Category: Books, Readings

The spiral effect in this very short story in The New Yorker is excellent. A winning exemple of a successful “one page fiction” . The Penthouse is the retelling of a comical, real-life moment, exemplified. We whirl around a central spine which, as subtext, is never made explicit. Great picture of “showing not telling”. The author set up a brilliant...

‘Motherhood’ stands as a timeless exploration of the poles, very elegantly done. It concerns the probing of our own undercurrents, too. Ably unclouding some of the imaginings surrounding the fantasy of the mother, anyone interested in the feminine will discover knowledge in this immensely readable book. Darker aspects of motherhood are real, and natural transgressions are not enough spoken about in...

Rankine wraps around subject-matter like charm work. Read this in three sittings. Littlest distance between reader and narrator. Immersive, first-person perspective. Text expands slowly, beautifully, inwards. Certainly an enquiry for the aesthete and for the curious although we are not here to pry. Very stimulating serpentine energy. First-rate contemporary culture, and interested in luring more of us into constructive work....

“Even when things are within reach, we still have to reach for those things for them to be reached,” Sarah Ahmed wrote in this incredible investigation of what it means to be situated. Part conceptual analysis and part personal digression, Ahmed describes in three chapters that consciousness is intentional, embodied, sensitive, and situated. That our bodies are directed in some...

Most of Emily Dickinson’s friendships were based entirely upon correspondence and we have here all the letters to the Norcross Sisters and all the letters to Thomas Wentworth Higginson, followed by ‘Fame Is a Bee’ (a selection of poems). Themes concern flowers, self-inquiry, mind and spirit as tangible, visitable places. Between two verses she fills the world (poems) with wonder....