The Best Albums of 2015
An excellent year with many albums that I expect to play for some time to come.
The Best Books of 2015
A selection of the best books I read this year in a number of categories: best fiction, best big history, best book I wish I had read years ago, best book by a French academic, best economics and most disappointing.
Further Reading
The Nobel Lecture by Svetlana Alexievich. A Q&A with Gerd Gigerenzer. Excerpt from Syrian Notebooks: Inside the Homs Uprising by Jonathan Littell. The books of the year according to The Economist and the Financial Times. An interview with the American art critic and historian Hal Foster. And more.
Caroline Roberts: Graphic Design Visionaries
I just spent an hour or so browsing through Graphic Design Visionaries, a fascinating new book from Laurence King Publishing. It features profiles of 75 of the world’s greatest graphic designers (or design studio).
Further Reading
A conversation with Jürgen Habermas. A promising idea in complexity theory. The Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art houses one of the world's greatest unseen collections of modern art. The average walking times between central London's Tube stations. René Girard has passed away. And more.
Giovanni Francesco Caroto: Portrait of a Child With a Drawing
This fascinating painting, which was among the works stolen from the Museo di Castelvecchio in Verona, Thursday 19 November 2015, raises ever more questions the longer I look at it.
Svetlana Alexievich: Second-hand Time
Second-hand Time is a collection of voices, stories, fragments and witness accounts. They tell of the individual and collective experience of existence in the grinding jaws of history.
Further Reading
Richard Feynman's Lectures on Physics. Karl Ove Knausgård on the role of editors and the practice of writing. Angus Deaton Nobel Prize in economics. A brief introduction to the history and mathematics of labyrinths. Yale University has put 170,000 photos of the US from 1935 to 1945 online. And more.
Highlights from the Spring 2016 Ready-to-Wear Collections
A selection of my favourite outfits from the spring 2016 RTW collections.
The Great Beauty
"La Grande Bellezza" (The Great Beauty) is one of those films that I want to watch again and again because of its beautiful cinematography and its memorable monologues and dialogues not to mention the beautiful soundtrack.
Further Reading
Social networks can create the illusion that something is common when it is actually rare. Yale University will receive 136.20 euros in interest on a perpetual bond issued in 1648 from a Dutch water authority. The Mouse of Wall Street. Duration of urination. Oliver Sacks has passed away. And more.
Further Reading
John Conway’s life in games. What happens to your checked luggage. Obituary for John Holland. Ten reforms the Troika would impose on Germany. Mathematicians have discovered a new type of pentagon that can tile the plane. Fifty psychological and psychiatric terms to avoid. Earth view. And more.