Farah Abdessamad on François-René de Chateaubriand
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I spent a good part of my childhood at home staring outside my bedroom window, following the trail of planes approaching the nearby Paris airport in the sky from my banlieue. I envied the passengers...
Read MoreWhere Berlin Begins
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From the bridge, I go back, usually, through Babelsberg. I pass flocks of ducks trustingly swimming up to the shore. Above, on a small hill—the palace...
Read MoreArtificial Taste by Mary Wollstonecraft
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A taste for rural scenes, in the present state of society, appears to be very often an artificial sentiment, rather inspired by poetry and romances, than a real perception of the beauties of nature...
Read MoreSome Sounds
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A house down around the block is getting a new roof, hammers echoing like giant flickers. Since the big virus outbreak...
Read MoreWhile on holiday in Bognor…
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All men are equal on their holidays: all are free to dream their castles without thought of expense, or skill of architect...
Read MoreItaly’s Midsummer Bescheerung by Vernon Lee
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The cool shadow of the fig-trees in the yards, with the whiff of that queer smell, heavy with romance, of wine-saturated oak and crumbling plaster; I know with a little stab of joy that this is Italy...
Read MoreFriendship in Fiction
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In philosophical treatments of friendship, it can often be elevated to the highest form of human relationships, even if its perfect form is rare...
Read MoreGeorge Orwell on bookshops
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When I worked in a second-hand bookshop the thing that chiefly struck me was the rarity of really bookish people...
Read MoreThomas Travisano on Elizabeth Bishop
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Elizabeth Bishop explored Brazil extensively, making trips down the Amazon, traversing the tropical rainforest with Aldous Huxley...
Read More‘Why was I making so many cups of tea?’
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It couldn’t possibly be that I was actually missing the ebb and flow of office life, could it?
Read More(Parentheses are outward-looking); “quotation is inward-looking”
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A parenthetical phrase (like this one) may refer to things outside of it, parts of the sentence it inhabits (say)...
Read MoreMore than Heavenly Bliss by Andre Gerard
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Important as the soup is in To the Lighthouse it is never identified, never seen as “beautiful red soup” or “eternal” tomato soup...
Read MoreThe tea should be strong. For a pot holding a quart, if you are going to fill it nearly to the brim, six heaped teaspoons would be about right...
Read MoreThe thing about new blooms is that they tend to bleed— / Those petals birthed / hugging close / that come warmer weather are tricked into jumping away...
Read MoreI spent a good part of my childhood at home staring outside my bedroom window, following the trail of planes approaching the nearby Paris airport in the sky from my banlieue. I envied the passengers...
Read MoreThe tea should be strong. For a pot holding a quart, if you are going to fill it nearly to the brim, six heaped teaspoons would be about right...
Read MoreThe thing about new blooms is that they tend to bleed— / Those petals birthed / hugging close / that come warmer weather are tricked into jumping away...
Read MoreI spent a good part of my childhood at home staring outside my bedroom window, following the trail of planes approaching the nearby Paris airport in the sky from my banlieue. I envied the passengers...
Read More