Books I want to remember
Gathering, Priya Parker
Mr Palomar is a delightful eccentric whose chief activity is looking at things. He is seeking knowledge; 'it is only after you have come to know the surface of things that you can venture to seek what is underneath'. Whether contemplating a fine cheese, a hungry gecko, a woman sunbathing topless or a flight of migrant starlings, Mr Palomar's... See more
Italo Calvino • Mr Palomar
Way Out There is an account of J. Robert Harris’s extraordinary exploits while backpacking in some of the world’s most tantalizing places―largely alone and unsupported. And after almost fifty years of wilderness travel, “J. R.,” as he’s known, has plenty of tales to tell! His stories are by turns funny, tragic, and uplifting, and are all told in... See more
Way Out There: Adventures of a Wilderness Trekker
Kat Arney sets out to understand how our genes work and, as her book title suggests, this is not going to be an easy task. She takes us on a journey, quite literally, as she flits across the world to meet a variety of geneticists, from those at the heart of the major genetic discoveries of the last century to those at the cutting edge of genetics... See more
James Hamlin • Herding Hemingway’s Cats: Understanding How Our Genes Work
because to some people it looks like a big empty space with nothing in it, but for us, it’s a really important place filled with wildlife and lovely, wonderful communities, and we wanted to protect them.’ She’d appealed to the critical difference between ‘space’ and ‘place’ – one a malleable territory largely Irreplaceable: The fight to save our
... See moreWomen fill with fury at waste, eco-apocalypse and the pressure to be flawless in a lyrical and oblique short story collection
Lauren Elkin • Florida by Lauren Groff review – rage and refusal as Earth reaps the whirlwind
For the first day or two I felt stunned, overwhelmed. I could only apprehend my felicity; I was too confused to taste it sincerely. I wandered about, thinking I was happy, and knowing that I was not. I was in the condition of a prisoner in the old Bastile, suddenly let loose after a forty years' confinement. I could scarce trust myself with myself. It was like passing out of Time into Eternity—for it is a sort of Eternity for a man to have his Time all to himself. It seemed to me that I had more time on my hands than I could ever manage. From a poor man, poor in Time, I was suddenly lifted up into a vast revenue; I could see no end of my possessions; I wanted some steward, or judicious bailiff, to manage my estates in Time for me. From “The Superannuated Man” 1823
Priya Parker Gatherings.
I struggle to recall the name Encounterism.
Lonelines
