The Best Books on Urban Fantasy

We tell ourselves fantastical stories to account for all that cannot be explained, says Seanan McGuire, the multi-award winning author of the October Daye, InCryptid, and Indexing series. Here, she selects five of the best urban fantasy books—fabulous novels that help us find the magical in the mundane.

The Best Post-Soviet Spy Thrillers

With the end of the Soviet Union, many thought the spy novel was dead. Within a decade, it was back, with old antagonists back in different guises and a new raft of international flashpoints to keep both fictional and real-life spies busy. Here, British spy novelist Charles Cumming, author of more than ten books, recommends five key post-Soviet spy thrillers and explains how the genre has evolved since the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Dinner With A Dictator

Witold Szabłowski | LitHub | 9th November 2023

Stalin could make a good shashlik, but after his second wife died he could not bear the smell of food being cooked. His diet mostly revolved around soup — meat soup with sauerkraut in winter, cabbage in summer. After the revolution, he largely ignored food and ate at the Kremlin canteen, but his "one and only culinary extravagance in those days was a bathtub full of pickled gherkins" (1,880 words)

Podcast: The Six-Week Cure | 99% Invisible

Entertaining look at how in the mid 20C Reno, Nevada became the divorce capital of the world, thanks to a short residency requirement of just six weeks and liberal grounds for ending a marriage (34m 55s)

The Golden Age Of Gadget Catalogues

Cabel Sasser | 6th November 2023

Blog post ten years in the making, as the author slowly collected archive copies of the DAK Catalog. This esoteric digest of curious pieces of technology published by a mail order electronics firm was all written by one man — Drew Alan Kaplan. He began in the 1970s by just reviewing and selling reel-to-reel tapes. His copywriting is masterful, but the man himself remains utterly reclusive (3,000 words)

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How To Light The Dark Months

Katherine May | The Clearing | 6th October 2023

Prioritise going outside when it is still light. Don't resist the change of lifestyle or live as if it is summer. Notice the transition points from day into night. Co-exist with darkness rather than trying to eradicate it. Revel in "apricity", the juicy warmth of the winter sun, even if you feel it through a car windscreen. Make the use of candles ordinary, to contrast with harsh winter daylight (1,380 words)

A Child On Death Row

Alex Mar | Guardian | 7th November 2023

Extract from a book about the 1985 murder of Ruth Pelke by Paula Cooper, who at 15 became the US's youngest person on death row. Millions, including Pope John Paul II, opposed her sentence. The victim's family initially supported the prosecution's pursuit of the death penalty — as was typical for cases of this type — but very unusually one member later changed his mind (4,790 words)

China's Best Province

Scott Sumner | EconLib | 6th November 2023

Taiwan has a superior economy, democracy, culture and standard of living compared to mainland China. There are three possibilities for its future. One: Beijing pivots towards "a Taiwanese system" — highly unlikely. Two: the status quo continues unaltered — possible. Three: an invasion — highly undesirable. The best outcome would be if the CCP began to imitate Taiwan by stealth (840 words)

Life Of A Corn Maze Designer

J. Bryan Lowder | Slate | 28th October 2023

The "agritainment" business is booming. Farmers make more money putting on events than actually farming. Corn mazes, pumpkin patches, pig races — these are the high yield crops. The corn maze designer interviewed here thinks of each plant as a pixel, from which he then constructs a pattern for planting. American flags, the Statue of Liberty and the odd country singer are popular motifs (2,500 words)

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A History Of Moquette

Anonymous | London Transport Museum | 31st October 2020

Moquette, a velvet-like material, is favoured by upholsterers for its durability. In the 1920s, it became the fabric of choice for London transport. Artists like Paul Nash and Enid Marx were commissioned to create intricate designs that gave trains and buses a modish visual identity. And the tradition continues: new moquette can still be found on the seats that zoom beneath the city (700 words)

When Gravity Sucked

Matthew Wills | JSTOR | 3rd November 2023

Einstein's theory of general relativity was admired but otherwise neglected for decades in America. Although it explained gravitation, it had no obvious strategic applications. Serious research began only in the 1950s thanks to funding from two businessmen, Robert Babson and Agnew Bahnson, who thought that gravity was a threat to humanity and wanted to find a way of getting rid of it (820 words)

What Would Herzog Do?

