A Pale View of Hills
A Pale View of Hills (1982) is Kazuo Ishiguro's first novel. Its narrator, Etsuko, lives in England, and her second daughter, Niki, is...
top of page
Search
2 min read
The Favourite
I was reluctant to watch The Favourite (2018) because I watched The Lobster (2016) last year and couldn't really get into it. Both are...
2 min read
Mao II
"The future belongs to crowds." So ends the prologue to Don DeLillo's 1991 novel Mao II, winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award. Crowds appear...
2 min read
Days of Being Wild
Wong Kar-wai's Days of Being Wild (1990) has been on my list since I watched Anthony Bourdain's Parts Unknown segment "Hong Kong",...
1 min read
The Lie and How We Told It
Tommi Parrish’s graphic novel The Lie and How We Told It (2018) is about sex and relationships and denial and how things fall apart and...
2 min read
Where Danger Lives
Where Danger Lives (1950) is a film noir starring Robert Mitchum and Faith Domergue and directed by John Farrow for a Howard Hughes-owned...
1 min read
Me Talk Pretty One Day
Me Talk Pretty One Day (2000) is a collection of twenty-seven essays by American author and humorist David Sedaris, and had me laughing...
2 min read
Look Back In Anger
Look Back In Anger (1959), starring Richard Burton (Jimmy), Mary Ure (Alison) and Claire Bloom (Helena), is a film based on John...
2 min read
Nerima Veggie Vending
Location: 35°46'11.8"N 139°36'33.1"E Tokyo has 23 wards (ku), each unique in its own right. I’ve lived in eight: Bunkyo, Minato, Edogawa,...
1 min read
Midnight Express
Midnight Express (1978) was streaming on Netflix this week and since I'd never seen it before and usually get right into prison escape...
2 min read
The Sea and Poison
I sort of read this book by accident. I’ve heard about Shusaku Endo for years but never read his work, and I recently watched Martin...
1 min read
Shirako River Blossoms
Location: 35°45'59.7"N 139°36'35.1"E I took this a block from my house in Nerima-ku on April 7, 2019. This time of year the Shirako River...
1 min read
The Stranger
The Stranger (1946) is Orson Welles’ first film noir and also the first Hollywood movie with documentary footage of the Holocaust. Franz...
2 min read
Shantaram
Weighing in at 944 pages (roughly 375,000 words), this is the longest novel I've read in a while. Shantaram (2003) details the...
1 min read
View of Vinh Nam Chon Beach
Location: 16°08'51.3"N 108°08'08.7"E I took this photo on the Hai Van Pass, north of Da Nang, Vietnam (February 27, 2019). There wasn't a...
bottom of page