novelgotOn Buddhism and MeditationNot too long ago, I went on a ten-day silent meditation retreat in Mexico. This was a retreat in the style of those Vipassana meditation…Jan 14, 2022Jan 14, 2022
novelgotBuddhism and ChristianityThe more I think about them, the more striking I find the commonalities between Buddhism and Christianity. It’s one of the quirks of…Jan 13, 2022Jan 13, 2022
novelgotShakespeare’s OthelloOthello has been one of the surprising pleasures of the previous week. I picked it up from a used bookstore after reading a couple of…Jan 12, 2022Jan 12, 2022
novelgotInnumeracyLately, I’ve been teaching at an after-school tutoring center, and I encounter many students who are shockingly deficient in the math…Jan 11, 2022Jan 11, 2022
novelgotOn Harold Bloom’s The Western CanonI’ve started reading, largely on a whim, Harold Bloom’s 1994 book, The Western Canon, and it’s made me remember what it is I love about…Jan 5, 2022Jan 5, 2022
novelgotOn the true cost of collegeIt’s such a commonly held view that a college education is too expensive in this country that it seems crazy to attempt to contest the…Jan 4, 2022Jan 4, 2022
novelgotSAD 7One of the perquisites of my job at the university was that the philology department furnished me with a tutor who would give me private…Oct 28, 2020Oct 28, 2020
novelgotThe Sportswriter — FordLongwinded and boring. The mundane musings of a middle-aged magazine writer in the 80’s. The narrator-protagonist has a rich internal life…Oct 23, 2020Oct 23, 2020
novelgotYou Know You Want This — RoupenianAn uneven set of stories, with a few 2’s, a few 3’s, and the occasional 4. I would give none of the stories a 5, and even single story of…Oct 22, 2020Oct 22, 2020
novelgotSAD 3 — In the shadow of our ancestorsIn Pamujanov’s In the Shadow of Our Ancestors, three stories are told in parallel, the first of a pagan druid in the times of the…Oct 22, 2020Oct 22, 2020