Chris Barsanti's Blog, page 172
May 30, 2014
Department of Weekend Reading: May 30, 2014
Where authoritarian nationalism is the name of the game.
Facebook now eavesdropping on everything being said around you.
And the South shall indeed rise (or is it fall?) again.
This is what Virginia Woolf looks like in a beard and turban.
Godzilla, he just keeps getting taller; so do skyscrapers.
In muchof America, native-born people have fewer opportunities than the foreign-born.
Going to Sonic, AR-15 at the ready.
On the front lines with the dogs of war.
Print and read: science fiction doesn’t just...
May 29, 2014
New in Theaters: ‘We Are the Best!’
Liv LeMoyne, Mira Barkhammar, and Mira Grosin in ‘We Are the Best!’ (Courtesy of Magnolia Pictures)
A trio of disaffected 1980s Swedish punks form a mostly tuneless band with one greatshould-have-been-a-hit song in Lukas Moodysson’s We Are the Best! It opens in limited release tomorrow after a batch of well-received festival dates.
My review is at Film Racket:
It’s assumed that the thorny flowers of punk need rocky, hostile ground to take root. Think of how the gone-to-seed, junkie-littered, cl...
Writer’s Corner: Dublin Writers Festival, Day 1
The annual Dublin Writers Festival, which just concluded this past Sunday, was an enjoyably low-key but nevertheless enthusiastic affair, mixing up writing workshops with talks and Q&As with authors and the occasional performance piece.
I covered a few days of it forPopMatters; here’s part:
This is Dublin, after all, which proudly carries its status as UNESCO City of Literature, and where the odd plaque on an undistinguished townhouse near St. Stephen’s Green reminds you that Bram Stoker lived...
May 27, 2014
New in Books: ‘Capital in the Twenty-First Century’
The most curiousblockbuster book of 2014 has easily been Thomas Piketty’sCapital in the Twenty-First Century. Piketty’s a French economist who wrote a nearly 700-page book about the Western world’s history (and probablenear-future) of economic inequality.
My review is atPopMatters:
[Piketty]thinks it’s actually a good thing that economists aren’t treated with as much respect in France as they are in the United States. This refreshing humility doesn’t keep the book from over-relying on a few poi...
May 25, 2014
Quote of the Day: Celebrity ‘Journalism’
From the always perspicacious P.J. O’Rourke, who wrote recently on the through-the-looking-glass experience that is reading an entire issue ofPeople, or evenUS Weekly:
The formula for celebrity journalism is to mix schadenfreude with celebration at about the ratio of gin to vermouth in a dry martini.
May 23, 2014
Department of Weekend Reading: May 23, 2014
No more drinks on your commute: The end of the storied bar car.
Coming soon: more polarization!
Kids don’t read because their parents don’t: “We’re surrounded by an implicit anti-book agenda, and still we wonder why kids don’t read books.“
Steve Albini’s letter to Nirvana: “I have a nice 24-track studio in my house. Fugazi werejust there, you can ask them how they rate it.”
Kara Walker’s massive Marvelous Sugar Baby sculpture at the old Domino sugar factory.
Your NASA photo of the week.
Today’s bab...
May 21, 2014
Quote of the Day: Office Edition
(Library of Congress)
Dilbert creator Scott Adams, who learned something about office culture while working in a cubicle for nearly two decades, onwho’s writing about business and the office:
Most business books are written by consultants and professors who haven’t spent much time in a cubicle.That’s like writing a first-hand account of the experience of the Donner party based on the fact that you’ve eaten beef jerky. Me, I’ve gnawed an ankle or two.
(h/t: Jill Lepore)
May 18, 2014
Readers’ Corner: The Death (and Life) of the Novel
U.S. Government Printing Office, 1942 (Library of Congress)
Point / counterpoint in the latest round of hand-wringing over the long rumored death of the novel.
First, Will Self in The Guardian, “Thenovel is dead (this time it’s for real)“:
I believe theserious novel will continue to be written and read, but it will be an art form on a par with easel painting or classical music: confined to a defined social and demographic group, requiring a degree of subsidy, a subject for historical scholarship...
May 16, 2014
Department of Weekend Reading: May 16, 2014
Trying to get a meeting with a professor? First make sure you’re the right race and gender.
More guns but fewer gun owners.
Orwell, war,and margarine.
The original Washington Monument.
How Hillary Clinton’s memoirreminds one reviewer ofVeep.
The bad news: sea levels will rise up to a dozen feet; the “good” news: it’ll take a while to happen; also, keep an eye on Greenland.
Print and read: Don’t call them union-busters.
May 14, 2014
Reader’s Corner: The Murderer in the Book Club
Gregg Arlington, WPA poster, c. 1936 (image courtesy of the Library of Congress)
Book clubs are great and all, but occasionally there’s that one member who’s just a little … off. Has too much sauvignon blanc, spoils the ending for those people who haven’t finished the book yet, and so on.
In hisgreat and highly helpful piece for The Morning News,“Eat, Pray, Murder“, Matt Seidel points out somecharacteristicsthat could signalpotential homicidal maniacs in the club.
A few of Seidel’s more helpful...
