Essays Vol. 2

Jon Snow and I have one thing in common: we both know nothing. I'm trying to fix my half of the problem. To that end, the first part of this review series was published a short while ago. Now for the second part: The War on Error (from

Essays Vol.1

I've read novels, journals, and newsletters; fiction and non-fiction, short-form musings and long-form articles, but one thing I haven't read more of is essays. This is a three part series to mitigate just that. It is not a definitive list, this is just

Art Posting, Part III

This is the last edition of the beloved Art Spotting series. Earlier versions are here and here. Often it happened that what people considered notable art was not interesting to me. Naturally that frustration had me thinking that surely there must be some type of art that would appeal to

Short Story Project Wrap-Up

There was absolutely no way I could've fit all this in one post without crossing the 5k word limit I often joke about. I wrote 32,736 words and gave 5 stars to 33 out of 200 (16.5%) stories. Most of the stories secured a three or

Short Stories - Dec

How do you slay a dragon? It depends on how much firepower you have. Enough and you can confront him head-on. Not enough and you have to improvise. In my case, I didn't have enough firepower (time) so to slay the dragon (my reading goal), I had

Short Stories - Nov

Mark Twain once said "I never let my schooling interfere with my education". I read that quote many years ago and it has been stuck in my mind ever since. It's unrealistic to think you'd learn everything you ever wanted to learn in four

Art Spotting, Part II

Picture this: you're visiting some art gallery in your neighborhood or some new part of the world. You like something, whip out your camera and the moment is immortalized. But it's not that easy when it comes to remembering art you viewed online. Say you choose

Short Stories - Oct

In a way stories are like people. You either like them immediately or not at all. Exceptions include a small minority where you're undecided at first and come to love or hate them a bit later. This month's review features some repetitions which means I'

Short Stories - Sep

I wrote back in Jan that I dedicated one hour a day to reading short stories and that I thought it was manageable. Not every month is a smooth sail like that. Some times I don't have the time or the inclination to read. And in those months,

Short Stories - Aug

We are what we read, so we must be careful about the things we want to read. — with apologies to Kurt Vonnegut. You should not take reading recommendations from some influencer's Instagram stories or #booktok. They'll have you reading Coleen Hoover's It Starts with

Short Stories - Jul

No preamble. 18 stories read at odd times and places throughout this month where several of them were kind of let-downs. Twice, by coincidence, I felt like two different stories (Balzac/Faulkner and Ahmad/Capote) had similar overarching themes. Let's recap: #81 La Grande Bretèche - Honoré de

Short Stories - Jun

In which we find out that a thing that started out as a spur-of-the-moment decision has bloomed into a project that has changed me many times over in the past few months. It was really annoying to see my anti-library and to-read list getting longer

Short Stories - May

New month, new set of stories. From Lispector to Stiegler, from Shaw to Philip K. Dick and from O'Brien to Tagore, there were a myriad of themes to explore. If you're tucked in, let's do a recap of the 15 stories I finished this

Short Stories - Apr

You're not gonna believe this but I also didn't get to read a lot in April. This one will be a shorter entry than previous ones covering two stories, one centering around a love a school kid has for his teacher and the other about a

Retrospective on 100 Days of Code

On April 4,2024, I finished Replit's 100 days of code project that involved building small games and projects using Python. It was a good starting point and taught me a lot about writing scripts for automation, working with libraries and debugging. I'm grateful to the

Short Stories - Mar

One moment you're existing like a ray of sunshine and the next moment you're typing out sentences like 'welcome to the third installment of the short stories review'. Life comes at you fast. I didn't get to read a lot this month.

Short Stories - Feb

You know the drill. We read a bunch of stories and then we write a few words on which ones we liked and which ones we didn't. The stories this month spanned almost the whole gamut of human emotions; parental love, young love, horror, disillusionment, anguish, and humor,

Short Stories - Jan

The last time I was reading fiction regularly was about 7-8 years ago. I can't recall exactly what led to the transition to reading more non-fiction. It was probably age or a demanding study schedule or a combination of both. Last year was the first time

The Year of Art, Part I

I am not some art connoisseur but I do know what I like. When I moved into my current apartment, I discovered that there were many small art galleries around me. This was a lovely surprise and meant that I could frequent these cute/eclectic places several times a week.

The Beginning

The beginning is important. Why you are starting something, what you plan to get out of it and how you are going to go about it, it's good to articulate these things to yourself. So should you ever start questioning yourself, you could come back to your notes