Home / Arts & Life

Arts & Life

Two Pleasingly Compact Books – The New York Times

With the holidays approaching, Read Like the Wind will catch its breath for a couple of weeks; the next edition will appear on Jan. 6, 2024. Merry everything. Dear readers, Twenty-two years ago, when Apple rolled out a nifty gadget called the iPod, its tag line was “1,000 songs in …

Read More »

A World Map With No National Borders and 1,642 Animals

A self-taught artist-cartographer and outdoorsman spent three years on an obsessive labor of love with few parallels. Dec. 10, 2023 In July 2020, his universe shrunk to a two-bedroom apartment by a rattling train line, Anton Thomas pulled out an H pencil and opened a portal to the world. At …

Read More »

Record of the Year – The New York Times

Three weeks left in the year, but don’t be fooled: December has its own peculiar velocity. Weeks seem to pass more quickly as the month goes on, a downhill sled picking up speed. Depending on your orientation to the holidays, the end of 2023 or time’s passage in general, this …

Read More »

Hear the Best Albums and Songs of 2023

Dear listeners, In the spirit of holiday excess and end-of-the-year summation, we’re about to make Amplifier history. Because today’s newsletter features — can I get a drumroll? And maybe an effect on my voice that makes me sound like one of those announcers at a monster truck rally? — our …

Read More »

Robert Precht, Producer of ‘The Ed Sullivan Show,’ Dies at 93

Robert Precht, who for more than a decade produced “The Ed Sullivan Show,” the influential Sunday night variety extravaganza that for 23 years brought singers, comedians, rock bands, jugglers, animal acts and the Italian mouse puppet Topo Gigio into the living rooms of millions of viewers, died on Nov. 26 …

Read More »

Two Books to Keep You Company While You Wait

Dear readers, For reasons too tedious to type much less force you to read, I spent a lot of time last month in waiting rooms. In one of these rooms I began to ruminate (angrily) on a paradox of waiting, which is that in order to escape its misery you …

Read More »

The Ultimate Brenda Lee Primer

Dear listeners, Sitting at No. 8 on this week’s Billboard Hot 100 — right between a sleek hit from the 20-year-old pop star Tate McRae and the latest offering from Taylor Swift’s vault — is a 65-year-old song, sung by an artist who is about to turn 79. Which, if …

Read More »

Dolly Parton (Really) Rocks – The New York Times

Dear listeners, At age 77, and with nearly 50 (!) solo studio releases to her name, Dolly Parton just scored the highest charting album of her career, the mammoth double LP “Rockstar,” which debuted on this week’s Billboard 200 at No. 3. (Darn those young whippersnappers Drake and Taylor Swift …

Read More »

Set the Table With This Thanksgiving Playlist

Dear listeners, Thanksgiving is nearly upon us, so today’s playlist is all about gratitude, family, and … food. Heaps and heaps of steaming, delicious food. Maybe you’re hosting your own feast and need some mood music while you prep. Maybe you’re traveling somewhere and need a seasonal soundtrack to help …

Read More »

Books for Thanksgiving – The New York Times

Dear readers, Even if you’re partial to the holiday season, and I am, this particular weekend can take on a prelapsarian feel. For many of us, these are the last days before we’re roped into a monthlong chorus line of celebration, wistfulness and reverence, before our relational identities consume everything …

Read More »