Studio Linda Liukas
Letter

No. 114 — It’s Books, Darling ⫶ Gingerbread Playground ⫶ La Manche to London

babies worship unknown goods

My name is Linda. I write a bi-weekly newsletter about computer science, childhood, and culture.

The underwater tunnel that connects Calais to Folkestone runs beneath the English Channel, which the French call la Manche. In just two and a half hours, it takes me from Paris to London and it’s honestly one of the best tricks living in this city has to offer. Poof, I’m back in my childhood England.

Every time I return to London, I realise how much I’ve missed the bookshops. Not the algorithmic “you might also like” rows, but the REAL tables: loosely connected piles of books that share a feeling rather than a genre, something only a bookseller’s hunch can see.

1.

I’ll share the full list of everything I read in 2025 in my upcoming Year in Review, but since this is peak book-buying season, here are a few small constellations/recommendations/tables from this year’s reading – all books I genuinely enjoyed. (Some linked books lead to Bookshop.org, and I earn a small commission each time someone uses the link to purchase a book.)

Technology writing that made me smile in 2025:

Books that belong to a a bookshelf in the New Global Ministry of Infrastructure (formed sometime in 2045):

Lab notes on making a human:

Long, knotty stories about families (my favorite genre!)

Finnish favorites in 2025

Books about looking carefully

Essays and other pilgrim books

Reading, memory and language

For kids, creatures, and other companions

Stories of containers:

2.

“In a collection of essays, Echolalias: On the Forgetting of Language, Daniel Heller-Roazen reproduces a story about Abū Nuwās, the great eighth-century Arabic poet.

When first setting out, the young Abū Nuwās approached a local master, Khalaf al-Ahmar, and asked permission to compose.

A much later biographer tells the tale:

Khalaf said: “I refuse to let you make a poem until you memorize a thousand passages of ancient poetry, including chants, odes, and occasional verses.”

So Abū Nuwās disappeared; and after a long while, he came back and said, “I’ve done it.” “Recite them,” said Khalaf. So, Abū Nuwās began, and got through the bulk of the verses over a period of several days. Then he asked again for permission to compose poetry.

Said Khalaf, “I refuse, unless you forget all one thousand parts as completely as if you had never learned them.” “That’s too difficult,” said Abū Nuwās. “I’ve memorized them quite thoroughly!” “I refuse to let you compose until you forget them,” said Khalaf.

So Abū Nuwās disappeared into a monastery and remained in solitude for a period of time until he forgot all the lines he’d learned. He went back to Khalaf and said, “I’ve forgotten them so thoroughly it’s as if I never memorized anything at all.” Khalaf then said, “Now go compose!”” - Lewis Hyde, A Primer for Forgetting: Getting Past the Past

Somehow this rhymes with Dave Friedman’s Where large language models break. The old Arab master wants his student to read a thousand poems and then forget them so completely that what remains is not quotation but style, a space of possibilities. Contemporary models don’t do this. As Friedman writes, “When the two AIs reached the limits of their world models, they, too, began producing language that remained elegant but weightless, rhythmic but unmoored, all motion and no locomotion. (…) Beckett is what interpolation looks like after it loses the ability to connect to the world.” Beckett!!

3.

The ultimate compliment for an architect: a kid turned our Ruoholahti Computer Playground into a gingerbread house for the Helsingin Sanomat competition. Iconic!

You can vote until Dec 12 here.

4.

Recently I fell down a small internet rabbit hole thanks to an old Dwarf Fortress bug report that read, with complete sincerity: “babies are born worshipping unknown gods.” I love that we live in a world where a bug tracker, of all places, can cough up a sentence like this. More DwarfFort bugs here.

5.

At Hatchard’s I was waiting for B. who had vanished into the the first and modern editions section. An older husband was already exasperated: I’ve been calling you several times, he sighed down the stairwell. His wife emerged, unbothered, brushing past him: Oh, it’s books, darling, as if that settled not only the argument but the entire question of how to live.

Fitzcarraldo Editions has a new The First Decade Collection, a limited edition series of ten hardbacks. I’m eyeing Dillon & Ernaux! I wish more publishers understood this particular joy.