Backpack — Stella EllerveeSkip to content
Stella Ellervee

Backpack

Things I like, am reading, or am currently interested in — good conversation-starters if we ever meet.

Books

  • Book cover for "How Rich Countries Got Rich... and Why Poor Countries Stay Poor" by Erik Reinert, showing a Venetian palace above a scene of poverty.

    How Rich Countries Got Rich… and Why Poor Countries Stay Poor

    Erik Reinert's history of economic development, arguing that today's rich countries got that way through deliberate industrial policy — not the free trade they now recommend to everyone else.

  • Book cover for "The Maths That Made Us" by Michael Brooks, a red cover with icons of a pyramid, rocket, and Vitruvian Man.

    The Maths That Made Us

    Michael Brooks traces how the invention of numbers — zero, negatives, algebra, statistics — reshaped civilisation.

  • Back cover of "Blood Relations" by Chris Knight, showing review blurbs and a hand holding the book.

    Blood Relations

    Chris Knight's theory that human culture emerged from a social and political revolution initiated by women, built from evolutionary biology and social anthropology.

  • Book cover for "The Unthinkable" by Amanda Ripley, white and red with the subtitle "Who Survives When Disaster Strikes—and Why".

    The Unthinkable

    Amanda Ripley's reporting on how people actually behave in disasters, and what that reveals about surviving one.

Entertainment

Adventures

  • Hiking-ish

    A loose photo dump from treks, hikes, and expeditions — shooting range and stone balancing included, because apparently that counts too.

    • Stella in a black lace dress, firing a handgun at an indoor shooting range stacked with tyres.
    • A group walking away across a grassy field at dusk, trees and clouds on the horizon.
    • Three hikers walking down a dirt forest road in autumn, trees turning yellow on either side.
    • Stella on cross-country skis on a snowy road, wearing a large backpack and holding ski poles.
    • A group of ten people posing in a snowy field, photographed from below by someone in a blue beanie in the foreground.
    • A woman in a red fleece and snowshoes standing on a bog under an overcast sky, ski poles slung over her shoulders.
    • A hiker asleep sitting against a tall wooden lookout tower post, backpack still on, in a sunlit pine forest.
    • A woman in a pink dress climbing a rocky sea cliff, with the coastline and open water below.
    • Stella in a black dress balancing a stone on a large boulder, flanked by two tall stone stacks on a rocky shoreline.
    • View from the ground of knees and a lake at golden hour, a birch tree and a fallen branch reflected in the water.
    • A wooden boardwalk trail winding through a bog at sunrise, a few pine trees scattered across the moss.
    • A close-up selfie of a hiker in a knit beanie with a loaded backpack, standing on a sunlit forest trail.
    • Two hikers with tall backpacks walking away down a sunlit forest trail, the sun flaring directly overhead.
    • Illustration of Pepe the Frog as an armoured knight, sitting by a campfire outside a ruined castle.

Plain Markdown version →

Welcome adventurer!

Sit down by the fire for a while. What brings you this far out?