What We Are Reading Today: ‘Stories of Your Life and Others’

Photo/Supplied
Photo/Supplied
Short Url
Updated 30 September 2024
Follow

What We Are Reading Today: ‘Stories of Your Life and Others’

Photo/Supplied
  • One of the standout tales in the collection is “Story of Your Life,” which was adapted into the 2016 film “Arrival”

Author: Ted Chiang

“Stories of Your Life and Others” is a collection of short stories by Ted Chiang, published in 2002.

The author explores complex themes such as language, time and consciousness.

One of the remarkable aspects of Chiang’s work is his ability to blend science fiction with philosophical inquiries, resulting in thought-provoking narratives that challenge readers to reconsider their perceptions of reality.

One of the standout tales in the collection is “Story of Your Life,” which was adapted into the 2016 film “Arrival.”

It follows linguist Dr. Louise Banks as she attempts to communicate with alien beings who have arrived on Earth. Through her interactions with the extraterrestrial visitors, Banks gains a new understanding of language and its impact on the perception of time.

Another notable story is “Understand,” which delves into the implications of enhanced intelligence.

Chiang’s exploration of the consequences of such a dramatic change in cognition is both insightful and thought provoking.

The story raises important questions about the nature of intelligence, consciousness and the limits of human potential.

Chiang’s writing is marked by meticulous attention to detail and a deep exploration of scientific and philosophical concepts.

His stories are not simply vehicles for technological speculation but rather profound explorations of human nature and the mysteries of the universe.

Chiang has won numerous literary prizes, including the Hugo, Nebula and Locus awards.

 


What We Are Reading Today: The Market for Skill

Photo/Supplied
Photo/Supplied
Updated 08 March 2025
Follow

What We Are Reading Today: The Market for Skill

Photo/Supplied
  • In “The Market for Skill,” Patrick Wallis shows how apprenticeship helped reshape the English economy

Author: Patrick Wallis

Apprenticeship dominated training and skill formation in early modern Europe. Years spent learning from a skilled master were a nearly universal experience for young workers in crafts and trade. In England, when apprenticeship reached its peak, as many as a third of all teenage males would serve and learn as apprentices.
In “The Market for Skill,” Patrick Wallis shows how apprenticeship helped reshape the English economy.
Some historians see apprenticeship as a key ingredient in the industrial revolution; others agree with Adam Smith in seeing it as wasteful and conservative. Wallis shows that neither of these perspectives is entirely accurate. He offers a new account of apprenticeship and the market for skill in England, analyzing the records of hundreds of thousands of individual apprentices to tell the story of how apprentices.

 


What We Are Reading Today: ‘Life in Sync’ by Philippa Gander

What We Are Reading Today: ‘Life in Sync’ by Philippa Gander
Updated 07 March 2025
Follow

What We Are Reading Today: ‘Life in Sync’ by Philippa Gander

What We Are Reading Today: ‘Life in Sync’ by Philippa Gander

All life is profoundly shaped by the daily, monthly, and yearly cycles of our planet, and all creatures have internal timekeeping systems that rely on cues from the surrounding environment.

With modern technology, we are changing our environments—and by proxy, the ecosystems around us—to override these innate rhythms of life. But at what cost?

“Life in Sync” reveals how Earth’s rotations shape our biology, what human sleep cycles looked like before the advent of artificial light, and why technology can’t free us from the constraints of our circadian clocks.


REVIEW: Arab Australian debut cultivates hope, solidarity in rural New South Wales

REVIEW: Arab Australian debut cultivates hope, solidarity in rural New South Wales
Updated 06 March 2025
Follow

REVIEW: Arab Australian debut cultivates hope, solidarity in rural New South Wales

REVIEW: Arab Australian debut cultivates hope, solidarity in rural New South Wales

JEDDAH: Escaping personal strife, a Muslim single mother carves a space for herself in the heart of rural Australia in “Translations,” an engrossing debut novel by Australia-born Palestinian-Egyptian writer Jumaana Abdu.

Set in New South Wales in the period just after the COVID-19 era with the threat of bushfires looming, the novel explores one woman’s efforts to cultivate not only the land but also a sense of belonging and identity on foreign soil.

In this story of self-discovery and resilience, Abdu intricately weaves in the broader theme of solidarity between First Nations of Australia and Palestinians — two nations grappling with colonization, dispossession and cultural erasure.

