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Arts & Literature, Magazines, Opinion, Podcasts, Politics, Reviews

Previews: The New Yorker Magazine – May 8, 2023

April 30, 2023 She Seeks Serene Leave a comment

Barry Blitt's “Room at the Top” | The New Yorker — Art by Barry Blitt

The New Yorker – May 8, 2023 issue

Can Charles Keep Quiet as King?

Three angles of King Charles III within an illustration by Alma Haser.

As Prince of Wales, Charles was always ready with an opinion. Now, with his coronation at hand, his job is to have none.

“My great problem in life is that I do not really know what my role in life is,” Charles once said, adding, “I must find one.”Photo illustration by Alma Haser for The New Yorker; Source photographs from Getty

Barry Blitt’s “Room at the Top”

The artist discusses being young and adrift in London, and gives King Charles tips for painting with watercolors.

New Yorker covers don’t always reflect current events, but some staged proceedings, both anachronistic and immemorial, can be catnip for cartoonists and commentators alike. King Charles III automatically acceded to the throne when his mother, Queen Elizabeth II, died on September 8, 2022. Charles, the longest-serving heir apparent in Britain’s history, spent seven decades preparing for the role of monarch. He became the next in line to reign over the United Kingdom at three years old, when Elizabeth became queen, in 1952.

Arts & Literature, Books, Newspapers, Previews, Reviews

The New York Times Book Review – April 30, 2023

April 28, 2023 She Seeks Serene Leave a comment

The New York Times Book Review (April 30, 2023): On the cover this week – Ned Blackhawk’s “The Rediscovery of America,” a sweeping, important, revisionist work of American history that places Native Americans front and center. Illustrating it is “Les Castors du Roi,” a 2011 painting by Kent Monkman, a Cree artist in Canada’s Dish With One Spoon Territory.

Read Your Way Through Boston

An illustration depicting a snowy street in Boston; a man in the foreground is engrossed in reading his book. — Credit…Raphaelle Macaron

Paul Theroux, the quintessential travel writer, has also enshrined his Massachusetts roots in his writing. Here are his recommendations for those who come to visit.

My father, like many passionate readers, was a literary pilgrim in his native Massachusetts, a state rich in destinations, hallowed by many of the greatest writers in the language. “Look, Paulie, this is the House of the Seven Gables — go on, count them!”

Everything, Everywhere, in One Big Book

This color photo shows a woman flipping pages of a book posed on top of a long low bookcase filled with volumes. Behind the woman, stretching to the top of the photograph are more bookshelves filled with books. — A woman consults a book at the New York Public Library on Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street in Manhattan.Credit…Ángel Franco/The New York Times

In “All the Knowledge in the World,” Simon Garfield recounts the history of the encyclopedia — a tale of ambitious effort, numerous errors and lots of paper.

In ‘Ordinary Notes,’ a Radical Reading of Black Life

The book cover for “Ordinary Notes,” by Christina Sharpe, is lilac with bold black type. A blurry photo of houses at twilight sits along the bottom edge.

The scholar Christina Sharpe’s new book comprises memories, observations, artifacts and artworks — fragments attesting to the persistence of prejudice while allowing glimpses of something like hope.

Culture, Design, Lifestyle, Magazines, Reviews, Society

Design/Culture: Monocle Magazine —May 2023

April 27, 2023 She Seeks Serene Leave a comment

Monocle Magazine (May 2023 issue) – As the canny, optimistic winners of this year’s Monocle Design Awards all demonstrate, staying on top of your game in any field requires the instincts of a true detective – and a curiosity to find out what makes the world tick, writes our editor in chief, Andrew Tuck.

Dutch master

A former waterside inn in a quiet fishing village north of Amsterdam is now a cosy hotel and restaurant where good food, nice design and big views all entice you to linger. Monocle takes a first look.ByJosh FehnertPhotographyJulie Mayfeng

Design Awards: Part 1

For the third annual Monocle Design Awards, we’ve scoured the globe for the best in architecture, furniture, graphic design and more, to celebrate projects improving our lives – while looking good.Edited byNic MonissePhotographyBenjamin Swanson

“I was a motorcycle hater,” says Stefan Ytterborn. That is, before the Swedish entrepreneur tried a few electric ones and got so hooked that he decided to design his own. Cake’s first model, Kalk, put competitors to shame with a design weighing 40 per cent less than the average motorbike. In 2021 Cake started shipping out Kalk &, an upgrade engineered for both commutes and off-road escapades. “During the week you ride the bike from home to work, and during the weekend you bring it out to the countryside,”…

