Goals for this month: more Vinge, Roman history, and final catch up with magazine backlog.
- NYer of 6/16/25. Gertrude Berg, "Mother of the Sitcom."
- The Nation of July/August 2025. Your pain, "She has nothing to eat but story" (from "Nothing Survives Without Food," a poem by Leah Naomi Green)
- NYer of 5/30/22. “There are some who claim the automobile will replace the bicycle, but this is rank nonsense,” a Maine magazine reported in 1899. “Those who have become attached to their bicycles—there are several millions of bicycle riders—will not easily give up the pleasure of skimming along the country like a bird... for the more doubtful delight of riding in the cumbersome, ill-smelling automobile.”
- The Annals of Imperial Rome by Tacitus. "The enemies lined the shore in a dense armed mass. Among them were black-robed women with dishevelled hair like Furies, brandishing torches. Close by stood Druids, raising their hands to heaven and screaming dreadful curses."
- NYer of 6/9/25. Fascinating piece on Nutella's Algerian competitor, El Mordjene.
- NYer of 4/3/23. One fifth of respondents who want the U.S. to be a "Christian nation" identify as secular.
- The Two Towers by JRRT. But which towers? I suppose it's Saruman's and Sauron's, but the only direct reference is the gate into Mordor that the hobbits don't take.
- First Dawn by Mike Moscoe. Absurd premise (the U.S. government orders a mission to go back in time and stop the first instance of militarized violence, thus preserving the matriarchy), but a real page-turner.
- My Death by Lisa Tuttle. A quick, captivating read.
- Queen of Air and Darkness by T.H. White. Magic is a mixture of feminine allure and animal abuse, it seems.
- NYer of 5/26/25. "Her mother had misread something about the Property Brothers on the internet and was insisting that they were being persecuted for being Christian" (Fairy Pools by Patricia Lockwood)
