Tolkien Reading Day
It’s March 25, the day that the ring was cast into Mount Doom. So that means it’s Tolkien Reading Day. Tolkien, of course, chose that day for the destruction of the ring because March 25 was...
View ArticleAn Oral History of Mad Men
This is fun for Mad Men fans: Don Draper lived on hard drives for half a decade before anybody paid him any notice. In 1999,Matthew Weiner, then an unfulfilled writer on CBS’ Ted Danson sitcom Becker,...
View ArticleBar-Hopping with Kyle Chandler
A fun interview with the former star of Friday Night Lights: “What would you do with two hours to see Austin?” I ask Kyle Chandler as I turn off my tape recorder. It’s half past three on the first...
View ArticleIn Praise of Personal Libraries
From TNR: The committed bibliophile is cousin to the obsessive, an easily seduced accumulator frequently struck with frisson. Cram your home with books, and you’re lovingly called a collector; cram it...
View ArticleDating Books
A lovely piece from Wes Hill: One of the pleasures of recording on the inside cover of a book the date you finished reading it—I’ve been doing that now for over a decade—is that, when you return to it,...
View ArticleAmazon Paying Authors’ Per Page Read
From the Verge: Amazon is introducing a new system that completely upends the way authors and publishers make money from their books. Starting next month, the company will pay authors based on the...
View ArticleThe Future of HBO
Interesting story: It was two years ago, on May 30, 2013, that Richard Plepler stood onstage at a New York media conference and declared that he had no plans to upend the cable ecosystem with a...
View ArticleNetflix and the Future of TV
Interesting piece: When Netflix released the first season of House of Cards to the world, every episode at once, it was treated as a milestone in a revolution. It was a front-page story in The New York...
View ArticleFrom the Trenches to the Shire
Via University Bookman: Many words have been devoted to the literature and lives of two of the twentieth century’s most beloved novelists, friends, and World War I veterans, C. S. Lewis and J. R. R....
View ArticleHow to Adapt a Book Into a (Good) TV Show
Vox: Todd VanDerWerff: What’s your process for turning a book or something else into a TV show or film? Graham Yost: With Justified, it was both easy and hard. It was easy in the pilot in that Elmore...
View ArticleThe Hidden Meaning of Life According to the Little Prince
From Crisis: A new film based on St. Antoine de Saint-Exupery’s classic The Little Prince recently made its premier. I haven’t seen it yet but it looks wonderful. Watching the previews reminds me of...
View ArticleEverybody’s Gone to the Rapture
Interesting review from The Verge: I never knew that the apocalypse could be so soothing. Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture, which launches on PlayStation 4 tomorrow, might just be the most relaxing take...
View ArticleThe Dark Side of Television’s Golden Age
From Pacific Standard: By most critics’ accounts, we’re living in a Golden Age of Television. Not to be confused with the first Golden Age, which took place from the 1940s through the ’60s, today’s...
View ArticleThe Late, Great Stephen Colbert
GQ: It was early July, about nine weeks before the debut of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, and we were sitting in his temporary office above a BMW dealership on the far west side of Manhattan. He...
View ArticleThe Refugee Crisis and Christian Hope
Alastair: Over the past week, the refugee crisis facing Europe has been a matter of intense discussion here in the UK and around the world. While the facts, figures, and politics have long received...
View ArticleThe Victimhood Culture
From the Atlantic: Last fall at Oberlin College, a talk held as part of Latino Heritage Month was scheduled on the same evening that intramural soccer games were held. As a result, soccer players...
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