Reviews, recommendations, and essays for serious readers.
Loveyoumeanitblog — A Life in Books Reviews, recommendations, and essays for serious readers. Browse Latest Posts Books deserve better than star ratings and summary paragraphs. We write about what we’re reading — novels, essays, history, science, poetry — with the kind of attention that treats literature as the complex art form it is. You won’t […]
On a Tuesday in October, the shirt arrived in my browser as a rectangle of text: THANKFUL GRATEFUL BLESSED, stacked in three lines, with wheat stalks rising on either side. The wheat is the tell. It is not a harvest cornucopia or a cartoon turkey; it is the crop itself, upright and orderly, the kind […]
There is a dashed circle at the top left of the ramp, and a solid ball at the bottom right, and the words I HAD POTENTIAL printed in white capitals above both of them. The ramp curves down between the two, a smooth white arc on what I take to be a dark ground. The […]
The LinkedIn Post About Failure and the Job I Left Out of It There is a genre of LinkedIn post that begins with a confession and ends with a promotion. The confession is always specific enough to feel brave and vague enough to be safe: I was let go. I was burned out. I made […]
There is motion at your front door. The words arrive in a white rounded banner, bell icon first, the way a phone would say it. Below the banner, inside a circular frame tinted the green of a cheap night-vision feed, an orange tabby has pressed its face almost against the lens. The eyes are wide. […]
There is a white bird in an orange jumpsuit. It holds a black mugshot board. Above its head, in letters that look like they were stenciled by a sheriff with a sense of humor, are the words GOT TOO SILLY. The bird does not look sorry. That is the first thing I notice. The second […]
The shirt says 1000 in letters tall enough to read from across a parking lot. Underneath, in a lighter weight, POUND CLUB, and beside or behind it a weightlifting graphic, pale against the dark fabric. That is the whole design. No asterisk, no fine print, no date of induction. Just a number and a noun, […]
The exhibit It is 9:47 on a Tuesday night. The laundry is in the dryer, which means it is technically done, which means it has been done for two days and is now a warm wrinkled brick I will re-fluff at 11:15 and then ignore again. The rent check is on the counter where I […]