Gesture and Speech
This book makes human evolution look more exciting and provocative than I would have thought possible. In particular, it explains why, when we know that many, probably most plants and animals have evolved to...
The Piano’s Role
If a movie doesn’t ever let you forget that it’s a movie, but keeps making you wonder how anyone could decide to cast, costume, and direct a scene as he has, you are probably...
Needing a Translator
We’d been skyping for months, both really enjoying it, I think — my husband kept noticing how much laughter was coming from the room where the really big computer lives. I was translating Lambert’s...
Arcana: Musicians on Music
There are ten of these books — same title, volumes I – X — published at irregular intervals between 2000 and last year. I don’t own them all (about half are in my nearby...
A Serving of Casual Insults
Most mornings, often before breakfast, I find myself in a righteous fury about having been forced to do some stupid thing to meet the incomprehensible demands some huge global server, presumably for the convenience...
Nomads don’t need Archives
Songlines: Tracking the Seven Sisters is an exhibition organized in Australia, now travelling to Europe and the US. It looks a lot like an exhibition of paintings, and it would command close attention and...