Tag: books
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Now Dig This
What I’ve been reading in 2024 As Desert Dispatch prepares to relocate its southwestern regional office to a new, more expansive suite (read: we’re moving into a townhouse), yours truly has been feeling a little more pressed for time. As such, your fearless writer has been scrambling for time to prepare each week’s pair of newsletters. So,…
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The Crime Wave at Saltburn
Emerald Fennell’s “Saltburn” and P.G. Wodehouse’s “Blandings” Saltburn, the recent film by Emerald Fennell, caused a stir when it debuted on Amazon Prime this past December. It’s been criticized, praised, and meme’d, while simultaneously re-popularizating Sophie Ellis-Bextor’s early-2000s hit song “Murder on the Dancefloor.” In short, the film has caused something of a sensation. As…
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A Short Theory of Rest
We Americans, and probably those of us in the wider West, have a strange relationship to rest. We have to be always moving, doing something – not just something, but something productive. How often have we felt that simply resting (like taking a nap) was wrong by its very nature of being unproductive? How many of…
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Bureaucracy As Accidental Hero
Roberto Rossellini’s “Rome, Open City” and Hannah Arendt’s “Eichmann in Jerusalem” Major Bergmann (right), played by Harry Feist, in Robert Rossellini’s Rome, Open City. Next to him is Ingrid, a German spy, played by Giovanna Galletti. Rome, Open City – the 1946 Italian neorealist film directed by Roberto Rossellini – is ostensibly about resistance fighters in The Eternal…
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5 Reasons to Drop a Bad Book
Or, The Argument Against Being a Book Completionist The “World History” shelf at the Joyner-Green Valley Library in Green Valley, AZ. The author is not saying any of the books in the above photo are bad.Photo by the author, taken on Oct. 10, 2023. It’s the dawn of a new year, so let’s have ourselves a desert dispatch listicle! …