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- An Acting Lesson: John Wayne and the “Reality of the Doing”
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- sheila on 2026 Shakespeare Reading Project: Hamlet
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- Dave on Review: The Chronology of Water (2025)
- Biff Dorsey on 2026 Shakespeare Reading Project: Hamlet
- sheila on “I just love telling stories. That’s what we do and it’s a good business to be in, especially if you know you have talent.” –Jensen Ackles
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Tag Archives: Tana French
December 2023/January-February 2024 Viewing Diary
The Golden Bachelor Watched – in great hilarity – with Karen and Allison during a raucous sleepover, and Carol pulled up on FaceTime. So we could watch together. The whole thing is so ridiculous. Maestro (2023; d. Bradley Cooper) I … Continue reading
Posted in Monthly Viewing Diary, Movies, Television
Tagged Al Pacino, Aline MacMahon, biopic, Charlie Chaplin, Chile, Denmark, documentary, drama, dystopia, England, France, Germany, Ireland, Juliette Binoche, Kazuo Ishiguro, literary adaptation, Michael Mann, North Korea, Paul Schrader, Pre-Code, Radu Jude, Ray Milland, Richard Pryor, Romania, romantic comedy, sci-fi, short films, Sidney Poitier, silent films, Spain, Sylvia Sidney, Tana French, true crime, William Wellman, Wim Wenders, women directors
41 Comments
Stuff I’ve Been Reading
— Farran Smith Nehme (a friend) has written a gigantic essay called “Bluebeard at the Movies,” about movies where women marry men who turn out to be BONKERS. So many references, so many films! — Farran, again, with a gorgeous … Continue reading
Posted in Books, Directors
Tagged friends, Orson Welles, stuff I've been reading, Tana French
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2017 Books Read
I got into a good rhythm with reading this year. I did a lot of re-reading, going back to books I haven’t read in 20 years or whatever. It was fun, like a reunion with an old friend. Much of … Continue reading
Posted in Books
Tagged 1984, A.S. Byatt, Bette Davis, books read, Camille Paglia, Christopher Hitchens, Edgar Allan Poe, England, France, George Orwell, Hannah Arendt, Herman Melville, Hitler, Ireland, Jack London, Janet Malcolm, Jean Renoir, Jeanette Winterson, Joan Crawford, Joan Didion, John Milton, Kim Stanley, Mark Danielewski, Mary Astor, Mary Gaitskill, Olivia Laing, Poland, politics, Robert Altman, Robert Conquest, Robert Kaplan, Russia, S.E. Hinton, Shirley Jackson, Tana French, Tennessee Williams, The Great Terror, war
4 Comments
2016 Books Read
I’ve enjoyed myself this year with reading. I have finally bounced back from 2009 and 2010, when I was so out of my mind that I could barely read anymore. (Larry McMurtry describes a similar thing happening to him post-heart … Continue reading
Posted in Books
Tagged Baz Luhrmann, books read, Camille Paglia, Cat On a Hot Tin Roof, David Thomson, East of Eden, Elia Kazan, Elvis Presley, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Horton Foote, James Agee, James Salter, Jerry Lee Lewis, John Steinbeck, Katherine Dunn, Mark Danielewski, Nick Tosches, Pauline Kael, Robert Kaplan, Shane Leslie, Stephen King, Tana French, Tennessee Williams, The Great Gatsby, William Faulkner
19 Comments
2013 Books Read
It’s been a hell of a year. Devastating as well as redemptive. I started it out in Memphis, and end it here in New Jersey. And now my new niece Pearl has arrived! It’s been both a busy year as … Continue reading
Posted in Books
Tagged A.S. Byatt, Anne Fadiman, Annie Proulx, Arthur Koestler, Balkans, books read, Darkness at Noon, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Edvard Radzinsky, Elinor Lipman, England, friends, George Eliot, H.L. Mencken, Henry James, Herman Melville, Hungary, Ireland, J.D. Salinger, Jeanette Winterson, Joan Acocella, Joan Didion, John Banville, Joseph Heller, Joshua Ferris, Lester Bangs, Lorrie Moore, Patricia Highsmith, Philip K. Dick, Russia, Sam Cooke, Stalin, Tana French, The Netherlands, The Only Game In Town, Thomas Carlyle, Victor Serge, William Shakespeare, Yugoslavia
33 Comments
2011 Books Read
Here is my annual roundup of all of the books I read this year. Not quite up to the pace I normally am (although 2009 was an all-time low), but movies and writing have become nearly full-time pursuits for me … Continue reading
2010 Books Read
Round-up of the books I read this year, in the order in which I read them. I am nearly finished with one last book (a collection of stories by Miranda July, given to me by my sister Siobhan for my … Continue reading
Posted in Books
Tagged A.S. Byatt, Andrei Tarkovsky, Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Annie Proulx, books read, Dava Sobel, David O. Selznick, David Thomson, E.M. Forster, Elia Kazan, Ellen Terry, Emily Dickinson, Ernest Hemingway, Evelyn Waugh, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Fred Astaire, Fyodor Dostoevsky, George Bernard Shaw, George Orwell, George Washington, Gouverneur Morris, Ireland, Jane Langton, Jaws, Joan Blondell, John Banville, John McGahern, Mark Helprin, Orson Welles, Oscar Wilde, Peter Bogdanovich, Rebecca West, Roman Polanski, Ron Chernow, Russia, Serbia, Shirley Jackson, Stefan Zweig, Sylvia Beach, Tana French, Tennessee Williams, Warren Beatty, William Shakespeare
37 Comments