the plot sucks but the killings are gorgeous

 I was everything I needed.           Xoài Phạm, from “The Greatest Pleasure”

He helped me find what I truly craved and identify what had been there all along: an unwavering sense of self.         Jennifer Chowdhury, from “In Pursuit of Brown-on-Brown Love”

Such an old, old memory, why should it make me cry?         Lloyd Schwartz, from “The Two Horses (A Memory)”

“I love you,” he whispered again, against the top of her head.         Mary Balogh, from Thief of Dreams

And he paused, in the space between inhalation and exhalation, and invited magic in.          Freya Marske, from A Marvellous Light        

“Nothing I didn’t already know, deep down.”         Dante Medema, from The Truth Project

It was a fine cry - loud and long - but it had no bottom and it had no top, just circles and circles of sorrow.         Toni Morrison, from Sula

For just a little while more, I think, let me hide here.         Jonathan Robbins Leon, from “The Same Kind of Monster”

In search of, an approximation:            desire of, love of.         Iliana Rocha, from “Elegy Falling Forward & Down“

I still crave the comfort of a hand in mine, the warmth of being claimed in the daylight.         Laura Bogart, from “A New Kind of Heroine”

And it is you, it is you she is holding like an open book, well-loved, in her hands.         Eve Alexandra, from “Heroine”

We survived to whisper our names to each other even if we could not yet confess them to anyone else.         Anna-Marie McLemore, from “Roja”

And this is the story of how I am caught.         Margaret Owen, from Little Thieves

I’m trying to hold on to this rope, and I’m trying to let go.         Melissa Faliveno, from “Tied, Tethered, Unfettered, Free”

Imagine you don’t fit anywhere, not even in your own head.         Bassey Ikpi, from “What It Feels Like”

I look to the sky and feel her ghost.         Colton Haynes, from Miss Memory Lane

It would be nice if we could talk about how we went online, driven by some sort of longing, and why we stayed there, pushing that want outward, over and over, until it couldn’t be ignored.         Kaitlyn Tiffany, from Everything I Need I Get from You

Care tasks exist for one reason only… to make your body and space functional enough for you to easily experience the joy this world has to offer.         K.C. Davis, from How to Keep House While Drowning

I had become one of the people on the street who knew where he was going.         Andrew Rannells, from Too Much Is Not Enough

Until everything was sea and sky, and the falling was flying, and he realised he was laughing too.         Alexis Hall, from A Lady for a Duke

Under the wrack and wreck of what had come before, the sky was new, and I reached for it with a yearning eager hand.         Nghi Vo, from The Chosen and the Beautiful

My beating heart is still yours, the letter said, and I’ll be waiting for you.         Dana Schwartz, from Anatomy

It won’t last for long, but it’s beautiful for now.         Linda Oatman High, from December

She holds my hand as I leave them all behind.         Erica Waters, from “Stay”

lucas jorgensen non-cento from the bureau of the library of alexandria

gottfried benn icarus

jack gilbert refusing heaven: poems: "failing and flying"

marcia carlson a masque for icarus

larry eigner three poems: "the feet of icarus..."

a.r. ammons collected poems: 1951-1971: "dunes"

jennifer robertson shrill shirts will always balloon

n. scott momaday in the presence of the sun: stories and poems, 1961-1991: "the delight song of tsoai-talee"

ted berrigan the collected poems of ted berrigan: "bean spasms"

natalie diaz when my brother was an aztec: "abecedarian requiring further examination of anglikan seraphym subjugation of a wild indian rezervation"

greg miller watch: "river"

joanna klink excerpts from a secret prophecy: "terrebonne bay"

dorothy dudley pine river bay

brenda shaughnessy our andromeda: "our andromeda"

frank lima incidents of travel in poetry: "orfeo"

lehua m. taitano one kind of hunger

no'u revilla kino

linda hogan when the body

paul verlaine one hundred and one poems by paul verlaine: a biligual edition: "moonlight" (tr. norman r. shapiro)

