It's been a busy couple of weeks on the media front. I'm no longer using Instagram, but I haven't yet seen a diminution of iPhone use — most likely this is due to a week of being miserably sick with what turned into bacterial sinusitis. 

First, I finished reading A Day in the Life of Abed Salama by Nathan Thrall. While I was reading this book there were times when it felt like fiction, but this 2024 Pulitzer Prize winner for non-fiction delivers a deeply connected, intimate exploration of the most painful day in a family's history. On the way to a field trip, five year old Milad Slama was killed in a school bus-semitrailer collision in terrible weather on a dangerous road. In the minutes and hours that follow, Milad's father Abed attempts to find his son but is caught between physical and logistical walls that have been built between Palestinian and Israeli controlled disputed territories. Thrall does not tell this story linearly, nor simply, and the inciting incident is like a hammer strike on a taut web of steel wires through history, people, families, politics, and nations. I could barely put this book down, so powerful were the stories.

Second, Tár. I had heard that this movie, helmed by Cate Blanchett, was a standout, but I was not prepared for how disturbing and beautiful it was. One should not read about this movie, but set aside the two hours and just watch it, listen to it, and sit with it. We're lucky that we have a good sound system at home and this movie takes full advantage of surround sound and Atmos, with extremely well done environmental and storytelling sound. The acting is stellar. The end of the movie, however, is weak and plays into an orientalist frame.

We've been watching Plur1bus and Murderbot. The former is a standout concept and I am eager to see how it plays out in its first season.

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