Arts & Literature, Books, Newspapers, Previews, Reviews

The New York Times Book Review – April 23, 2023

April 21, 2023 She Seeks Serene Leave a comment

The New York Times Book Review – April 23, 2023:

With His Tale of Shipwreck, David Grann Is Steady as He Goes

This illustration shows a sailing ship being tossed in heaving seas. The art is stylized, with mostly black, white and subtle blue lines, and the image is mirrored, so the same picture appears twice, once right-side up and the other upside down. — Credit…Naï Zakharia

The author’s latest book, “The Wager,” investigates the mysteries surrounding an 18th-century maritime disaster off Cape Horn.

There were multiple moments while reading David Grann’s new book, “The Wager,” about an 18th-century shipwreck, when it occurred to me that the kind of nonfiction narratives The New Yorker writer has become known for share something essential with a sturdy ship.

‘Biography of X’ Rewrites a Life Story and an American Century

The book jacket of “Biography of X,” by Catherine Lacey, is a deep red with a small, scrambled photograph of a woman’s face in the center.

Catherine Lacey’s new novel follows a polarizing artist through a fractured country.

The narrator of “Biography of X,” the new Catherine Lacey novel, is a journalist named C.M. Lucca who worked for a Village Voice-like newspaper in New York City during the 1980s. C.M. has a cool tone and a lonely intelligence; she’s a solitary spirit.

These Police Chiefs Are Working to Change Perceptions

A sea of uniformed police officers throng Fifth Avenue; an American flag waves in the background. — Police officers from across the country line Fifth Avenue for the funeral of the N.Y.P.D. officer Wilbert D. Mora, 2022.Credit…Karsten Moran for The New York Times

In “Walk the Walk,” Neil Gross profiles three departments around the country experimenting with genuine reform.

WALK THE WALK: How Three Police Chiefs Defied the Odds and Changed Cop Culture, by Neil Gross

Buildings, Culture, History, Reviews, Travel, Videos

Travel: France’s Most Beautiful Hiking Paths

Video April 20, 2023 She Seeks Serene Leave a comment

FRANCE 24 (April 20, 2023) – Of the 370 long-distance hiking paths that criss-cross the French countryside, some in particular stand out. In Finistère, on the Atlantic, the Chemin du Pouldu merges with the Brittany coast. Its contrasts of green and blue have inspired many artists, such as French painter Paul Gauguin.

Down in the Cévennes, Scottish writer Robert Louis Stevenson gave his name to the Chemin Stevenson, where you can still come across donkeys. As for the route to Santiago de Compostela, one of the oldest long-distance hiking paths in France, it contains delights for the eyes and the soul.

Culture, Short Films, Travel, Videos, Views

Cinematic Travel Films: ‘Morocco Arise’ (2023)

Video April 18, 2023 She Seeks Serene Leave a comment

Brandon Li Unscripte d (April 18, 2023) – The spirit of Morocco, through my eyes. From the medina to the mountains, the Fantasia to the World Cup, Morocco is forever rising.

Arts & Literature, Culture, Magazines, Opinion, Politics, Reviews

Previews: The New Yorker Magazine – April 24, 2023

April 17, 2023 She Seeks Serene Leave a comment

The New Yorker – April 24 & May 1, 2023 issue:

JooHee Yoon’s “Drawing Hands with A.I. (After M. C. Escher)”

A hand drawn on a piece of paper rises off the page and draws another hand on the piece of paper which in turn draws the...

The artist discusses artistry, artificial intelligence, and the human experience.

Chatbots and image generators, newly on the rise, have sparked our imaginations—and our fears. As artificial-intelligence machines sharpen their ability to translate written prompts into images that accurately capture both style and substance, some visual artists worry that their specialized skills might be rendered irrelevant.

“Drawing Hands,” M. C. Escher, 1948.

The Future of Fertility

A futuristic scene of metallic DNA strands which wrap around a central petri dish containing a human ovum.

A new crop of biotech startups want to revolutionize human reproduction.

In 2016, two Japanese reproductive biologists, Katsuhiko Hayashi and Mitinori Saitou, made an announcement in the journal Nature that read like a science-fiction novel. The researchers had taken skin cells from the tip of a mouse’s tail, reprogrammed them into stem cells, and then turned those stem cells into egg cells.

Crooks’ Mistaken Bet on Encrypted Phones

A group of four men sit around a table piled with cocaine. They are illuminated by the light of a cell phone hovering...

