We write this post every year, but this year it has a little more meaning. I don’t know about you, but reading was the only thing that got me through this year. We love television, of course, but reading was the only activity absorbing enough to get me to stop doomscrolling. So here are the books that got us through quarantine–the best books we read during this cosmic joke of a year.
Continue reading →The New Yorker released the first English translation of Italo Calvino’s short story, “Adventure of a Skier.” We loved it, and wished that more New Yorker stories were as weighty yet enjoyable as this one.
The Onion‘s Spider-Man review (via Indiewire) hilariously objectified Tom Holland the way movie critic David Edelstein slobbered over Gal Godot. “Superbabe in the woods” will never be a thing.
Why is Jane Austen so popular? Big Data can give us the answer by analyzing her word choices. (via NYTimes)
Stephen Greenblatt wrote a powerful article for The New Yorker about how Shylock can teach tolerance even while exemplifying anti-Semitism.
Have you read Roxane Gay’s book Hunger yet? If you weren’t already planning on reading it, we dare you to read this adapted excerpt in The Guardian and not put it on your Amazon wish list.
Keith & the Movies gives a rave review to one of our favorite movies from this year, Jane Austen adaptation Love & Friendship.
“I can’t imagine anything a black man would want to be more right now than bulletproof,” says Mike Colter in an article on the Huffington Post, “Marvel’s Luke Cage is the Bulletproof Black Superhero We Need Right Now.”
Aaron Bady of The LA Review of Books calls HBO’s Westworld “the most consciously reflexive TV show I’ve ever seen.”
The New Yorker argues that the so-called “first conservative art show in America” inspired by Donald Trump is quite terrible from an artistic perspective, which, sure.
You know you want to read an epic fanwank from 2009 about the theory of management (supposedly) underlying The Office.
At the LA Review of Books, Aaron Hanlon passionately argues against the tired notion that humanities Ph. D.s are irrational for pursuing their degrees at all.
Adversion 