- Attended a Ray Lamontagne concert – acoustic, excellent songwriting, material is bluesy and a little dark, great show.
- Attended a talk by Louise Penny, author of the Inspecteur Gamache novels set in the province of Québec on the border with the state of Vermont – unassuming, funny, great stories, interesting way of mapping out in advance the whole series
- Watched:
- the movie Burning (South Korean, won an award at the Cannes Festival and is Korea’s submission at the Oscars) – good storytelling, probably could have done it in 90 minutes rather than two hours;
- the Netflix series The Mechanism (inspired from a real case in Brazil that I was familiar with) and Narcos Mexico (no real character development);
- Started last season of House of Cards – won’t finish it (no movement on the plot; too much navel-gazing). I can’t recommend enough the excellent original House of Cards by the BBC.
- Books:
- Finished reading Jean Chrétien’s Mes histoires (in French), Dani Shapiro’s memoir Hourglass, and Charles Krauthammer’s Things that matter;
- I didn’t finish Marilynne Robinson’s What are we doing here? – the topics were attractive but the treatment is laborious and clunky;
- Currently reading an academic thinkfest on Charles Taylor edited by Ruth Abbey and Amsterdam by Russell Shorto – excellent writing, he really draws you in. A recommendation from my friend Einar while we were visiting him and his family in… Amsterdam. He also recommended The island at the center of the world by the same author.
- Started an online course on Diego Velazquez offered by Museo del Prado in Madrid.