Drug syndicates and other criminal groups bought into the idea that a new kind of phone network couldn’t be infiltrated by cops. They were wrong—big time.

Many criminals have been convicted as a result of encrypted-phone stings—more than four hundred in the U.K. alone.Illustration by Max Löffler

Arts & Literature, Books, Newspapers, Previews, Reviews

The New York Times Book Review – April 16, 2023

April 14, 2023 She Seeks Serene Leave a comment

The New York Times Book Review – April 16, 2023:

She Taught Us to Do Nothing. Now Jenny Odell Wants to Save Time.

This image shows the hands of a clock set into a circle of melting ice, suggesting time is fluid and ephemeral. — Credit…Ricardo Tomás

The author’s new book, “Saving Time: Discovering a Life Beyond the Clock,” urges readers to revise their conceptions of time and the world to nurture hope and action for a better future.

In Russia’s War in Ukraine, ‘Nature Has Also Suffered.’

This is a black-and-white photo of a series of manmade wooden columns sticking out of a tranquil body of water. — Early-1900s wooden poles used for salt mining on the Kuialnyk Estuary, on the northwest coast of the Black Sea.Credit…Yevhen Samuchenko

A book of photographs taken before February 2022 reveals formerly breathtaking landscapes that may never be the same.

A Time-Travel Novel Whose Thrills Go Beyond the Speculative

In this abstract illustration, three figures in an astral plain try to hold onto the flow of time, which is artistically rendered as a colorful, flowing stream. — Credit…Changyu Zou

In Jinwoo Chong’s debut novel, “Flux,” a time-warping discovery impacts the lives of three people coping with personal and systemic traumas.

Arts & Literature, Books, Newspapers, Previews, Reviews

The New York Times Book Review – April 9, 2023

April 7, 2023 She Seeks Serene Leave a comment

The New York Times Book Review – April 9, 2023:

It’s Like ‘Little Women’ — but With Basketball

This is a series of six small drawings of men and women dressed in white, standing in a hilly rural landscape. — Credit…Kristina Tzekova

In “Hello Beautiful,” Ann Napolitano puts a fresh spin on the classic story of four sisters.

“It is your God-given right as an American fiction writer,” Ursula K. Le Guin once said, to change point of view. But “you need to know that you’re doing it,” she warned, and “some American fiction writers don’t.”

Osamu Dazai, With Help From TikTok, Keeps Finding New Fans

A black-and-white photograph of the author Osamu Dazai, who is resting his chin on his hand and looking to his left. — The Japanese novelist Osamu Dazai.

The enduring appeal of a midcentury Japanese novelist who wrote of alienation and suicide.

The first thing you hear is an eerie synth tone, followed by a portentous, insinuating voice. “Tell me, Dazai,” it says. “Why is it you wish to die?”

“Let’s turn that question around,” someone earnestly replies. “Is there really any value to this thing we call … living?” Then a beat drops, accompanied by distorted shouts.

Real People, Reincarnated in the Pages of New Novels

This is an illustration featuring six coin-like drawings in orange, teal, purple in pink, layered over a monochromatic street scene. — Credit…Michelle Mildenberg

These hefty books explore the lives of a former poet, a polarizing artist and a Scottish rebel from unexpected angles.

One of the great attractions of historical fiction is its ability to approach the past from unexpected angles, allowing us to consider famous figures in surprising ways. It’s a tactic that pays off brilliantly in Stephen May’s elegantly acerbic SELL US THE ROPE (Bloomsbury, 240 pp., paperback, $18), which features a thuggish former poet who calls himself Koba. The world will later know him as Stalin.

Arts & Literature, Culture, Magazines, Opinion, Politics, Reviews

Previews: The New Yorker Magazine – April 17, 2023

April 6, 2023 She Seeks Serene Leave a comment

A courtroom drawing of Donald Trump at his arraignment on April 4 2023. — Art by Jane Rosenberg – April 5, 2023

The New Yorker – April 17, 2023 issue: Truth is stranger than fiction: for the first time in its long history, The New Yorker is publishing a courtroom sketch on the cover.

America’s First Indicted Ex-President Is Very Sorry—for Himself

A photo of Donald Trump speaks in a MaraLago ballroom hours after being arraigned.

Notes on Donald Trump’s day in court.

By the time Donald Trump marched out from behind a phalanx of American flags and emerged into the gilded Mar-a-Lago ballroom to speak to cheering supporters on Tuesday night, America’s first indicted ex-President hardly seemed chastened by his historic day as a defendant in a Manhattan courtroom.