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Hi Scholar,

Last weekend, we made a trip to Hay-on-Wye, known as the National Book Town of Wales. Cynics might dismiss the title as little more than a marketing gimmick, but to us, it felt entirely deserved. We had never before encountered so many bookshops concentrated in one place, especially second-hand bookshops, which have become somewhat of a rarity these days.

Aside from the thrill of discovering and hunting, there was a particular pleasure in the slow, almost strenuous mental work of browsing for books without any algorithmic curation or endless “for you” feeds so typical of our digital world. And perhaps even more appealing was the sense of being among so many others who shared the same fervent love and respect for books. We also couldn’t help but notice the quiet reverence with which people treated the bookshops – whispering as though to preserve their sanctity, much as one does in a library.

Our brain food typically tends to be a sort of food for thought for the mind. But today, perhaps, it is more of a food for thought for the soul – for it is concerned not with matters of fact, but with matters of concern: generosity, kindness, and care, particularly in the context of review work. This concern arises from multiple observations within the academic milieu – across conferences, supervision meetings, peer review, and even on academic niches of social media platforms. It is the sense that while receiving reviews – comments, feedback, reports – can be incredibly developmental for one’s work, they can also be deeply destructive to the morale, spirit, and soul of the person being reviewed.