mahmoud darwish the butterfly's burden: "the cypress broke" (tr. fady joudah)

mahmoud darwish the butterfly's burden: "your night is of lilac"

amir rabiyah prayers for my 17th chromosome: "our dangerous sweetness"

sara nicholson the living method: "the end of television"

charles shields proposal for a exhibition

ginger murchison a scrap of linen, a bone: "river"

tsering wangmo dhompa virtual

anne carson the beauty of the husband: "v. here is my propaganda one one one one oneing on your forehead like droplets of luminous sin"

muriel rukeyser the collected poems of muriel rukeyser: "the book of the dead"

anne stevenson stone milk: "the enigma"

david tomas martinez love song

robert fitzgerald charles river nocturne

thomas mcgrath the movie at the end of the world: collected poems: "many in the darkness"

linda rodriguez heart's migration: "the amazon river dolphin"

donald revell the glens of cithaeron

sumita chakraborty dear, beloved

angela jackson and all these roads be luminous: "miz rosa rides the bus"

The START of your story - how fucked up flawed is your premise/character at the start? what do they have to change? why are they HERE?

The END of your story - How do you want your main character/theme/universe to change after your story? Does it get better or worse? THIS SETS UP THE TONE DRASTICALLY.

What you want to happen IN BETWEEN - the MEAT of it. What made you start writing this WIP in the first place. Don't be ashamed to indulge, it's where the BRAIN JUICE comes from. You want a deep dive into worldbuilding and complex systems? Then your start and end should be rooted in some fundamental, unique rule of your universe (what made you obsess over it?). Want to write unabashed ship content? Make sure your start and end are so compelling you'll never run out of smut scenarios to shove in between scenes (what relationship dynamics made you ship it in the first place?).

The ANTE - the GRAVITY of your story. How high are the stakes? Writing a blurb or interaction? start with a small day-in-the-life so you can focus on shorter timelines and hourly minutiae that can easily get overlooked in more complicated epics. Or you can go ham on it and plot out your whole universe's timeline from conception to demise. Remember: the larger the scale, the less attached your story may get. How quickly time flies in your story typically correlates with the ante (not a hard rule, ofc, but most epics span years of time within a few pages, while a romance novel usually charts out the events of a few months over a whole manuscript.)

Heavily depends on region of the world. Japanese slice of life can defy this convention. Lebanese fiction somewhat, too. Some French. Bildungsroman. Sometimes Germany doesn't care. I kinda have to admit I like contemporary German film.

The END of your story - How do you want your main character/theme/universe to change after your story? Does it get better or worse? THIS SETS UP THE TONE DRASTICALLY

Also depends heavily on the region of the world. BTW, Japan, has the tightest command of tone, on a general basis that I've seen in any literary tradition. And I've read as far as I can.

Sometimes the point of the entire story is to change ONE thing about the character in East Asian canon. And then the story ends.

And you might think, welp, then the tone is limited. Nope. I've seen it go really dark, really light, funny, dramatic, etc. And loved every minute of it. How much your character does or does not change, therefore, does not dictate the tone, from my observation. It's the smaller inconsequential things that you don't think about the set up the mood. You CHOOSE a mood beforehand to get the tone.

BTW, I envy writers who can achieve a tonal shift in a super short amount of time. *I* want that skill, dammit.

This also somehow seems to assume two additional things:

The story is linear.

The audience's perception can't change during the story such that when they interact with the story, the audience is changed, but the character and world are static. (This is difficult to pull off, but I've seen people pull it off.)

What you want to happen IN BETWEEN - the MEAT of it. What made you start writing this WIP in the first place. Don't be ashamed to indulge, it's where the BRAIN JUICE comes from. You want a deep dive into worldbuilding and complex systems? Then your start and end should be rooted in some fundamental, unique rule of your universe (what made you obsess over it?). Want to write unabashed ship content? Make sure your start and end are so compelling you'll never run out of smut scenarios to shove in between scenes (what relationship dynamics made you ship it in the first place?).

This sounds at least West European-based.

