Each quarter I do a quick roundup of the book and film reviews that I do on Goodreads and Letterboxd. These reviews are too short and too off-the-cuff to be included with the more in depth reviews I do on this site. Below are the highlights of the quarter.
Books
I am keeping 4 books ahead of my 2015 Goodreads challenge so far, so that is good. I spend a lot of time reading The New Yorker, The Atlantic and The Literary Review of Canada while I am at home so I am glad audiobooks help me keep pace. I would have finished 1 or 2 more, but I abandoned a couple of books this year. That is something I normally wouldn’t do… but life is short right? And there is too much worthy out there to read.
Here are the longer reviews from this quarter:
- How We Got to Now
- Information Doesn’t Want to Be Free
- Kitten Clone (where I talk a little about my piece published in the LRC)
Probably the number one book of this quarter – and potentially of this year – is Piketty’s Capital. A very challenging book. I am aware of the criticism, but it has certainly affected the way I think about economic policy.
★★★★☆ The Once and Future King
★★★☆☆ The Big Disconnect: Why the Internet Hasn’t Transformed Politics
★★★☆☆ The Republic of Thieves
★★★★½ Station Eleven
★★★☆☆ Ha’penny
★★★★★ Capital in the Twenty-First Century
★★★★☆ Pay Any Price: Greed, Power, and Endless War
★★★★☆ Half a Crown
Film
Out of the 10 films I saw this quarter (the highlight being The Grand Budapest Hotel) I only deigned to write a little something for the following:
★★★½☆ Like Father, Like Son
★★★☆☆ Attack the Block
★★☆☆☆ Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
Not a lot of insight there…