Blogs and Stories
An Oscar Director's Nightstand
What the Oscar nominated John Patrick Shanley is reading.
The Perfumed Garden
by Shaykh Nefzawi
The erotic manual The Perfumed Garden by Shaykh Nefzawi, translated by Sir Richard F. Burton, contains a wonderful story about a beggar outwitting a greedy princess. There is also much sexual arcania; for instance, a long list of alternate names for the male member, including The Rummager and The Crowbar.
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This Gun for Hire and Brighton Rock
by Graham Greene
Graham Greene's "entertainments," as he called these short books, offer mesmerizing narratives of suspense. They are complicated by Greene's tortured vision of modern life as idealism caught in relativistic quicks. This Gun for Hire and Brighton Rock are especially good.
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Shadow and Evil in Fairy Tales
by Dr. Marie Von Franz
And finally, Shadow and Evil in Fairytales by Dr. Marie Von Franz is a psychological explication of some fairytales, Russian, African, and otherwise, by a deeply insightful and plain spoken Swiss acolyte of Carl Jung. I have nowhere else felt the chill of evil leavened so interestingly with insight.
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The Road Leads On
by Knut Hamsun
The Road Leads On by Knut Hamsun is a fascinating tale by an important if morally imperiled novelist. (An unfortunate photo op with Hitler late in life.) I guarantee this slowly building portrait of a manager of a sheep farm will never leave you. The theme of the book: “Drive without purpose leads inevitably to destruction” certainly has its applications in today's world.
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Horatio Hornblower
by C.S. Forester
If you're in the mood to commit to a world completely rendered in a series of books, the Captain Horatio Hornblower series is a ripping good read, a pitch perfect rendition of the Napoleonic wars as conducted in the age of sail on the high seas.
The Right Dumps Carrie
Jacob Bernstein is a senior reporter at The Daily Beast. Previously, he was a features writer at WWD and W Magazine. He has also written for New York magazine, Paper, and The Huffington Post.
What's Joe's Problem?
Lloyd Grove is editor at large for The Daily Beast. He is also a frequent contributor to New York magazine and was a contributing editor for Condé Nast Portfolio. He wrote a gossip column for the New York Daily News from 2003 to 2006. Prior to that, he wrote the Reliable Source column for the Washington Post, where he spent 23 years covering politics, the media, and other subjects.
Geithner's Stock Plummeting
Jeff Madrick is a contributor to the New York Review of Books and a former economics columnist for the New York Times. He is editor of Challenge Magazine, visiting professor of humanities at Cooper Union, and senior fellow at the New School's Schwartz Center for Economic Policy Analysis. He is the author of Taking America, The End of Affluence (Random House) and The Case for Big Government.
A Gift From Frank McCourt
John Patrick Shanley is an award-winning American playwright. He won the Academy Award for his script for the 1987 film, Moonstruck. In 1990, Shanley directed his script of Joe Versus the Volcano and in 2005, he won the Pulitzer Prize for Doubt. He directed the movie version last year.
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