An Avian Journey: Dinosaurs to Downtown
October 17, 2017
More by The Common Reader staff
TCR’s Annual “Top Fives”
With two “Notable Essays” selected for inclusion in this year’s Best American Essays anthology, plus landings in top Internet aggregators such as Longreads, 2023 was a banner year for The Common Reader. Here our staff goes one field further, naming five personal favorites published by the journal this year, along with five favorite cultural moments from the wider world of books, film, documentary works, podcasts, and food.
Ten Noteworthy Items About August
Facts, events, and otherwise little-known bits of information that garland the eighth month.
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Seven Words English Needs
The other day, a post on Threads stopped me mid-skim. “I am a Japanese woman,” it began. “Here are seven words my language has that English desperately needs.” For a decade now, I have been collecting words from other languages. After years wallowing in English vocabulary like a muddy…
Seeds Hear the Rain Sing
I could never live in the desert. Rain cleans my mind. That soft rinse sluicing down, soothing all that is dry or cracked or withering. Add thunder, and you have catharsis: any violent emotion can be released into that heavenly rage. And there is no comfort quite like cuddling close…
‘Nuremberg’: Holocaust as Melodrama
In the end, the only thing to be done with a movie like this is to throw it to the wolves of Reddit.
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The Speculative Value of a Stolen Literary Bust
By the time it was gone, the change was subtle but unmistakable: one corner left without its figure, one pedestal left bare. But to understand why that absence matters, it helps to understand who Kate Chopin was and the stories she wrote.
Recipes for Rascals
The ginger nut (and by association other cookies of its type, such as those made with black peppercorns) has an aggressive presence but offers scant sustenance. It is meant to aid digestion of other things, to have a warming effect in winter, to relieve boredom, and perhaps to remind us we are alive in the sometimes dry, husky business of life.
Standing at the Edge of Two Worlds
Having lived in the United States for a few years, I have either struggled to understand democracy in practice or struggled to keep up with it.