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Books read: 2022
- Monkeys with Typewriters by Scarlett Thomas ★★★★☆
- Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel ★★☆☆☆
- Winter Trees by Sylvia Plath ★★★☆☆
- The Imagination Chamber by Philip Pullman ★☆☆☆☆
- Dawn by Octavia Butler ★★☆☆☆
- The Orchard on Fireby by Shena Mackay ★★★☆☆
- Howl’s Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones ★★☆☆☆
- Selected Poems by Sylvia Plath ★★★★☆
- Touching the Void by Joe Simpson ★★★★☆
- Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative? by Mark Fisher ★★★★☆
- How High We Go in the Dark by Sequoia Nagamatsu ★★☆☆☆
- The Invention of Nature: Alexander von Humboldt’s New World by Andrea Wulf ★★★★★
- The Writing Life by Annie Dillard ★★★★☆
- The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories by Ken Liu ★★☆☆☆
- Call Us What We Carry by Amanda Gorman ★★★☆☆
- Bedouin of the London Evening: Collected Poems by Rosemary Tonks ★★★☆☆
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The Chemical History of a Candle
An outstanding series of five short videos (~10 to 20 minutes each) based on Michael Faraday’s lectures The Chemical History of a Candle.
In these lectures Michael Faraday’s careful examination of a burning candle reveals the fundamental concepts of chemistry, while at the same time superbly demonstrating the scientific method.
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Quote: Shaun Tan
“So you want to hear a story? Well, I used to know a whole lot of pretty interesting ones.
Some of them so funny you’d laugh yourself unconscious. Others so terrible you’d never
want to repeat them. But I can’t remember any of those, so I’ll just tell you about the
time I found that lost thing…”Shaun Tan’s The Lost Thing is a thing of beauty. Wonderful art woven with an evocative narrative that’s inspirational and fun. Do watch it.
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The Alley
Rain falls,
Darkening red brickwork
Featureless apartments
Of five floors.
A lone street light’s shadow falls
Into the alley.There are two men there
Face to face
Trench coats
Fedoras
Rivulets running.
A fumbling of hands,
Damp and dextrous,
A brief exchange.
Back to back.
One back into the black.
The other heads this way.
Echoing footfalls
Bouncing off the side walls.
A glance to right
A nose tip
A dart to the left
Evasive.