Illustration: Adele Morgan
Daily Archives: December 19, 2022
Art & Music 2022: ‘TURBINES’ Sterling Ruby In New York
Reviews: The Best Books From Top 35 Lists In 2022
The Ultimate Best Books of 2022 List
Literary Hub (December 19, 2022) – From 35 lists and from 29 publications (yes, there are even more lists out there, but we’re all going to die some day), tallying a total of 887 books. 84 books were highlighted on 4 or more lists, and those are collated those for you here, in descending order of frequency.
14 lists:
Hernan Diaz, Trust
An unparalleled novel about money, power, intimacy, and perception. Even through the roar and effervescence of the 1920s, everyone in New York has heard of Benjamin and Helen Rask. He is a legendary Wall Street tycoon; she is the daughter of eccentric aristocrats. Together, they have risen to the very top of a world of seemingly endless wealth–all as a decade of excess and speculation draws to an end. But at what cost have they acquired their immense fortune? This is the mystery at the center of Bonds, a successful 1937 novel that all of New York seems to have read. Yet there are other versions of this tale of privilege and deceit.
Penguin Random House
Gabrielle Zevin, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow
On a bitter-cold day, in the December of his junior year at Harvard, Sam Masur exits a subway car and sees, amid the hordes of people waiting on the platform, Sadie Green. He calls her name. For a moment, she pretends she hasn’t heard him, but then, she turns, and a game begins: a legendary collaboration that will launch them to stardom. These friends, intimates since childhood, borrow money, beg favors, and, before even graduating college, they have created their first blockbuster, Ichigo. Overnight, the world is theirs.
Ed Yong, An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us
The Earth teems with sights and textures, sounds and vibrations, smells and tastes, electric and magnetic fields. But every kind of animal, including humans, is enclosed within its own unique sensory bubble, perceiving but a tiny sliver of our immense world.In An Immense World, Ed Yong coaxes us beyond the confines of our own senses, allowing us to perceive the skeins of scent, waves of electromagnetism, and pulses of pressure that surround us. We encounter beetles that are drawn to fires, turtles that can track the Earth’s magnetic fields, fish that fill rivers with electrical messages, and even humans who wield sonar like bats.
12 lists:
Jennifer Egan, The Candy House
Jonathan Escoffery, If I Survive You
Namwali Serpell, The Furrows
11 lists:
Margo Jefferson, Constructing a Nervous System: A Memoir
10 lists:
Tess Gunty, The Rabbit Hutch
Hua Hsu, Stay True: A Memoir
Celeste Ng, Our Missing Hearts
Perspectives: Harper’s Magazine – January 2023
Harper’s Magazine – January 2023 Issue:
Truth Takes a Vacation
Trumpism and the American philosophical tradition
Twenty-five years ago, the philosopher Richard Rorty accomplished something many writers aspire to but few ever pull off: he predicted the future. Toward the end of his 1998 book Achieving Our Country, Rorty considered the possibility that “the old industrialized democracies are heading into a Weimar-like period, one in which populist movements are likely to overturn constitutional governments.”
Boomtown
A solar land rush in the West
A solar farm in the Mojave Desert. All photographs from Nevada by Balazs Gardi, October and November 2022, for Harper’s Magazine
Island Views: Gozo And Comino In Malta (4K)
Gozo is an island in the Mediterranean Sea, one of 21 that make up the Maltese archipelago. Inhabited for thousands of years, it shows evidence of historic immigration and rule by the Phoenicians, Romans, Arabs, Sicilians, French and British, among others. It’s known for its Neolithic Ġgantija Temple ruins, rural hiking paths, beaches and scuba-diving sites.
Comino is a small island of the Maltese archipelago between the islands of Malta and Gozo in the Mediterranean Sea, measuring 3.5 square kilometres in area.
Arts & Culture: The New Yorker – December 26, 2022
Roz and Emily Eat Their Way Through Midwood
Our first stop: a cheese Danish. Can’t skip breakfast
What Kevin McCarthy Will Do to Gain Power
The Republican leader’s ambition has always been his defining characteristic. Attempting to placate both Trumpists and moderates may lead to his downfall.
Picturing the Cove Inn
Memories of a high-school job at a local seafood restaurant, blurred by time.
Scotland Views: Mains Castle In East Kilbride
John Carroll (December 2022) – East Kilbride is the largest town in South Lanarkshire in Scotland and the country’s sixth-largest locality by population. It was also designated Scotland’s first new town on 6 May 1947.
Mains Castle lies just to the north of East Kilbride, and is easily visible from the public path around the loch of the James Hamilton Heritage Park. It is a free-standing rectangular tower house on a mound, with a square caphouse providing access to the wallwalk in one corner of the tower. Historically there were additional buildings clustered around the tower, but there are no traces of these now. Mains Castle is privately owned and is occupied.
News: Japan Unveils $320 Million Military Buildup, Pakistan-Afghanistan
From London, Japan unveils 320 Million military buildup plan, Pakistan and Afghanistan forces clash at disputed border, and other top stories.
Front Page: The New York Times – December 19, 2022
Proud Boys Trial Is Set to Open, Focusing on Role in Jan. 6 Violence
The charge of seditious conspiracy is the same as in a recent trial of members of the Oath Keepers militia, but the Proud Boys defendants are accused of a central role in the fighting at the Capitol.
In Heart of Peru’s Protest, a Pause to Mourn the Dead
Confrontations between protesters and the Peruvian authorities have left at least 25 dead and hundreds injured. Nowhere may tensions be higher than in the highland city of Ayacucho.
Who Is Rep.-Elect George Santos? His Résumé May Be Largely Fiction.
Mr. Santos, a Republican from New York, says he’s the “embodiment of the American dream.” But he seems to have misrepresented a number of his career highlights.
For Messi, and Argentina, the (Extra) Wait Is Worth It
It looked like another title might have slipped through its fingers, but Argentina, and its star, claimed the ultimate trophy.
Boomers Daily 