Let's see if I can generate a list of stories that break this...

A lot of Korean media drives people up the wall when it suddenly changes genres at the Jeon part of the story structure (Giseungjeongyeol). You might expect a tonal shift, but often the show/movie/book is ripping your heart apart while it's managing to keep together the tone the entire time. Windstruck, for example pulls something like this.

For those who don't understand why... welp, Koreans don't see genre as these hard delineations. What's the paramount to the story are the emotions attached to the thoughts and make sure they match. So the story will do whatever the fuck genre it feels like to accomplish that.

Stories are sold in the East Asian Sphere, in general, by demographic, not by genre.

But let's strike off the East Asian sphere.

You still have Indigenous N, C, and S American peoples. A lot of their stories, you think at the beginning are one thing, and then by the time you get to the end. !@#$. I learned a life lesson. Apache and Zuni, for example. For those paying attention, I believe these are called Coil stories as cited by Warburton.

Beyond that, Aboriginal, a few of the stories don't follow this. And pinning down Bollywood and Tollywood, well... that's the most fun part of their media.

Personally, I kinda think some of it is how people think of religion and time influencing some of it too. Because for East Asia, you still have influences of Buddhism, and changing form isn't a huge deal.

But in Christianity, it's often said only Jesus and God can change form.

If you account for those differences, then the above makes far more sense. Hey, Writing theory with a side of Anthropology for you.

The ANTE - the GRAVITY of your story. How high are the stakes? Writing a blurb or interaction? start with a small day-in-the-life so you can focus on shorter timelines and hourly minutiae that can easily get overlooked in more complicated epics. Or you can go ham on it and plot out your whole universe's timeline from conception to demise. Remember: the larger the scale, the less attached your story may get. How quickly time flies in your story typically correlates with the ante (not a hard rule, ofc, but most epics span years of time within a few pages, while a romance novel usually charts out the events of a few months over a whole manuscript.)

The introduction of stakes into story is a funny story since it was 100% a quirk of language rather than a really good physical manifestation of having a Literary theory to back it. This is an example of how writers love a good bit of coinage, and then try to bring it to unbelievable heights, and then don't give a shit about where it came from. (And I'm not innocent in this either.)

Stakes pins you likely from the English speaking sphere.

Stakes is wholly a concept that comes from mainly US, secondarily UK, less so Canada, and somewhat Australia and New Zealand. (White side of the colonized countries, BTW. And yes, I did bother to read Maori, Indigneous Australian, as well)

Removing the fact that the whole concept is basically a coinage that got out of control in the writing community, philosophically and writing theory-wise I don't think it quite works like this.

The SCALE, lets call it, which is different from emotional investment, character investment, and setting investment, (which are often folded into stakes writing theory-wise) does not mean detachment from emotional investment. One can have time fly very quickly and still have emotional investment: Sleeping Beauty and Rip Van Winkle, for example, demonstrate this. Once you get to those lines about 100 years, that's supposed to hit you with a feeling of LOSS.

Stakes, removing all of the fanfare, as it were, originally was about character. Lightly about story stakes, but explaining that is like launching a 1,000 ships.

You can get emotion from the reader in other things than whatever the character wants and severe individualism propagated by capitalism.

If you want the story to linger with the reader, if one uses psychology, then the best ways I've found from reading lots of psychology books, anthropology and sociology books, and general history of how things become classics, is to make the story sing in these ways:

Hit a cultural nerve.

Hit a theme that translates well across time.

Make people THINK something and make sure that THINKING lingers with the person. If it lingers for more than a week, you've basically taken up their head space for a long time.

Make people FEEL something. Evoking a strong feeling and pairing it well with a thought will forever haunt the person.

The first one is tricky. I won't lie. Sometimes you need a pandemic to make Wandavision hit that nerve. Some people are good at predicting it, but you really need to read widely, and yes, outside of the US/UK to do that.

The second one I think if you hit something specific, often there is something universal in it. Like your love of food often translates, even if it's a specific cultural tradition. If you try to hit everything, it tastes, well, bland.

