I’m still doing most of my reading offline, as I struggle to make room on the reading table for the slew of books I’m anticipating as gifts during the holidays. In the meantime, you can read these:
• FiveBooks interview, “Emrys Westacott on Philosophy and Everyday Living” (From 2012, but new to me, and most importantly, it’s excellent. FiveBooks is a great site, and Westacott is one of my favorite writers online.)
• Patrick West, “From Sweden to Cuba: Stop Looking for Utopias“
• Tim Lott, “A Guru for Those Who Don’t Trust Gurus” (Again, an old article, but an excellent piece about Alan Watts, one of my most formative intellectual influences. )
• Brendan O’Neill, “‘White Men’: The Most Dehumanising Insult of Our Times” (Hyperbolic title, and it contains the obligatory Spiked/O’Neill call for class consciousness, but still a good read, especially the line, “The Guardian, slowly morphing from a newspaper into a tumblr account…”)
• Kevin D. Williamson, “The Parochial Progressive Obsession With Ayn Rand,” and “The Matter With Coal Country” (The former is especially notable for the brilliant metaphorical image of an affinity for Rand as an “intellectual mullet”.)
• Ronald Bailey, “Stuck“
• Kay Hymowitz, “How Women in Media Missed the Women’s Vote“