25257. (Samir Baig) Why We Don’t Care… and How to Get Us To [article]
25258. (Maria Isabel Puerta Rivera) Democratic Backsliding and Autocratization:
. . . . . The Political Effects of the COVID-19 Pandemic in Nicaragua and Venuzuela
25259. (Iain Reid) I’m Thinking of Ending Things
25260. (Martin Brusis) Conditions and Consequences of Populism and Democratic
. . . . . Backsliding
25261. (John Lacy) The Old Troop; or, Monsieur Raggou [play]
25262. (Kantapon Suraprasit, et al) Late Pleistocene Human Paleoecology in the
. . . . . Highland Savanna Ecosystem of Mainland Southeast Asia [article]
25263. (Alwin Kloekhorst) Luwians, Lydians, Etruscans, and Troy ― The Linguistic
. . . . . Landscape of Northwestern Anatolia in the Pre-Classical Period [article]
25264. (Heather Cox Richardson) West from Appomattox ― The Reconstruction of
. . . . . America after the Civil War
25265. (Susan Hayes, et al) A Late Pleistocene Woman from Tham Lod, Thailand:
. . . . . The Influence of Today on a Face from the Past [article]
Category Archives: B - READING
READING — OCTOBER 2023
READING — SEPTEMBER 2023
25245. (Robert S. Allen) His Majesty’s Indian Allies ― British Indian Policy in the
. . . . . the Defence of Canada 1774–1815
25246. (Paul Howe) Eroding Norms and Democratic Deconsolidation [article]
25247. (Ceren Civlan) A Brief Overview of the Effects of Mediterranean Politics and
. . . . . Ottoman-Hapsburg Conflict on the Modern European Identity [article]
25248. (Jeff Goodell) The Heat Will Kill You First: Life and Death on a Scorched Planet
Read more »
READING — AUGUST 2023
25227. (Brian Klaas) The Despot’s Accomplice ― How the West is Aiding and
. . . . . Abetting the Decline of Democracy
25228. (K. P. Dial, A. M. Heers & T. R. Dial) Ontogenic and Evolutionary
. . . . . Transformations: Ecological Significance of Rudimentary Structures
. . . . . [article]
25229. (Stephen M. Gatesy & David M. Baier) Skeletons in Motion: An Animator’s
. . . . . Perspective on Vertebrate Evolution [article]
25230. (Daniel Z. Lieberman & Michael E. Long) The Molecule of More
Read more »
READING — JULY 2023
25218. (Sherman Hollar) Ancient Egypt
25219. (John Flanagan) Ranger’s Apprentice: The Ruins of Gorlan
25220. (Benjamin D. Santer, et al) Exceptional Stratospheric Contribution to Human
. . . . . Finger On Atmospheric Temperature [article]
25221. (Rebecca Giblin & Cory Doctorow) Chokepoint Capitalism ― How Big Tech and
. . . . . Big Content Captured Creative Labor Markets and How We’ll Win Them Back
25222. (L. Sprague de Camp) The Great Fetish
Read more »
READING — JUNE 2023
25173. (Abdi Nazemian) Like a Love Story
25174. (John Thorley) Athenian Democracy
25175. (Matthew Edgeworth, et al) The Stratigraphic Basis of the Anthropocene Event
. . . . . [article]
(Stephen Leacock) Too Much College, or, Education Eating Up Life:
. . . . 25176. [2] (Stephen Leacock) Education Eating Up Life [article]
. . . . 25177. (Stephen Leacock) The Machine at Work [article]
. . . . 25178. (Stephen Leacock) What Good Is Latin? [article]
Read more »
READING — MAY 2023
25143. (Jean-Paul Gagnon & Emily Beausoleil) West By Not West: Comparative
. . . . . Democratic Theory is Constellational [article]
25144. (Damon Knight) The Other Foot [novel version; short story version read at 14153]
25145. (Frederic Charles Schaffer & Jean-Paul Gagnon) The Hegemonic Concept of
. . . . . Democracy has Dissolved, What Happens Now? [article]
(Stephanie Dalley ‑ed. & –tr.) Myths From Mesopotamia:
Read more »
READING — APRIL 2023
25131. (Dmitry Dubrovsky) Escape from Freedom. The Russian Academic Community
. . . . . and the Problem of Academic Righst and Freedoms [article]
25132. (David K. Wright) Impact of Farming on African Landscapes [article]
25133. (Joseph Kelly) America’s Longest Siege ― Charleston, Slavery, and the Slow
. . . . . March to Civil War
25134. (Claudia Chang, Sergei S. Ivanov & Perry A. Tourtellotte) Landscape and
. . . . . Settlement over 4 Millennia on the South Side of Lake Issyk Kul, Kyrgysztan:
. . . . . Preliminary Results of Survey Research in 2019–2021 [article]
25135. (Matti Charlton) Dendrome
25136. (Mehdi Hasan) Win Every Argument
25137. (Pavla Peterle Udivič & Miran Erič) Logboat from Ižanska I {SI-81} from
. . . . . Ljubljana: New Evidence for Iron Age Transportation on the Ljubljana
. . . . . Marshes, Slovenia [article]
25138. (James Ker-Lindsay & Mikulas Fabry) Succession and State Creation
