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Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup by John Carreyrou Alfred A. Knopf, 2018 Hardcover, 352 pagesBad Blood, the true story of the rise and collapse of a medical device start-up in Silicon Valley that blew through $900 million dollars on a product that never worked, was on many “Best Of” book […]
On the centenary of the end of First World War, Academy Award-winner Peter Jackson (The Lord of the Rings trilogy) presents the World Premiere of an extraordinary new work showing the Great War as you have never seen it. This unique film brings into high definition the human face of the First World War as […]
Big Sur, California Highway 1, just north of Garrapata Creek Bridge: 12 January 2019 So that when later I heard people say “Oh Big Sur must be beautiful!” I gulp to wonder why it has the reputation of being beautiful above and beyond its fearfulness, its Blakean groaning roughrock Creation throes, those vistas when you […]
And now for something completely different… I’ve been slowly working my way through The Elements by Euclid and recreating the propositions. What a strange, nerdy thing to do, right? I’m not completely sure why I decided to do this, but I’m thoroughly enjoying it. At the rate I’m going, it will take until the middle […]
And in 1790, he [Radishchev] wrote, anonymously, one of the immortal works of Russian literature: Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow. Nationalistic, insightful, mindful of the human condition, and understanding of the forces of human history, Radishchev envisioned a better world: His book was both a document and a pamphlet, the narrative of a simple […]
S. N. Jaffe has an article at the War on the Rocks site titled “The Risks and Rewards of Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War“ that should be helpful to anyone attempting to read or write about the war. Jaffe is the author of Thucydides on the Outbreak of War: Character and Contest, a study […]
My schedule has been overbooked for some time now, but the last few months I have made it a priority to focus on posting notes on books after I finish certain tasks. Unfortunately, most days I only get some of those tasks done, leaving no time to work on posts. In the next few weeks, […]
Last week I decided to take the long way back to Atlanta for my plane ride home. It turned out to be a meditative trip. Driving across the Florida panhandle, from the Alabama border to Tallahassee, allowed me to see some of the devastation from Hurricane Michael, which had hit the area a few weeks […]
The changes wrought by death are in themselves so sharp and final, and so terrible and melancholy in their consequences, that the thing stands alone in man’s experience, and has no parallel upon earth. It outdoes all other accidents because it is the last of them. Sometimes it leaps suddenly upon its victims, like a […]
We had a busy weekend, but the highlight for me was seeing “One Man Romeo and Juliet” by Shelby Bond. He has performed it at many spots around the world, and hopefully you’ll get a chance to see it live. There is a lot of audience participation, and despite the title the kids had a […]
The other major find yesterday was a “new” used copy of La Regenta, retiring the pictured copy being held together by rubber bands. While I have many fond memories of piecing together the old copy (literally) while reading it, I’m hoping this one survives re-readings. Which I hope to do soon. First, though, I’ll need […]
Yesterday I was in a used bookstore and they had several Library of America books in good shape, ranging from $8 to $12. I wanted to pick up several of them, but a few of the books were by authors that had multiple volumes in the series. A couple of them I knew I didn’t […]
There’s no way to summarize California in just one picture, but this one covers a few aspects. This picture was taken a couple of hours before sunset on August 5th at Manresa State Beach, a few miles south of Santa Cruz. There’s a church holding baptisms in the ocean while surfers are enjoying chest high […]
Later this month (at least in some locations) you can choose the form of madness you wish to see: On Thursday, September 27, 2018 in select theaters is King Lear with Ian McKellen. The blurb at National Theatre Live: Broadcast live from London’s West End, see Ian McKellen’s ‘extraordinarily moving portrayal’ (Independent) of King Lear […]
We’ve had Shout! Factory TV as a mainstay on our TV for a while but a current listing almost escaped my notice, so I wanted to pass it on to anyone else interested. Currently there are a few episodes from the Fridays TV series from their first season on ABC in 1980. I completely missed […]
In looking up something this morning I ran across the September 9, 1979 New York Times article Anthony Hopkins: ‘Acting Is Like Being in a Public Confessional’, which had been behind a paywall when I was watching and researching the actor starring in Jean-Paul Sartre’s play Kean. I had posted a ‘bleg’ for a copy […]
The O. Henry Prize Stories 2018 Edited by Laura Furman (Anchor) The O. Henry Prize Stories 2018 contains twenty prize-winning stories chosen from thousands published in literary magazines over the previous year. The winning stories come from a mix of established writers and emerging voices, and are uniformly breathtaking. They are accompanied by essays from […]
I was happy to get the perfect birthday gift this year—Vladislav Vančura’s The End of the Old Times (Konec starých časů). I have been looking for a copy to call my own since I read the book about 4½ years ago. My comments on the book are here. It’s a wonderful novel, enjoyable at both […]
The Gargoyle Hunters by John Freeman Gill Alfred A. Knopf, 2017 Hardcover, 352 pages The city had a rich, complex life long before you ever came along and started having your own personal little responses to it, Griffin. It’s bigger than you. … The lives lived by generations of New Yorkers in and around a […]
Illustration by Ragni Svensson From Platonov’s Chevengur: The Ambivalent Space by Natalia Poltavtseva The May 2018 edition of e-flux contains the Andrei Platonov story “Immortality,” translated by Lisa Hayden and Robert Chandler. It is a fairly simple but moving story of the railway station chief Emmanuil Semyonovich Levin tirelessly working to keep trains running on […]