What an eye-opener! I learned so much from The Last Kings of Shanghai, a truly informative and engaging book by Jonathan Kaufman. So what’s with the headline of this blog post? Well, that’s not my phrase; it’s the subtitle of… Read More ›
Books
The Source Material for… (Episode I: The Bicentennial Man)
About five weeks ago I reviewed the movie The Bicentennial Man. I pointed out that it was based on two sources: on Isaac Asimov’s novelette of the same name and on the later adaptation of that novelette into a full-length… Read More ›
Being human in the age of algorithms
That’s not the title. It’s actually the subtitle. The book’s title is Hello World. OK, so now that you know the title, you want to know who the author is—right? Well, the author is applied mathematician Hannah Fry, whom I… Read More ›
Another treat from Richard Osman
A couple of months ago I reviewed the first novel in Richard Osman’s Thursday Murder Club series. Now I turn to the second, which I have just finished reading. This mystery, The Man Who Died Twice, is at least as… Read More ›
The Bicentennial Man
“One has mixed feelings about the movie” would be my comment if I’m going to speak in Andrew’s style. As usual, I recommend seeing the movie before reading the book. In this case the first version was a long short… Read More ›
A classic mystery—written in 2021!
Agatha Christie was, I believe, the originator of the locked-room mystery. If not the originator, she was at least an early and very successful practitioner. But this post is not about Agatha Christie. It’s about Anthony Horowitz and his latest… Read More ›
The Queen’s Gambit: what’s it all about?
Is it about chess? You may be tempted to say yes. It seems to be about chess. In high school English—a hundred years ago or so—I learned to distinguish plot from theme. If we’re talking plot, then The Queen’s Gambit… Read More ›
People love dead Jews.
Yes, I too cringe at the title of this best-selling book of interrelated essays. But unfortunately it’s altogether appropriate. Mark Oppenheimer of the Unorthodox podcast calls it “the best collection of essays that I have read in a long, long… Read More ›
Never—no, always—take the shortcut!
“Abjure the hypotenuse!” That’s what our busy high school dean (also assistant headmaster and sole college counselor) George Grenville Benedict—called G2 by the students (behind his back)—was famous for saying. As my classmate Alba Briggs publicly observed on screen in… Read More ›
A work of (mostly) fiction by Hillary Clinton and Louise Penny
Fasten your seatbelt; it’s going to be a bumpy ride. Those are (or should be) the pilot’s instructions as you begin reading the novel State of Terror, co-written by Hillary Clinton and Louise Penny. Perhaps it’s not surprising that this… Read More ›
Learning Strategies 