Staple Day 27

A MONTHLY UPDATE FROM INSIDE FIELD NOTES

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Hi, it’s Jim from Field Notes. This is our 27th monthly newsletter containing a variety of stuff that doesn’t really fit anywhere else. Please respond to this email with comments, questions, or suggestions. I’d love to hear from you. You can find recent Staple Days here.

Short Version: 1943, Deal, Pod, J’Accuse, Mother Road, Wrap, Poetry & Prose, Chronological, 60642

Things were very busy for Black Friday-Cyber Monday. We have extra hands in the warehouse and are cranking the orders out. If yours hasn’t shipped just yet it will be on the way in the next couple days.

Over There

Thanks to our subscribers and everyone who has purchased our new “1943” Edition and The Field Notes Brand Books reissue of The Maltese Falcon in the format of the World War II Armed Service Editions. I’m frequently asked whether we worry that we’ll run out of new ideas for our limited editions. But really, there are unlimited ways to go. Look at it this way, it took us fifteen years and 69 releases to figure out we could put the staples on the short side of a memo book. For Rick Kogan’s piece about this release in the the Chicago Tribune we talked a little about that and I said that we don’t really worry about things, we just take it on faith that if we are curious about something and excited about the research and process, people like us will dig it too.

Talking Book

We started a new podcast to dive a little deeper into subjects that are best examined through conversation. I’m not sure how often we will record new episodes, but when we can bring new voices and expertise to a subject, we’ll take advantage of those opportunities.

By hosting a conversation between Kevin Guilfoile, who edited, and wrote the forward for our Field Notes Brand Books reissue of The Maltese Falcon, and Molly Manning, author of When Books Went to War, we could really get into the story of the Armed Services Editions that served as the inspiration for our “1943” Edition.

While setting things up we discovered that there are a bunch of podcasts with “Field Notes” in their title. None of them have anything to do with us, but it seemed wise to use a name that would be unique and easily searchable. You can find out more about and listen to the Staple Day Podcast at our site and subscribe to it on Apple, Spotify, and pretty much everywhere else.

Related: An excellent illustrated article by Jennifer Schuessler from 2023 on “pocket-size paperback weapons in the fight for democracy.”

Whodunnit

Our Wednesday Murder Club Memo Book, which we gave away as a gift-with-purchase in late October, contained a puzzle. The challenge was to identify the killer and the weapon used in a crime. Not many people got it right, and we randomly chose ten of them as prize winners.

The puzzle was created by Sandy Weisz and Mao Reynolds of The Mystery League. Sandy has explained how the whole the whole thing worked. Look at the photo at the top of his solution. The weapon seems obvious, and by now you know we had other plans for the murderer too.

Page 362

“Here is the diary of a book and it will be interesting to see how it works out.” June 1, 1938, John Steinbeck starts writing The Grapes of Wrath.

Martini Shot

While were were constructing a film set, and also a big mess at HQ, we shot a quick behind-the-scenes sequence about the making of Spade and Archer, our homage to the opening shot of the great 1941 film version of The Maltese Falcon. Like all of our films, this was produced and directed by Steve Delahoyde, and like most of them (and our notebooks) it was made using analog, practical methods.^†

Digging

As noted in previous Staple Days, I’m keeping a commonplace book to record quotes that resonate with the present me, so that the future me knows where he’s been. Here are a couple recent entries.

Noli timere

Note: Poet Seamus Heaney texted this Latin phrase to his wife, Marie, minutes before he died in August of 2013. It translates as “Do not be afraid.” Ulta O Broin wrote about this in Multilingual Magazine back then. I’m thinking about Heaney this week while waiting for my copy of the new compendium of his work. The Poems of Seamus Heaney. Here’s a lovely review by Robert Pinsky.

A character “is making their case to you the reader, like they’re making their case before God, and while you might not agree with them, at least you get the world according to them.”

Note: Author Spencer Ackerman talking about his novel Sheepdogs. I was happy to see this wildly entertaining tale on the just-announced Long List for the 2026 Tournament of Books. If the ToB awarded its annual prize for “the novel that would make the greatest Coen Brothers movie,” Sheepdogs would be a shoo-in to take home the Rooster.

Clicking Through the Seasons

We needed a quick way to click through to the product page of any of our Quarterly Limited Editions, going back to 2009. So I put together a simple list and thought it might be handy for you too. To see what we add next to this roster, consider joining the thousands of people who have signed up for a year-long subscription.

In Person

A week from Saturday, December 13th, we’ll be hosting our annual Holiday Market at HQ in Chicago. It’s going to be a blast. Here are the details. Also, the Shop at HQ is open from 9-5 every weekday until 12/23. Hope to see you here soon.

Um, there’s a reason we selected the books we selected on the inside back cover of The Falcon. Drop me a note if you noticed that. TTY soon.

^*Coined a long time ago in the Field Nuts Facebook group, “Staple Day” is traditionally observed when a writer reaches the exact middle of a Field Notes Memo Book, revealing the metal fasteners which bind the cover and the interior pages together.

^†Field Notes is, and will always be, 100% A.I.-free. We proudly take full responsibility for our own hallucinations.