BoredReading

'Essays in Flesh and Bone'

3 weeks ago

from Anecdotal Evidence in literature

One of my friends is reliably cheerful. We should all have friends like him. His emails and telephone calls are never annoyingly cloying, in the sense...

Jeanne F. Jalandoni

3 weeks ago

from The American Scholar in literature

Weaving past and present together The post Jeanne F. Jalandoni appeared first on The American Scholar.

Is It Not Wonderful to Be Alive: Edward Lear’s Parrots

3 weeks ago

from The Marginalian in literature

In the late summer of 1832, England was set aflame with wonder — a glimpse of something wild and flamboyant, shimmering with the lush firstness of a...

'A Minority Pursuit'

3 weeks ago

from Anecdotal Evidence in literature

In comparison to the late D.G. Myers, I’m a quietist, waiting for something to happen rather than stepping on the accelerator myself. He supplied me...

Why Bats Shouldn’t Exist: The Limits of Knowledge, the Pitfalls of Prediction, and the Triumph of the Possible Over the Probable

3 weeks ago

from The Marginalian in literature

Prediction is the sharpest tool the human animal has devised — the chisel with which we sculpted survival out of chance, the fulcrum by which we...

'Things That Might Have Been and Were Not'

4 weeks ago

from Anecdotal Evidence in literature

An old friend has grown uncharacteristically introspective and is finding much to regret. It’s a function of age. A widower in retirement from...

Michael Douglas Explains It All

4 weeks ago

from The American Scholar in literature

Jessa Crispin on what the actor’s roles tell us about the crisis of masculinity The post Michael Douglas Explains It All appeared first on The...

No, KKR is not “equity washing”

4 weeks ago

from The Elysian in literature

Contra Katie Boland on the private equity company’s employee-ownership model.

'After the Rain, Perhaps, Something Will Show'

4 weeks ago

from Anecdotal Evidence in literature

Most of us are born with a brain but without a user’s manual. This soggy organ weighs on average about three pounds and contains 86 billion neurons....

How much of the planet should we harm for our comfort?

a month ago

from The Elysian in literature

Becky Chambers’ gentle sci-fi on the right amount of carbon, AC, airplanes, and yachts.

'Without Any Hope of Fame or Money'

a month ago

from Anecdotal Evidence in literature

Friends and relatives, people whose judgment I actually trust, have urged me to move Anecdotal Evidence from Blogger to Substack and I don’t...

Snake in the Grass

a month ago

from The American Scholar in literature

The post Snake in the Grass appeared first on The American Scholar.

The way of arrival

a month ago

from This Space in literature

Two intellectual memoirs dominated my reading over Spring, three if WG Sebald's Silent Catastrophes can be included given that its analysis of the...

'It Is Always Summer, Always the Golden Hour'

a month ago

from Anecdotal Evidence in literature

I fight the urge to wallow in nostalgia but it seeps back in like moisture in an unfinished basement. I take that image from my childhood home. The...

“Daddy” by Sylvia Plath

a month ago

from The American Scholar in literature

Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “Daddy” by Sylvia Plath appeared first on The American Scholar.

Uncoding Creativity in the Age of AI: What Makes a Great Poem, What Makes a Great Storyteller, and What Makes Us Human

a month ago

from The Marginalian in literature

I once asked ChatGPT to write a poem about a total solar eclipse in the style of Walt Whitman. It returned a dozen couplets of cliches that touched...

Participatory science makes everyone a researcher

a month ago

from The Elysian in literature

So we can study the Earth at scale.

Why Go On?

a month ago

from The American Scholar in literature

The post Why Go On? appeared first on The American Scholar.

On agency

a month ago

from Escaping Flatland in literature

Or, how to handle being sentenced to freedom, and handle it effectively, and authentically, and responsibly

"Some of His Work Was Gold'

a month ago

from Anecdotal Evidence in literature

From a dusty, thoroughly disorganized Houston bookstore I bought a copy of Turnstile One: A Literary Miscellany (Turnstile Press, 1948), edited by...

A Defense of Joy

a month ago

from The Marginalian in literature

One of the most important things to have learned in life is that choosing joy in a world rife with reasons for despair is a countercultural act of...

'A Great Euthanasia'

a month ago

from Anecdotal Evidence in literature

I can’t think of another poet who wrote so often or so amusingly about death as Thomas Disch. I once tried tallying his death-themed poems and lost...

America the Beautiful

a month ago

from The American Scholar in literature

The poem that became a hymn to the nation came about in troubled, polarizing times The post America the Beautiful appeared first on The American...

'Lord, Make Me Not Too Rich. Nor Make Me Poor'

a month ago

from Anecdotal Evidence in literature

“In spite of the Deconstructionists who say that communication is not really possible, we most of us manage to honor stop signs, and we all honor the...

Lessons in the Diplomatic Arts

a month ago

from The American Scholar in literature

Notes from a musical tour of South Africa The post Lessons in the Diplomatic Arts appeared first on The American Scholar.

