Tom CarlisleThe Twisted Ones: nostalgia and repetition in the heart of the woodsI’ve just finished reading T. Kingfisher’s buzzy horror novel The Twisted Ones. Plenty of reviewers have called it terrifying, which is…Jun 5, 2020Jun 5, 2020
Tom CarlisleA post-COVID aesthetic crisisFor the past couple of decades, tech pioneers have been explicitly trying to emulate the aesthetic of sci-fi like Star Trek — clean lines…May 24, 2020May 24, 2020
Tom CarlisleThe eerie logic of coronavirusOf course I didn’t pick up The Weird and The Eerie, Mark Fisher’s collection of essays on contemporary culture, looking for wisdom about…May 21, 2020May 21, 2020
Tom CarlisleWhy Karl Ove Knausgaard’s “My Struggle” is the Book to Read in LockdownAbout a hundred pages from the end of the sixth and final book in Karl Ove Knausgaard’s mammoth My Struggle, Knausgaard writes, “this…May 14, 2020May 14, 2020
Tom CarlisleWhy the ‘disrupters’ haven’t yet broken publishingVenkatesh Rao, in his excellent series Breaking Smart, makes a distinction between purist and pragmatic conceptions of the world and its…Aug 11, 2019Aug 11, 2019
Tom CarlisleMidsommar and the Death of Liberal HumanismLike The Wicker Man, Midsommar shows both the inarguable logic of faith communities, and their incredible power.Jul 30, 20191Jul 30, 20191
Tom CarlisleWhy I’m not Reading a Book: 11–04(I got up at 5:15am for corporate training)Apr 12, 2019Apr 12, 2019
Tom CarlisleWhat a throwaway gag in “The Good Place” can teach you about being a good personAsk a lot of people about religion and one of the things that they’ll often tell you is that they don’t like to feel judged. The majority…Sep 24, 2017Sep 24, 2017
