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Current Issue: No. 302

Stop! Look! Listen! Francis Chang's Reading and Watching Recommendation

Posted on March 6, 2025

Lost in Translation (film by Sofia Coppola) and Interior Chinatown (novel by Charles Yu) by Francis Chang 

The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle posits that it is impossible to know the exact location or nature of a particle at any particular moment because the act of observation itself causes a slight shift in position of the observed subject. The resulting alteration in trajectory from the present moment will magnify over time, until the next act of observation and reflection. 

As someone in the thicket of middle age, I wonder how much my recollections of the past shift my understanding of the world. Even in this later stage of life, I still obsess over the questions “who am I” and “what is my place in this world”? It is with this mindset that I rewatched the movie Lost in Translation and read the novel Interior Chinatown.

Stop! Look! Listen! Tom Cull's Reading Recommendation

Posted on March 4, 2025

Myth is on my mind. My partner and I recently tore through the first season of KAOS, a new Netflix series that plays fast and loose with classical Greek Mythology. In this retelling, Gods and humans live in a stylized world that somewhat resembles our own. Zeus, played to a tee by the ingenious Jeff Goldblum, lives in a gaudy mansion on Mount Olympus and wears velour tracksuits and gold-rimmed glasses.

Stop! Look! Listen! Catherine Austen's Reading Recommendation

Posted on February 28, 2025

“How old are you?” This is the question that everyone asks best-selling historian Nell Painter when she returns to school at age 64. She retires from teaching at Princeton and pursues her lifelong dream of becoming an artist. Not a dabbler, not a retiree taking a few classes, but a “serious artist.” Art may be all about seeing, but artists are about being seen. Painter doesn’t just want to paint; she wants to get her MFA and be seen as a professional artist.

Stop! Look! Listen! Melinda Burns' Reading Recommendation

Posted on February 25, 2025

I have been a fan of Abigail Thomas ever since I read her memoir, “Three Dog Life,” years ago. I recently re-read it along with everything else of hers I could find. I just finished her latest, “Still Life at Eighty: The Next Interesting Thing,” with a beautiful photo of her multi-lined face on the cover and a beloved dog in her lap. I love her for the way she observes her life in moments, nothing longer than a few pages, exploring how she came to be the person she is. The everyday and the ordinary are her territory, and where her mind goes “when it’s off-leash,” as she says.

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