What I Read in June 2025 - A life of agony was all for naught.

a month ago

from Wuthering Expectations in literature

My summer plan was to read, short, easy books, and I almost succeeded. I read short, difficult books in French, and accidentally read several grim,...

Vision of the Womb and Vision of the Brain: H.D. on the Two Kinds of Seeing and the Key to Over-mind Consciousness

a month ago

from The Marginalian in literature

“One must be a seer, make oneself a seer,” Arthur Rimbaud wrote, “by a long, gigantic and rational derangement of all the senses.” As more and more of...

Maybe an exowomb is better than pregnancy

a month ago

from The Elysian in literature

The Pod Generation’s near-future satire pits nature against technology. Which is the better curator?

'One Is Looking in the Right Direction'

a month ago

from Anecdotal Evidence in literature

News of certain public deaths remains rooted in memory to an indelible time and place. Famously, millions of mundane lives intersected forever...

Big Rock, High Plateau

a month ago

from The American Scholar in literature

The post Big Rock, High Plateau appeared first on The American Scholar.

'Superintending What He Cannot Regulate'

a month ago

from Anecdotal Evidence in literature

In my family we can’t get away from the “Y” chromosome. Having children is known as “going to the Y.” I have three sons, no daughters, and my brother,...

“The Fig Tree” by Ruth Stone

a month ago

from The American Scholar in literature

Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “The Fig Tree” by Ruth Stone appeared first on The American Scholar.

How can we rewild the Earth at scale?

a month ago

from The Elysian in literature

From global targets to backyard projects

'The Fun Which Is Ebullient All Over Yours'

a month ago

from Anecdotal Evidence in literature

A pun is best delivered without announcing itself as a pun. Those ungifted at wordplay tend to underline, boldface and italicize their every attempt...

Greg Ito

a month ago

from The American Scholar in literature

The life cycle of a candle The post Greg Ito appeared first on The American Scholar.

Uncaging the Bird in the Mind: William Henry Hudson and the Gift of the Ruin of Your Best Laid Plans

a month ago

from The Marginalian in literature

“The mind is its own place, and in it self can make a Heav’n of Hell, a Hell of Heav’n,” wrote Milton in Paradise Lost. Because the mind (which may in...

'The Ledge Itself Invents the Leap'

a month ago

from Anecdotal Evidence in literature

Good hearts try to talk us out of phobias. After all, people are naïve about the powers of rationalism: “Explain it, and it goes away.” As a kid I...

Democrats Need a Mamdani-Type to Win

a month ago

from The Elysian in literature

If you're still talking about his rent freeze and grocery policies, you're missing the point.

Anima: One Woman’s Search for Meaning in the Footsteps of Bulgarian Mountain Shepherds

a month ago

from The Marginalian in literature

"All our lives we perform tasks while waiting for something to click into place. For somewhere to put our love."

'Susceptible to Education'

a month ago

from Anecdotal Evidence in literature

I grew up fetishizing a university education. I knew no one in my family or in my working-class neighborhood who had “gone to college,” as the common...

Once in a Lifetime

a month ago

from The American Scholar in literature

Jonathan Gould on how Talking Heads transformed rock music The post Once in a Lifetime appeared first on The American Scholar.

'The Neglected By-ways'

a month ago

from Anecdotal Evidence in literature

Thomas Parker is a longtime reader and frequent commenter on this blog. On Monday’s post he recalled a passage he thought may have been the work of...

The future used to be better

a month ago

from The Elysian in literature

How contemporary art reflects our waning belief in progress.

The hare

a month ago

from Escaping Flatland in literature

vaguely impressionistic reflections about what I've been up to + links to stuff I've enjoyed recently

'The Kitchen Perpetually Crowded with Savages'

a month ago

from Anecdotal Evidence in literature

Jonathan Swift often stayed at Quilca, the country home of his friend the Rev. Thomas Sheridan (1687-1738) in County Cavan, Ireland. There he wrote...

Crystal Ball

a month ago

from The American Scholar in literature

The post Crystal Ball appeared first on The American Scholar.

Divinations of the First Light: A Cosmic Poem for the Vera Rubin Observatory

a month ago

from The Marginalian in literature

At the end of her trailblazing life, having swung open the gate of the possible for women in science with her famous comet discovery, astronomer Maria...

'The Silly, Trivial Things You Did When Young'

a month ago

from Anecdotal Evidence in literature

“Of course, you live life forward and think about it backwards.” I’ve spent the last month or so thinking about the summer of 1973, when I visited...

Verse 31 from Gitanjali by Rabindranath Tagore

a month ago

from The American Scholar in literature

Poems read aloud, beautifully The post Verse 31 from <em>Gitanjali</em> by Rabindranath Tagore appeared first on The American Scholar.

A self-governing forest

a month ago

from The Elysian in literature

Terra0 thinks nature should become economically independent.