We made something gigantic: The 101 greatest artworks -- movies, songs, buildings, books -- of and about Washington, D.C. www.washingtonpost.com/entertainmen...

My occasional spotlight on some recent things from our coverage. First up, @roncharles.bsky.social on Ian McEwan's latest, "a story of scholarly obsession, with all the twinned pleasures and diversions such a story necessarily involves." www.washingtonpost.com/books/2025/0...

I thought Ross Douthat's recent explanation of how late night became more political was off. So I dug into the history. www.nytimes.com/2025/09/24/a...

The final episode of Black Rabbit was fittingly dumb.

I just don't know how you can look at the actual application of review in most sports -- which leads to regular, multi-minute breaks in play to litigate microscopic edges in slow motion -- and still think "getting the call right" is the only thing that should matter. It's still entertainment!

Not to take away an ounce of Chotiner's interviewing talent, but a lot of what people marvel at is what people just ... say. "I want to make sure *you* can hear you."

This year's Booker shortlist: www.washingtonpost.com/books/2025/0...

Certainly not in my lifetime.

I really thought my lifelong belief that absurdity is the essential state of the human condition would have better prepared my sanity for protection in 2025, but in a way I can't articulate yet, I think it's done the opposite.

They were my first real (just me and friends) concert. The old Bronco Bowl in Dallas.

"You couldn't pay me to read Matthew McConaughey's poetry," a principled person might say. I, however, have no such scruples. www.washingtonpost.com/books/2025/0...

For @nybooks.com I wrote about the TV drama Adolescence, teenage boys and the Manosphere. Includes looksmaxxing, mewing, Fresh & Fit, Sexual Market Value ... www.nybooks.com/articles/202...

This is an agent of the US federal government, armed for live-fire combat against a modern army, slamming a passive and nonviolent female candidate for the US Congress into asphalt. Then walking away without checking if she has injuries, with his identity concealed behind a black facemask.

As you cancel streaming services, here is a casual reminder that only 16% of Americans read for pleasure anymore, and your local library has hundreds or thousands of books you haven't read. They would love to see you stop by and renew your library card.

Can't wait to read this. I'm not the most well-traveled person, but being inside there as the sun was starting to set was (by a decent distance) the most incredible man-made thing I've ever seen. Orwell missed on this one.

People are still out in the world reading books, thank God. My colleague Nora Krug asked several people around the D.C. area about what has their attention at the moment. www.washingtonpost.com/books/2025/0...

Dan Piepenbring in a review in the new Harper’s of Cory Doctorow’s “Enshittification.”

Episodes 1, 2 and 4 of Adolescence are very good. Episode 3, thanks to Cooper and fellow winner Erin Doherty, is all-time great.

Stop making shows about the Murdaughs challenge

In an effort to move 2 percent back in the direction of sanity today, I read Saul Bellow's Paris Review interview from 1966. And it worked! I only feel 98 percent insane! Choice excerpts:

Parul alert. 🚨 www.nytimes.com/2025/09/12/m...

Charlie Kirk called me a ‘lunatic’ and a ‘prostitute’ and demanded I be deported. Nothing, *nothing*, justifies killing him, or robbing his kids of their dad. We don’t know the identity or motive of the shooter but murder can *never* be the response to political disagreements.

Just manifesting my semi-retirement plan again. (Photo from "The Bookshop" by Evan Friss.)

A new instalment of INVENTORY is available now via the @backlisted.bsky.social Patreon. Sign up as a Locklistener today and you’ll get this plus a bunch of other stuff, all while supporting the podcast. This week: Neko Case, ‘Nearly Midnight, Honolulu’. www.patreon.com/backlisted

It’s like that old joke where a bunch of foxes are running out of the USSR. A man asks them why they are running Foxes: “they’re arresting all the camels!” Man: “but you’re not camels!” Foxes: “yes, but you try proving that to them!”

I'm harnessing the unprecedented power of AI to forget how to read and develop a severe mental illness that makes me unrecognizable to those who once knew me.

This is the official spokesperson for the White House, stating that the President hopes to deploy the United States military to occupy every city controlled by the political party that opposes him. Explicitly.

Fawn Hall? We haven't heard that name in years.

I guarantee an AI-generated CEO could (and will soon) say this for *much, much* cheaper than Wright.

The answer to the first two questions below is yes if certain conditions are met: Putting reviews in front of online readers; not expecting/caring that every review do equally "well," traffic-wise; and caring about subscribers' desires/behaviors beyond clicks. Etc.

“Editing according to traffic is not editing; it’s engineering" — David Remnick in NYmag nymag.com/intelligence...

Amazing combination of photo and headline. Also: agreed.

Making a resolution to keep up with these more regularly as print experiences. One of the connecting strands between me now and 19-year-old me. This is a great issue.

Relevant book review: www.washingtonpost.com/books/2025/0...

This frame has potential.

The “problem” with vaccines? They so effective at preventing deaths that they create generations of people that question whether disease was a problem in the first place because they have never experienced the horrors of a world without vaccines.

We took the paywall down on this one. defector.com/how-the-fuck...

I realize there are timing issues to figure out here, but has Hulk Hogan, somehow, been reincarnated as Bill Simmons?

Subscribe to things you like if you can! You support the things you like and getting mail is still fun!

I know, I know, but: The president of the US saying, literally, "we're going in" in reference to sending the military to an American city for no reason beyond terrorizing the local population should be the most immediately impeachable shit imaginable

Saw with my sister in '99. We're both hyper-polite moviegoers, so were totally silent for all 3 hours despite being nearly alone in there. Credits started rolling and we turned to each other. Her: "I loved that." Me: "I hated it." Got up and left. (Can't stand by this opinion without rewatching.)

The whole album is about 🔥 , about everything you think about 🔥 as being: cleansing, something that destroys everything in its path. It’s an element that’s everywhere; the metaphorical & allegorical interpretations of 🔥 are endless.” M. Stipe Happy anniversary to Document, released on 8.31.1987

With the way August weather has been, a big fall books preview feels especially appropriate. www.washingtonpost.com/books/2025/0...

With the way August weather has been, a big fall books preview feels especially appropriate. www.washingtonpost.com/books/2025/0...

Becca Rothfeld on the failings of a boosterish tale of AI-human relations. www.washingtonpost.com/books/2025/0...

Why do those most obsessed with longevity make me want life to be shorter?

This is very good. harpers.org/archive/2025...

I return to this review from time to time as an exemplar of one type of the art. It gets granular, of course, but I love this umbrella statement near the top. www.nytimes.com/2011/08/14/b...