Books, travel, and everything else. “Nothing behind me, everything ahead of me, as is ever so on the road.”
It's been a long old winter. One positive discovery has been finding that even when everything is shut, this is a city made for walking - albeit with some effort required, since the hills are almost San Francisco-esque in their proportions and frequency. For what else can you really do during a pretty hard lockdown, … Continue reading Lisboa is a flâneuse’s city
Humans should, as the philosopher maintains, be willing to burden themselves in order to be free. If you always choose the path of least resistance, the alternative that offers the fewest challenges will always take priority. Your choices will be predetermined and you will not only live un-freely, but also lead a dull life.Erling Kagge, … Continue reading Lisboa and lockdowns
Once upon a time in a Paris loft... It's finally time to publish it. I started keeping this list - of every book I have read cover to cover - in October 2018, as I was nearing the end of my transformational time at the Shakespeare and Company bookshop in Paris. Being there with the … Continue reading Every book I’ve read in the last two years
What do you think of when you think of Norway? A land of fjords slicing into its frayed coastline, one of the longest in the world; cosy fires, endless summers, and snow beneath the northern lights. Norway is a country of just five million people, but it is huge, and diverse in dialects and industries. … Continue reading Five great books about…Norway
In the middle of the North Sea, north of the German coast, is a small island (well, archipelago really). Inhabited by around 1,100 people, it sits in an area of sea called German Bight. Best of all, it has its own grey seal colony. This island is Helgoland in the German spelling, Heligoland in English. … Continue reading Heligoland: North Sea island with its own seal colony
Some research I worked on for months came to fruition at last this summer! This mysterious deep-sea shark is built to live for centuries. Will it survive to tell the tale of the Anthropocene? I consider the Greenland shark, nuclear waste, and ocean plastics, showing how their scales of time and space converge. Please read … Continue reading Atomic bombs and 500-year-old sharks…
As Storm Ciara raged across the UK and the Netherlands this weekend, I found myself battling across Amsterdam to get to the cinema as everyone else seemed to be hiding inside. For the first time since moving here, I had decided to shun my beloved bicycle for weather reasons when I realised I would struggle … Continue reading ‘Your Name’ is a cosmic masterpiece
Unusually for me, most of my favourite books this year have been non-fiction, and it's true that I've read a lot more of this kind of book in 2019. It's probably due to a reorientation towards studying again, meaning that I have to spend most of my free time reading books that are mostly informative … Continue reading My best books of 2019
Recently, I went on a field trip to a nuclear waste storage facility called COVRA in the south-west of the Netherlands. The area is called Zeeland, the least populous province of this densely populated country. This watery land is criss-crossed by a series of large barriers, dams, and dykes which were put in place after … Continue reading Nuclear storage and the future: “Welcome to the new age”
This list will be updated the more I come across, and the more time I can find... 🎬 Films Anthropocene: the Human Epoch Into Eternity Sea of Shadows Whales Weep Not Werner Herzog documentaries Donna Haraway: Storytelling for Earthly Survival Vive la baleine! (Three Cheers for the Whale) 🎧 Podcasts Mothers of Invention National Geographic, … Continue reading Environmental Humanities: books, podcasts, films, etc.
no cash on the highway 