* Jeff Sypeck’s book Looking Up: Poems from the National Cathedral Gargoyles, which I enjoyed despite being the totally wrong audience; usually I don’t enjoy poetry and especially contemporary poetry but Looking Up works.

* “A Star in a Bottle: An audacious plan to create a new energy source could save the planet from catastrophe. But time is running out.” This is one of the best articles I’ve read recently.

* “Why Is It So Hard for Women to Write About Sex? Because it’s easier to titillate, shock, and lie than to get at the messy truth about female desire.” I disagree with the premise of the headline, but fortunately the article is more interesting than the headline implies.

* “I’m The Duke University Freshman Porn Star And For The First Time I’m Telling The Story In My Words,” a story that ought not to be a story. I’ll also note that if she really wrote this she’d be among the top 3% of students I taught, although I don’t buy her blaming of things on “the patriarchy;” in my experience and the experience of many women, other women are much worse to women in situations like hers than men are.

* Charles Simic: What’s Left of My Books.

* The Endangered Art of the Movie Novelization.

* Wisconsin tires of public-sector union rent-seeking and offers a model for other states.