Looming apocalypse. Paranoid conspiracies. Rocket-obsessed oligarchs. As Thomas Pynchon’s novel turns 50, its world feels unnervingly present. Read more
(We earn a small commission if you click above and buy the book at Bookshop.org)
Category: Essays
Bullying Librarians Is for Know-Nothings
Right-wing activists have taken over school boards across the country, banning books on topics from slavery to the Holocaust, rejecting courses like AP African American Studies, and prohibiting teachers from discussing gender identity in the classroom. Now, in a comically transparent escalation of this anti-intellectual crusade, they are targeting libraries. Worse, they’ve embraced a characteristically cruel approach to doing so: bullying librarians. Read more
(We earn a small commission if you click above and buy the book at Bookshop.org)
The Dangerous Decline of the Historical Profession
The average number of available new “tenure track” university jobs, which are secure jobs that provide living wages, benefits and stability, between 2020 and 2022 was 16 percent lower than it was for the four years before the pandemic. The report further notes that only 27 percent of those who received a Ph.D. in history in 2017 were employed as tenure track professors four years later. Read more
(We earn a small commission if you click above and buy the book at Bookshop.org)
M.F.K. Fisher Taught Americans How to Nourish Bodies and Souls
Looking back at a great writer. Read more
(We earn a small commission if you click above and buy the book at Bookshop.org)
How 2022 Became the Year of the Fragmented-Identity Novel
The tail end of 2022 has been marked by a worrying sense that the center really isn’t holding. Read more
(We earn a small commission if you click above and buy the book at Bookshop.org)
The Honesty of Pornography
Often vilified as a weapon of male supremacy, pornography in fact has much to tell us about ourselves and our culture. Read more
(We earn a small commission if you click above and buy the book at Bookshop.org)
Writing Your Own Obituary Can Teach You How to Live
There’s a misconception that obituaries are about death. In reality, they’re about life. Sure, they include things like cause of death and the loved ones of the deceased. But a good obit should paint a vivid picture of the life someone lived, of how that person might want to be remembered. Read more
(We earn a small commission if you click above and buy the book at Bookshop.org)
Why Read Old Books? A Case for the Classic, the Unusual, the Neglected
Books of the past not only add to our understanding. They offer repose, renewal and perspective. Also, they can be fun. Read more
(We earn a small commission if you click above and buy the book at Bookshop.org)
The Dreariness of Book Club Discussions
We enjoy each other’s company. We drink coffee, we eat crackers, we get reacquainted with each other’s love lives, and we have an excuse to read the books that’ll appear on The New York Times’s notable list this year. And of course, reading the books is the point. The whole book club is predicated on the notion that reading these books will improve our minds in some way, and that it’ll contribute measurably to our intellectual lives. And yet, month after month, I leave each meeting feeling as if we’ve engaged in an empty, meaningless exercise. Read more
(We earn a small commission if you click above and buy the book at Bookshop.org)
Is It Wrong to Not Finish a Book?
Do you give a book a certain amount of time, or a certain number of pages, before giving up? Do you never give up? How do you decide? Read more
(We earn a small commission if you click above and buy the book at Bookshop.org)