The third one usually people use philosophy, history, and the more brainy story structures to hit this. If you can leave the consumer feeling uneasy, resting on a question they have to wrestle with, well... you've won.

The fourth one can also be tricky, but paired with a good theme makes you pause.

Ideally if the last two are paired together it will haunt you for the rest of your life.

Reset occasionally comes up into my head. (From Japan) I still think of the potato from Greatest Love and how it haunts me. And the rocks from Everything, Everywhere, All at Once and the tears I cried at the googly-eyed rocks. Making me think and feel at the same time.

Do I have the cognitive dissonance of It's just a stupid rock? Why am I crying? Absolutely. Am I still crying? Absolutely. But somehow I didn't realize how high my mind and emotions were invested in those rocks. They made me laugh and then hooked me into questions about what is existence. And before I knew it I was crying at the stupid god. damned. rocks. *Shakes fist in envy*

I still watched behind the scenes, and they spent a lot of time trying to find the perfect rocks for the scene. But because their emotional investment was high, so was mine.

And Reset, it haunts me still. Psychological horror done right. The questions it asked would haunt me all week, and then I'd come back for the next episode and it would haunt me some more.

Conclusion

I think if you want to hit outside of your own sphere, if you are able to get down and dirty with something that is universal to human experience, but be specific about it, it might hit that sweet spot. You would need to have unique thoughts about it. (AKA why Gen Ai sucks.) You would need to have experiences that speak to people's hearts and minds. But also the almost impossible task of really thinking about the impact of the scene and book as a whole.

This is independent of stakes, setting, character, time theory, religion, and so on.

But what are you aiming for your book to do exactly for the audience?

What do you want the reader to feel during the story and after the story?

What are you trying to get the audience to think about when writing the story?

How do you plan to achieve the above aims?

This is 100% outside of story mechanics, and I'm probably going to regret these words, because humans are like that, but I've yet to find a story that defies these questions...yet. I'll still be delighted when I find out I'm wrong and screaming about how fabulous it is. I mean, Pirahã~?

My relative made a bad movie, like a terrible movie, where he was the director, though not the producer and to create a "Night" scene he uses a magic marker on the lens. Their intention in making the film is 100% clear. It's not for the audience, but to hide funds. lol. He still makes fun of the movie and gives the best live commentary on the movie. But even that shitty movie, which has almost zero script and zero plot, by the director's own admission still manages to hit all questions of intention. (And I do watch the shitty things with the good things of each country.)

1. “You can’t edit a blank page.”

This advice hit me like a ton of bricks when I first heard it. It’s so simple, yet so powerful. Writing something—even if it’s not perfect—is better than writing nothing at all. The idea is to get the words out, even if they’re messy, and then fix them later. There’s always room to improve, but the hardest part is starting. So, don’t wait for perfection. Just write.

2. “Show, don’t tell—except when you should tell.”

It’s one of the classic writing rules, and yet, I found this piece of advice to be both a game-changer and a huge relief. So often, we get stuck on the idea that “showing” is the ultimate goal. But sometimes, telling is just as effective. It’s about knowing when to lean into subtlety and when to give the reader exactly what they need upfront.

3. “Write the book you want to read.”

This was one of the most liberating pieces of advice I’ve ever received. So many times, we get caught up in writing what we think people will want to read, or what we think is “marketable.” But when you focus on writing a story you genuinely want to read—one that excites and moves you—everything else falls into place.

4. “Don’t compare your first draft to someone else’s final draft.”

This one is a tough one to swallow, especially in the age of social media where we’re constantly exposed to the polished, perfect versions of other people’s work. It’s easy to feel like you’re falling behind when you compare your rough drafts to someone else’s masterpiece. But every writer starts somewhere, and your first draft is just that—a draft.

5. “Make your characters want something, even if it’s just a glass of water.”

This advice came from a workshop, and it’s one that I’ve come back to time and time again. It’s a reminder that characters need motivation—whether it’s a big goal like saving the world, or something small and personal, like finding a glass of water in the desert. A character without desire is a character that feels flat and uninteresting.

