~Vladimir Nabokov, Pale Fire
Is reading an effective therapy strategy? Many experts think so
The Best Book Covers of 2019 Book Riot – “It’s the season of best of lists, and with the bonus of this being the end of a decade, we’re being treated to double the number of best of lists this year. What shouldn’t be overlooked among those lists are the incredible book covers that graced shelves this year. Works of art in and of themselves, it’s an outdated belief that we shouldn’t judge a book by its cover. The reality is we do and that we should. In honor of that, let’s take a peek at the best book covers of 2019. Finding information about the designers and artists behind book covers isn’t always possible. I’ve done my best to track down that information. In places where that is missing, any leads would be appreciated…”
Judgment day: what makes a book a good read?
In the spirit of full disclosure, and because any reading is better than none, here are some of the books I read this year.
Summer Reading 2019: 10 short stories by 10 big authors
Ten authors share moving, real-life reflections on an aspect of the year just gone.
This is why the internet is so excited about the trailer for Promising Young Woman
A new film from Australian Margot Robbie's production company is turning heads around the globe, and promising to subvert the narrative of "nice guys" revenge thriller style.
IN THE FUTURE WE’LL ALL BE RUSSIAN SPIES FOR FIFTEEN MINUTES: Steele Dossier Peddled Insane Conspiracy Theory That American Jews Were Secret Russian Spies.
IN THE FUTURE WE’LL ALL BE RUSSIAN SPIES FOR FIFTEEN MINUTES: Steele Dossier Peddled Insane Conspiracy Theory That American Jews Were Secret Russian Spies.
The New Yorker Puzzles
& Games Department
How can we make sense
of an era that we struggle even to remember? Here’s an actual test to get you
started. Sift through the rubble of the past 10 years, and see if any of it
looks familiar. Has Australian TV found an answer to Scandi noir?
With The Kettering Incident and The Gloaming, Victoria Madden is changing the way that global TV audiences view Australia.
Hollywood often takes dramatic license with movies based on true
stories. Happens
all the time.
But the new Clint Eastwood film, “Richard Jewell,” appears to
have gone too far. The film is about the media frenzy around Jewell, the
security guard wrongly accused of planting a bomb at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics.
Kathy Scruggs was the real-life reporter at the Atlanta
Journal-Constitution who reported that Jewell was under investigation. In the
movie, Scruggs, played by actress Olivia Wilde, sleeps with an FBI agent,
played by actor Jon Hamm, to get the story.
There
is no evidence that Scruggs slept with anyone to get the story.
Furthermore, Scruggs can’t defend herself. She died in 2001 at the age of 42
from an overdose of prescription pain pills for a chronic back problem.
The Journal-Constitution sent a letter to Warner Bros., Eastwood
and screenwriter Billy Ray, saying, “We hereby demand that you immediately
issue a statement publicly acknowledging that some events were imagined for
dramatic purposes and artistic license and dramatization were used in the
film’s portrayal of events and characters. We further demand that you add a
prominent disclaimer to the film to that effect.”
There’s also the threat of a lawsuit.
The film is set to be released nationally on Friday. As one
observer said on Twitter, you would think a movie about Richard Jewell would be
more careful about taking liberties with a real person’s life story. Or, as AJC
editor Kevin G. Riley told Variety, “The film literally makes things up and
adds to misunderstandings about how serious news organizations work. It’s
ironic that the film commits the same sins that it accuses the media of
committing.”
Riley
told IndieWire, “Perpetuating false tropes about female reporters and
journalism itself shouldn’t go unchallenged in a time when our profession finds
itself under almost constant attack.”
Wilde also is taking heat for her portrayal. In defending the
plot, she
told Deadline that she did an “extraordinary amount of research about Kathy
Scruggs” and talked to Scruggs’ friends and colleagues. But Scruggs’
brother said Wilde never reached out to him or any of Scruggs' close
friends.
Poynter senior vice president Kelly
McBride tweeted:
“For all the talk in Hollywood of making progress on
women's issue, this is a real setback.”
There’s no question that what happened to Jewell was wrong, and
the media played a part in that. (Read
this Henry Schuster apology piece in The Washington Post.)
Ultimately, that has nothing to do with the portrayal of Scruggs
in this movie. Accusing a reporter of trading sex for scoops is an awful
accusation, not far from plagiarism or fabrication. To do so without any proof
is appalling.
Warner Bros. put out a statement Monday night, firing back at
the AJC: “It is unfortunate and the ultimate irony that The Atlanta
Journal-Constitution, having been a part of the rush to judgment of Richard
Jewell, is now trying to malign our filmmakers and cast. ‘Richard Jewell’
focuses on the real victim, seeks to tell his story, confirm his innocence and
restore his name.”
The
New York Times notes that a disclaimer at the end of the film says it was
based on “actual historical events,” and “Dialogue and certain events and
characters contained in the film were created for the purposes of
dramatization.”
But that disclaimer hardly excuses saying an actual person did
something as unethical as sleeping with a source just for the sake of
“dramatization.”
