my car, I was able to use four Griptwists to connect the legs of chairs to each other, etc., at critical points, so that the entire mass (i.e., of one table and four chairs) was stabilized from within, rather than essentially trying to “net” or “wrap” the mass together from the outside, with bungee cords. Second, with bungee cords, there’s always a certain amount of “give,” unless you stretch them to their maximum, which isn’t always practical; bungeed objects will often move a bit more than you want them to. Third, if you do stretch bungee cords to their maximum, they exert great pressure on the object being contained. I wouldn’t have wanted to use bungees around the barrel of my telescope, for example. The Griptwists remain as tight (but only as tight) as you tie them, with no inherent potential energy to give or take along their own length like elastic bands. This brings to mind a fourth benefit: no danger of “snapback” when it’s time to unload or unpack.

Some things will always have to be netted down, and sometimes the stretchiness of bungees provides a benefit in and of itself (like the ability to squeeze one more last-minute object under the cords, without having to repack). Moreover, from the outside to the extent they lack handy points where a Griptwist could be employed (e.g., a couch, a canoe, a stack of luggage or boxes). But for temporarily affixing one object to another in a point-to-point fashion, with stability, I see more everyday utility in the Griptwist. — Adam Zaner

---

Parcel bands

Four Way Rubberbands

These hefty four-way rubber bands are so much more useful that a plain old rubber band. Also they can be used decoratively on a simple brown-paper-wrapped gift. Or as a solid tie for bundles of magazines or newspapers. — Kaz Brecher

---

Once a week we’ll send out a page from Cool Tools: A Catalog of Possibilities. The tools might be outdated or obsolete, and the links to them may or may not work. We present these vintage recommendations as is because the possibilities they inspire are new. Sign up here to get Tools for Possibilities a week early in your inbox.

10/12/26

Jurassic sounds / Free Utilities / China travel tip

Recomendo - issue #535

Listen to a Jurassic forest

Scientists have reconstructed what a Jurassic forest might have sounded like 165 million years ago, and the one-minute audio is a really cool soundscape to imaginatively step into. They created it by analyzing and modeling the sound-producing structures preserved in 20 fossil insect wings from nine species that lived together in what is now Inner Mongolia. It’s a diverse chorus of low trills and high-pitched chirps, and I wish I could loop it all day as background noise. — CD

Inexpensive exercise headphones

If I’m doing vigorous exercise, my earbuds fall out. I didn’t want to spend a lot of money on a second pair, so I bought these inexpensive Joywise Bluetooth headphones. They are wireless, have loops that fit around the ear, and are connected to each other with a wire. Unlike most small earbuds, they charge via USB-C directly rather than in a case. The sound quality is great for the sub-$20 price, and the batteries last up to 16 hours before needing a recharge. — MF

Analog math

For mathematical nerds, Henry Segerman is your channel. Segerman 3D-prints weird mathematical shapes, invents curious mathematical toys, constructs intricate mathematical models, and turns math into analog things you can 3D-print yourself. His YouTube channel demos all this with expert explanations of the math behind it. — KK

Free online utilities

Normal Tools is a free collection of 193 single-purpose tools for all kinds of random small tasks, including calculators, color pickers, image resizing, and file conversion. It has more tools than I will ever need, but useful to bookmark. Most tools are private by default and process everything locally in your browser, with no account or download required. — CD

China Travel

I am traveling in China again and I am reminded that the best way for foreigners to book hotels, trains, and flights anywhere within China is to use Trip.com. It is easy to use, comprehensive, accurate, and reliable. — KK

The White Rose

Besides Recomendo, Cool Tools publishes a newsletter about books called Book Freak. I’ve been doing it for quite a few years, and I recently started finding old out-of-print books, scanning them, and turning them into ebooks with a new foreword and cover. This is a benefit for paid subscribers, and so far the library includes four books, with a new one coming every month. The latest is The White Rose by B. Traven, who also wrote The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. It was translated into English in 1979 but is out of print, so I used AI to translate the German version. It’s very readable and a fantastic book. You can read about it here. —MF

---

This Issue’s Sponsor

Why do smart people miss the future? Dev Patnaik explains why smart, hardworking people still get blindsided by change, and how to get better at noticing what’s coming before it arrives. Watch the TEDx talk.

---

Sign up here to get Recomendo a week early in your inbox.

10/11/26

Book Freak #221: Ways of the Six-Footed

Anna Botsford Comstock on the Dignity of Life’s Upward Struggle

Get Ways of the Six-Footed

I came across Ways of the Six-Footed, a collection of essays by Anna Botsford Comstock, Cornell’s first woman professor, while visiting the Museum of Jurassic Technology in Los Angeles. The museum has a nice reading library, and I was drawn to the book’s design and title.

I read it for about an hour, captivated by Comstock’s portraits of bees, ants, crickets, and caterpillars and the ways they solve the problems they face. I went home and ordered a copy, and it has stuck in my memory for over a decade.

