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.

I’m traveling in Indonesia this month, so the column will be somewhat abbreviated.  But I did read a few interesting things.

First up, I read Martin Hajek’s “More than a Gap Year Adventure,” a book about making a long-term career out of TEFL.  That’s something I’ve accomplished, to some extent.  But when people ask me for advice about how they might do the same, I’m often at a loss.  I’m quite aged now, and my anecdotes are decades out of date.  So I’ll send people to Amazon to buy the book, or perhaps even gift a few copies myself.  Readers will find a general introduction to the field by Hajek, and a lengthy collection of essays by contributors who have found success.  There isn’t anything in here about working in the test prep industry, but there is a fine essay about being a test examiner.

(By the way, just a few days ago someone asked me about working in the test prep industry.  Since my earlier musings are all out of date, I’ll try to pen a few words when I return from my travels.  But even this is hard for me.)

Next, I read Angela Nagle’s “Kill All Normies.”  This one is a short history of the online countercultures that memed Donald Trump into office back in 2015/16.  It’s an interesting read, especially in light of the very different path Trump just took to get back into office.  I’ll add it to the “Test Resources Left Book Club” index when that next gets updated…

Finally, I read the 14 December 2023 issue of the London Review of Books.  A few fine articles stood out that could help people practice their academic reading skills.  They are:

• “I Don’t Know What it Looks Like,” which is about the less-studied modern architecture found in Paris.  Architecture comes up now and then in the TOEFL reading section, and I don’t share nearly enough content about it on the site.  Check out the article.
• “Hickup over the Littany,” which is about efforts to figure out what music from the past actually sounded like.  That’s probably impossible to do, but some people have dedicated their lives to it.  Again, music is a topic that appears often enough in the TOEFL reading section, but it is often ignored by people who make prep materials for the test.
• “Friend or Food,” an article about how European exploration of the new world influenced thinking about animals and pets.  A fascinating read.  History, as you know, is a topic often explored on the test.

The last question in each TOEFL reading passage is the “prose summary” question.  Here the test taker must pick three sentences (from six) that summarize the key points of the passage.  Students often ask if the order in which they select the sentences matter.  For instance, here’s a question posted to Reddit today:

As you know, the last type of question is a summary question in the reading section. I came across some comments saying that the order of the answers matters, is that really true? And if yes, what does it exactly mean? The alphabetical order (like C, D, then E answer) or the order according to the paragraphs (so the right order could be at first D, then E and C – because the information goes like that).

The answer is:  the order does not matter.  Your choices can be listed in any order.

For proof, here is a paragraph from the most recent Official Guide to to the TOEFL, published by ETS:

My wife and I enjoyed a holiday in Borneo this month.  And that means we spent many hours on an airplane.  And that means I read a few more issues from my endless stack of New Yorker magazines!

First up, I read the May 8, 2023 issue (yeah, I am still more than a year behind).  I enjoyed “The Fugitive Princess of Dubai” about how several princesses (daughters of the ruler) have attempted to flee that country.  It’s a weird, weird story.  But it really captured my attention.

Next, I read the June 5, 2023 issue.  That was the annual music issue!  An interesting story is “The Case for and Against Ed Sheeran.”  The premise here is that one of Sheeran’s songs sounds quite a lot like Marvin Gaye’s “Let’s Get It On.”  Did he steal from Mr. Gaye and co-writer Ed Townsend? That’s for the court to decide.  Some academic stuff about writing will strengthen your TOEFL muscles, perhaps.

Later, while sitting in the lobby of the luxurious Capital Residence Suites in Bandar Seri Begawan, I read a copy of the “Borneo Bulletin.”  It had a perfect TOEFLy article about the discovery of some hobbit-sized bones.  They connect to a scientific concept called “Island Dwarfism,” which I’m sure has already appeared on the test at least once.  I took a picture of the article for you!

Moving ever forward, I also found the time to read a proper non-fiction book.  It was “The Meritocracy Trap” by Daniel Markovits.  The central premise here is that work in America has changed in recent decades.  The author supposes that a small elite group of workers has monopolized profitable work, at great expense to themselves (who work way too hard) and the former middle class (who doesn’t have as much to do as before).  If true, I suspect that this trend will be accelerated as AI takes over more and more tasks.  I’ve even seen it in test prep – five overworked AI gurus can replace 100 teachers who formerly worked at a leisurely pace and enjoyed a nice work/life balance.  Highly recommended.

Finally, continuing along with the Norton Library Podcast, I read a modern English translation of “The Canterbury Tales.”  Look… I don’t recommend this to my TOEFL students, but the matching podcast episode could strengthen your academic listening skills.

More recommendations next month.  Maybe even a bit more airplane time, if I’m lucky.