6. “The best way to improve your writing is to read more than you write.”

This advice took me a while to fully understand, but it makes perfect sense. Reading other authors’ work, especially those whose writing you admire, teaches you things that can’t be learned through theory or workshops alone. You’ll pick up on pacing, voice, structure, and what makes a story truly captivating—all while expanding your understanding of storytelling.

7. “Your first draft is just you telling yourself the story.”

This was another gem of wisdom that I didn’t fully grasp at first. It’s easy to fall into the trap of wanting your first draft to be perfect, but it’s not meant to be. The first draft is for you—to explore the plot, the characters, the world. It’s your chance to get everything down and see where it leads, without worrying about perfection.

8. “Write with the door closed, rewrite with the door open.”

So if Buddhism is telling people not want so much, then you'd expect a lot of South, Central, East and South East Asians to find ways to break the "want" cycle.

Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter... and Spring

Korean movie. Artsy, film from a US perspective, but in "wanting" it creates evil and creates a cycle. So, it argues against wanting.

There is also Botchan by Natsume Soseki. You definitely have strong feelings about Botchan by the end of the novel. You hate him because he floats there the entire time.

Kokoro there is a character who in love with his sensei's wife, but does not act on it. He's rather directionless.

Natsume Yuujinchou, particularly the first series had the titular character Natsume not know what he wants. Everyone else wants things stronger than him, which often floors him. It becomes apparent why as you consume the story.

There's stories about NEET from Japan that covers how the main character doesn't know how to want anything anymore.

Irish folktales often have the Fae with super strong wants, and the protags with none.

A lot of YA has character doesn't know what they want. All countries really, particularly Japan. The whole point of the story is trying to figure it out.

Red Balloon, a French film, I watched in French class, the main character kinda floats there, trying to figure things out, but doesn't really *want* anything. He neither gets what he wants, seeks what he wants or really ends with nothing he wants. He just grows up. (Bildungsroman)

India often has what you want was wrong in the first place, which dates pretty much to the Mahabharata. But Tollywood and Bollywood is a changing target, but I found this is still true.

Mexico LOVES reframing the wants at the end of the third act out of 5 where there is a lecture from an elder who tells at least one of the two characters indirectly or directly what they were not thinking about all of this time.

Philippines, particularly in the early 2000's had a God Light over the character as they realized hard that what they thought they wanted was wrong all along, bottom of the second act (I'm hard pressed to call it a 5 act structure, but going into this is kinda iffy)

I haven't really watched enough Thai filmography, but I have a heavy suspicion it will also have characters with no wants.

Often in conflict narratives, you require clashing wants, which kinda has an individualistic bent to it. Because the point is to raise the anxiety level of the reader. But if you're facing a more cooperative society, or one that emphasizes the freedom from wants, this makes a lot less sense, world literature-wise, at least.

I watched a German short film where a social influencer was locked out of her own house after abusing her child by basically posting on social media all about her child's life. Her want didn't change her one bit. And that was the entire point. Her child didn't change either. In another words, her want obstructed the whole relationship because the needs were ignored. The story, BTW, was conflict-filled, but it was a discovery and morality arc for the watcher, which was an odd sensation for me. This is because the characters didn't change or discover needs.

In making clashing wants, you bring drama, anxiety, fear, tension.

But I also kinda think that there can be varying ways of approaching this, theoretically, as illustrated above. Sometimes we don't know what we want, or society screws us over so we are frozen, or what we want is clashing from what we need and in letting go of the want, we get what we need. Sometimes the most interesting story can be the character doesn't want anything at all and the story ends when they figure out what they do want. Sometimes that, too, is how we mature and grow as people.

One could frame this as conflict, but one also could frame that as self reflection, taking a breath, discovering about things in the world or morality. I 100% get that the US labels this as "Literary" fiction, but look at that generated list (off the top of my head). Is it really "Literary" fiction or is it Literary Fiction because it's PoC and self-reflection and taking a breath to reassess is considered "wrong" in a capitalist society. You need THINGS and STUFF in order to HEAL. Don't you know how much a 1980's Hulk figure is going to *heal* you once you HAVE it.

