· Gallery of Cultural Influence ·

An illustrated newsletter where I share my favorite books, movies and other culture diversions from the past month.

Hail, Caesar!

The new Coen brothers movie is similar to their previous films Burn After Reading and The Big Lebowski, with its sense of humor and almost surrealistic sense of plot development. It’s about a movie studio and the people that keep it running. When one of the studio's main stars is kidnapped, it’s up to Eddie Mannix to find him. My favorite character was Hobie Doyle, a Douglas Fairbanks-like cowboy who swings from trees and hops onto horses. You can also read the New York Times review.

The Dispossessed

As a fan of science fiction novels, it took me far too long to read a book by Ursula K. Le Guin. A novel about a physicist who travels to another planet in hopes of finding an audience to share his theories, The Dispossessed won the Nebula Award for Best Novel in 1974. The version of the book that I read was the Harper Perennial, Olive Edition with excellent design and illustration by Milan Bozic. You can buy your own copy from the Powell Books.

The Harvest

The Harvest is one of the best short stories I’ve ever read. Ostensibly, it’s about a woman who is recovering from a car accident, but like any great story, it hints at much more. I read “The Harvest” in a collection of equally excellent short stories called “At The Gates of the Animal Kingdom.” Apparently copies of this book are difficult to find, but “The Harvest” is included in another larger collection of stories that you can pick up from The Strand.

Thanks for reading!

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