Monthly Archives: December 2017

Reading Well: History of Wolves by Emily Fridlund

History of Wolves (2017) by Emily Fridlund is a fantastic book, certainly one of the best I read this year. It’s a whodunnit that manages to preserve dramatic tension throughout, despite having made “the big reveal” quite early in the book. That … Continue reading

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Reading Well: Future Home of the Living God by Louise Erdrich

I’ve been a fan of Louise Erdrich for decades, and remember thinking that Love Medicine, The Beet Queen, and Tracks were as fine a sequence of three novels as I had read. I hadn’t read much from her since then–perhaps a couple novels and … Continue reading

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@TheMovies with PopPop: The Salesman

The Salesman is another excellent film from Iranian Director Asghar Farhadi. The film won the 2016 Best Foreign Film Oscar, and Farhadi made additional waves when he refused to attend the ceremony in response to Trump’s travel ban. The movie … Continue reading

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Reading Well: Sequels & Other Novels

{More follow-ups and other works …} I hadn’t realized Colson Whitehead, long before The Underground Railroad, wrote The Noble Hustle, a first person account focusing on one of my favorite topics: poker, and specifically, No-Limit Texas Hold ‘Em. Published in 2014, Whitehead’s book … Continue reading

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Reading Well: Company Town by Madeline Ashby

Published in 2016, Madeline Ashby‘s Company Town deserves a place among the more solid entries in the burgeoning field of young adult dystopian novels that reach beyond a simple displacement of a boy-meets-girl narrative into a bleak future (although, it must be said, … Continue reading

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@The Movies with PopPop: Battle of the Sexes

Battle of the Sexes is a very good movie – far better than it might have been! While its main plot event is the $100,000 purse tennis match between Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs, the movie is really about … Continue reading

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