I'm more of the thought of why not use this tool anyway? It's there, use it without worrying about the label.

Failing and Flying by Jack Gilbert

What the Living Do by Marie Howe

Night Walk by Franz Wright

Crossword by Lloyd Schwartz

The Great Fires by Jack Gilbert

Love Train by Tomás Q. Morín

Divorced Fathers and Pizza Crusts by Mark Halliday

Perhaps the World Ends Here by Joy Harjo

in another string of the multiverse, perhaps by Michaella Batten

acknowledgments by Danez Smith

Death Wish by Josh Alex Baker

San Francisco by Richard Brautigan

How to Watch Your Brother Die by Michael Lassell

You Are the Penultimate Love of My Life by Rebecca Hazelton

On Political(ized) Life by Kanika Lawton

All the Dead Boys Look Like Me by Christopher Soto

It Was the Animals by Natalie Diaz

In Time by W.S. Merwin

It Is Maybe Time to Admit That Michael Jordan Definitely Pushed Off by Hanif Abdurraqib

Dear Life by Maya C. Popa

I Could Touch It by Ellen Bass

To The Young Who Want To Die by Gwendolyn Brooks

Maya Angelou reading Still I Rise

Mary Oliver reading Wild Geese

Olivia Gatwood reading Aileen Wuornos Takes a Lover Home

Danez Smith reading Alternate Heaven for Black Boys

Neil Hilborn reading OCD

Jack Gilbert reading Failing and Flying

Gwendolyn Brooks reading To the Young Who Want to Die

Ada Limón reading The Quiet Machine

José Olivarez reading Getting Ready to Say 'I Love You' to My Dad, It Rains

Natalie Diaz reading Post Colonial Love Poem

Hanif Abdurraqib reading When I Say That Loving Me Is Kind of Like Being a Chicago Bulls Fan

Hey! I have also seen that post floating around and I searched my own blog to find it but i didnt so I might as well recommend the few I remember 

Miss Timmin’s School for Girls by Nayana Currimbhoy 

Picnic at Hanging Rock by Joan Lindsey

Claudine at School by Colette 

The Lake of Dead Languages by Carol Goodman

Silent Sky by Lauren Gunderson

The Chinese Garden by Rosemary Manning

Ghost Wall by Sarah Moss 

The Secret Place by Tana French (Dublin Murder Squad Series)

A Great and Terrible Beauty and the Gemma Doyle trilogy by Libba Bray

Hangsaman by Shirely Jackson

Peter Watson, The Medici Conspiracy: The Illicit Journey of Looted Antiquities—From Italy’s Tomb Raiders to the World’s Greatest Museums

Diane Ackerman, ‘Smell: An Offering to the Gods’ A Natural History of the Senses 

Nikita Gill, from “Great Goddesses: Life Lessons from Myths & Monsters”

An “Odor of Sanctity”: The Iconography, Magic and Ritual of Egyptian Incense, Elliot Wise, p. 71 in: Studia Antiqua 7.1 Spring 2009

Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

Here’s a (non-exhaustive) list of essays I like/find interesting/are food for thought; I’ve tried to sort them as much as possible. The starred (*) ones are those I especially love

also quick note: some of these links, especially the ones that are from books/anthologies redirect you to libgen or scihub, and if that doesn’t work for you, do message me; I’d be happy to send them across!

