7/22/26
Solvej Balle monitors the situation.
reviews
25 posts
7/20/26
Because my twenty-nine-year-old sister-in-law is still living on my couch.
7/9/26
An Oakland schoolteacher on Mac Barnett's “Make Believe” and the good books her young readers deserve.
6/24/26
Are rumors of a leftist LitRPG genre more than fantasy?
5/29/26
In his new book, Trevor Paglen tries to look through a machine's eyes.
5/11/26
How American children became the fussiest eaters in history (and why they need to check their not-dying privilege).
4/22/26
There’s something rotten in Jenny Xie’s “Holding Pattern.”
4/16/26
Thinking more about Temescal Pool, a place where you can think less.
4/15/26
In Ellen Huet’s “Empire of Orgasm,” growth is the real cult we meet along the way (and no one is immune to being touched by the spectacle).
4/10/26
Theodore Gordon's “The Composer’s Black Box: Making Music in Cybernetic America,” unboxed.
4/4/26
A collection of 13 Proximitivist installations TKTKTKT something from Benjamin about Aesthetics and Politics.
4/2/26
Where there's no trash island there.
3/18/26
Wallace Shawn's caustic monologue about capitalism and complicity gets an ingenious staging at Clio's Books.
2/16/26
More books should be like Frank T. Marquardt's “Hop Fight,” and, swear to god, we'd say that even if he weren't a paying member of this site.
2/14/26
Cruising for a connection.
2/11/26
David Foster Wallace's magnum opus turns thirty.
10/22/25
A Tale of Two Murals on Telegraph Avenue, Aaron Cometbus's “The Loneliness of the Electric Menorah,” and Praising the Emptiness
10/16/25
A review of matter out of place, at Huchiun Park in Emeryville.
10/15/25
A bookseller recommends a novel about suicide.
9/18/25
9/11 Truth Film Festival, Grand Lake Theater, 9/11
9/4/25
Contemplating longevity and bedtime with Béla Fleck and the Flecktones, UC Theatre, Last Week
8/28/25
Wozzeck, Scottish Rite Center, August 17
6/19/25
Like any movie in the Squad Assembles genre, "Sinners" is secretly about full employment
6/5/25
Please don’t be the fifth person he’s bitten tonight! He draws blood.
6/2/25
Review of a free book pile: Lawton Avenue, Upper Rockridge