The Marginalian
The Marginalian

Reads from 2020

Walt Whitman on What Makes a Great Person and What Wisdom Really Means
Walt Whitman on What Makes a Great Person and What Wisdom Really Means

“The past, the future, majesty, love — if they are vacant of you, you are vacant of them.”

read article

The Secret Life of Trees: Stunning Sylvan Drawings by Indigenous Artists Based on Indian Mythology
The Secret Life of Trees: Stunning Sylvan Drawings by Indigenous Artists Based on Indian Mythology

Reverie and reckoning with our relationship to nature between the branches and the birds.

read article

The Gospel of James Baldwin: Musician Meshell Ndegeocello Rekindles the Fire of Truth for This Time
The Gospel of James Baldwin: Musician Meshell Ndegeocello Rekindles the Fire of Truth for This Time

“You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read.”

read article

The Shadow Elephant: A Tender Illustrated Fable About What It Takes to Unblue Our Sorrows and Lighten the Load of Our Heaviest Emotions
The Shadow Elephant: A Tender Illustrated Fable About What It Takes to Unblue Our Sorrows and Lighten the Load of Our Heaviest Emotions

In praise of that quiet, nonjudgmental place of permission where all healing begins.

read article

Essential Life-Learnings from 14 Years of Brain Pickings
Essential Life-Learnings from 14 Years of Brain Pickings

On the weight of the world and the weight of the sky.

read article

To Believe in Things: Poet Joseph Pintauro’s Lost Love Poem to Life, Illustrated by the Radical Nun and Visionary Artist Sister Corita Kent
To Believe in Things: Poet Joseph Pintauro’s Lost Love Poem to Life, Illustrated by the Radical Nun and Visionary Artist Sister Corita Kent

“You are not everything but everything could not be everything without you.”

read article

Beyond Good and Evil: Nietzsche on Love, Perseverance, and the True Mark of Greatness
Beyond Good and Evil: Nietzsche on Love, Perseverance, and the True Mark of Greatness

“A man of genius is unbearable, unless he possess at least two things besides: gratitude and purity.”

read article

Octavia Butler on Creativity, the Generative Power of Our Obsessions, and How We Become Who We Are
Octavia Butler on Creativity, the Generative Power of Our Obsessions, and How We Become Who We Are

“Love quiets fear. And a sweet and powerful positive obsession blunts pain, diverts rage, and engages each of us in the greatest, the most intense of our chosen struggles.”

read article

Trees, Stars, and the Wonder of Being Human: Astronomer Natalie Batalha Reads Dylan Thomas’s Cosmic Serenade to What We Are
Trees, Stars, and the Wonder of Being Human: Astronomer Natalie Batalha Reads Dylan Thomas’s Cosmic Serenade to What We Are

“Children in wonder watching the stars, is the aim and the end.”

read article

The Science of How Alive You Really Are: Alan Turing, Trees, and the Wonder of Life
The Science of How Alive You Really Are: Alan Turing, Trees, and the Wonder of Life

“The more a creature’s life is worth, the less of it is alive.”

read article

View Full Site

The Marginalian participates in the Bookshop.org and Amazon.com affiliate programs, designed to provide a means for sites to earn commissions by linking to books. In more human terms, this means that whenever you buy a book from a link here, I receive a small percentage of its price, which goes straight back into my own colossal biblioexpenses. Privacy policy. (TLDR: You're safe — there are no nefarious "third parties" lurking on my watch or shedding crumbs of the "cookies" the rest of the internet uses.)