Book report for May 2024
Letter No. 85: Includes a shocking development, early Steinbeck, and Pluto.
The most startling thing about Dr Essai’s reading
Does the eye take in more than we think? Or, maybe luck isn’t blind
Letter No. 84: Includes incongruity, dogs, and rumpled garments.
When I was 18 years old, as a graduation gift my
Sometimes you wait for the picture to make itself
Letter No. 83: Includes a film crew, wet horses, and three ducks.
In the summer of 2008, I was traveling
Book report for April 2024
Letter No. 82: Includes a rock star, puzzling fictional physics, and atomic habits that have nothing to do with physics.
Flowers make yellow look easy
Letter No. 81: Includes gratuitous use of Goethe and probably your first ever encounter with a paragraph that includes mention
Business as usual in the anxiety economy
Letter No. 80: Includes dubious use of data (shocking!), corporate cynicism (no!), Crime Crime Grades (sic!), and someone with dirty
Onward to the Path of Totality, followed by a moonshadow
Letter No. 79: Includes much casual use of the word “saros,” some old astronomy, and not much ineffable.
A saros
Time for gratitude
Letter No. 78: Includes nothing but thanks.
Dr Essai is just back from a journey to the Path of Totality—
Book report for March 2024
Letter No. 77: Includes smutty essayism and many colors.
Dr Essai, with an eye on the beginning of American baseball
Imagining the sullen cave girl who became the world’s first artist
Letter No. 76: Includes someone eating an oyster, disaffected cave youth, and cogitation about color.
The oldest known painters exhibited
