Featuring a Russian spy murder, a self-immolation, gun-toting government thugs and other fanciful plot devices, “Project Blue Book,” History’s popular new series on the Air Force’s program to investigate and debunk U.F.O.s, is not your historian’s Project Blue Book. We viewed the first six episodes from the standpoint of writers who have long worked on […]
How wise dear Blaise Pascal was when he wrote: “All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” If only the good doctors in the opening scenes of this adaptation of Justin Cronin’s bestseller The Passage (Fox) had imbibed his words before they went spelunking for vampires. That’s your […]
The scene is Britain, the time the not-too-distant future. The air hangs heavy with metaphor. Ever since a climatic event known as the “Change”, life has, well, changed. Movement between countries is outlawed. There isn’t a single beach left anywhere in the world. Britain’s coastline has been obliterated by a National Coastal Defence Structure, known […]
Q: Do you have any book suggestions for my 14-year-old daughter? I am trying to wean her off screens. She likes to be scared, loves music and has huge empathy.Marie-Claude Gervais, 51, psychologist, London A: Fiona Noble, children’s books editor at the Bookseller, writes:The lure of screens in teenage life looms large but books still […]
This article contains spoilers for “True Detective” Season 2. Agree with the writer’s defense? Couldn’t disagree more? Let us know in the comments. The first season of HBO’s “True Detective,” which aired in 2014, ended with Rust Cohle (Matthew McConaughey) and Marty Hart (Woody Harrelson) looking up at the night sky, lamenting the darkness. Still, […]
Matthew Goode has always exuded a whiff of danger: the slyly wicked smile. The devil-may-care charm. The sense that something rather naughty lurks beneath his suave exterior. Which mostly explains why he was cast, no audition required, as Matthew Clairmont, an Oxford genealogist — and 1,500-year-old vampire — in “A Discovery of Witches,” streaming on […]
The book I’m currently readingOne is Kapo by Aleksandar Tišma. This was hard to get hold of but having read The Use of Man and The Book of Blam, both recently put out by NYRB Classics, I had to find it. The title will tell you it’s not light reading. Also The Great Fire by […]
Flannery O’Connor once expressed a wish that a novel could be published as quietly as a short story, “without having to hear from all the bright people in the Sunday papers.” Imagine her bemusement over “Cat Person.” Published in late 2017 — in the thick of #MeToo revelations — the viral short story by Kristen […]
The critics and the awards voters are broadly united: Christian Bale’s transformative performance as Dick Cheney in Vice is the best male performance of the year. But opinion is more divided on the actor’s acceptance speech at Sunday night’s Golden Globe awards: as well as praise from pundits, the actor’s shoutout to Satan as an […]
January 1 Centenary of the birth of The Catcher in the Rye author JD Salinger.7 Winners of Costa category awards announced.11 Release of the biopic Colette, starring Keira Knightley.12 50th anniversary of the publication of Philip Roth’s Portnoy’s Complaint.14 TS Eliot prize for poetry awarded.29 Costa prize-giving with book of the year revealed. Germaine Greer […]
ImageAt the Akiyamas, Marie Kondo dispenses benedictions, not judgments. Can you treat your belongings with respect? Can you be mindful of each other’s weird objects and habits? CreditDenise Crew/Netflix Entropy, that unpleasant byproduct of consumerism, has been a subject of reality TV almost since that genre’s genesis. From “Clean House” to “Hoarding: Buried Alive,” we’ve […]
This isn’t a collection of books about drunkenness or alcoholism, though both feature. Rather, it is a celebration of those who write well about alcoholic drinks. I write about alcohol for a living. My latest book, The Home Bar, is a guide to setting up your domestic refreshments but it is also about booze history […]