Tag: books
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Write thank-you notes to your favorite authors
Literally: find a favorite (not dead) author’s website and use their contact form to send them a message with specifics about why you like them. I’ve done this several times. The nice thing is they’re usually very accessible and responsive, maybe because they tend not to get the same kind of public praise as actors,…
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Media of the moment
An ongoing series The Arcadian Wild. Heard about this folk/bluegrass trio recently and got immediately obsessed with “Big Sky, MT”. Scream. Somehow I’d never seen this, though I was familiar enough with it based on its cultural ubiquity. Kinda wish the conclusion was a little tighter so it could be a perfect 90 minutes, but…
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Somehow I interviewed Glenn Frankel
One of the great things about running an online magazine like Cinema Sugar is that I can just decide that I want to try to interview someone, and then watch as that dream miraculously becomes reality. That happened recently in conjunction with Westerns Month. I remembered that I’d read two excellent books about westerns by…
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Bye bye, book bans
My adopted home state of Illinois has got 99 problems but now book bans ain’t one: Illinois has become the first state to legislate against the banning of books in public libraries, a practice that has been on the rise across the United States as conservatives look to suppress some books dealing with race, history…
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Media of the moment
An ongoing series Reality. Riveting recreation of the arrest of whistleblower Reality Winner, played by Sydney Sweeney. This was my first encounter of Sweeney and was thoroughly impressed. Just released on (HBO) Max. Queer Eye season 7. A quality hang as usual. Ted Lasso season 3. Hard to top season 1 but have enjoyed watching…
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The Church of ‘Bull Durham’
Really enjoyed reading Ron Shelton’s The Church of Baseball: The Making of Bull Durham, which I followed up with a rewatch of Bull Durham. He has such a wry, matter-of-fact style and perspective on his careers, most notably minor-league baseball player and movie writer-director. Some quotes… On being an athlete with intellectual curiosities: Around this…
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Lifeblood of reading
Alan Jacobs gets to the crux of the ongoing Hachette v. Internet Archive lawsuit, which pits publishers against libraries in the quest to determine who has the right to distribute digital books: Whatever forces are arrayed against libraries are also arrayed against readers. But publishing conglomerates don’t care about readers; they only care about customers.…
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Holy book bans
Perhaps unsurprisingly, I’m against book bans of all kinds. They’re the literary version of the Streisand Effect, not to mention small-minded and fascistic. And yet, I also can’t get enough of people petitioning to ban the Bible based on the same criteria used for other books, most recently in Utah for example. It’s both A+…
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My son’s media of the moment
A spinoff of an ongoing series Yoto. He uses his mini Yoto audio player every day, which is an excellent screen-free source of “edutainment”. He’s always ready to spout facts he’s learned from the many nonfiction cards he enjoys. (Some terms he’s learned and repeated: hominid, pyroclastic flow, and bioluminescence among others.) Current favorite cards…
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Media of the moment
An ongoing series Priestdaddy by Patricia Lockwood. Hilarious and insightful memoir/biography of Lockwood’s Catholic priest father and her experience living with her parents. Blankets by Craig Thompson. A stunning graphic novel memoir about small-town life, religion, young love, winter, and so many more things. The Climb. An excellent indie film told through episodic, slice-of-life sequences…
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Media of the moment
An ongoing series Athena. Come for the gangbusters opening 10 minutes—stay for the tense, heart-pounding drama of Children of Men-meets-The Battle of Algiers in a French apartment complex. (Streaming on Netflix.) The End of Education by Neil Postman. My third Postman book after Amusing Ourselves to Death and Technopoly. Would probably rank it below those…
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In praise of microhistories
Clive Thompson on the appeal of microhistories: When you drill down deeply into a single subject, you nearly always realize: Holy crap, this is more complex than I’d have thought. This is true of just about any subject, right? And it’s exactly the opposite feeling you get from a “big” book, which strives to make…
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Live Text, Reader View, No-Signup Tools
Three techie things I’m loving. 1. Live Text Live Text, available in iOS 15 and beyond, feels not far off from magical. The ability to copy text from photos or through the camera app has completely transformed my book notetaking process as a print-book partisan but digital notetaker. I can just point the camera at…
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Media of the moment
An ongoing series Barbarian. Despite being a big baby about horror films, I went to see this opening weekend when I came into some unexpected free time. To say it’s surprising in many ways is a gross understatement. The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power. Thus far it’s managing to strike the right…
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Our Art, Our Lives: On ‘Salty’ and ‘The Last Movie Stars’
When we make our art, we are also making our lives. And I’m sure that the reverse is equally true. That line is from Look & See, the beautiful documentary about the life and work of Wendell Berry. I think about it often, and I thought about it again recently as I feasted on two…
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Media of the moment
An ongoing series Blood, Sweat & Chrome: The Wild Story of Mad Max: Fury Road by Kyle Buchanan. An excellent oral history of one of the greatest films ever made. One of the many tidbits: George Miller’s first choice to play Max was Heath Ledger, which I now can’t stop thinking about. The Northman. A…