Recommendations Spring/Summer 2024

[Header Photo by Ethan Robertson on Unsplash]

I have had a notably good run lately with entertainment (books, films, series, music, etc.) and pop culture. And nothing makes that more enjoyable than sharing with others.

This covers a good deal of re-reading and re-watching by me, but also some wonderful new works and thinkers/creators that I am really excited about.

Here, then, is a very eclectic list of recommendations for your spring and summer of 2024.

Haruki Murakami

Kafka on the Shore [Just finished re-reading. A wonderful and powerful work by Murkami, many think his best.]

1Q84 [Currently in the midst of re-reading, and my initial venture into Murakami. Brilliant and quite long, which I enjoy.]

Haruki Murakami Manga Stories 1: Super-Frog Saves Tokyo, Where I’m Likely to Find It, Birthday Girl, The Seventh Man [On deck to read.]

Haruki Murakami Manga Stories 2: The Second Bakery Attack; Samsa in Love; Thailand [On deck to read.]

Arthur C. Clarke

Rendezvous with Rama [Just re-read and a gem from my adolescence. Incredibly readable and just wonderful sci-fi.]

Childhood’s End [Another love from my adolescence, and on deck for re-reading.]

Poor Things

Poor Things (2023) [A very graphic and incisive film. Lots of sex and nudity just FYI.]

Poor Things, Alasdair Gray [Really surprised with how wonderful and laugh out loud funny this is. Highly recommend, but an interesting typeset approach with some images.]

Music

Wonderful cover by The National of “Heaven” by Talking Heads

https://youtu.be/ewVQLO248BQ?si=L4qBI60ngIBpLbzg

Vampire Weekend [New obsession.]

The Decemberists [New album out soon and “All I Want Is You” is wonderful.]

Series

Outer Range [Currently re-watching because S2 is out. Sci-fi western. Some glorious fun (and a bit of David Lynch vibes) and wonderful acting/writing.]

Fallout [My partner is the gamer and I have no background in this. But the series grew on me so I will be re-watching.]

Ian Cushing

Cushing does excellent scholarship on deficit perspectives of language and the “word gap.” And open-access.

Tiered vocabulary and raciolinguistic discourses of deficit: from academic scholarship to education policy, Ian Cushing

Social in/justice and the deficit foundations of oracy, Ian Cushing

Teachers Challenging Language Discrimination in England’s Schools: A Typology of Resistance, Ian Cushing & Dan Clayton

James Baldwin

“The American institutions are all bankrupt,” explains James Baldwin in “Notes on the House of Bondage.” And he weighs in on voting when “how it happens that in a nation so boastfully autonomous as the United States we are reduced to the present Presidential candidates?”

George Saunders and Lane Smith

The Very Persistent Gappers of Frip, Saunders and Smith [A wonderful work and I cannot recommend it enough. I love Smith’s art, and blogged about this here.]

It’s a Book, Smith [One of my favorite picture books, funny and sharp.]

Lego

Haven’t been much into these types of builds but both are really good ones and nice displays.

Rocket & Baby Groot (76282)

Green Goblin Construction Figure (76284)

Daredevil and Black Widow

Daredevil Omnibus v.3 [I am currently drafting a book on Black Widiow, and this is a wonderful collection of the Daredevil/Black Widow era from my adolescence when I became a comic book collector.]