Author Archives: smellincoffee

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About smellincoffee

Citizen, librarian, reader with a boundless wonder for the world and a curiosity about all the beings inside it.

Top Ten Freebie: Ten 2021 Adds to my Goodreads Wanna Read Shelf

This week’s TTT is a freebie, so I chose to look back on some of the books added to my Godoreads wanna-read list. America and Iran: A History, 1720 to the Present, John Ghazvinian. Something of a perennial interest of … Continue reading

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Touching History

Touching History: The Untold Story of the Drama that Unfolded in the Skies Over America on 9/11©2008 Lynn Spencer 320 pages When the brilliant blue skies over the continental United States became a place of confusion, dread, loss, and death, … Continue reading

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American Contempt for Liberty

American Contempt for Liberty© 2015 Walter Williams432 pages American Contempt for Liberty caught my eye immediately, for its title alone, for I’ve had a growing suspicion that the failure of the American republic lies not only in the ever-expanding state, … Continue reading

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Selected quotes from Anti-Politics

“Power and authority, as substitutes for performance and rational thought, are the specters that haunt the world today. They are the ghosts of awed and superstitious yesterdays. And politics is their familiar. Politics, throughout time, has been an institutionalized denial … Continue reading

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Anti-Politics

Anti-Politics: A Collection of Agorist Essays© 2021 ed. Sal Mayweather165 pages If you’re still waiting for your masters for permission to live after nearly two years of “two weeks to flatten the curve”, don’t bother reading further. This isn’t your … Continue reading

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Random, because trolleys

Today I spotted a tourist bus from Montgomery parked outside the library in such a way that I was reminded of a postcard from over a century ago.

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Selections from The Unbroken Thread

“The great benefit to be derived from reading pre-modern authors is to come to realise that after all we [moderns] might have been mistaken.” – C.F.J. Martin  [C.S. Lewis] argued that instinct, science’s go-to answer to our central question, just … Continue reading

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Revolutionary Ride

Revolutionary Ride: On the Road to find the Real Iran© 2017 Lois Pryce304 pages It was a note from a stranger that took her to Iran, a request from a Habib of Shiraz that she one day visit his home … Continue reading

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Eagles at War

Eagles of Rome: Eagles at War© 2015 Ben Kane448 pages Cast from solid gold, and larger than a man could hold in both hands, the eagle was depicted lying forward on its breast. A golden wreath encircled its almost-touching wings, … Continue reading

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Of anthropology, Solzhenitsyn, and a return to the gulag archipelago

If I’ve been quiet as of late, I’ve been bedridden with a severe sinus infection, one that came with headaches so severe that I couldn’t even use my four days off of work to read. Yesterday was the first day … Continue reading

Posted in Classics and Literary, Reviews, science | Tagged , , , , , | 5 Comments