Sriya Sridhar

But also—I think we’ve gotten kind of weird about reading books like reviewers, in the age of the internet. I saw a bit of a video once where this aspiring book influencer delivered this pained, extended apologia for not finishing an essay collection, like it hurt him so much not to finish the book but he just couldn’t. And I thought…most people... See more

There are two ways to make the world more mesmerizing: to seek out new and increasingly intense experiences, or to loosen the filters that make ordinary experience “ordinary”. You can go skydiving, or you can meditate for long enough that walking feels like skydiving. Either way, I think what we’re seeking is an escape back into what we used to be,... See more

In her seminal work on boilerplate contracts, Margaret Jane Radin distinguishes between World A and World B to illuminate the fundamental tension between contract theory’s ideals and modern contractual reality. World A embodies the classical paradigm: contracts emerge through meaningful negotiation between informed equals. Here, parties exercise... See more

So the first one is this Japanese novelist, Junichiro Tanizaki’s 1933 essay, “In Praise of Shadows.” And this is a very small book, or a very long essay, in which Tanizaki kind of muses on his own taste, and why he designed his house in a certain way, and why he chooses food in a certain way or installs lamps in a certain way. And the point at... See more

I used to know someone with epilepsy who told me that sometimes, after a seizure, he felt like everyone he saw looked familiar. I find that fascinating. It suggests that “meaningful adjacencies” might be a kind of error, a useful error. When I’m starting an essay, if it seems to only be about one thing, there’s often a kind of inertness to it. But... See more