the weekly reading guide (vol. 2)
(nov 10-16) — the week's essential short-form, essays, op-eds & discussions
featured this week: a reporter’s fresh reading of moby-dick, an economist essay on the changing sociology of relationships, a sharp analysis that uses julius caesar to explain america’s legal system, two pieces on linguistics and art deco, and a reflection on jane austen’s craft for her 250th birthday.
each issue will arrive every sunday throughout november. i hope to continue through december and beyond.
read last week’s guide:
[November, 10 - 16 2025]
The Best Essays from the Past Week
“the great relationship recession” — the economist
this was pretty funny and shocking to me. relationships are no longer sought after. vogue has declared that for the modern woman, having a boyfriend was actually embarrassing. modern life increasingly makes partnership feel optional, expensive, or even burdensome. no modern girl needs a partner who, for instance, might need to be taught how to respect women, be faithful, be an adult. turns out for 100 million people, that’s not so attractive anymore. it also reflects upon the changing conventional landscape of our times: back in the day, when marriage was a big deal for women who couldn’t fend for themselves due to the strict societal family roles, endured all kinds of nonsense from men: infidelity, violence, just plain disrespect. today, turns out, nobody wants to deal with it anymore. it’s a sober, unsentimental reminder that sociology is changing in its face. it also ends on a haunting not that there’s a chance ai will replace boyfriends for many. ai is kind, compassionate, loyal. i guess i get it.
“toward a university of repair” — public books
i love reading about education. this is a powerful essay on the modern university. using the recent congressional hearing on haverford college as its frame, the author shows how a small quaker-rooted campus became a proxy battleground for national anxieties about antisemitism, protest, and free expression. but the deeper argument is larger: the author states that america is addicted to punishment, a playground that treats disagreement as dangerous, and conflict as moral failure, instead of treating these as the raw material of learning. by looking at haverford college’s restorative model, which might be more easy to mock than dismiss, the essay explores what it would mean to build institutions that repair harm rather than exile the harmed and the harming alike. a humane read about justice and community.
“what’s the difference between a god and a monster?” — los angeles review of books
a fascinating review of brandon grafius’s scared by the bible, a book that reads scripture through the lens of horror, by taking the text’s seeming violence, dread, and ambiguity seriously. i haven’t read the book but found it fascinating that the reviewer argues that the bible’s most unsettling passages, from demonic possession to genocidal warfare to the terror of the divine, have always lived closer to monster studies than sunday school. grafius treats horror films as a key to understanding these stories, showing how fear, revulsion, and awe can illuminate the divine as both comforter and threat. the author writes, “this is a book that takes both the bible and horror movies seriously. not only is it normal to be scared by the bible, but that also may be the best way to read it.”
“another cruise” (lapham’s quarterly)
i’ve read moby-dick as a “sea adventure” before but it really is america’s philosophical epic, it’s own divine comedy. if i read it now, i’d probably figure that the whale was god, nature, fate, trauma, the unknowable, the “you” you cannot escape. it’s endlessly interpretable. this essay caught my eye as a deep literary reflection on re-reading moby-dick at the age ahab was when he met his doom. the writer drifts through emerson’s journals, obscure 19th-century references, mutiny, homoerotic subtexts, and melville’s own oddities as an autodidact. it also marvels at how the novel’s “errors” and repetitions reveal a deeper anxiety about identity and consciousness. how terrifying is it to have consciousness without an identity? pretty terrifying if you read the book through that lens. it’s criticism and personal meditation at once, making you reflect how much you may have already changed as a person, when you revisit a classic at a later age after having visited it for the first time as a younger reader.
“choosing the word of the year is no easy feat” — lit hub
a funny, nerdy peek behind the curtain of how a single word comes to define an entire year. stefan fatsis traces the chaotic, oddly democratic process that runs from dictionary boardrooms to hotel ballrooms full of linguists arguing over vibes, memes, suffixes, and the political temperature of the moment. prepare for lexical trivia as well as a portrait of how language metabolizes culture, including our fears, jokes, and collective breakdowns. full of great anecdotes that show how the words we elevate say as much about who we are.
“why anglophones use the alphabet so oddly” — (the economist)
a charming little history lesson disguised as a puzzle about the letters we think we already understand. this is a book review that traces how english inherited an alphabet from elsewhere and then bent it, misshaped it, mispronounced it, and kept all the quirks. why c and g split into hard and soft, why h is named aitch, why the order we chant as children is basically arbitrary. it’s all a reminder that english is a magpie language, stitched together from invasions, accidents, monks, printers, and centuries of improvisation. the result is strangely beautiful: a mongrel alphabet that reveals how cultures collide and languages evolve.
“art deco at 100: why the ‘machine age’ aesthetic endures” (the conversation)
a graceful, generous walk through the century-old style that still feels strangely futuristic. the piece traces art deco from its 1925 paris debut, with all its optimism, geometry, and the shimmer of the machine age, to its american reinvention in skyscrapers, liners, and lavish theaters. the piece reminds you how thoroughly deco seeped into culture, from the great gatsby to tamara de lempicka’s angular heroines to the neon sweep of radio city. a century later, the style continues to resurface everywhere, from miami architecture to mercedes concept cars. a lovely reminder that the future once had sharp , bright-colored angles as well as a dazzling belief in progress.
“jane austen perfected the love story – but kept her own independence” (the conversation)
happy 250th, jane. a crisp, affectionate exploration of the tension at the heart of austen’s legacy, who wrote the definitive romantic arc, yet chose a life outside marriage. the piece follows pride and prejudice as both its blueprint and critique, showing how austen herself refused the compromises her heroines often had to make. through scholars and a regency-ball re-creation, we see that austen wasn’t simply writing about love but about constraint, money, reading the world correctly, and finding happiness without losing yourself. the result is a portrait of a woman who invented the modern love story by insisting on something radical for her time: agency.
an older piece that i stumbled upon this week and felt worthy sharing:
“the lessons of due process in julius caesar” (jstor daily)
a sharp, unsettling read that uses julius caesar to illuminate the stakes of due process in america right now. the author traces how shakespeare’s play obsessively returns to the question of punishment — who decides it, why, and according to what procedure. two small scenes, often skipped over in performance, become devastating: cinna the poet torn apart by a mob for a crime he didn’t commit (and then, chillingly, for being a “bad poet”), and the triumvirate casually “pricking” names for execution. the essay links these moments to modern visa revocations, deportations, and arbitrary executive power, arguing that the danger isn’t only mistaken identity — it’s the ability of authorities to change their reasons on the fly. without due process, justice collapses into whim, and this was true back in rome and it is true now.
guided reflection prompts
what invisible rules shape the worlds in these pieces?
look for: social scripts, gender norms, design codes, political illusions, industry pressures, historical accidents.
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I can't wait to read pieces on Jane Austen and Art Deco. Thank you for such a thoroughly researched list.
Love the guided prompts, Tulipe!