WHAT have you finished reading recently? Against the Machine, Paul Kingsnorth. Quotations to be posted today. WHAT are you reading now? The Last Jeffersonian, a biography of Grover Cleveland I picked up a week or so ago at a local … Continue reading →| Reading Freely
But while I learned this early, it was much later that I learned something else, dimly and slowly, through my study of history, mythology and, well, people: that every culture, whether it knows it or not, is built around a … Continue reading →| Reading Freely
Today’s TTT is a Halloween freebie, and while that should make things easier, it doesn’t. I’m not much for Halloween: my family didn’t celebrate it as a kid, and while I’ve enjoyed quite a few costume parties in. So, I’m … Continue reading →| Reading Freely
At some point during college, I tried to work out what an ideal human society might look like. This was back when I still strongly identified with the left, but my dreams were not of a world state and a … Continue reading →| Reading Freely
When I was a wee bairn, in the olden days when the Earth was new and dinosaurs roamed the land, I cut my teeth on reading Kathryn Tucker Windham’s collections of ghost stories. KTW, or “…| Reading Freely
Yes, yes, I know. I said I wouldn’t read more in this series until I’d hit some nonfiction first — but the last book ended with the Dome of the Rock being blown up! How could I resist? The Impossible … Continue reading →| Reading Freely
Ach du lieber but this is not a good cover. In The Accidental Nazi, a historian from 1981 West Berlin was astonished to find himself inexplicably standing on a tarmac in 1941 Berlin, watching a pla…| Reading Freely
Can you imagine the Russians marching through Berlin? And the Americans and the British in the Ruhr? It would be the end of everything.” “It almost seems as though you can see the future,” she said. “Do you think you … Continue reading →| Reading Freely
Today’s Long and Short review is….”Things that Scare Me”. Swarm insects that sting/bite, obviously. Falling off bridges into deep water. The increasing dystopia of the 21st …| Reading Freely
In my lifetime, in my part of the world, the notion and meaning of ‘home’ has steadily crumbled under this external pressure until it is little more than a word. In a Machine anticulture, the home …| Reading Freely
10 posts published by smellincoffee during October 2025| Reading Freely
“Remove justice, and what are kingdoms but great robberies? For what are robberies themselves, but little kingdoms?”~ St Augustine I can still remember being scandalized in seventh grad…| Reading Freely
WHAT have you finished reading recently? The Day of Battle, a girthy history of the Anglo-American invasion of Sicily and Italy in World War 2. WHAT are you reading now? Against the Machine, Paul K…| Reading Freely
Seeking the True, the Good, and the Beautiful| Reading Freely
Over at Bewitching Books, Ravenous Reads, I saw a fun bookish game in which ten images are generated by AI, using prompts inspired by books. It was originally inspired by the same game at Bowl Owl&…| Reading Freely
