November 2022 Archive

November in Paris (Part 2)

Published Nov 30, 2022

Months roll by, each one totally different from the last. October was all about racing hearts, November was about asking hard questions. Went to see Jeff Koons at Centre Pompidou purely out of curiosity...

Fall 2022 Literary Season Roundup

Published Nov 27, 2022

The autumn literary flood is wrapping up. Before January's next wave hits with hundreds more novels, time to take stock of what I actually read this season. A drop in the ocean of six hundred releases...

Marina Bellezza - Silvia Avallone

Published Nov 25, 2022

Italy 2012, Berlusconi era. A valley in Piedmont gutted by the economic crisis. Textile mills shut down, shops closed, villages emptied out. In the small town of Biella, Marina and Andrea are trying to survive...

Demi-sommeil - Eric Reinhardt

Published Nov 23, 2022

Can existence, like an object falling behind a dresser, slip into a space where nothing actually happens? Read somewhere that a writer's first novel reveals everything about their future work. Had to check this one out...

The Blazing World - Siri Hustvedt

Published Nov 21, 2022

Are we just one person or are we multiple people? For years, Harriet Burden was an unknown artist making dollhouses filled with strange characters. Married to a famous art dealer, she lived in his shadow...

Return to Little Wing - Nickolas Butler

Published Nov 10, 2022

Sometimes forgiveness is just a deep sigh. Little Wing, Wisconsin. Population 1,500. Where Hank, Lee, Kip and Ronny grew up. Friends forever. But now they're thirty and each one's living their own separate life...

The Salt of the Earth - Wim Wenders

Published Nov 6, 2022

A film about photographs, odd concept. But that's filmmaker Wim Wenders' move: making photographer Sebastiao Salgado the subject. Twenty years ago, Wenders was captivated by a photograph in a gallery...

The Victoria System - Eric Reinhardt

Published Nov 4, 2022

We need the pride to invent something unique that doesn't look like anything known, something that will be our pride and pleasure. A man shopping in a mall gets drawn to a woman he passes. She doesn't notice him...

The Meteorologist - Olivier Rolin

Published Nov 2, 2022

Can't figure out why I'd never read Olivier Rolin before, especially since I love writers who travel. But that gap's filled now, thanks to this book mixing biography with investigative journalism...