Organizing my favorite books of the year is always a challenging task. How to sort through so many remarkable books, particularly when preferences are so subjective? How to make some sort of sense or cohesion out of such a disparate array of texts? Ultimately, the books that made the final cut are the ones that … Continue reading 2021 Reading List – The Final
science writing
How Shall We Live?
I've always had a deep faith in books. As with many readers, libraries felt like church to me, bookstores like monasteries. Opening a new book feels like a ritual, as does closing it when finished. I'm sure this worship led me to seek a scholar's life, and not only a scholar but a scholar of … Continue reading How Shall We Live?
Going Off Book: Quarantine Celebrity-ing, + Notions, Late April Edition
Celebrity-ing While Quarantining During the COVID-19 pandemic, while most of us #shelterinplace, celebrities have been putting out elaborately orchestrated videos to entertain the troops, as it were, and keep up morale. And generally speaking, call me "curmudgeon" if you must, I loathe what feels to me like being pandered to by rich and famous people. … Continue reading Going Off Book: Quarantine Celebrity-ing, + Notions, Late April Edition
Where the Sidewalk Ends: Four Writers on Climate Change and Understanding the Overarching Crisis of Our Time
Exactly one month ago, the sustainability teams at UO hosted WOHESC, a regional sustainability in higher education conference. Attendees included a mix of professionals and students, spending two days talking about everything from putting social justice into practice to the feasibility of widespread nuclear power in the US. That conference moment happened right before everything … Continue reading Where the Sidewalk Ends: Four Writers on Climate Change and Understanding the Overarching Crisis of Our Time
On Toggling Between Books, or the Strange Fixed Marriage of Julia Child and Carlo Rovelli
Listening to: A Spotify playlist where I'm dumping one-off songs I want to keep listening to. Drinking: A Firestone Walker IPA. Traditionally—since childhood—I've been a one-book-at-a-time kind of reader. The first cracks in that tendency probably came in graduate school, a time when it's relatively impossible to be reading only one thing at a time. … Continue reading On Toggling Between Books, or the Strange Fixed Marriage of Julia Child and Carlo Rovelli
Dogs, Coffee, & Books 