Core Principles

1. Every Life Confronts Problems

The young Viceroy caterpillar eats a leaf down to its midrib and rests on the bare stem during the day, where birds could find him. “He fastens with a silken thread a little bunch of débris to the bare stem between his feeding-place and his resting-place. This is a clever performance; for if one of his foes should be hunting on this leaf and should start out on the denuded stem it would meet with this empty and worthless mass and would naturally be discouraged from further investigation.”

2. Observe the Humble to Learn the Grand

The Little Carpenter Bee nests inside a broken twig of elder or sumac. “Our heroine, with the aid of her mandibles or jaws, commences to excavate a tunnel in the branch by removing the pith mouthful by mouthful… we might compare her to a man who should attempt to dig a well three or four feet wide and two hundred feet deep, and with no tools except his hands with which to remove the earth.”

3. The Individual Serves the Whole

A young ant’s first job after it emerges is to care for the colony’s larvae. “When the ant babies are hungry they stretch up like young birds, and their nurses regurgitate partly digested food into the gaping, hungry mouths… When the sun shines hot on the nest in the morning the nurses carry their charges to the lower compartments, but toward night they carry them again to the upper nurseries.”

4. Go Back and Do Your Part

Comstock pried the maple-leaf cutter caterpillar’s tiny leaf tent loose and left it upside down, to see what he would do. “He crawled halfway out upon the leaf and by a dexterous lift of the rear end of his body he brought the tent down right side up and at once began pegging it down… He had spun his silken cords so they formed an X.”

Try It Now

1. Go outside and observe a spider, insect, or other small creature. What problem is it trying to solve?
2. Think about your own behavior. What are you trying to solve? The next time you face an overwhelming problem, think about how a solitary or social insect works through its problems one step at a time. How could you break your big problem into a set of smaller ones?
3. If you’re waiting for conditions to be perfect before you act on a project, think about how animals build shelter from whatever materials are at hand. What do you have at hand, physical, conceptual, or social, that you could use?
4. Some insects succeed through sheer persistence. That might be the only thing you need to add to solve your problem.

Quote

“I felt inspired to go back and serenely do my own little part as well as I could, trusting that somehow, somewhere, and to Some One the net proceeds of struggle are greater than the cost.”

---

Book Freak is published by Cool Tools Lab, a small company of three people. We also run Recomendo, the Cool Tools website, a YouTube channel and podcast, and other newsletters, including Recomendo Deals, Gar’s Tips & Tools, Nomadico, What’s in my NOW?, Tools for Possibilities, Books That Belong On Paper, and Book Freak.

10/9/26

Multi-day Hikes/Debit Card Back-ups/Worst Airport Connections

Nomadico issue #227

Best Multi-day Hikes on Multiple Continents

This article has a flawed title since it’s missing some of the longest and best-known treks, but this list of 28 of the best multi-day hikes in the world deserves kudos for one big reason: she’s done them all. From the Inca Trail and Chile’s W Trek to Everest Base Camp and the Routeburn Trek in New Zealand, there are a lot of tempting trips on here to plan around if you love the outdoors.

Enhance Your Rental Apartment

What do an extension cord, a corkscrew, a French press, an ice tray, and a large drinking glass have in common? They’re all items I’ve bought and left behind when the furnished apartment I rented while traveling was lacking what I needed. Yeah, I could have made a request with the owner, and have done that when the kitchen was truly barren, but I’ve learned that “Don’t sweat the small stuff” is a good short-term apartment rule of thumb. Most items I bought in some kind of discount store or the local market, always an added adventure. The coffee press came from a Malaysian IKEA ($8), another interesting cross-cultural experience. One friend who used to be nomadic would even buy an air fryer and leave it if he was in a place for two or three months, but I’m not sure I would go that far…

International Money Back-ups

My ATM card never came back out of the machine when I used it in Tashkent, two years after an airport ATM ate a version of the same card in the Republic of Georgia. The second instance had a happy ending thanks to a phone call from my tour guide and a trip to the bank’s HQ. I was never really sweating it though because I had backups. I have three cards that don’t charge an ATM fee and reimburse the local fee as well (to a point with the last one). They’re tied to cash accounts at Fidelity, Schwab, and my biz bank Novo. I generally keep at least one in a separate place/bag from the others. Plus a PayPal card, a Wise one (don’t love it), and whatever my wife is carrying. Overkill? Maybe, but I never pay a fee to get my money this way and I know I’ll always have access.

Airports Where Connections Are a Pain

While you see lots of lists for best airports (we highlighted one for the USA last week) and worst airports, this article Kevin Kelly sent me that originally ran in the Washington Post focuses on one aspect: long and confusing connections. A few frequent travelers I know are quoted in it and I can say that all four airports I try hard to avoid for connections are featured: Miami, JFK, Heathrow, and Paris. Two of them mentioned, Frankfurt and Denver, have been 50/50 for me. I hate a lot of things about Istanbul’s airport, but getting to your gate is fairly straightforward there.

