Tana French pegs the cause of Ireland’s financial crisis on “a total disconnect between action and consequence.” For many Irish citizens since the collapse of the Celtic Tiger, she writes, “their whole sense of a world governed by coherent cause and effect, of their ability to have any agency in their own lives, came under attack.” Bonus: our own Edan Lepucki has previously written about French’s novels and plotting.
Tana French on the Celtic Tiger
Film Time with Steve
Looking for something to watch this weekend? Steve Buscemi’s ranked his top ten films in the Criterion Collection.
Books As Balm
The New York Times reports that actress Carrie Fisher's books have risen to the top of Amazon's bestseller lists following news of her death. Fisher penned the memoirs Wishful Drinking, Shockaholic, and The Princess Diarist, which just came out last month, as well as several novels, including the book-made-movie Postcards from the Edge. Our own Lydia Kiesling included Postcards on a reading list for her short-lived celebrity book club a few years back.
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Convergences
Recommended Reading: Andrea Denhoed on Flannery O’Connor.
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PDT Cocktail Book
With New Year's Eve looming, LA Weekly is forgoing their usual cookbook of the week in favor of a cocktail book--The PDT Cocktail Book by Jim Meehan and illustrator Chris Gall, the only beverage book that made it into their Best of 2011 "cookbook" list.
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That Moment When
"I can still remember with complete clarity the way I felt when whatever it was came fluttering down into my hands that day 30 years ago on the grass behind the outfield fence at Jingu Stadium; and I recall just as clearly the warmth of the wounded pigeon I picked up in those same hands that spring afternoon a year later, near Sendagaya Elementary School. I always call up those sensations whenever I think about what it means to write a novel." Haruki Murakami on "The Moment [He] Became a Novelist," excerpted on Lit Hub from the new double edition of his first novels, Wind/Pinball.
The Thoreau Diet
"Thoreau did kill, cook and eat a woodchuck that was eating his beans. But he decided that was a lousy way to treat a woodchuck and he never did it again." In celebration of his bicentennial, NPR sets straight five myths about Henry David Thoreau's diet, including the pernicious canard that he stole pies from neighbor's windowsills. See also "My Summer with Henry," on reading Thoreau's Cape Cod on Cape Cod.
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