25139. (Tristan Carter) Obsidian Consumption in the Late Pleistocene ― Early
. . . . . Holocene Aegean: Contextualising New Data from Meolithic Crete [article]
25140. (Michael R. Waters, Thomas W. Stafford Jr. & David L. Carlson) The Age of
. . . . . Clovis ― 13,050 to 12,750 cal yr B.P. [article]
25141. (Mike Parker Pearson, et al) The Stonehenge Riverside Project: Exploring the
. . . . . Neolithic Landscape of Stonehenge [article]
25142. (Tomas Larsson & Stithorn Thananithichot) Who Votes for Virtue? Religion and
. . . . . Party Choice in Thailand’s 2019 Election [article]
READING — MARCH 2023
25104. (Kirsti Mäkinen) The Kalevala: Tales of Magic and Adventure
. . . . . [ill. Pirkko-Liisa Surojegin] [tr. Kaarina Brooks] [prose re-telling of
. . . . . Elias Lönnrot’s Kalevala with verse samples]
. . . . . [see other translations: Bosley at 27 & 8563; Kirby at 391;
. . . . . Friberg at 18426]
25105. (Matti Charlton) The Dark Woods ― A Very Light Bedtime Children’s
. . . . . Story
(William M. Breiding ‑ed.) Portable Storage Nine:
Read more »
25074. (Matti Charlton) You’re Mine ― A True Story for Brave Little Ones
There are not many books for children in which death is the main topic. Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings’ 1938 novel The Yearling, which dealt with death from a child’s point of view, comes to mind, but it was not conceived by it’s author as a “children’s book.” It is today generally shelved with “young adult” fiction in libraries, but that was not a category in use at the time of its writing. The author was addressing adults in a story written from the point of view of a child. Its clarity and emotional intensity allowed it to reach a younger audience. We expect a teenager to have some concern with the idea of death.
But when it comes to books for younger children, death is still a taboo topic. It is something that, many believe, children should not be exposed to in fiction, or even allowed to think about. This presumes that no small child will encounter death, or have to think of it, or need to understand it. Except, of course, the children in Uvalde, Texas, and Sandy Hook, Connecticut. Except, of course, the millions of small children who have had to experience a death in the family, or even the death of a beloved pet. And that doesn’t even take into account parts of the world torn up by war, where small children are drenched in the stench of death. There aren’t many children in Ukraine or Yemen, today, who are oblivious to death. Religion is of little help, here. It is far more concerned with denying death than with understanding it, or preparing for it. At its worst, it attempts to dismiss life as a mere prelude to an imagined eternal existence … at once obliterating death from thought and obliterating life from significance.
So I would recommend Matti Charlton’s You’re Mine. I wish I had such a book available to me when I was very young. In very straightforward language, it explains death, how it is inevitable, and why its existence underlies the preciousness of life: “Be grateful for your life. Every day. Every second. Cherish every moment while your life is still yours.” The narrator is death itself, portrayed as a monstrous beast, speaking to the reader, “Little One.” While the artwork of the book is designed to be just scary enough for a child to handle, it also evokes the beauty of life in a way that a child can understand. It is refreshingly free of evasion, deceit, or existentialist blarney. Many adults would benefit from reading it, since, as the author says in a postscript: “..we are all Little Ones, after all.”
READING — FEBRUARY 2023
25089. [2] (Robert McClodkey) Homer Price
25090. (Rosemary Sutcliffe) Beowulf [story]
25091. (Peter S. Ungar) Evolution’s Bite ― A Story of Teeth, Diet, and Human Origins
25092. (Jesús Gil Fuensanta, Alfredo Mederos Martín & Otabek Uktamovich Muminov)
. . . . . Not Far from the Limits of the Northern Uruk Culture in the Middle/Upper
. . . . . Euphrates: the Later Calcolithic Levels of Surtepe [article]
25093. (Susan Dewey, et al) Control Creep and the Multiple Exclusions Faced by Women
. . . . . in Low-Autonomy Sex Industry Sectors [article]
25094. (Raziel Reid) When Everything Feels Like the Movies
25095. (Joseph R. Bishop & Pascal Gagneux) Evolution of Carbohydrate Antigens ―
. . . . . Microbial Forces Shaping Host Glycomes? [article]
Read more »