I read some pretty random things things month!

First up, I read “Our Hotel in Bali” by Louise G Koke.  This slim volume relates the author’s experience running (along with her husband) the very first hotel on Kuta Beach in Bali.  This hard-to-find book had been on my “must read” list for a couple of years, and when an affordably priced copy became available a few months ago I snapped it up (and, what do you know, it was signed by the author!).

I’ve been to Bali many times over the years (for the first time around 2006, and most recently in 2024) but I haven’t ever stayed very long.  Bali is terribly crowded now so I mostly use it as a stepping stone to quieter places in Indonesia.  That said, I’ve long had a fascination with Bali as an historically important tourist destination.  Koke’s book offers great insights into that period, as it tells about a period when there were only three or four hotels on the island.  Meanwhile, quite a few of the famous names in early Bali tourism make appearances in her story.  Highly recommended. I suspect I will spend more time exploring the history of travel to Bali through reading in the months ahead.

Next, I read the August/September 2025 issue of the “Capital Hill Citizen.”  It contained a great article about the possibility of a “cashless society.”  This paper is print only (and proudly so) so I can’t link to it, but it did inspire a new writing for an academic discussion task, which I published over on prepex.

Finally, I continued my journey through the Norton Library Podcasts, and read a modern translation of “Inferno.”  You can listen to the podcast episodes starting over here.  I do recommend that if you attempt to tackle this work that you seek out a modern translation as I did.  My first attempt, using a old public domain translation, was an abject failure.

Not a ton to report this month, as much of my reading time was spent on fiction, which I don’t usually highlight here.  But I did check out a few relevant items.

First up, I read Norbert Elliot’s “On a Scale: A Social History of Writing Assessment in America.”  This might be the best work on the topic,  but it is a pretty niche topic.  I learned a lot about why ETS raters grade TOEFL essays holistically – basically, it is pretty hard to get two raters to score an essay the same way when they are giving specific scores to various categories.  That actually answers some long-standing questions I’ve had about the IELTS test, actually.

Next, I read the April 4, 2024 issue of the London Review of Books.  I quite liked an article called “Zzzzzzz” about why we sleep. The topic of sleep has appeared on the TOEFL quite a few times.  I think I’ll even add a question about sleep to the book I’m working on right now.

Finally, I read the latest dispatch from the Luddite Club.  Now this is only available in print form and I don’t want to break that sacred trust by sharing the contents here, but if you happen to be a Luddite (or just enjoy traditional post), I do recommend joining their mailing list.

Also:  I have decided to supplement this column with something called “You Should Read More Ephemera,” which will encourage everyone to read more of the odds and ends that appear on the new TOEFL, starting in January.  I’ll do that by cutting out and photographing some of the various bits and bobs of English writing that cross my path.  First up is a little travel guide to the mountain I look at from my window every morning, which came from a copy of “Stars and Stripes Korea” which I picked up last time I visited Incheon Airport.  Enjoy:

Here’s my video guide to all of the changes in the TOEFL reading section for 2026.

I read some stuff this month!

First up, I read a wonderful book called “How Scholars Write.”  It’s a guide to good writing that is often assigned to first year students at Columbia University.  It’s meant to give readers an understanding of how to approach academic writing early in their careers as students.  It could be a little challenging for high schoolers (and even freshmen) but there is a lot to love here.  The central idea is that writers should seek a “scholarly problem” to explore in their work.  This refers to gaps in understanding that can be explored.  I guess it is the difference between observing something and seeking out something new.

Next, I read Mark Fisher’s “Capitalist Realism.”  Many readers have written about this book, so I’ll narrow my focus to something in Chapter 5.  Here Fisher refers to the lifelong skilling and reskilling that workers were expected to do at the time he wrote this book (2008).  This trend has become acute since then.  It seems like all of the young people I talk to now know they need to keep learning for their whole careers.  If they don’t keep learning they’ll be left behind.  The trouble is, no one can tell them what, of all the things they could learn, is most useful to focus on.  To make matters worse, that what is forever changing.  It might be different every day they get out of bed.  It’s almost kafkaesque.  

Then I continued my readalong with the Norton Library Podcast, and read the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass.  Interested readers can tune into the first episode over here.

Finally, I read the 7 March 2024 issue of the London Review of Books.  An article called “Impossible Desires” describes the love we have of books.  And the fear we have of them.  I’m almost done with my large stack of LRB issues.

I read Christopher Schaberg’s “The Textual Life of Airports.” If you like academic writing and you also like airports, this is the book for you.  In the first of his three books about airports, Loyola University professor Shaberg explores how they have been depicted in literature and popular culture over the years. This is a curious topic – and not for everyone – but the book has attracted a lot of admirers.

I also read “Challenges and Innovations in Speaking Assessment” by Larry David and John M. Norris of ETS.  This one is perfect if you are obsessed with standardized English tests, or obsessed with the history of ETS.  Or both.  I enjoyed reading about ETS’s early forays into speaking assessment for clients like the Peace Corps and the province of New Brunswick.  There is also some good stuff about the “Test of Spoken English” which existed alongside the original TOEFL, which didn’t include any speaking questions.  And, of course, I was happy to learn more about the ETS “SpeechRater” AI and how they handle templated responses. Less interesting were articles about more recent research at ETS.  It’s always sad to read that sort of stuff knowing that it will never find its way into an actual product.  You know, in many ways the story of modern day ETS is a story of research and innovations that don’t ever get used for any real purposes.

I read a real grab bag of stuff this month.  It was a good month.

