Assorted book arrivals: nonfiction, fiction & poetry, classics and a little box from Spain

Sunday night candy

I published the speech I read during the Latiné Student Celebration in my newsletter. If you wish to read it, link is in the photo

A morning with Edgardo Cozarinsky: his brilliant short variations on Joseph Roth’s life and his posthumous nouvelle where the Rothian protagonist is lost in a world narrated through Cozarinsky’s cinematic relationship to plot and space.

Friendly reminder — Individual faculty can do this by opting out. I did this semester. I assigned books, gave paper handouts in class, and put nothing on canvas save the syllabus. The result? Better engagement and a better grade average. www.chronicle.com/article/kill...

A beautiful elegiac novel and a personal journey haunted by Cesare Pavese. Really wonderful Saturday read.

Truly exceptional novel narrated in poetic stream of consciousness about a woman that, using an ancient Albanian law, renounces sex and womanhood this acquiring the rights of a man. One of the most mesmerizing works of fiction I’ve read in a while

New Blu-Ray edition of Olivier Assayas’ Boarding Gate, a compelling if uneven eurothriller built around logistics and finance, in the European and Chinese underbellies of global capital. Extra points for Kim Gordon in a small supporting role.

François Ozon’s The Stranger, a faithful and visually wonderful take on Camus, with echoes of Carne and Duvivier and accents on the imperial and racial logics, conducting wonderful work through silence in the first half, and perhaps overdoing the interior monologue on the second half. in theaters

Paquetito desde España

Johnnie To’s Romancing in Thin Air, a lovely melodramedy, atypical in the canon of one of the great masters of Hong Kong action, with a screenplay that grows into a deepening emotional direction, carried by the perfect performances of its magnetic protagonists. In Blu-Ray.

Billie Eilish and James Cameron’s Hit Me Hard and Soft, The Tour, an impressive concert film stunningly shot in 3D, delivering both her amazing performances and a very good focus on her fandom. In theaters.

Pete Ohs’ Erupcja, a film about the inability to commit to love, located in between US mumblecore and the French New Wave, shot in handheld and with Linklater-Style collaborative dialogue, a bit half baked but enjoyable. In theaters.

Assorted book arrivals

Alex Ross Perry’s Videoheaven, a 3-hour long film essay on the history of the video store grounded on an encyclopedic account of its representation in US films of all stripes, aptly narrated by Maya Hawke. In the Criterion Channel.

Always a good time to read McClanahan and McCune’s “Ed Tech” keyword, but now seems even better www.press.jhu.edu/books/title/...

From the great Alice Notley

Ratchapoom Boonbunchacoke’s A Useful Ghost, a brilliant dark comedy about ghosts that possess appliances and haunt dreams, beginning as a mediation on loss and memory with queer undertones and growing into a reflection about justice and reparation. In VOD

Damian McCarthy’s Hokum, an excellent folk horror/thriller built with perfect atmospherics and a superb performance by Adam Scott, a horror film precise in its elements and very good at affecting the audience. In theaters

3 AM country songs I actually like playlist Ella Langley. Choosin’ Texas. Dasha. Austin (Boots Stop Workin’) Shaboozey, A Bar Song (Tipsy) Wyatt Flores. Only Thing Missing is You. Lady Antebellum. Need You Now Jesse Sykes and The Sweet Hereafter. Reckless Burning.

A marvelous compilation of three stories by Magris of Europeans in the Southern Cone of América, including a linguist and naturalist seeking utopias, a French man who proclaims himself the King of Araucanía and a nun in Antártica, all in dialogue with the literature of the region. Really superb.

Kazuya Shiraishi’s Bushido, an update of the classic samurai film notable for its work with framing, light and color, and for the most riveting scenes of people playing Go out there, slow burning but very beautiful in its best moments. In theaters.

Late-night read, Roberto Calasso’s beautiful, fragmentary memoir of Roberto Bazlen, Bobi, on literary sensibility, sound and the culture of Postwar Italy. Chef’s kiss from one of the great nonfiction writers of the late 20th and early 21st century .

Gabriele Mainetti’s The Forbidden City, a lively Italian wuxia-meets-mafia-noir film, a revenge film dealing with the trafficking and extortion of migrants set in a beautifully multicultural Rome, a forward-looking antidote against Meloni-era fascist nostalgia. In 4K disc and VOD

Four really excellent Latin American albums I’ve been listening this week.

Llego tarde a esta fiesta, qué librazo. Inteligente estructural, histórica y políticamente y un contrapunto necesario a tanta autoficción. Hay que leerlo.

Assorted film arrivals

good morning discoursers! middlebrow furrowed chaos yesterday whew but CULTURE IS FOR EVERYBODY hyperallergic.com/how-to-prote... @isanchezprado.bsky.social

The 4K UHD edition of Juan Meza-León’s Aztec Batman, Clash of Empires (also available in HBO Max), a landmark collaboration between Warner and Mexican animation studio Ánima, bringing the DC mythology to a revisionist narration of the fall of Tenochtitlán.

David Lowery’s Mother Mary, a visually arresting but contrived film on friendship, creative collaboration and stardom. Anne Hathaway and Michaela Coel deliver extraordinary emotional performances notwithstanding the cheesy notes of a screenplay that collapses into cliche in the last act. In theaters

This is my favorite album of 2026 so far, from Argentine experimental pop artist Paula Prieto, it has been out for a while in alternative platforms as she was shunning mainstream channels but it got released on Friday in Apple Music and Spotify. Highly recommended, alongside all of her music.

Subterranean in St Louis, Exile in Bookville in Chicago, Casa Tomada and El Desastre in México City, Grolier in Cambridge. All awesome.

TEACHING TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY LITERATURE: ESSAYS FROM THE CLASSROOM Officially under contract and coming in 2028! It's a monster volume: 33 teacher-scholars from around the world writing provocative, shortform essays in the service of pedagogy

An interesting and ambitious novel that is worth reading even if it does not fully deliver. I like its architecture, its play with the metafictional and its fragmented narrative but I also found the narrative voice surprisingly monotonous and plagued by this ironic detachment derivative of Bolaño.

José Luis Rivas, a fantastic poet of the sea and the long verse and some of his many translations, which have shaped the canons of poetry read in Mexico

Today I taught my very last class at WashU, after 20 years, a self-reflection for a Mexican Visual Culture class, an intense course on the relationship between art and society in Mexico

fellow film profs, rejoice! “among a totally random population, levels of creativity for the people watching the experimental films were immediately higher compared to those watching YouTube videos” www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/dig...

Steven Soderbergh’s The Christophers, a little jewel of a dramedy on the value of art and of the artist, built around an exceptional acting tête-à-tête between Ian McKellen and Micaela Coel, complemented by deliciously obnoxious comedic antagonism from James Corden and Jessica Gunning. In theaters.

@annakornbluh.bsky.social from a hater of the genre, these are some of the ones I really love: Amadeus, Malcolm X, Ed Wood, La Vie en Rose, The Color of the Pomegranates, Cantinflas, Camille Claudell, Lawrence of Arabia,I Tonya, The DivingBell and the Butterfly, Mishima, The Last Emperor