“It’s a good thing she’s dead.”

It was my friend Nora on the phone. Not hello, Penelope, this is Nora, how are you? Just “It’s a good thing she’s dead, or I’d kill her.”

I’d bugged Nora to read the Lymond Chronicles, raving that it was the most intense reading experience of my…

In 1997, the American Film Institute released a list of the 100 greatest American films. The Searchers ranked 96th. This was a scandal.

It is the greatest John Wayne movie, and the greatest Western ever, which means, necessarily, that…

Haruki Murakami visits a library…and finds a sheep

A young boy finds himself trapped in a bizarre library with a sheep man and a mysterious girl in Haruki Murakami’s illustrated short novel, The Strange Library.

Remembering a legend of world cinema

Prolific Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami died July 4 in Paris, France. During a career that…