“The fact that human beings create such things as gardens is strange […]” reflects Robert Harrison in his 2008 book Gardens: An Essay on the Human Condition – a book that was recommended to me by my partner in weird academic interests, Rea! (psstt, who now also has a blog) “Why would gardens be strange, you weirdos?” you might be thinking. As the author puts it – they mark a bizarre and somewhat conflicting (but not fully antithetical) human desire to both represent nature as well as to transfigure it! Many of us, especially those born and raised in cities, are used to considering a walk in a garden or park as quasi-wilderness where we could get some… #nature #hotgirlwalk. ...

You cannot overestimate the unimportance of practically everything writes Greg McKeown in Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less. Sure, practically everything is unimportant, yet virtually most things have a formidable way of overwhelming me and convincing me of their Targaryenesque birthright to be on top of my to-do list. Just a few days ago I was cooking at home and almost without noticing, I was mentally going through all of the projects I had to focus on in the coming months. My anxiety was growing as my thoughts were physically bouncing on and off emails I had to write, books I wanted to read, and even bigger musings such as who I wanted to become. Did I want to be a teacher, or work in tech, or organize kids summer camps in Bulgaria? Then, let’s throw in the mix the 23 podcast episodes I have saved to listen to, blog article ideas, wanting to adopt a dog, get into woodwork, move apartments, and let us not forget my addiction to mindlessly scrolling on dating apps or refreshing WhatsApp! ...

Have you ever asked yourself if 2008’s DreamWorks animation Kung Fu Panda could be read as “a somewhat naive, but nonetheless basically accurate illustration of an important aspect of Lacanian theory”? Well, if you are still reading Žižek with me, hello and welcome to page 69, section title Les non-dupes errent! Slowly making my way through Living in the End Times, I could not have been more excited to start reading a subpart where the author’s analytical might is focused on one of the funniest cartoon blockbusters from my childhood, namely Kung Fu Panda (2008, John Stevensoon and Mark Osborne). Žižek has once and for all put a fictional goose’s “special noodle soup” as a serious intellectual example in my head and there is no going back… ...

As I am writing this, it is the final week of the year, it is snowing outside and in an hour from now I will be having coffee with the biggest reader of my family - my great-aunt Nina. Even though in the past months, I have felt as if I am mainlystress-reading academic articles and juggling between different responsibilities, something about this beautiful snowy morning gave me the muse to remember and share some of the wonderful books I had the privilege and pleasure of reading this past year. ...

Isn’t it funny realizing the consequences of seemingly insignificant day to day choices? We often consume the narrative à la How I Met Your Mother where every tiny event, new encounter, romantic disappointment leads the protagonist Ted Mosby one step closer to the moment he meets the future mother of his children (which would be impossible without every random occurrence beforehand). Well, I feel that I had my own little HIMYM loop closed the other day when [drum rolls] I finally got on Reddit! And what was the tiny seemingly insignificant step leading to it? None other than me picking up Žižek’s Living in The End Times at a moment where I had all of my books packed in boxes. ...

I vividly remember how, during my second year of Bachelor’s in Zoom class, one of my favorite professors mentioned Elena Ferrante as one of the most important contemporary authors to follow in our lifetime. Since a friend and I always took this class together seated on my old uncomfortable couch in front of one laptop, I lurked and saw in his notes he put something along the lines of “read ferate??” ...

What do we choose to live in denial of? One Sunday evening, I picked up a book from the common shelves at my now former apartment in the 13th arrondissement of Paris. It was my last night at the place I called home for over a year, so I was a bit anxious before going to bed. Having all of mybooks packed and already sent to Grenoble, I almost jokingly picked up Slavoj Žižek’s Living in the End Times, which was left in the living room by the previous tenant, a Marxist urbanism graduate who now lives in Barcelona. ...