Category: Books
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Weekly Wanderings: January 4, 2026
So … 2026. What a year, huh? 🤨 One good thing: I had the pleasure of serving as moderator for my friend Joseph Torigian at a discussion of his book, The Party’s Interests Come First: The Life of Xi Zhongxun, Father of Xi Jinping, at Three Cats in Clawson, MI this afternoon. Three Cats is…
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2025 Book Reviews in Review
Have you ever heard someone say “The days are long, but the years are short” about how it feels to raise children? That’s how 2025 has felt to me—kind of a slog on a daily basis, but I can’t believe that we’re now almost at the end. I decided against writing any sort of annual…
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Weekly Wanderings: December 21, 2025
Here we are—the shortest day of the year, and the final regular Weekly Wanderings post of 2025, although I’ll pop into your inboxes next Sunday with a year in review sort of thing. Thank you to everyone who has read, clicked, liked, subscribed, etc. I already have some writing lined up for 2026, both here…
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Weekly Wanderings: December 14, 2025
Two housekeeping notes to start: (1) If you’re in Clawson, Michigan, on Sunday, January 4, I’ll be the discussant for a talk by Joseph Torigian on his book, The Party’s Interests Come First: The Life of Xi Zhongxun, Father of Xi Jinping (read my write-up of the book from earlier this year). Tickets are free,…
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Weekly Wanderings: November 17, 2025
This week’s post comes a day late and many links short, as I just never got the time to read all the stories I’d been saving. Instead, as is apparent by the number of Goodreads reviews below, I’ve spent most of my free time recently deeply committed to my November novel-reading project. This is not…
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Weekly Wanderings: November 9, 2025
Greetings from the first snow of the season in Ann Arbor. Although I saw one forecast yesterday that predicted 4-6 inches of snow for us today, it has now settled down to 1-3 inches—enough to make for a picturesque Sunday at home, not enough to make life overly difficult for anyone on the roads. My…
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Weekly Wanderings: November 3, 2025
November. The penultimate month of a year that has often felt endless and yet flown by. November always seems like a month that people want to rush through, eager to get to the December holidays and end-of-year celebrations. Christmas commercials are playing regularly on TV now; one of the radio stations I usually listen to…
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Bookshelf: Silk Roads
As much as I love to cook, I’m hopeless at reverse-engineering recipes. I’ve eaten plenty of dishes that I wish I could replicate at home, only to be defeated by my lack of skills. (Also, probably, my unwillingness to use as much butter and salt as the original chef likely did.) I have little sense…
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Weekly Wanderings: October 20, 2025
Thanks for joining me this week. New Goodreads Reviews Recommendations China Stories Eliot Chen, “Laura Murphy on Enforcing America’s Ban on Uyghur Forced Labor” Wang, who has more than 800,000 subscribers on YouTube, is representative of a small but influential part of the Mandarin-language media landscape. He is part of an exodus of media professionals…
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Weekly Wanderings: October 12, 2025
The Phillies season has ended; the Flyers season has begun. Time marches on. Thanks for joining me this week. Recommendations China Stories Emma Belmonte, “A Surrogacy Silk Road: Chinese Parents Head West for Babies” Yangyang Cheng, “No Country for A Woman” While men and boys are perceived to have more potential, are allowed more time,…
Maura Elizabeth Cunningham 