I finished Paul Krugman’s Conscience of a Liberal yesterday. In summary, the book is a statement of Krugman’s views on a modern society’s optimal economic setup, the fact that he believes that the United States of the 1950s–1970s was much closer to that setup than it was before or has been since, and his theories on how that state was reached, lost, and can be reached again.
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I went to see this tonight (yes, when I should have been editing). It was excellent, and while I can’t claim that it had a definitive Coen Brothers mark (because I haven’t yet worked out what that is), it definitely stood out as “different” somehow.
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The Pale Blue Eye is a historical thriller set in 1830s America, at West Point Military Academy. A murder there brings a retired police constable, Augustus Landor, back to work, and in the course of his duties he becomes friendly with one of the cadets—Edgar Allan Poe.
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I recently watched the first season of HBO’s Rome. Like most of the series that HBO produces, the quality of the production is extremely high, including the acting, directing, and writing.
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I loved Guns, Germs, and Steel, which I consider an extremely important book for understanding how the world came to be the way it is. Collapse is more important for understanding where we may be going.
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On the Grannan family’s recommendation, I recently read William Bernstein’s The Four Pillars of Investing. It’s really good, and I see no reason not to recommend it to more or less everyone.
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So the good guys in this movie are the ones who kill off newborn males if they’re “defective” in any way? Hmm…
Despite being a Frank Miller fan, I’ve never read the 300 comic. It just didn’t seem as if it would have enough to hold my interest (plot is rather important to me). Seeing the movie version hasn’t changed my mind.
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I’m still waiting for Powers 10 to come out—it may be out, but the local comic store I go to (Comix Experience on Divisadero) hasn’t gotten it in yet. So I got some other things instead.
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The Malazan Book of the Fallen is a series of fantasy novels by Steven Erikson (and possibly also by Ian Cameron Esslemont). I started reading it way back in late 2000/early 2001.
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So this is only about six years late…
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Closer, closer to this millennium…
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Century Rain doesn’t take place in the same universe as the other Alastair Reynolds books I’ve read (Redemption Ark, Revelation Space, Chasm City). This universe posits an Earth abandoned by humans after a nanotechnological disaster.
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Slightly late, but getting closer… soon I might reach books I read this millennium.
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God’s Playground is Norman Davies’ ambitious history of Poland.
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Penelope Lively’s The Photograph Starts off very promisingly, drawing the reader into a tale of a man who finds a compromising photo of his dead wife while looking for old research materials.
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I’ve read a ton of comics in the last week or so, and some of them have been amazing.
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Just like the last one, this is somewhat late… although almost a year less so. Because I stopped keeping track of the books I read for most of that year, this list of recommendations is going to be rather short.
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I might not watch television per se, but I do watch shows on DVD, and this is a list of my favorites.
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Okay, so this is a little late… but 1996 is the first year I kept (sporadic) track of what I read, mainly during the time I was living in Berlin. This is some commentary (on the books from that year that I can still remember…).
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Last night I finally finished Herman Hesse’s The Glass Bead Game, after fourteen days of slogging through it. It contributed to his winning the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1946, and has a host of admirers (as seen in the Amazon reviews, for example). I couldn’t stand it.
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I went to see this about ten days ago and it was fantastic. Raymond Chandler noir in a high school. Completely amazing dialogue. One of the best movies I’ve seen in a long time. Seth and I were both stunned by how great it was. Go see it.
(It’s a Wonderful Life) x (-1) = The Butterfly Effect