The 400 Blows, by Francois Truffaut This year marks the 60th anniversary of the release of Francois Truffaut’s The 400 Blows, a film that changed cinema—and on its debut, brought immediate recognition to the then-unknown director. In May, 1959, The 400 Blows won the Grand Prize for Direction at the Cannes Film Festival, when only [….]
Passage to Ararat, by Michael J. Arlen Tuesday, April 24, marked a sober anniversary, 103 years since the Armenian genocide, when 1.2 million Armenians systematically died at the hands of the Ottoman Turkish Government. In Little Armenia, in Los Angeles, marches and observances gave voice to the painful legacy of the genocide for the ancestors [….]
Last week, when the Emmy nominations were announced, the BBC Three series Fleabag received eleven nominations—for writing, acting, and direction, and no wonder. Written by and starring creator Phoebe Waller-Bridge in the eponymous role, the series is a marvel of wit and dark humor. Broadcast in the US on Amazon Video, Fleabag has caused a [….]
Werewolves in Their Youth: Stories, by Michael Chabon Michael Chabon’s, Werewolves in Their Youth isn’t a horror or sci-fi, though Chabon is a fan. The collection, published in 1999, features characters who move about in the placid light of day, until some triggering event causes a dark side to emerge. The results are the entertaining turns [….]
Fear: Trump in the White House, by Bob Woodward The story has been called a bookend to Richard Nixon’s, a tale of hubris, an account akin to a ticking clock. Of Bob Woodward’s Fear: Trump in the White House, George Packer wrote in the New Yorker, the book “belongs on a shelf with the literature [….]
Cutting Teeth, by Julia Fierro When my daughter was little, there was a universally acknowledged sentiment among the parents I knew. We referred to summer as the busy season, when the steady routine of the school year fell away and the schedule went overtime. Still, when your kids are small, there’s a lovely innocence to [….]
On Wednesday, Special Counsel Robert Mueller spoke publicly for the first time about the Russia investigation he began over two years ago, and with that a book that is likely to contain the political story of our era, came to life in a way it hadn’t before. I purchased my copy, published by The Washington [….]
The Love of A Good Woman, Stories by Alice Munro The short story has few practitioners as skilled as Alice Munro, now 88, a writer who’s all but required reading during #ShortStoryMonth. Munro famously began writing stories as a young mother, finding the story took “less time.” Lucky for readers that the genre turned out [….]
Arranged Marriage: Stories, by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni Acclaimed poet, novelist, and story writer Chitra Banerjee Divrakaruni’s first book of fiction was published in 1995. The eleven stories in Arranged Marriage reveal her gift for chronicling female cultural dislocation and the compound identities that come with leaving one place, and its engrained customs and beliefs, for [….]
Selected Stories, by William Trevor Today’s rec continues a celebration of #ShortStoryMonth. A volume of stories by William Trevor is a reader’s must-have, and this 2009 collection brings together some of the great writer’s best—48 classic stories, many of which were first published in The New Yorker, Harper’s, and literary magazines such as Glimmer Train [….]
