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A FEW WEEKS AGO my son made me put on a new song that he'd heard about at school. At first I thought it was by a German rapper I [...]

UMBERTO ECO: A LIBRARY OF THE WORLD Various cinemas The first shot of Umberto Eco: A library of the world, in black-and-white, is familiar. The camera follows Eco as he [...]

It might not be true that all scholars are desperate to stay away from work in university administration. Certainly, some are called to serve more than others. (They can even [...]

A few years ago, on a visit to Northern California, I caught up with a friend from university whom I hadn't seen in years. As he was driving me to [...]

MEDIEVAL HORIZONS Why the Middle Ages matter IAN MORTIMER 256pp. Bodley Head. 22 [pounds sterling]. Medieval Horizons: Why the Middle Ages matter seems to be about the importance of the [...]

I was so tired this spring that I finally read My Year of Rest and Relaxation. Ottessa Moshfegh's novel about a wealthy young woman who drugs herself into oblivion was [...]

'IN SPITE of the national veneration universally felt for our great bard, he has been subjected amongst us to a series of ... cruel mutilations and operations,' begins a review [...]

DON'T THINK, DEAR On loving and leaving ballet ALICE ROBB 304pp. Oneworld. 16.99 [pounds sterling]. Halfway through Alice Robb's Don't Think, Dear, a book about the effects of ballet training [...]

RECENTLY A MINING ENGINEER died in the small north German town of Mettingen, leaving behind a library of more than 70,000 books. Online news outlets shared pictures of Bruno Schroder's [...]

IN SEARCH OF ROMANIA DENNIS DELETANT 280pp. Hurst. 20 [pounds sterling]. DENNIS DELETANT FIRST WENT to Romania in 1965 to attend a summer language school run by the British Council. [...]

When I was finishing high school in Toronto, I interviewed for a scholarship that would have funded my university studies. In the first round the selection committee asked me to [...]

WRITE IT ALL DOWN How to put your life on the page CATHY RENTZENBRINK 240pp. Bluebird. 14.99 [pounds sterling]. YOUR STORY MATTERS Find your voice, sharpen your skills, tell your [...]

Gluttons get a bad rap. They are considered unbridled, excessive, perverse. One thinks of Augustus Gloop touring Willy Wonka's factory, 'scooping hot melted chocolate into his mouth as fast as [...]

FEMINA A new history of the Middle Ages, through the women written out of it JANINA RAMIREZ 464pp. WH Allen. 22 [pounds sterling]. Halfway through Femina, her new history of [...]

GONE BUT NOT FORGOTTEN My favourite flops and other projects that came to nothing HANS MAGNUS ENZENSBERGER Translated by Mike Mitchell 208pp. Seagull. 17.99 [pounds sterling] ($24.50). Failure is now [...]

AROUND FIFTEEN YEARS ago my boyfriend and I travelled around Romania. In Sibiu, a Transylvanian town with rooftop windows that look like sleepy, peeping eyes, we found a student cafe [...]

Sharon Marcus THE DRAMA OF CELEBRITY 328 pp. Princeton University Press. 24 [pounds sterling] (US $29.95). 978 0 691 17759 5 Ellis Cashmore KARDASHIAN KULTURE How celebrities changed life in [...]

A FEW WEEKS AGO I dreamt that one of my TLS editors asked me to write about sports. There was, unusually, no book to review, so I had to look [...]

Bonn has been unbearably hot this summer, but at least we have our French film festival back. On yet another sultry evening, a friend and I have Lucques olives and [...]

LOST & FOUND A memoir KATHRYN SCHULZ 256pp. Picador. 14.99 [pounds sterling]. In 'Lost', the first, long chapter of Lost & Found, Kathryn Schulz describes her father's decline and death. [...]

The Middle Ages keeps appearing in unexpected places. I find it while reading Amit Chaudhuri's Odysseus Abroad (2014). The protagonist, Ananda, a twenty-two-year-old Bengali literature student in London, is reminded [...]

THE AGE OF FITNESS How the body came to symbolize success and achievement JURGEN MARTSCHUKAT Translated by Alex Skinner 220pp. Polity. 20 [pounds sterling]. EXERCISED The science of physical activity, [...]

It has become commonplace to call this era an 'age of distraction'. Every few years a new study comes out with horrifying statistics about how technology splinters our attention spans. [...]

IT IS SUNDAY EVENING and I am making dinner alone. I toss slices of Japanese eggplant into a wok with thinly cut ginger and then reduce it with soy sauce. [...]

ON ANIMALS SUSAN ORLEAN 256pp. Atlantic. 14.99 [pounds sterling]. 'People can be figured out, but animals are enigmatic,' explains Susan Orlean in her captivating new book, 'so the best we [...]

Why is it so hard to write clearly? I have had many opportunities to ask myself this question lately. Over the past few months I've been taking a class on [...]