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What We Are Reading Today: ‘How the Universe Got Its Spots’ by Janna Levin

What We Are Reading Today: ‘How the Universe Got Its Spots’ by Janna Levin
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Updated 01 January 2025

What We Are Reading Today: ‘How the Universe Got Its Spots’ by Janna Levin

What We Are Reading Today: ‘How the Universe Got Its Spots’ by Janna Levin

Is the universe infinite or just really big? With this question, cosmologist Janna Levin announces the central theme of this book, which established her as one of the most direct, unorthodox, and creative voices in contemporary science.

As Levin sets out to determine how big “really big” may be, she offers a rare intimate look at the daily life of an innovative physicist, complete with jet lag and the tensions between personal relationships and the extreme demands of scientific exploration.

Nimbly explaining geometry, topology, chaos, and string theory, Levin shows how the pattern of hot and cold spots left over from the big bang may one day reveal the size of the cosmos.


What We Are Reading Today: ‘Father Time’ by Sarah Blaffer Hrdy

What We Are Reading Today: ‘Father Time’ by Sarah Blaffer Hrdy
Updated 16 October 2025

What We Are Reading Today: ‘Father Time’ by Sarah Blaffer Hrdy

What We Are Reading Today: ‘Father Time’ by Sarah Blaffer Hrdy

It has long seemed self-evident that women care for babies and men do other things. Hasn’t it always been so? But come the 21st century, increasing numbers of men are tending babies, sometimes right from birth.

How can this be happening? Puzzled and dazzled by the tender expertise of new fathers around the world—several in her own family—celebrated evolutionary anthropologist and primatologist Sarah Blaffer Hrdy set out to trace the deep history of male nurturing and explain a surprising departure from everything she had assumed to be “normal.”


Book Review: ‘My Musings’

Book Review: ‘My Musings’
Updated 16 October 2025

Book Review: ‘My Musings’

Book Review: ‘My Musings’
  • The book reminds us that meaning often hides in the everyday, waiting for us to notice. 

JEDDAH: “My Musings” feels less like a book and more like a long, unhurried conversation with someone who has lived, laughed, lost, and learned, and is generous enough to share the journey.

A.G. Danish has a gift for noticing the small things most of us overlook and then weaving them into reflections that suddenly feel universal.

What’s refreshing is how ordinary moments, like staring at an empty fridge, fighting with a remote control, or sipping a cup of tea, become mirrors for bigger truths about life, love, and resilience.

He doesn’t preach; he observes. And in those observations, there’s humor, honesty, and sometimes a quiet ache that stays with you long after you’ve put the book down.

The beauty of “My Musings” lies in its balance: One page makes you smile, the next makes you pause, and before you know it, you’re looking at your own life a little differently.

Danish is not afraid to show his vulnerability, especially when he writes about family and loss, and that honesty is what makes the writing so relatable.

His pain of losing his wife Farida Danish can be felt in some parts of the book.

This is not a book to rush through. It’s the kind you keep on your bedside table, picking up a piece at a time, letting each thought breathe. Each chapter is a saga in itself.

If you enjoy writing that is simple, reflective, and deeply human, “My Musings” is worth your time. It reminds us that meaning often hides in the everyday, waiting for us to notice. 

A warm, thoughtful, and quietly powerful read. 
 


What We Are Reading Today: ‘Earth and Life’ by Andrew H. Knoll

What We Are Reading Today: ‘Earth and Life’ by Andrew H. Knoll
Updated 15 October 2025

What We Are Reading Today: ‘Earth and Life’ by Andrew H. Knoll

What We Are Reading Today: ‘Earth and Life’ by Andrew H. Knoll

How did the world as we know it—from the soil beneath our feet to the air we breathe and the life that surrounds us—come to be?

Geologists have proposed one set of answers while biologists have proposed another.

Earth and Life is the first book to reveal why we need to listen to both voices—the physical and the biological—to understand how we and our planet became possible.

In this captivating book, Andrew Knoll traces how all life is sustained by Earth’s geological and atmospheric dynamics, and how life itself shapes the physical environment.


What We Are Reading Today: Seven Rivers by Vanessa Taylor

What We Are Reading Today: Seven Rivers by Vanessa Taylor
Updated 14 October 2025

What We Are Reading Today: Seven Rivers by Vanessa Taylor

What We Are Reading Today: Seven Rivers by Vanessa Taylor

Vanessa Taylor’s “Seven Rivers” tells the story of the Nile, Danube, Niger, Mississippi, Ganges, Yangtze and the Thames.

At its heart are the empire-builders of the Chinese dynasties, Romans and Hindus and their river gods, the Habsburgs and Ottomans, Mughal emperors, the people of the Niger from Mali’s golden age to today, struggles of life and death on the Mississippi, and the dethroning of the British on the rivers of their unruly imperial subjects.


What We Are Reading Today: ‘I Was Working: Poems’ by Ariel Yelen

What We Are Reading Today: ‘I Was Working: Poems’ by Ariel Yelen
Updated 13 October 2025

What We Are Reading Today: ‘I Was Working: Poems’ by Ariel Yelen

What We Are Reading Today: ‘I Was Working: Poems’ by Ariel Yelen

Seeking to find a song of the self that can survive or even thrive amid the mundane routines of work, Ariel Yelen’s lyrics include wry reflections on the absurdities and abjection of being a poet who is also an office worker and commuter in New York.

In the poems’ dialogues between labor and autonomy, the beeping of a microwave in the staff lounge becomes an opportunity for song.