Best of 2024

Photos

Notable diversions so far this year:

Books

  • Anthony Horowitz, Close to Death, 2024
  • Rebecca Makkai, I Have Some Questions for You: A Novel, 2023 (Set in a prestigious boarding school, the narrator, a former student turned podcast host, leads us through a masterfully constructed literary thriller. This thought-provoking exploration of the past’s grip on the present intricately weaves themes of memory, identity, and justice into a compelling narrative.)
  • Peter Attia, Outlive: The Science and Art of Longevity, 2023 (For the super health conscious, well-known physician’s meticulously researched blueprint for extending both lifespan and healthspan through a synthesis of diet, exercise, and medical testing. Summary: eat less, sleep, exercise, meditate, get tested, and learn to read your test results.)
  • David McCloskey, Damascus Station, 2021 (Set in Damascus and penned by former CIA analyst David McCloskey, ‘Damascus Station’ follows CIA operative Sam Joseph as he goes deep undercover, navigating a labyrinth of lies and treachery in an attempt to undermine the Syrian regime. This gripping and suspenseful novel unravels amid the shadowy alleys and whispered conspiracies of a nation teetering on the edge.)
  • David McCloskey, Mascow X, 2023 (This taut thriller shadows CIA operative Sam Joseph as he penetrates the enigmatic world of Moscow, tangled in a high-stakes game of deceit and betrayal. As tensions rise, Joseph races against time, maneuvering through a deadly maze of intrigue that could reshape global alliances.)

Movies

Series

Music

Videos

Articles

  • Jon Baskin, “Conversion Experience: Terrence Malick’s ‘To The Wonder’,” The Las Angeles Review of Books, May 12, 2013 (“Malick’s films are lessons not only in what is knowable about human beings, but also in what is unknowable — we might say, what is wondrous — about them… As usual, Malick has presented us less with characters than with types… Neil is, in the words of the local priest, “the man who hesitates, who does nothing, who buries his talent in the earth…” He is not unlike us — watching and waiting dumbly in the dark… Such figures are generally men, alternately skeptical or idealistic, capable of being moved by love but not of sacrificing their fantasies of social acclaim for it… In conspicuous contrast to the never-ending movement of the female characters who orbit him, his most characteristic action is to stand and stare, as if watching the film of his own life… It is eerie, and sometimes frustrating, to observe him. Yet he represents, as Richard Brody has rightly noted, the American or Protestant spirit — what Max Weber described as the “spirit of capitalism” — pared down and stripped to its essentials. As he lumbers through Paris with Marina, we can see a muffled happiness in him, but it is a happiness never free from the worry of what such happiness may cost.”)