Ken Ilgunas

Elena (2011, Russian) - I can’t seem to write one of these newsletters without mentioning an Andrey Zvyagintsev film. Zvyagintsev’s Elena...

Films Daughters of the Dust (1991, USA) This is one of the most surprising movies I’ve ever watched. It's about a group of...

Movies I’ve watched 18 movies in 62 days. If it was up to me, I’d be watching a movie a night, but two a week is not bad for a house...

Movies The White Ribbon (Germany, 2009) - Director Michael Haneke may be making the case that Germany’s descent into 20th Century...

The Sea, the Sea by Iris Murdoch (1978, *audio*) I’m not sure if The Sea, the Sea is a good book. It’s a haphazard, crazy, bonkers book....

The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by William Shirer (1960) This is one of the best history books I've ever read. It relies almost...

History lovers, I highly recommend the comprehensive, 1,280-page, and irresistible The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by William...

[I only read 21 books in 2019, my lowest total in the fifteen years I've counted the books I've read. But, of these few, I was lucky to...

Nick Drnaso's Sabrina is the most 2019 book you could possibly read. It's about conspiracy theory culture, suburban malaise, and how the...

Meghan Daum is one of my favorite memoir writers and her latest, The Problem with Everything, is very good. It’s a...

Colin Woodard’s, American Nations, is one of the best books on American history I’ve ever read. It urges you to think of America less as...

I really enjoyed "Prisoners of Geography" by Tim Marshall. It's a great introduction to modern-day geopolitics, which I was terribly in...

The Stranger in the Woods: The Extraordinary Story of the Last True Hermit by Michael Finkel (2017) The book is a comedy, tragedy, and...

Listening The Wilderness – Jon Favreau the former speechwriter for President Obama, gives a history of the Democratic party, a diagnosis...

Some book-review love for This Land Is Our Land from Adventure Journal: “My dad, a law-abiding rural county detective, always surprised...

Listening Esther Perel’s Where Should We Begin? Seasons 1 & 2 – This podcast is full of good, practical relationship advice. (One helpful...

If I can find the self-discipline, I’m hoping this will become a regular blog series that’ll give me a place to record, reflect on, and...

I’d love it if someone, whose tastes are similar to my own, would give me a syllabus of decent books to read, to save me the trouble of...

It's a great book. Some thoughts... 1. Grant’s story is pretty close to a real rags-to-riches story, and watching his climb is such fun....

This is a fun, delightful read about a hermit who lived in the Maine woods for 27 years. The hermit, Christopher Knight, stole food,...