The novel’s title could be a reference to not just the transformation of the land through re-vegetation and restoration, but also the translations that characters undertake to bridge linguistic, cultural and emotional gaps between them — translation in this sense is portrayed as the language of solidarity and resistance.

Hidden within the trope of new beginnings in a small town, Abdu paints a powerful picture of mutual recognition and respect, of shared struggles, and the healing potential of intercultural bonds.

This is unveiled through Aliyah’s interactions with the community into which she slowly, and sometimes reluctantly, begins to integrate, including her conversations with Shep, the reserved Palestinian man from Gaza who she hires as a farmhand, and Billie, the wise and nurturing Kamilaroi midwife.

Love and faith are also focal elements in the story. Love in its many forms — romantic, familial, and communal — acts as a balm to past wounds for the Arab and Aboriginal characters, while faith, both in the divine and in human resilience, guides Aliyah, and her childhood friend Hana, through despair toward hope.

“Translations” is a profound exploration of not just the complex interplay between identity and trauma, but also a look at how love can bridge divides, and how shared histories of resistance can unite different peoples in their quest for peace and understanding.

In one pivotal moment in the story that carries a deep message, Shep discusses displacement and the “chain of loss and expulsion” with Billie’s husband Jack, an Aboriginal character, who poignantly says: “You want to wish for something, wish for the return of the land’s dignity.”


Book Review: ‘The Wisdom of the Romantics’ by Michael K. Kellogg

Book Review: ‘The Wisdom of the Romantics’ by Michael K. Kellogg
Updated 06 March 2025
Follow

Book Review: ‘The Wisdom of the Romantics’ by Michael K. Kellogg

Book Review: ‘The Wisdom of the Romantics’ by Michael K. Kellogg

Due for publication by the imprint Prometheus in May 2025 and now available for preorder, “The Wisdom of the Romantics” by Michael K. Kellogg explores the complexities and contradictions of the artistic and intellectual movement Romanticism.

Kellogg, a philosopher and author of several books on intellectual history, including “The Wisdom of the Renaissance,” “The Wisdom of the Middle Ages,” and “The Greek Search for Wisdom,” delves into how Romanticism emphasized “sensibility, inspiration, individual freedom, emotional intensity, introspection, sincerity, and heightened imagination,” in reaction to the “over-reliance on reason” during the Enlightenment period.

Kellogg highlights the contradictions within Romanticism itself, noting that it “is beauty and ugliness. It is art for art’s sake, and art as an instrument of social salvation. It is strength and weakness, individualism and collectivism, purity and corruption, revolution and reaction, peace and war, love of life and love of death.” These attributes, Kellogg argues, were fully embraced by the Romantics, in contrast to the rationalists who rejected them.

Romanticism, which lasted between 1780 and 1850, emerged as a reaction against the Enlightenment’s rigid focus on reason and the Industrial Revolution’s emphasis on progress and rationality. It flourished across literature, art, music and philosophy, embracing intense emotion and highly individual expression. It romanticized the very notion of romanticism.

Kellogg also slips into the world of words from a range of writers that fit that timeframe, from Jean-Jacques Rousseau to Honore de Balzac, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe to Friedrich Hegel, and William Wordsworth to Jane Austen. He argues that Romanticism is a “highly subjective enterprise,” where defining it is not about finding a fixed definition but about embracing its contradictions and diversity.

The book is slightly dense; it feels drawn from a college mandatory reading list. At the same time, it is witty and playful. It almost requires the reader to also be a dreamer and a romantic to enjoy the writing of this era — and about this era.

In addition to writing several books, Kellogg is a founding and managing partner at the law firm Kellogg, Huber, Hansen, Todd, Evans & Figel, PLLC. He also holds degrees from Stanford, Oxford and Harvard Law School, proving that he is, in fact, the perfect person to merge logic and heart within a book — and, dare I declare, a true Romantic. 


What We Are Reading Today: When the Earth Was Green by Riley Black

What We Are Reading Today: When the Earth Was Green by Riley Black
Updated 05 March 2025
Follow

What We Are Reading Today: When the Earth Was Green by Riley Black

What We Are Reading Today: When the Earth Was Green by Riley Black

Riley Black’s “When the Earth Was Green” brings readers back in time to prehistoric seas, swamps, forests, and savannas where critical moments in plant evolution unfolded.

Black guides readers along the burgeoning trunk of the Tree of Life, stopping to appreciate branches of an evolutionary story that links the world we know with one we can only just perceive now through the silent stone, from ancient roots to the present.