The Ants Will Come and Tell Me
As the Empire was falling apart, Britain had a problem: how to keep control of all its former colonies and their resources as they…
Borges Marathon, Part 2: The Improbable Impostor Tom Castro
I love the writing of Jorge Luis Borges. Back in the early days of this blog, I was so deeply affected by…
The Reality of Anti-Fascism
Reading The US Antifascism Reader lately gave some useful context on this much-maligned but essential movement. It's a collection of essays and…
January 2021 Reading Roundup
January wasn't a great month, but I did read some good books. Here's a quick roundup.
Breasts and Eggs by Mieko Kawakami
What does it mean to be a woman? In the memorable novel Breasts and Eggs, Mieko Kawakami explores the question by looking…
From Concentric to Maculate: Marco D’Eramo’s Geographies of Ignorance
As we all know, travel has become a lot easier in recent decades—at least for those of us born into relative privilege and possessing…
Best Books I Read in 2020
There’s a quote by Alice Walker that I love: “When I was a child, I read books for entertainment and information; I…
The Seat of the Soul by Gary Zukav
In her preface to The Seat of the Soul, Oprah Winfrey writes: “The Seat of the Soul changed the way I see…
Steppenwolf by Hermann Hesse: German Literature Month 2020
There’s a lot more to the novel than a protest against society’s stifling conventions. In fact, the way that Hesse wrote the…