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 […]
There is a chair in my bedroom that has not been sat on since 2022. It is not a decorative chair. It is not an accent chair. It is a laundry chair, which is a different piece of furniture entirely: a chair that has been demoted from seating to sorting, from furniture to limbo, from […]
The ball is already at the bottom. Above it, in white block capitals: I HAD POTENTIAL. A dashed circle waits at the top of a curved ramp, keeping a place for the version of the ball that was going to amount to something. This is an unusually economical way to disappoint a guidance counselor. The […]
There is a candle on my bookshelf that has never been lit. It sits in a heavy amber jar with a wooden wick and a label that says something like Fireside Fig or Hinoki Smoke—I can’t remember, because I refuse to look directly at it. Looking directly at it would require acknowledging that I bought […]
Comparison culture is the habit of measuring an actual, unedited life against other peopleâs displayed ones â the promotion post, the highlight reel, the friend whose linen closet has labels. It travels with a whole family of named concepts: social comparison theory, FOMO, status anxiety, lifestyle creep, the compare-and-despair loop. And its signature move is […]
Thursday, March 14, 2024. 1:17 AM. Couch. A sweatshirt I have owned for eleven years, with a hole near the collar that I have been meaning to sew for so long that the hole has become a feature. Cereal from a mixing bowl because the cereal bowls are in the dishwasher, which I have not […]
… …”} I must make sure no unescaped ” inside the html string. I’ll use ” only for HTML attributes, escaped as “. Everything else uses curly quotes. Let me also make sure I don’t use the word “validation” or “AI” etc. â no. Also â “E-E-A-T signals”: persona-matched. First-person experiment, dates, named friends, receipts. […]
Last spring I stood in my kitchen at 11:52 p.m., doing calf raises while the kettle boiled, so my phone would buzz and a little ring would close and a cartoon owl would be proud of me. The tea was for a sleep score. The calf raises were for an activity goal I’d set in […]