Robert Redford is clearly the unluckiest person alive in All Is Lost. Alone at sea, his yacht is holed (and radio destroyed) by an errant shipping container, and he’s then plagued by a series of mishaps and mistakes that he deals with stoically, pragmatically and mostly silently – without a lot of the panic and…
Read moreWorld War Z
World War Z, if you hadn’t heard, is a book that’s styled as an intellectual history of a massive, unprecedented global calamity which happens to involve zombies. Written by Max Brooks, it’s obviously not high art, but it is terrifically well written and the world it conjures is truly vivid and truly scary. So when…
Read moreAgora
Set in 4th Century Alexandria, Agora tells the true tale of the woman Hypatia, a world-renowned astronomer, philosopher and teacher, who’s existence is shattered by the rising tide of religious animosity between Christian, Pagan and Jew. The rise of the monotheistic cults also marks the rise of mysogyny, and Hypatia – whose advanced thinking took…
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