“The first week of August hangs at the very top of summer, the top of the live-long year, like the highest seat of a Ferris wheel when it pauses on its turning. The weeks that come before are only a climb from balmy spring, and those that follow a drop to the chill of autumn, but the first week of August is motionless, and hot. It is curiously silent, too, with blank white dawns and glaring noons, and sunsets smeared with too much color.”
—Natalie Babbitt, “Tuck Everlasting”
- How weird is the future going to be? Just a little bit — or plain flat-out radically unthinkably weird? And is this future 1,000 years from now — or 100?
- Relatedly, here’s what Tyler Cowen’s reading. (Kvelling that my mother’s book made the list!)
- On reading Agatha Christie during the pandemic. (“Indefatigably English” is a charming –and accurate– description.)
- Good piece on the Aeneas/Dido story.
- 14 books about Kenya.
(The editors of the NYT Books section have an “editor’s picks” article, but one of the books is subtitled “The strange science of perspiration.” I’m interested in all sorts of things, but that’s firmly in books-that-could-be-article-length territory.)