A gift
On Days of Reading
Days of Reading
Marcel Proust
Proust’s meditations on reading, and the gifts that writers leave their readers. Best read slowly.
Masks
On The Value of Nothing
Food Rules
Michael Pollan
This little book from everyone’s favorite omnivore deftly defines a series of simple rules to eat by, expanding on his mantra from In Defense of Food: eat food, not too much, mostly plants.
Apropos of Massachusetts
On The Value of Nothing & Life Inc.
The Value of Nothing
Raj Patel
Raj Patel argues that the tragedy of the commons is one borne of privatization and corporatism, not an innate fact of the commoners themselves.
My Bread
Jim Lahey & Rick Flaste
Lahey’s simple method for bread making (which trades kneading for time) is worth the hype.
On craft
On my decision to leave Norton—my home for nearly a decade— and join the ranks at Etsy.
The conformity of lawns
On Life Inc.
As you “like” it
On Mediated & Ways of Seeing
God’s eye view
On Mediated
Mediated
Thomas de Zengotita
de Zengotita investigates the ways in which our experience of the world is mediated through traditional media (television, newspapers) as well as the ways in which we self-mediate.
Witness
On Reading Pictures & Standard Operating Procedure
Standard Operating Procedure
Philip Gourevitch & Errol Morris
The book companion to Errol Morris’ movie of the same name. Where Morris tells the story with video and photography, Gourevitch communicates with words alone.
Carved into stone
On Library
Library
Matthew Battles
Battles’ lively history runs from the ancients to the internet, with tales of libraries built and burned along the way.
Future readings
On Reading Pictures
Summertime
J. M. Coetzee
With Coetzee’s last few works of fiction, he seems to be making an effort to get out ahead of the biographers who will no doubt pounce on his grave while still warm.