TV Mini-Series Review: Normal People (2020). BBC and Hulu.

A 12-part series based on the 2018 bestselling novel of the same name by Sally Rooney, this story follows a pair of young Irish lovers, their on again/off again romance and friendship, and their respective personality developments as individuals from their last year of high school into their years together and apart at Trinity College in Dublin. 

It's very touching, and definitely evocative of many of the common experiences and life lessons of sexual and romantic relationships during the late teens and early twenties.  It has a lot of fairly explicit sex in it, although most of it is handled very sweetly and tastefully.  Recommended.

Book Review: The Monk of Mokha (2018). Dave Eggers.

This is the incredible, inspiring true story of a young Yemeni-American who grew up as a poor immigrant child in the Tenderloin district of San Francisco.  In the process of trying to find a way to make a living as a young man, without much early success, he discovers that his home country of Yemen was the original source of coffee. 

From this minor piece of historical trivia, he has a vision of himself as the man who can restore Yemeni coffee to international prominence, and then sets out to do it, despite his lack of any knowledge about coffee, or any business experience, connections or funding sources.  

In the process of this unlikely quest, he encounters one major obstacle after another:  poor coffee growing practices across Yemen, local warlords, terrorism and Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, and the onset of the Yemeni war with Saudi Arabia, which unfolds and traps him in Yemen just as he's finally ready to ship his first load of elite coffee to America.  

An unusual rags to riches adventure story for our modern era.  Recommended.

Book Review: The Road to Unfreedom: Russia, Europe, America (2018). Timothy Snyder.

This book by a noted academic with deep personal connections in Eastern Europe exposes the political evolution of Russia after the fall of the Soviet Union, from a nation apparently on the brink of a promising transition to western-style democracy, to the totalitarian, corrupt autocracy of Vladimir Putin.  

Those of us in the West who had been ignoring post-Soviet Russian developments in the belief that democracy had become inevitable there need to read this book closely.  Snyder pays particular attention to the 20th century fascist theoreticians who have been elevated back to prominence by Putin, and explores the tools, news media and institutions being used to destroy a fact-based political reality in Russia, in favor of an "eternal" regime with no succession plan, no accountability to the people, and no ability to look to history or objective facts to determine what is true and real.  

It’s not surprising that Snyder has been in demand as a commentator on cable news the past few years, both during the Trump presidency, and again now as we watch the horrifying war launched by Putin and Russia upon Ukraine unfolding in real time.  He has a deep understanding of the historical precedents for these events, as well as their theoretical underpinnings in the authoritarian traditions of Russia, the Soviet Union and elsewhere.

The playbook he describes is all depressingly familiar by now:  undoubtedly totalitarian in its methods and effects, and unrestrained by the democratic and rational traditions (along with fact-based journalism) which still exist in the western world and free societies, but which have been under similar forms of attack here too in the past several decades.  Recommended.

Book Review: Bad Blood (2018). John Carryrou.

An excellent investigative history of Theranos, the glittery $9 billion hi-tech health start-up led by Elizabeth Holmes, a beautiful and charismatic 19-year old Stanford drop-out who promised a revolution in blood testing, but instead led it to disaster and collapse through personal manipulation, brilliant but fraudulent marketing, secrecy and deceit over a 15-year period.  

 

The book and Carryou’s investigation, as well as some of the information contained in the book, appear in some of the current documentaries, podcasts and fictionalized versions of the Theranos story, including most recently the HBO documentary series The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley, and the Hulu TV mini-series The Dropout. 

 

A fascinating and disturbing story of the high-tech start-up world and its pathologies, well researched and presented.  Recommended.

TV Review: Parks and Recreation. Peacock Streaming (NBC), Seasons 1-7.

A really sweet and funny TV series about a bunch of mid-western Parks & Recreation employees in the little mid-western hamlet of Pawnee, Indiana, produced by and starring Amy Poehler.  I never bothered to see this one before, because I assumed it was just Saturday Night Live-style skits in an office setting (I've never been a big SNL fan).  

But when we finally watched it, it turned out to be endearing, hilarious and definitely binge-worthy.  The cast is excellent, starting with Amy Poehler in the lead role, but including also Nick Offerman, Rashida Jones, Rob Lowe, Chris Pratt and several others, playing a bunch of office and town misfits who are each ridiculous in their own unique ways, but all basically kind and adorable. 

This is definitely the sort of show where we laugh with them, rather than at them.  In this sense, it is very reminiscent of Tina Fey's wonderful 30 Rock comedy series.  No wonder the two of them (Poehler and Fey) have done so much great comedy together.  Highly recommended.    

Movie Review: The Snow Walker (2003). Amazon Prime.

Some good friends told us about this 2003 movie, based on a Farley Mowat novel, after we came back from a 2019 trip to Alaska.  We finally got around to seeing it, and it was well worth it.  

The story takes place in 1952, in the Canadian Northwest Territories, where an arrogant white bush pilot and war veteran on a side trip to a tiny remote native village is persuaded to take a very sick young native woman to the nearest city hospital.  

Unfortunately, the engine fails on the way, and the two of them end up crash-landing in a barren wilderness, where the pilot tries to take charge to figure out how to rescue them.  What he doesn't realize (until he does) is that his ailing passenger is far better equipped for survival, with just the few primitive tools she carries in her kit, than he could ever be in that hostile, cold natural environment. 

Watching the process of how she copes in the wild, and they gradually learn to work together, is fascinating, emotionally stirring and wonderfully told.  Highly recommended.

TV Mini-Series Review: Little Fires Everywhere (2020). Hulu.

A perfectly-timed new TV series when it was released (based on the 2017 bestseller of the same name by Celeste Ng), this series starring Reese Witherspoon and Kerry Washington explores many facets of race and class conflict in American society. 

Witherspoon portrays Elena, a wealthy White suburban Mom of four teenage children, seemingly well-intentioned and kind, but also narcissistic, uptight and clueless, whose life and family become increasingly intertwined with those of Washington's character Mia. 

Mia is a mysterious free-spirited Black artist with a 15-year old daughter, who moves from place to place every few months in a beat-up old hatchback, for reasons that she doesn’t reveal but which increasingly add to the tension surrounding her, her daughter and their odd rootless lifestyle.

This situation quickly becomes a powder keg for all the racial and class tensions, as well as the family dramas and personalities, within and between the two families and the Shaker Heights community in Ohio.  A really excellent piece of TV drama for our era.  Highly recommended. 

Book Review: Petty: the Biography (2015). Warren Zanes.

This book claims to be the 'unvarnished truth' about the life of Tom Petty, resulting from Petty and his whole circle of friends, Heartbreakers band members, fellow stars and family members opening up to the author about all the private emotional turmoil and personal ups and downs of one of America's greatest ever rock and roll legends and his band.  That seems to be a well-founded claim, as much as any biography can claim to be the ‘truth’ about anyone’s life.

A nicely-written and intensely revealing look behind the scenes of one of rock's most epic, beloved and habitually private figures, published shortly before his tragic death.  Highly recommended.