Last Christmas, my brother, presumably because he’d had to sit through impromptu lecture after impromptu lecture from me about The Wire, bought me three novels written by authors who have contributed to the show. I just finished reading all three and thought I’d share my thoughts.
The books, in chronological order, are A Drink Before the War by Dennis […]
A full-scale documentary-style film has actually been made about policy debate. I haven’t seen the film yet, so I don’t really have much to say about it, except that if you want to get a feel for what the activity’s actually like, watch the trailer. It’s at www.debatemovie.com.
From reading one review, I am slightly suspicious, […]
I am secretly a big Michael Moore fan. Whenever I talk about his films with other people, I add in the requisite demurals, studied skepticism about his methodology, and so on, but really, deep down, I love it. I think what I like best is just his willingness to stick fingers in the eyes of […]
In short, our gentleman became so caught up in reading that he spent his nights reading from dusk to dawn and his days reading from sunrise to sunset, and so with too little sleep and too much reading his brains dried up, causing him to lose his mind.
Finally setting aside Woody Allen’s advice from Annie […]
Last week, fittingly I suppose, I spent an extra day of my life attempting to return from Los Angeles to Chicago by plane. I therefore had to pick up a new novel, and then another. I had wanted to read Don DeLillo’s newest, Falling Man. Upon finishing it, I grabbed Terrorist by John Updike. A couple of […]
As the first bit of summer reading I’ve actually finished, I thought I’d make a note of it.
A few months ago, I bought “The Complete Works of Sherlock Holmes” at a used book store. It was a nice old hardcover, with every single novel (4) and short story (56). I have to say, […]
According to today’s New York Times, in Iraq we’ve decided to start arming Sunni insurgents who we think can work against Al-Qaeda tyepes. Am I the only one that just wonders WTF!!! I mean did we think NONE of this through before we invaded this country? The Sunnis were supposed to be […]
Okay, let’s get things rolling again…
I’ve watched the first two episodes of “Season 6B” of The Sopranos. I don’t fully understand why it’s not just “Season 7″, considering that “6A” was at least 10 episodes, but I guess it’s not.
Anyhow - my thoughts on the new episodes. It seems that, at some level, […]
… so we made it all the way up to chapter 4 without the students getting me fired…
Well, I suppose that’s not really the issue with the opening chapters of Ulysses - the real problem is that they’re very, very hard to understand for first-time readers, especially chapter 3 (”Proteus”). What the first-time reader needs […]
Politics being rather boring at the moment, and having run out of clever observations to make about The Wire, I’ve been thrown back towards one of my great loves…
… reading James Joyce.
[Before reading on - read (or re-read) the opening chapter of Ulysses - it’s right here] - if this works out, I’ll make this […]