Literature + Writing

Godot Comes to Sarajevo - Susan Sontag

The Strangeness of Grief - V. S. Naipaul*

Memories of V. S. Naipaul - Paul Theroux*

A Rainy Day with Ruskin Bond - Mayank Austen Soofi

How Albert Camus Faced History - Adam Gopnik

Listen, Bro - Jo Livingstone

Rachel Cusk Gut-Renovates the Novel - Judith Thurman

Lost in Translation: What the First Line of “The Stranger” Should Be - Ryan Bloom

The Duke in His Domain - Truman Capote*

The Cult of Donna Tartt: Themes and Strategies in The Secret History - Ana Rita Catalão Guedes

Never Do That to a Book - Anne Fadiman*

Affecting Anger: Ideologies of Community Mobilisation in Early Hindi Novel - Rohan Chauhan*

Why I Write - George Orwell*

Rimbaud and Patti Smith: Style as Social Deviance - Carrie Jaurès Noland*

Art + Photography (+ Aesthetics)

Looking at War - Susan Sontag*

Love, sex, art, and death - Nan Goldin, David Wojnarowicz

Lyons, Szarkowski, and the Perception of Photography - Anne Wilkes Tucker

The Feminist Critique of Art History - Thalia Gouma-Peterson, Patricia Mathews

In Plato’s Cave - Susan Sontag*

On reproduction of art (Chapter 1, Ways of Seeing) - John Berger*

On nudity and women in art (Chapter 3, Ways of Seeing) - John Berger*

Kalighat Paintings  - Sharmishtha Chaudhuri

Daydreams and Fragments: On How We Retrieve Images From the Past -  Maël Renouard

Arthur Rimbaud: the Aesthetics of Intoxication - Enid Rhodes Peschel

Cities

Tragic Fable of Mumbai Mills - Gyan Prakash

Whose Bandra is it? - Dustin Silgardo*

Timur’s Registan: noblest public square in the world? - Srinath Perur

The first Starbucks coffee shop, Seattle - Colin Marshall*

Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus, Mumbai’s iconic railway station - Srinath Perur

From London to Mumbai and Back Again: Gentrification and Public Policy in Comparative Perspective -  Andrew Harris

The Limits of “White Town” in Colonial Calcutta - Swati Chattopadhyay

The Metropolis and Mental Life - Georg Simmel

Colonial Policy and the Culture of Immigration: Citing the Social History of Varanasi - Vinod Kumar, Shiv Narayan

A Caribbean Creole Capital: Kingston, Jamaica - Coln G. Clarke (from Colonial Cities by Robert Ross, Gerard J. Telkamp

The Colonial City and the Post-Colonial World - G. A. de Bruijne

The Nowhere City - Amos Elon*

The Vertical Flâneur: Narratorial Tradecraft in the Colonial Metropolis - Paul K. Saint-Amour

Philosophy

The trolley problem problem - James Wilson

A Brief History of Death - Nir Baram

Justice as Fairness: Political not Metaphysical - John Rawls*

Should Marxists be Interested in Exploitation? - John E. Roemer

The Discomfort You’re Feeling is Grief - Scott Berinato*

The Pandemic and the Crisis of Faith - Makarand Paranjape

If God Is Dead, Your Time is Everything - James Wood

Giving Up on God - Ronald Inglehart

The Limits of Consensual Decision - Douglas Rae*

The Science of “Muddling Through” - Charles Lindblom*

History

The Gruesome History of Eating Corpses as Medicine - Maria Dolan

The History of Loneliness - Jill Lepore*

From Tuskegee to Togo: the Problem of Freedom in the Empire of Cotton - Sven Beckert*

Time, Work-Discipline, and Industrial Capitalism - E. P. Thompson*

All By Myself - Martha Bailey*

The Geographical Pivot of History - H. J. Mackinder

The sea/ocean

Rim of Life - Manu Pillai

Exploring the Indian Ocean as a rich archive of history – above and below the water line - Isabel Hofmeyr, Charne Lavery

‘Piracy’, connectivity and seaborne power in the Middle Ages - Nikolas Jaspert (from The Sea in History)*

