Reading List: Chlorine Gardens

December 9, 2019

I don’t have much time today (it was bound to happen) but I can still throw something out there as part of the reading list. We’re almost there. Tomorrow is Human Rights Day.

Chlorine Gardens
by Keiler Roberts

Dealing with pregnancy, child-rearing, art-making, mental illness, and an MS diagnosis, the parts of Chlorine Gardens’ sum sound heavy, but Keiler Roberts’ gift is the deft drollness in which she presents life’s darker moments. She doesn’t whistle past graveyards, but rather finds the punch line in the pitiful.

“If the Good Lord made me bipolar on purpose, it must be because he’s (she’s? they’re?) bipolar. That’s the only way to explain how consistently great and terrible His creations are. Now that I’ve figured that out, maybe I do believe in God. I can imagine creating cancer on my darkest day, and then the Grand Canyon to make up for it.”

architecture, engineering and construction

The Answer’s in Your Model (and yet, it might be wrong)

A few weeks ago, in one of those happy convergences of life, I was reading an Italian essay on Italo Calvino and artificial intelligence (I wrote about it here), and there’s a very interesting set of passages that have to do with our contemporary obsession

September 16, 2026 9:00 am

movies and tv

The End of Oak Street

By the life of me, I don’t understand how’s possible that this movie was ever cleared for production. The concept is simple, and shamefully Stephen King-esque: a portion of a small suburban town gets teleported into a not particularly well-defined “age of dinosaurs,” and the

September 14, 2026 9:00 am

books and literature

Susanna Clarke’s The Ladies of Grace Adieau

I had forgotten how much I was bored by Clarke’s Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, but I trust I’ll like other stuff by the same author and, before tackling Piranesi, I decided to finally approach this one. Not remembering these are spin-off stories from Jonathan

September 13, 2026 9:00 am