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Curious Reading Club
@readcurious.xyz
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Brilliant, hand-picked non-fiction delivered to your door every month.
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The great @laurenmarkham.bsky.social is almost there with her Kickstarter for a new "guerrilla newspaper" on "how to approach—thwart, upend, survive—autocracy"

More in our weekly update:
newsletter.readcurious.xyz/p/curious-ne...
A typographical poster saying "THE APPROACH - THWART! UPEND! SABOTAGE! SURVIVE!" on a glowing orange and white background
June 17, 2025 at 4:25 PM
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3. It's expansive. "there are lots of books about AI and the people who shape it out... this book takes a much wider and more global view of things" and actually goes to eyewitness things that many others just take on trust.
Photo of a page in Karen Hao's book describing a visit to an "urban forest" built by Google in Chile to offset its data center there, which turns out to be a few straggly trees in a remote area -- not what Google claims.
June 8, 2025 at 6:05 PM
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The New York Times called it "wry and revelatory"

The New Yorker said it was “consistently entertaining and often downright funny"

And you know what, they are right.

PLUS!

We'll be holding a live Q&A with Henry later this month: if you're signed up you will get an invitation.

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Author Henry Grabar standing at a lectern wearing a suit.
April 1, 2025 at 7:46 PM
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Part 1 is here: Adam talks about on the value of a story that transports people back to life before things changed.

newsletter.readcurious.xyz/p/unexpected...
February 21, 2025 at 9:41 PM
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People who read @adamhigginbotham.bsky.social’s “Challenger” were so immersed that they hoped the disaster would somehow be averted.

newsletter.readcurious.xyz/p/adam-higgi...

2nd part of our interview with Adam is out now!
February 21, 2025 at 9:39 PM
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Last chance to get our February book of the month, Adam Higginbotham's CHALLENGER before we wrap up mailouts.

readcurious.xyz/products/cur...

Sign up and for just $25 each month, you get a hand-picked work of non-fiction that will entertain, inform and expand your mind.
The cover of Adam Higginbotham's book CHALLENGER: "A true story of heroism and disaster on the edge of space"
February 13, 2025 at 5:17 PM
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ANNOUNCEMENT!

Our February book is @adamhigginbotham.bsky.social's tremendous telling of the 1986 Space Shuttle tragedy "Challenger: A True Story of Heroism and Disaster on the Edge of Space"

Get your beautiful hardback copy for $25 by signing up today.
newsletter.readcurious.xyz/p/cur010-cha...
The cover of Adam Higginbotham's book CHALLENGER on a black and white tiled background
February 1, 2025 at 8:29 PM
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Preparing to announce and ship February's book of the month—a real doozy that was rightly praised to the roof in end-of-year lists.

Want to get it and other hand-picked non-fiction each month for just $25? Sign up now and fantastic reads will be on their way to you in no time!

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The hidden cover of CUR010, Curious Reading Club's book of the month for February 2025, on a black and white tiled background.
January 28, 2025 at 5:09 PM
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We chatted with @annaleen.bsky.social, our author of the month... and got a bunch of fascinating lessons on psychological warfare, including how culture wars use the same tactics as the military to sow fear and loathing among Americans.

Read more:
newsletter.readcurious.xyz/p/interview-...
Screenshot of a segment of text reading "these kinds of laws create a state of psychological distress in the chosen victims, whether it's black people or trans people or immigrants. And that's the goal of psychological war: to make a particularly adversary scared, confused, unable to speak out publicly about their situation unless they want to risk arrest or risk lynching or risk being beaten." Author Annalee Newitz on a Zoom call discuss their book Stories Are Weapons.
January 25, 2025 at 12:01 AM
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Every Friday our newsletter features interviews with authors, close reads and explorations of the recipe for great non-fiction as well as links, news and updates.

Sign up for free here:
newsletter.readcurious.xyz
A screenshot of the homepage of the Curious Reading Club newsletter, featuring recent stories and interviews
January 21, 2025 at 4:45 PM
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Don’t know what you spent your day doing, but instead of doomscrolling or staring transfixed by current events we went to the bookstore.

Great haul from Moe’s in Berkeley.
Four books with largely monochrome colors splayed across a yellow seat, posing for a photo like your French girls. Crime & Punishment, Exhalation, The Imaginative Argument and Beowulf lay before you.
January 20, 2025 at 11:37 PM
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In case you missed it... We're a book recommendation service focused on hand-picking brilliant non-fiction that will entertain you, provoke your imagination and expand your horizons.

Sign up to get a new book each month: It's $25/month to subscribe (US-only)
readcurious.xyz/collections/...
Three covers of books chosen recently by Curious Reading Club: On Tyranny, A Map of Future Ruins and Another Word For Love.
January 20, 2025 at 6:19 PM
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This newsletter also features one of the best character descriptions of all time! It's the opening lines of Ian Parker's 2008 @newyorker.com profile of the irascible Alec Baldwin.

www.newyorker.com/magazine/200...
Screenshot of text from a New Yorker article reads "Alec Baldwin, who stars in '30 Rock,' the NBC sitcom that has revived his career and done nothing to lift his spirits, has the unbending, straight-armed gait of someone trying to prevent clothes from rubbing against sunburned skin. He is fifty years old, divorced, and lives alone in an old white farmhouse in the Hamptons and an apartment on Central Park West—feeling thwarted, if not quite persecuted."
January 17, 2025 at 5:43 PM
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Anyone out there looking for the "Great American Fantasy" may want to consider conspiracy theories—the nation's incoherent legendarium of psyops, cults and unhinged claims.

newsletter.readcurious.xyz/p/conspiracy...

Featuring @annaleen.bsky.social, @abbierichards.bsky.social and @nytimes.com
January 10, 2025 at 5:49 PM
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All this and more in our full interview with Rebecca!

newsletter.readcurious.xyz/p/interview-...

Sign up to our newsletter for get more interviews, close reads and book recommendations:
newsletter.readcurious.xyz
December 10, 2024 at 8:14 PM
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3) Research, research, research. You might find stories that are so vital but hidden in documents, libraries, and archives — like the story of Millie Naharkey, a Muskogee woman who was abducted, abused and swindled in the 1920s by unscrupulous oilmen who wanted her inheritance.
December 10, 2024 at 8:06 PM
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2) help people see what you see, and feel what you feel.
December 10, 2024 at 8:00 PM
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How does the opening of By The Fire We Carry drag the reader into the story? Take look at the use of perspective, images and landscape: newsletter.readcurious.xyz/p/zooming-in...
Highlighted section of text from the linked post saying “we start with the camera zoomed way out, almost as if we are looking down from space at a map of the US and its complicated borders.”
November 25, 2024 at 5:35 PM
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Coming up in today's newsletter: a close read of the opening of Rebecca Nagle's BY THE FIRE WE CARRY. Why is it so punchy and effective? Sign up now to find out!
newsletter.readcurious.xyz
The first page of the hardcover edition of Rebecca Nagle's BY THE FIRE WE CARRY. It begins "The Indian Nation Turnpike is a four-lane highway cutting north to south through the bottom right corner of Oklahoma."
November 22, 2024 at 5:16 PM
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Even an internet outage caused by the wind and rain from an atmospheric river couldn't stop us from chatting with @rebeccanagle.bsky.social about this month's book club pick.

Interview coming soon for newsletter subscribers (and video too for paying Members.) Sign up at:
newsletter.readcurious.xyz
Screen capture of video chat between author Rebecca Nagle, who has one earphone in as she talks into the microphone, and interviewer Bobbie Johnson, who appears to have gigantic hands.
November 21, 2024 at 4:53 PM