Caterina Fake | 2nd November 2023

When all the world is against you, ask yourself: What Would Werner Herzog Do? Herzog's new memoir recommends an approach to life something like this: "Don’t get distracted by meaningless tripe. Don’t fight for prizes not worth winning. Follow through, get it done, learn to pick locks and walk long distances. Be strong, be smart, bring your toothbrush, be kind, work hard, be beautiful" (1,055 words)

Extracting Knowledge

Markus Strasser | Seeds Of Science | 31st October 2023

Machine learning is of relatively little value to scientific researchers because the newest and most sought-after knowledge usually isn't there in the searchable literature; innovators have strong commercial incentives to withhold detailed information about their discoveries. Recently-published knowledge is usually behind paywalls. Machines still struggle with charts and graphs (5,200 words)

Audio: Siblings Of Chaos | Allusionist

Helen Zaltzman talks to lexicographer Susie Dent about the histories and origins of a mubblefubble of English words, some of which are in common use, such as gas, chaos, and dismal; others of which are in less common use, such as latibulate, bellycheer, and hibernacle (36m 21s)

When Ads Generate Themselves

John Herrman | Intelligencer | 27th October 2023

Amazon has overturned "truth in advertising" as a business norm and an ethical norm by offering AI tools enabling advertisers to create generic copy and faked images. Presumably Amazon has concluded that consumers will still be swayed by advertisements and images which they know to be fictional; and Amazon's interest is in maximising quantity of transactions, not quality of transactions (1,500 words)

Real Play

Devon Brody | Paris Review | 19th October 2023

Reflecting on The Sims, a video game that enabled children to simulate adult life through their on-screen avatars. "It seemed both boring and exhausting, the way she tried to take care of herself while also maintaining a social life, not to mention a creative practice. None of her art was very good, and I didn’t get to read her writing, which she didn’t like to work on. She was always so tired" (2,200 words)

What I Saw At The Revolution

Michael Kazin | Dissent | 1st November 2023

Diary of a half-hearted American revolutionary. As a Harvard undergraduate in 1968-1970 Kazin joined SDS and Weather Underground. He smashed windows, occupied buildings, dodged the draft and stumped for Castro. All of which makes here for an atmospheric and highly readable memoir. But I do wish that Kazin had troubled to explain his actions instead of simply recounting them (8,500 words)

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Of What Is Linguistics The Science?

Ermanno Bencivenga | Epoché | 28th October 2023

Of language, obviously. But what is language? Some linguists insist that language is what gets said; the job of linguistics is to aggregate and analyse usage. Others insist that language is a mental model to which usage merely conforms; it cannot be studied it directly. "Each party’s conception of the subject-matter of linguistics would have us conclude that the other party’s is no science at all" (4,700 words)

No Exit For Dictators

Branko Milanovic | Global Inequality | 28th October 2023

Game theory. Why tyrants rarely go quietly. "Assume the ruler plays an annual game in which he asks himself: 'Am I better off if I retire now, or if I commit another crime which will make my retirement next year more difficult but my rule this year safer?' The answer is simple. He is better off committing another crime in the expectation that this will make his overthrow less likely" (1,300 words)

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A Werewolf On The Moon

Phil Plait | Scientific American | 27th October 2023

Given that werewolves present as wolves when the moon is full, i.e., fully lit by the sun, what happens to a werewolf on the moon, or in lunar orbit? A lunar day lasts two Earth-weeks — lots of wolf-time. A lunar satellite orbit takes two hours, half in light and half in dark. A lycanthrope would transform every hour. "In the enclosed volume of a small station, this would undoubtedly lead to mayhem" (1,670 words)

How To Fall Down A Rabbit Hole

Alden Burke | Syllabus Project | 31st October 2023

Practical guide to how to indulge curiosity and become sidetracked more often. "The beauty of the rabbit hole, and the warren you create by falling down it, is how it activates your curiosity to generate new, reflective pockets of information and knowledge. And the better you become at 'finding', the more portals emerge, and the farther you get from a complete sense of having found" (1,620 words)

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How Often Do You Lie?

Christian B. Miller | Conversation | 26th October 2023

Research has shown that people on average tell 1.08 lies per day, but that figure is likely skewed by "frequent liars". The studies cited here paint a surprisingly honest picture of their participants, with "the small number of rampant liars" accounting for the majority of deception. Still, the medium makes a difference: lying on video chat is more common than lying face to face, for instance (1,130 words)