---

A weekly newsletter with four quick bites, edited by Tim Leffel, author of A Better Life for Half the Price and The World’s Cheapest Destinations. See past editions here, where your like-minded friends can subscribe and join you.

10/8/26

Shaman Vol. 1 / Adventures with Barefoot Critters

Issue No. 138

SHAMAN IS BONKERS AND GOOFY AND ABSURD – AND GROUNDED IN REALITY

Shaman Vol. 1
by Ben Kahn (author) and Bruno Hidalgo (artist)
Locust Moon Press
2015, 132 pages, 7 x 10.5 x 0.2 inches (paperback)

Buy on Amazon

“He’s the one who makes your whole world possible. This is a world of noble heroes, and savage villains. A world where men and women of great power die everyday. And the Shaman? The Shaman is the one who brings them back.”

Ben Kahn and Bruno Hidalgo’s Shaman Vol. 1 is, on its surface, an entertaining, fast-paced, self-deprecating story about a guy who raises the dead, his young daughter who wields magic from her mystical tattoos, and a teleporting former superhero-turned-sidekick who travel around bringing back to life those whom “the personification of life itself” tells them to. Along the way, they fight skeletons and Cosmic Guardians and giant green monsters, all the while throwing down quips and wisecracks and pop culture references. It’s fun stuff all around, pulling you in and making you laugh out loud.

But coursing underneath throughout the narrative is an examination of the concepts of right and wrong, good and evil, life and loss, and what it means to be a “family.” Ben Kahn’s storytelling works in the gray areas where nothing is clean cut, and everything, therefore, becomes far more interesting. What could easily be flat, one-dimensional characters are, here, complex, multi-dimensional beings whose motivations and choices are constantly examined and second-guessed. As outlandish a concept as Shaman is, it’s grounded in the human reality; the reader knows these characters because the reader is these characters.

So often in comics the intent of the writer gets lost in the complexity of the artist’s choices, but not so in Shaman. Bruno Hidalgo’s rendering, linework, composition, and pacing not only complement the tone of Kahn’s rich narrative, they enhance it. Hidalgo understands the beats of graphic storytelling, pausing in all the right moments, and using panel structure and layout to capture the rhythm of action. Hidalgo’s choices as an artist amplify both the comedic and dramatic elements of Shaman perfectly.

Certainly, much of Shaman Volume 1 is bonkers and goofy and absurd. But Kahn and Hidalgo are offering much more than Pop Tarts for breakfast here. What is the right thing to do? How do we understand pain and loss in our lives? What does it mean to be a parent, a friend, a hero? Shaman is serving a full meal for dinner – it just happens to be one with a deliciously sweet and fun frosting on top. – Daniel Elkin

---

ADVENTURES WITH BAREFOOT CRITTERS TEACHES ABCS WITH CHARMING WOODLAND FLORA AND FAUNA

Adventures with Barefoot Critters
by Teagan White
Tundra Books
2014, 312 pages, 8.4 x 10.3 x 0.5 inches

Buy on Amazon

A is for adorable and that’s just the beginning of the attributes you’ll want to ascribe to this sweet account of anthropomorphic animals and the alphabet. Teagan White has created a charming book filled with colors awash in the glow of nostalgia, where forest critters romp across a scenic woodland, bundled in impossibly cute sweaters and tiny, striped scarves.

Adventures with Barefoot Creatures is characterized as an ABC book but its letter-themed, rhyming stanzas also follow the woodland flora and fauna through the seasons. A, B and C take place in deep winter as the critters clean out the attic and sniffle through colds. Spring arrives, with robin’s eggs and growing things twining their green vines and reaching across the pages in a riot of whimsy. Exuberant, the critters frolic in the summer’s sun, swimming in the lake and collecting ocean artifacts from the shores. As the end of the alphabet approaches, cable knit sweaters reappear and the illustrations become clotted with the changing colors of leaves and the warmth of campfires. Z arrives to find the barefoot critters snuggled together, exhausted from their delightful New Year’s festivities and tumbled together in a darling snoozefest on the couch.

ABC books are a well-explored subgenre that usually offers little in the way of novelty. Adventures with Barefoot Critters is a title that steps outside the clichéd with playful, quaint artwork that beguiles. If you enjoy the fascinating world of the quirky, imaginative Ms. White and her cast of cheery woodland companions, keep your eyes peeled for her latest book arriving in late summer, Counting with Barefoot Critters. Be assured that it will contain enough anthropomorphic animals in adorable sweaters to warm your literary heart through another season of reading. – Kaz Weida

---

Books That Belong On Paper first appeared on the web as Wink Books and was edited by Carla Sinclair. Sign up here to get the issues a week early in your inbox.

10/6/26

What’s in my NOW? — Victoria Pace