BOOK and MOVIE recommendations?

I suspect you'd really like the new Little Mermaid, Lord of the Rangs, and that new Netflix documentary, "How To Talk Down To White People".

Book: Eugene Onegin by Aleksandr Pushkin, or Tarr by Wyndham Lewis.

Onegin might be a better fit based on ~why~ you are asking, -- it will tell you all about distraction/entertainment, about getting away from everything, &c.

Tarr could have been written in 2022, but it was written in 1918. Wonderfully incisive commentary on 'culture', 'life', and 'art'.

Movie:Citizen Kane if you haven't already seen it, and L'Avventura

For movies and TV:

Has suggestions up to last year, I believe.

Cormac McCarthy is, imo, our greatest living author and while No Country for Old Men isn't his best book by any stretch, it was written as a screenplay for the movie which I think cracked the IMDB top 100 of all time. Worth a read and then a watch (or whatever you prefer)

If you're going to read McCarthy then definitely read Blood Meridian: or The Evening Redness in the West. Astonishing book, considered by some to be the greatest American novel, with one of the most indelible characters in American fiction.

Pro tip: Have dictionaries (English and Spanish) ready to hand.

TV: Black Sails

Blood Meridian takes my breath away but, depending on the reader’s sensibilities, I think No Country for Old Men, the Border Trilogy, and The Road are more reader-friendly introductions to CM. Then Suttree and Blood Meridian (again, both of which I love).

TV:

The Wire, The Wire, and possibly The wire

Breaking Bad

The Sopranos

Better Call Saul

Teletubbies

Book: "Narcissus and Goldmund" by Hermann Hesse

Movie: "Tokyo Story" (A 1953 Japanese movie directed by Yasujiro Ozu)

Book: "Silas Marner" by George Eliot

Movie: "Tender Mercies" starring Robert Duvall

Never would’ve expected to see Lewis. Hessé or Eliot (he’s great! 🤪)

like this, but nice.

2666 by Roberto Bolano

The Prague Cemetery by Umberto Eco

If on a winter's night a traveler by Italo Calvino

Movie: I recommend “watching a director” - Kubrick (Dr Strangelove is a good starting point) and Lynch (gotta start with blue velvet if unfamiliar) are impeccable, the coen brothers are very good (Barton Fink is underrated). Ridley Scott’s Alien is a 10/10 medium defining masterpiece but other than that he is hit or miss from what I have seen.

Books - I could recommend many but something that you won’t find on very many “top books” list is Six Problems of Don Isidoro Parodi by Jorge Luis Borges and Bioy Casares, Thomas Browne’s Diptyich Urne-Buriall and the Quincicall Lozenge is excellent non-fiction if you are “in your hermetic era”

Kubrick-"Lolita"-1962

Lynch- "Wild at Heart"

Houston- "The Maltese Falcon"

Coppola- "The Godfather II"

Allen- "Annie Hall"

Scorsese- "Raging Bull"

Kazan- "A Streetcar Named Desire"

Hitchcock- "Psycho"

Bogdanovich- "The Last Picture Show"

Schlesinger- "Midnight Cowboy"

Ashby- "The Last Detail"

Nichols- "The Fortune"

Welles- "Citizen Kane"

Rafelson- "Five Easy Pieces"

The Book.........The Boys in the Boat..........wonderful story.........also The life of Jim Thorpe great read..........Wish they would make a movie about the Boys in the boat!!!

Thanks for the input, everybody!

For some fiction if you're into Fantasy and have a lot of time either the Wheel of Time or The Dark Tower series are great reads. Do not even try to get through their awful TV adaptations.

If you want to read some Non Fiction Victor Davis Hanson is a great historian who writes very interesting military history books.

Books: Light Between Oceans, Testament of Youth, Higher (by Neal Bascomb), The Perfect Mile (by Neal Bascomb), Project Hail Mary

Movies: Top Gun Maverick

Mel Robbins - The Five Second Rule" book

Michelle Hurn - "The Dietitians Dilemma" book

Rhonda Byrnes - "The Secret" book