Stream of Reading (Prepare to be Forwarded) – An Archive of What I'm Reading
If you’re considering picking up Anna Kendrick’s memoir, Scrappy Little Nobody, which was released on November 15, and you are not one who loves precious self-deprecation, then let me save you some time: Don’t do it. But if you truly must, at least skip the hardback and skim it on your Kindle to spare yourself…
Books, ‘As Close to Immortality as the Written Word Can Expect’ (Dreamstime image: Yulan) A Firing Line conversation with Philip Terzian Philip Terzian, the literary editor of The Weekly Standard since 2005, has become one of the deans of the book-reviewing trade. He is much admired for his ability to make taste and…
On Tuesday night I felt briefly the old urge to find a book to deal with hard times, and took The Berlin Stories off the shelf. As is so often the case lately, the tug of my phone was stronger, and I left the book sitting on the floor after leafing through its pages….
Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury’s cautionary tale about book censorship, was written as a response to the paranoid political climate of the McCarthy era, but its message apparently still hasn’t sunk in. It’s 2016, and some kids still aren’t allowed to read the book without a permission slip from their parents. Daily Show head writer Daniel Radosh…
Rebecca Onion wrote an interesting essay about immersing herself in survivalist “prepper” fiction. (The gateway drug was apocalyptic fiction, so, uh, I might be at risk.) Here’s an illustrative sample: In more than one of these books, the prepper encounters people who expect him to share the resources he’s planned ahead to store. […] In…
For over a year after Love Me Back came out I woke up every day with this loop in my head: I should write. But I need money. If I write something I can sell it and I’ll have money. But I need money now. If I had money now, I could calm down…
There’s nothing wrong with being a bureaucrat. So you’re a tiny cog in a machine made of abstract rules, paperwork, and the broken dreams of those who do not understand either. So what? You’re just misunderstood. Without you, nobody would know where to file their TPS reports. Nobody would even know what a TPS report…
For those who want to understand the social dynamics of the Donald Trump revolution — and why it is almost certain to fail — look no further than the ongoing kerfuffle over the Hugos, an annual set of awards for excellence in sci-fi and fantasy, which have been under attack by a bunch of embittered reactionaries….
The Harry Potter books almost have a complete world built in, thanks to seven books, several tie-ins, and, for better or for worse, whatever author J.K. Rowling decided to introduce in Pottermore. Despite all the detail that has gone into crafting his universe, there are still some things that can’t be accounted for—things that keep…
His Wild Cards series is getting adapted for TV. Source: EW In the latest achievement in his quest to do absolutely anything other than finish writing The Winds of Winter, author George R. R. R. Martin has announced a new TV deal for his “Wild Cards” anthology series with Universal Cable Productions. After describing his 32…