The Vikings and their age - Nils Blomkvist (from The Sea in History)*

Mercantile Networks, Port Cities, and “Pirate” States - Roxani Eleni Margariti

Phantom Peril in the Arctic - Robert David English, Morgan Grant Gardner*

Assorted ones on India

A departure from history: Kashmiri Pandits, 1990-2001 - Alexander Evans *

Writing Post-Orientalist Histories of the Third World - Gyan Prakash

Empire: How Colonial India Made Modern Britain - Aditya Mukherjee

Feminism and Nationalism in India, 1917-1947 - Aparna Basu

The Epic Riddle of Dating Ramayana, Mahabharata - Sunaina Kumar*

Caste and Politics: Identity Over System - Dipankar Gupta

Our worldview is Delhi based*

Sports (you’ll have to excuse the fact that it’s only cricket but what can i say, i’m indian)

‘Massa Day Done:’ Cricket as a Catalyst for West Indian Independence: 1950-1962 - John Newman*

Playing for power? rugby, Afrikaner nationalism and masculinity in South Africa, c.1900–70 - Albert Grundlingh

When Cricket Was a Symbol, Not Just a Sport - Baz Dreisinger

Cricket, caste, community, colonialism: the politics of a great game - Ramachandra Guha*

Cricket and Politics in Colonial India - Ramchandra Guha

MS Dhoni: A quiet radical who did it his way*

Music

Brega: Music and Conflict in Urban Brazil - Samuel M. Araújo

Color, Music and Conflict: A Study of Aggression in Trinidad with Reference to the Role of Traditional Music - J. D. Elder

The 1975 - ‘Notes On a Conditional Form’ review - Dan Stubbs*

Life Without Live - Rob Sheffield*

How Britney Spears Changed Pop - Rob Sheffield

Concert for Bangladesh

From “Help!” to “Helping out a Friend”: Imagining South Asia through the Beatles and the Concert for Bangladesh - Samantha Christiansen 

Gender

Clothing Behaviour as Non-verbal Resistance - Diana Crane

The Normalisation of Queer Theory - David M. Halperin

Menstruation and the Holocaust - Jo-Ann Owusu*

Women’s Suffrage the Democratic Peace - Allan Dafoe

Pink and Blue: Coloring Inside the Lines of Gender - Catherine Zuckerman*

Women’s health concerns are dismissed more, studied less - Zoanne Clack

Food

How Food-Obsessed Millennials Shape the Future of Food - Rachel A. Becker (as a non-food obsessed somewhat-millennial, this was interesting)

Colonialism’s effect on how and what we eat - Coral Lee

Tracing Europe’s influence on India’s culinary heritage - Ruth Dsouza Prabhu

Chicken Kiev: the world’s most contested ready-meal*

From Russia with mayo: the story of a Soviet super-salad*

The Politics of Pancakes - Taylor Aucoin*

How Doughnuts Fuelled the American Dream*

Pav from the Nau

A Short History of the Vada Pav - Saira Menezes

Fantasy (mostly just harry potter and lord of the rings)

Purebloods and Mudbloods: Race, Species, and Power (from The Politics of Harry Potter)

Azkaban: Discipline, Punishment, and Human Rights (from The Politics of Harry Potter)*

Good and Evil in J. R. R. Tolkien’s Lengendarium - Jyrki Korpua

The Fairy Story: J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis - Colin Duriez (from Tree of Tales)*

Tolkien’s Augustinian Understanding of Good and Evil: Why The Lord of the Rings Is Not Manichean - Ralph Wood (from Tree of Tales)*

Travel

The Hidden Cost of Wildlife Tourism

Chronicles of a Writer’s 1950s Road Trip Across France - Kathleen Phelan

On the Early Women Pioneers of Trail Hiking - Gwenyth Loose

On the Mythologies of the Himalaya Mountains - Ed Douglas*

More random assorted ones

The cosmos from the wheelchair (The Economist obituaries)*

In El Salvador - Joan Didion

Scientists are unravelling the mystery of pain - Yudhijit Banerjee

Notes on Nationalism - George Orwell

Politics and the English Language - George Orwell*

What Do the Humanities Do in a Crisis? - Agnes Callard*

The Politics of Joker - Kyle Smith

Sushant Singh Rajput: The outsider - Uday Bhatia*

Credibility and Mystery - John Berger