Brews You Can Use: 11/14/2025
It's the birthplace of Joe Stalin, but don't let that fool you: Georgian wine is very good. The Spectator has praised it at least twice in recent years. I drank it twice while in Krakow this week.
More issues
Books Aren't Rational. They're Tactile.
Back in the greasy, disco-lit haze of the 1970s and the dawn of the Reaganite ‘80s, the publishing world churned out a billion paperbacks. They were dirt cheap, some even free, handed out like girlie pamphlets on the Vegas strip.
But there was a hook: they were riddled with ads,
Books Can Shield You From Cults
Role models are great. We all oughtta have a few.
But don’t underestimate the anti-role models. These cautionary wraiths of consequence are more often the true educators in this carnival of folly called “modernity,” whispering not “be like me” but “For God’s sake, be anything but.”
That lean
Don't be a Zizian
Everyday Neurology 101: The right hemisphere receives sensory input, feeds it to the left hemisphere for processing, receives a report from the left hemisphere, synthesizes it, feeds its synthesis back to the left hemisphere for more processing, which reports back, and on and on until a decision is made.
This
The OG of Reading Apps
"Oprah, can you imagine curling up in bed to read a computer? Weeping for Anna Karenina and being terrified by Hannibal Lecter, entering the heart of darkness with Mistah Kurtz, having Holden Caulfield ring you up--some things should happen on soft pages, not cold metal." Harper Lee to Oprah Winfrey
The Scrolling Blog: Earlier Entries
Sucked into Twitter
I clicked on my Twitter tab so I could navigate to Gmail to contact my IT guy. I got sucked into my Twitter feed. Every time; every freakin' time. There's just so much amusing stuff on social media. It really is the crack cocaine
The Way of the Cobblestone
Smooth makes things rough. Ease makes life more difficult. Soft makes us brittle.
We lost something when asphalt replaced cobblestone. Every step on those old, gnarled stones forced a man’s body to shift, recalibrate, and work. The more cobblestonish the surface, the more micro-exertions. The more asphaltish the surface,
Albert Jay Nock, the Remnant, and Our Need to Read
Picture a man, tattered coat flapping, rummaging through a dumpster in an alley. You wince, don’t you? That flicker of disgust ripples through your gut.
But hold on. Don’t judge him too harshly. He’s not much different from a stray dog, sniffing for scraps.
That’s not
Jeremy Clarke: A Great Reader
It's arguably the most popular column in Britain's oldest newspaper.
The "Low Life" column of The Spectator has entertained readers since 1975, when Jeffrey Bernard provided readers with, to quote Johnathan Meades, "a suicide note in weekly installments."
After Bernard's
Twenty 20th-Century Books for Young Autodidacts
(Actually, there are 33, if you count the honorable mentions)
Joseph Epstein is arguably the best essayist alive. He’s urbane, funny, self-deprecating. He’s a fine stylist, and he’s remarkably well-read.
I remember William F. Buckley marveling at Epstein’s erudition and wondering how Epstein could have so