bookshelf

This is my bookshelf for sites I like to visit. All the resources here are in English - you can also look at the german bookshelf.

blogs I like

finished ouvres of internet artists

on a sunbeam - A graphic novel about two young adventurers on journeys through space. It has a tranquil softness.
octopus pie - A touching graphic novel set in New York. Made by Meredith Gran.
hark a vagrant - A series of little cartoons touching on feminism, classic lit, and history, made by Canadian cartoonist Kate Beaton.

works that are continually updating

media and collections of art / science / miscellany

hakai magazine - marine biology news, written with interesting and engaging storytelling
public domain review - a collection of arts & culture essays, ranging from medieval era manuscripts to victorian photography to, well, whatever year is currently in the public domain (for the United States, that's anything published more than 95 years ago)
open culture - a blog that does deep dives into music and art from the past, most of it obscure.
- some highlights:
  - japanese artisan restoring a tattered old book
  - color images of tsarist russia from 1905 - 1915
the marginalian - a project maintained by Maria Popova, who synthesizes art, botany, zoology, and poetry in her pieces
- some favorites:
  - the letters between emily dickinson and her love, susan gilbert
  - the seamstress who solved the ancient mystery of the argonaut, pioneered the aquarium, and laid the groundwork for the study of octopus intelligence
atlas obscura - a bit like a travel magazine, but specifically for forays into obscure places you might never hear about otherwise
noema magazine - a publication about culture, science and modernity. Thoughtful pieces, I like them.
the american scholar - a collection of essays by living and active writers, published by the Phi Beta Kappa society. Some personal, some biographical.
- selected pieces:
  - a forgotten turner classic

essayists i like to read

timothy snyder - a scholar of authoritarianism, who has published two books: "on tyranny" and more recently "on freedom," for which he lived in Ukraine during the war, speaking with Ukrainians. The link is to his blog.
- selected works:
  - my favorite europeans are nine years old
henrik karlsson - a swedish essayist/blog writer who takes a more philosophical view to his writing. I really enjoy his way of thinking.
- selected works:

libraries

internet archive - a great place to go to watch movies in the public domain, like silent films. Books are also available. I confess, for my German class this past semester I bought none of the works by authors we were assigned (all were pre-1963) and instead checked them all out from the Internet Archive.

project gutenberg - a library of free ebooks, all in the public domain. I recommend Voltaire.