1. As research for a novel I’ve been working on, I've been reading segments of dentist Weston Price’s 1938 tome, Nutrition and Physical Degeneration, in which he discusses his research into local diets and teeth around the world. This week, I've been squinting at a blurry picture of Mrs. Price standing among Egyptian ruins with camels, and rereading Price’s brief discussion of how camel milk was essential to a healthy Egyptian diet. 2. TaraShea Nesbit’s The Wives of Los Alamos is a sort of Greek chorus of women narrating their life in New Mexico while their husbands secretly build the atomic bomb. 3. Ander Monson’s Neck Deep and Other Predicaments presents essays in surprising forms, like an essay on snow with a page snowed full of ellipses. 4.  I've been wandering through T. Fleischmann’s Syzygy, Beauty, a long essay in lyrical snippets. I like hearing the word “syzygy” in my head, over and over. 5. My whimsy of choice has been Aleksandra Mizielinska and Daniel Mizielinski’s Maps, a book of maps with illustrated factoids including the animals that live in each country, types of foods eaten there, and common children’s names.