First up, I read the June 2025 issue of National Geographic.  It contained an excellent article called “Could Beavers be the Secret to Winning the Fight Against Wildfires?”.  It explores some positive impacts of beaver dams.  There is also some good stuff here about the history of beavers in the USA.  This is great and accessible academic reading practice.  I read this while sitting in the courtyard of the Doksan Public Library (in Geumcheon).  A nice place to chill for an hour, if you are ever in the area.

Next, I read the May 12, 2025 issue of Time Magazine, which included a great article called “The Return of the Dire Wolf.”  This one is about the science and ethics of resurrecting extinct species.  This topic would make a perfect integrated writing question… or an even better academic discussion question.  I have already added it to my “to-write” list.

I also read the February 22, 2024 issue of the London Review of Books.  It included a great long article about Linnaeus, his life and his classification system.  Perfect TOEFL reading practice.

Moving along, I read Kate Chopin’s novel “The Awakening,” as part of my journey through the Norton Library Podcast.  This one is a bit more accessible than most books covered by the podcast, so check it out if you are interested in reading some classic American literature.  The podcast episode is here.  And you can find a cheap copy of the book on Amazon.

Finally, I engaged my particular brand of madness and read “Cambridge English Exams – The First Hundred Years.”  Yeah… this is a detailed history of the first 100 years of the Cambridge English Exams.  Pretty cool if you are into that sort of thing.  If so, you can read it for free via Cambridge.

That’s all for now, but check back for some more silliness next month.

Family concerns prevented me from reading much this month, but I did consume the February 8 issue of the London Review of Books.  There’s always one article in every issue that is just perfect for you TOEFL kids.  This issue’s story was a lovely piece about the Sumerian priestess Enheduana, who might be considered “the world’s first author.”  There is a ton of good stuff in here about art, history and language.  A TOEFL reading passage might cover some of the same territory.  I might even be able to contort it into a TOEFL integrated writing question!

Since I don’t have anything else to recommend this month, perhaps this is a good time to point you to some related podcasts.  According to my podcast app, these are the testing/education adjacent podcasts I have spent the most time listening to since June of 2024:

• Our World, Connected (from the British Council)
• Tried and Tested Podcast (from PSI exams)
• ICEF Podcast
• The Rant Podcast (from College Futures Foundation)
• Tests and the Rest
• Talking ELT
• TESOL Pop
• What Now?  What Next?
• Higher-Ed Spotlight

They should all be available via your favorite podcast app.

I continued my “Norton Library Podcast” read along this month by reading “Dubliners” (which has been a favorite short story collection for some time.  I think many followers of the blog will enjoy this short story collection.  Though the stories were published more than a century ago they are accessible and easily comprehensible.  You could find a cheap copy on Amazon.  The collection is in the public domain so you can also find it online here and there.  Make sure to check out the podcast for some listening practice.

I also read the 25 January, 2024 issue of the London Review of Books.  I read and read and read and at the very end I found a perfect TOEFLish article!  It’s called “Petrifying Juices” and discusses the traces of molecules that can be found in fossils that otherwise seem to be entirely stone.  It describes an article that may have inspired the book “Jurassic Park” thusly:

“In 1982, the entomologist George Poinar and electron microscopist Roberta Hess published a paper on a 40-million-year-old fossil fly stuck in a glob of amber. Exquisite images taken with Hess’s instruments reveal individual cells in the fly’s abdomen, frozen in death, a microscopic Pompeii. Zoom in further and you can see structures straight out of a biology textbook: mitochondria, bubble-shaped fat reservoirs, even cellular nuclei. Poinar and Hess later speculated that if a mosquito were preserved in amber just after it had sucked blood from a dinosaur, it might be possible to recover the dinosaur’s DNA from blood cells in the mosquito’s stomach.”

If you squint hard enough you could image a TOEFL reading passage about something like this.  As I recall, one of the TPO sets (or ETS books) has an integrated writing question about the possibility of finding the remains of blood cells in a dinosaur fossil.

Meanwhile, I also read a cool book about shareware by Robert Moss called “Shareware Heroes.”  Get it if you are into computer software from the 80s and 90s.

I read a few fun things this month!

While sitting in the Doksan Public Library, I read the March 2025 issue of National Geographic. I enjoyed a couple of articles. Specifically:

• The Viking Age is Welcoming a New Kind of Hero: Women, which is about the roles women may or may not have played as warriors in the viking civilization. It even includes a discussion of what was found inside of a grave and its potential significance… a perfect bit of TOEFLesque English!
• The Epic Journey of Canada’s Last (and only) Reindeer, which is about a reindeer herd that was brought to Canada about a century ago. I was fascinated by the circuitous route they took to reach Canada. Remember that animals are a common topic on the TOEFL.

I also read the January/February issue of Analog, which contained a wonderful article about Dark Sky Sanctuaries (which are places which go out of their way to reduce the amount of light that is produced at night). That magazine doesn’t publish online, so here’s a similar article from National Geographic. This sort of thing could form the basis of a TOEFL integrated writing or speaking question.

Meanwhile, I read one of my favorite books on good writing – “Style: Lessons in Clarity and Grace.” It’s a book I’ve recommended quite a few times over the years and I’ll recommend it to everyone here. It contains some great advice about keeping your writing clear and coherent. Those are two things that just about everyone struggles with as they progress in their education.

Finally, I continued my “Norton Library Podcast” read along by checking out the Greek play “Medea.” Here’s the first podcast episode, if you want some listening practice.