February 2026
Books/links/misc. from last month.
Lux by Rosalía
Sorcery & Cecelia: Or The Enchanted Chocolate Pot by Patricia C. Wrede and Caroline Stevermer. Possibly the most comforting comfort read I’ve ever encountered? I wish I’d known about it years ago, so I wouldn’t have had to use The Fountainhead to fall asleep.
On Size and Life by Thomas McMahon and John Tyler Bonner, a book on how organisms adapted at different sizes, and some of the physics that helps determine their shapes. It’s a great book, and happens to contain a description of an experiment in which kangaroos were trained to bounce on a treadmill. It also contains this helpful diagram, with the caption: “Human development, showing change in body shape with increasing age.”
The Black Prince by Iris Murdoch
Tiny Bookshop, more pure comfort.
A dispatch from under the local rock
Tensions between Denmark and the US over Greenland seem to have subsided.
On the other hand, tensions between the US and Israel on one hand, and Iran on the other, have worsened. There seems to be an active war?
But things are also not rosy in Norway, where Mette-Marin, a member of the Norwegian royal family, has become implicated in the Epstein case. Somewhat against the spirit of monarchy, a poll revealed that a large chunk of Norwegians don’t believe she ought to inherit the throne.