I’m a second-generation used and rare bookseller.

A lot of my life is organized around one question: what is worth preserving, and what do we need to build so that preservation can keep happening? This question shows up in my work with books, in my consulting for small businesses, in what I read and write, and in how I try to cultivate relationships.

This blog is where I work that question out loud — essays, dispatches from the bookstore, fiction, and whatever else catches my attention that week. The writing is personal, sometimes funny, and mostly unironic. If you’re new here, start with Best Of. If you want the weirder stuff that best captures the vibe, try Deep Cuts.

My parents opened Becker’s Books in Houston in 1993 and I grew up there. I got sober at 22, worked in China for three years, spent ten years coaching small-business owners full-time as a professor, and came back to used books full-time thanks to a generous fellowship in 2025 from O’Shaughnessy Ventures. I’m currently working on an AI tool for used booksellers to catalog books and preparing to open another location for my family’s bookstore.

People who enjoy reading my stuff are usually thoughtful but not joyless, ambitious but not careerist, highbrow and lowbrow in equal measure. On average, I write something new every other week and put a podcast out once a month. Everything here is free, but paid subscriptions help me keep making more of it.