The New Yorker: John Updike issue. Amazing. The excerpts from his writing over the decade were magnificent. Starting the current issue with A-Rod on the cover signing autographs for cartoon kids with Popeye arms.
Saturday by Ian McEwan. Due to a review in the current New Yorker. I kindled a copy and started it on a flight. About a brain surgeon. Great voice.
My Life in France by Julia Child. Recommended by Chas. Dubow at Businessweek.com in response to last weekend’s sausage posting. I need to post more on French cooking, one of my winter weekend hobbies. Julia Child was more than the woozy TV cook played by Dan Ackroyd on SNL, she wrote the bestselling treatise on French cooking for the American cook and loved France with a passion. Just a great book. I’d put it on the shelf next to A.J. Liebling’s Between Meals and Geo. Orwell’s Down and Out in Paris and London.
Atlantic Monthly – crash issue. Four different covers for four seperate metro markets. Each with the tag line that New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and San Francisco come out for the better after the current panic abates. Custom magazine covers aren’t news. The issue is okay. I need to go back and find the ultra prescient piece by James Fallows on the coming meltdown. Here it is. Great piece of early eco/sci fi crashapalooza set in 2016. It freaked me out when I read it three years ago, and I think a lot about it today.
Movies
- The Reader, Kate Winslet up for best actress. I could argue for that.
- Le Jour se Leve, 1939. Jean Gabin, directed by Marcel Carne. Wow. Poetic Realism at its best. Jules Berry as the evil dog trainer was pretty awesome.
