What We Are Reading Today: The Life of Violet by Virginia Woolf

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Updated 11 October 2025
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What We Are Reading Today: The Life of Violet by Virginia Woolf

In 1907, eight years before she published her first novel, a 25-year-old Virginia Woolf drafted three interconnected comic stories chronicling the adventures of a giantess named Violet — a teasing tribute to Woolf’s friend Mary Violet Dickinson.

But it was only in 2022 that Woolf scholar Urmila Seshagiri discovered a final, revised typescript of the stories.

The typescript revealed that Woolf had finished this mock-biography, making it her first fully realized literary experiment and a work that anticipates her later masterpieces.


What We Are Reading Today: ‘Python Practice Lab’

Updated 07 December 2025
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What We Are Reading Today: ‘Python Practice Lab’

Authors: Angelica Lim and Victor Cheung

This classroom-tested, workbook-style text teaches basic programming by guiding readers to write Python programs that mimic interactive chatbots. 

Unlike textbooks with opaque examples explained in dry, monotonous code, Python Practice Lab engages readers immediately, with more than thirty motivating and hands-on examples. 

Readers learn by writing fun, working programs that gradually become more difficult as new concepts are introduced.