— THE LONESOME IRISHMAN — SCORSESE’S OPUS SHOWS US THE SUPERFICIALITY OF ANTI-BOOMER POLITICS AND THE TRAGIC LIMITATIONS OF THE SUPPOSED GOLDEN AGE
There is an old parable I have often been told. It goes something like this: A man is walking on the road alone. Unaware of where he is or where he is going he finds himself lost and ends up at the bottom of a deep pit. The man begins to cry for help. Along comes a doctor. The man yells up, “Hey doc, can you help me out?” The doctor writes a prescription, throws it down the hole and moves on. Then comes a priest. The man asks, “Father, I’m stuck down here. Can you help me?” The priest scribbles some prayers on a piece of paper, throws them into the pit, and moves on. The man continues to yell. Then along comes a friend. The man yells up, “Hey, Gus, it’s me. Can you help me out?” And the friend jumps in the hole. The man looks at his friend and says, “Are you stupid? Now we’re both down here.” The friend says, “Yeah, but I’ve been down here before and I know the way out.”— THE LONESOME IRISHMAN — SCORSESE’S OPUS SHOWS US THE SUPERFICIALITY OF ANTI-BOOMER POLITICS AND THE TRAGIC LIMITATIONS OF THE SUPPOSED GOLDEN AGE
Getting Out of the Hole
Speaking of cooking, I couldn’t find a good list of the year’s best cookbooks, but I’ll update this if Eater or someone else publishes one. (see update below)
Elena Ferrante’s Literary Success Has Changed The Role Of Women Writers In Italy
Her ascent, and the rediscovery of some of the last century’s great Italian female writers, has encouraged a new wave of women and shaken the country’s literary establishment. Women writers here are winning prestigious prizes, getting translated and selling copies. Their achievements have set off a wider debate in Italy about what constitutes literature in a country where self-referential virtuosity is often valued over storytelling, emotional resonance and issues like sexism or gender roles. –The New York Times
415 Hours of East German Home Movies from 1947-1990
IS THERE ANYTHING IT CAN’T DO? Alcohol may have saved humanity from extinction, scientists claim
I made an effort to read more books in 2019 and mostly succeeded (I think). But there are so many good books out there I couldn’t get to, which is at once both panic-inducing (OMG, the endless bedside stack of books) and exciting (so much to look forward to reading). It’s in this spirit that I went through a bunch of end-of-the-year books lists to pull out some of our collective favorite books of the year for 2019.
The NY Times has published two lists so far: The 10 Best Books of 2019 and 100 Notable Books of 2019 (I think their critics’ picks are forthcoming). Ben Lerner’s third novel, The Topeka School, is on both lists and almost all of the others linked here as well. I read Lerner’s 10:04 a few years ago and really enjoyed it. Ibram X. Kendi’s How to Be an Antiracist made the longer list and is on my to-read-soon list as well.
As many others did, The Times Literary Supplement recommended The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming by David Wallace-Wells.
On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong made the Washington Post’s Best Books of 2019. I pick up Vuong’s book every time I see it on a bookstore shelf…one of these days I’m going to actually buy & read it.
Book Riot’s list of the Best Books of 2019 includes Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle by Emily Nagoski & Amelia Nagoski. Their talk at XOXO 2019 about the stress cycle was my favorite — it seemed at times they were talking directly at me.
In their Best Books of 2019 list, Kirkus Reviews highlighted Exhalation by Ted Chiang and Internment by Samira Ahmed.
Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Nobel Prize winner Olga Tokarczuk is on Time magazine’s 10 Best Fiction Books of 2019 list.
Library Journal has a number of lists in many categories — Chris Ware’s Rusty Brown and Mira Jacob’s Good Talk appear on their graphic novels list.
The lists from Goodreads always present a broader view of what’s being enjoyed by readers. See for instance: Most Popular Books Published In 2019 and Best Books of 2019. On the list of books for kids are Sulwe by Lupita Nyong’o and Yoon Ha Lee’s Dragon Pearl.
Three Women by Lisa Taddeo and Taffy Brodessner-Aker’s Fleishman Is in Trouble both made the New York Public Library’s list of Best Books of 2019.
Two lists from Five Books: Best Science Books of 2019 and Best Math Books of 2019. Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men by Caroline Criado Perez topped the first list and Infinite Powers: The Story of Calculus by Steven Strogatz made both lists. I wrote about Perez’s book back in February.
The Guardian selected the best science, nature and ideas books of 2019. Among those mentioned are Greta Thunberg’s No One Is Too Small to Make a Difference(which oddly didn’t make many other lists) and The Age of Surveillance Capitalism by Shoshana Zuboff.
The Guardian also asked a number of writers and celebs for their 2019 favorites. Hilary Mantel highlighted Olive, Again by Elizabeth Strout, comparing the author favorably with Jane Austen. Anand Giridharadas picked Jia Tolentino’s Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion, the only book on any of these lists in which I am quoted (as far as I know). Yotam Ottolenghi liked The Whole Fish Cookbookby Josh Niland.
The top two books on Amazon’s Best Books of 2019 list are The Testaments by Margaret Atwood and The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead. I haven’t gotten around to Whitehead’s latest (The Underground Railroad was great) but I did read The Testaments and loved it.
Voracious reader Tyler Cowen weighs in with two lists: favorite fiction of 2019and best non-fiction books of 2019. He mentions Sally Rooney’s Normal People, which I really enjoyed, and Lakota America: A New History of Indigenous Powerby Pekka Hämäläinen.
Alright, we’ve got a couple of lists of the year’s best cookbooks, In her list of the best baking cookbooks of 2019, Melissa Clark highlights Tartine: A Classic Revisited by Elisabeth Prueitt and Chad Robertson. On the SF Chronicle’s best cookbooks of 2019 is Isa Chandra Moskowitz’s I Can Cook Vegan and Alison Roman’s Nothing Fancy: Unfussy Food for Having People Over. And Samin Nosrat (Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat) recently published a selection of her favorite fall cookbooksas a gift guide, including Oaxaca: Home Cooking from the Heart of Mexico by Bricia Lopez and Javier Cabral. (thx merrill & connor)