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Jan 15, 2025 | 
independent.com | David Starkey
Credit: Courtesy Like Greil Marcus writing about music, or Jed Perl and the late Peter Schjeldahl writing about art, Dave Hickey’s essays are interesting whether or not you’re interested in the artist or art he is discussing.
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Dec 2, 2024 | 
independent.com | David Starkey
Book Review | ‘The Work of Art: How Something Comes from Nothing’ by Adam Moss An Exploration of the Process of Creation from Multiple Angles By David Starkey Mon Dec 02, 2024 | 1:21pm Add to Favorites I first saw Adam Moss’s The Work of Art: How Something Comes from Nothing in a bookstore in Montpelier, Vermont, and immediately, like Wallace Stevens’s jar in the wilderness, this tome made the rest of the volumes in the shop feel as though they were simply surrounding it. In short, I coveted...
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Nov 12, 2024 | 
independent.com | David Starkey
In some ways, Richard Powers’s new novel Playground is a double bildungsroman, showing us the youth and early adulthood of Todd Kean — white, a native of Evanston, Illinois, and the son of a wealthy family — and Rafi Young — Black, born on the West Side of Chicago, the son of bitterly divorced working-class parents. Both Todd and Rafi are classic Powers characters: brilliant, conflicted, egomaniacal and yet often full of regrets.
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Nov 2, 2024 | 
spectator.com.au | David Starkey
World How Kemi Badenoch’s Tories can rebuild Britain Kemi Badenoch (Getty Images) The Conservatives finally have a new leader. But Kemi Badenoch must be under no illusions: after the disastrous July election, we have a mountain to climb and a revolution to undo. But we can remain hopeful, because we have been here before – and found a way out.
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Nov 2, 2024 | 
spectator.co.uk | David Starkey
The Conservatives finally have a new leader. But Kemi Badenoch must be under no illusions: after the disastrous July election, we have a mountain to climb and a revolution to undo. But we can remain hopeful, because we have been here before – and found a way out. In 1974, the Conservative prime minister Edward Heath, having taken Britain into Europe, blown up the economy and been humiliated by the miners, was defeated by Labour’s Harold Wilson. The future of the Tory party was in doubt.
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Oct 17, 2024 | 
failbetter.com | David Starkey
Each year, these fires seem to get more relatable. —KCAL 9 News AnchorLike old friends who know all our secretsbut don’t mind, and would never tell,these fires just keep getting more convivial. Their bursts and flares are the color of warm claret. Their little wind-whipped tales dazzle good-naturedly. Next year, they will be even more intimate,like fiancées whose extended familieswe have come to know and cherish.
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Oct 11, 2024 | 
independent.com | George Yatchisin |Hadeel Eljarrari |David Starkey |Isabelle Walker
Love Is in the Air for Santa Barbara Reads S.B. Reads 2024 Kicks Off at Satellite with ‘Romantic Comedy’ by Curtis Sittenfeld By Leslie Dinaberg Fri Oct 11, 2024 | 12:02pm Add to Favorites A library staff member shows copies of 'Romantic Comedy' by Curtis Sittenfeld, now available for free, in English and Spanish | Photo: SB Public Library Late-night sketch comedy shows are in the air right now. Director Jason Reitman (whose family has long ties to Santa Barbara) has an excellent new film out...
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Oct 3, 2024 | 
independent.com | George Yatchisin |Brian Tanguay |David Starkey |Leslie Dinaberg
‘Disturbing the Bones’ | Photo: CourtesyAcclaimed director and screenwriter (Holes, The Fugitive, and the Santa Barbara–set Steal Big Steal Little, among others) and Santa Barbara resident Andy Davis has teamed up with American Book Award–winning author Jeff Biggers to write a new novel, Disturbing the Bones, in which they imagine what happens in the final days of a clashing presidential election, when a nuclear weapons incident throws the world into chaos.
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Oct 3, 2024 | 
independent.com | Brian Tanguay |David Starkey |Leslie Dinaberg |Ryan Cruz
Book Review | ‘I Want to Be Where the Normal People Are’ by Rachel Bloom The ‘Crazy Ex-Girlfriend’ Star’s Memoir Is Both LOL Funny and Grimace-Making By George Yatchisin Thu Oct 03, 2024 | 11:24am Add to Favorites Think of Rachel Bloom’s memoir I Want to Be Where the Normal People Are as a bathroom book. It’s written in zippy chapters — some lists, some mini-screenplays, some poems from her childhood (they are often illustrated, as it seems she’s kept all her life’s journals, and yes, she is...
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Sep 25, 2024 | 
independent.com | David Starkey |Brian Tanguay |Maggie Yates |Callie Fausey
Book Review | ‘The Big Green Tent: A Novel’ by Ludmila Ulitskaya, Translated by Polly Gannon A Russian Epic in the Tradition of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, Set in the Period After Stalin’s Death By Brian Tanguay Wed Sep 25, 2024 | 2:22pm Add to Favorites When I read the first volume of The Gulag Archipelago as a teenager, I lacked the education to fully understand it. My youthful worldview was unsophisticated, amounting to little more than “America Good – Soviet Union Bad.” I sensed that...
