the weekly reading guide (vol. 2)

(nov 10-16) — the week's essential short-form, essays, op-eds & discussions • on moby-dick, the relationship recession, universities, biblical horror, art deco, austen, shakespearean due process

Nov 16, 2025

people walking on snow covered ground during daytime

welcome to week two of my sunday reading series.

last week, i began a weekly guide to share the best pieces of writing i read that week. this is for those who don’t have time to sift through headlines, and are tired of monotonously reading about the same things, and would like a nuanced, well-rounded reading experience that includes interesting columns on culture, literature, sociology, policy, education, and other arcane topics that aren’t easily found. this week’s list includes pieces from the wall street journal, the economist, and the new york times (currently offering $1/week digital access), along with free-access essays from a few trusted publications.

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, a nytimes letter from tim kaine, 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.

last weekend, i also shared a slow reading toolkit: a few analog companions to make your reading more meaningful. you can find that, and last week’s selections, below:

weekly reading guide — the best articles, essays & op-eds to read this weekend (nov 3-9, 2025)

tulipe 🌌

November 9, 2025

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[nov 10 - nov 16, 2025]

ambiance of the week

the rain made this weekend perfect for staying in and reading. here’s the rainy jazz piece i played while going through this week’s selections.

this week’s best pieces of writing:

“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.

“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.”

“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.

“tim kaine’s shutdown vote” — the new york times
listening to debates about the shutdown have left us all exhausted. tim kaine defends himself directly to the nyt here, arguing why, after 38 days of chaos, hunger, unpaid workers, grounded flights, he voted to end the shutdown — even if it meant giving up leverage on health care. rage and partisanship aside, worth reading direct words from someone on the inside explaining from personal pov what went down leading up to it.

“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. love you, jane!!!

“running on the spot in a dream” — charli xcx on substack
i haven’t heard many of her songs but a friend showed me that this popular artist is on substack and i thought it’s worth sharing how artists are using this platform to get personal with their fans, giving a direct sneak peek into what it’s like to be in the middle of public scrutiny, controversy, and working on a movie as a musician.

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
questions to help you read this week’s pieces slowly, critically, and with emotional intelligence.

[before reading]

what forms of “structure” am i encountering this week?
— romantic structure (austen), linguistic structure (the alphabet), architectural structure (art deco), political structure (shutdowns), relational structure (singlehood), creative structure (charli xcx’s process).
how do structures support freedom, and how do they restrict it?
what assumptions do i hold about love, marriage, and independence?
how does my own experience shape my view of what a “good life” looks like?
how do i imagine modern adulthood?
does singlehood feel like liberation or loneliness to me?
what do i believe about partnership as a cultural requirement?

[during reading]

where does each writer locate power?
— in design (art deco),
— in language (alphabet),
— in cultural expectations (singlehood),
— in politics (shutdown dynamics),
— in narrative (austen),
— in creative autonomy (charli).
what invisible rules shape the worlds in these pieces?
look for: social scripts, gender norms, design codes, political illusions, industry pressures, historical accidents.
what does freedom mean in each piece?
freedom from marriage, from tradition, from genre, from linguistic history, from political expectation, from architectural constraint.

[after reading]

what portrait of modern life emerges across all six pieces?
is it a world moving toward individuality? fragmentation? reinvention? self-authorship?
where do the essays quietly agree with each other?
for example, austen’s independence and charli’s creative autonomy;
or the singlehood article and the shutdown analysis—both about navigating systems bigger than oneself.
what kind of attention did each piece require?
slow attention? emotional attention? analytical attention? imaginative attention?
how did switching modes shift the way i read?
how does the week’s reading change the way i see my own routines, relationships, ambitions, and creative life?

[for your journal]

write one paragraph connecting two unlikely pieces — for example, pair the singlehood article with austen’s independence: what do they reveal about solitude, stigma, and society?

companion playlist
music for reading, reflecting, and journaling.