Friday Links
December 27, 2024
St. John the Baptist by Titian
Andy Fowler: The Best & Worst Movies I Watched in 2024
Anthony Domestico: The Best Books of 2024
Our Lady of Emptiness by Matthew J. Milliner
How to Give a Real Gift by Tara Isabella Burton
Manifesto! A Podcast
Andy Fowler: The Best & Worst Movies I Watched in 2024
I included this mostly because Fowler writes that the best movie he watched this year is Calvary with Brendan Gleeson. It’s a tough movie to watch and certainly not for all people or all ages, but it is a great film and Gleeson is magnificent.
Anthony Domestico: The Best Books of 2024
A yearly review that is always worth checking out from Anthony Domestico:
In 2024, I made judgments in my reading life. Some were in agreement with the rest of the literary world: I too was puzzled by Rachel Cusk’s Parade. Some differed from what other critics had to say: I was disappointed by Percival Everett’s James, a good novel by a legitimately great novelist. When I say that the following were my favorite books of the year, I mean that they’re the books that I most enjoyed trying to re-describe to my friends and students, the books that gave me delight when I tried to figure out what made them tick. These are all books that I didn’t get a chance to write on, and for each, I’ve offered a passage that I think exemplifies what makes them worth attending to.
Our Lady of Emptiness by Matthew J. Milliner
This whole series from Milliner has been fantastic and worth reading:
Indeed, today, after visiting what is left of the Temple Mayor, one can walk just a few dozen paces to the Catholic Cathedral of the Assumption, where the Eucharist is perpetually exposed, a practice that is itself an answer to the sun worship of the Mexica. For all the clerical failures in the present, we can express gratitude that the training of priests today does not involve techniques for how to remove a living human’s heart. So, yes, Guadalupe accommodated indigenous culture, but also necessarily corrected it. The fact that Mary is no goddess means that she requires no sacrifice and is herself dependent, as all humans are, on the sacrifice of the cross.
How to Give a Real Gift by Tara Isabella Burton
This is something you can do all year, not just on Christmas Day:
The premise of Vaidyanathan’s assignment—inspired by a similar exercise developed by the writer Chris Everett—is that when we pay attention to beauty not for our own sake, but with the tastes and needs and longings of another in mind, we’re able to more clearly see the object in question. When we experience the world as gift-givers, rather than consumers, it is easier to see what is beautiful, or what is meaningful. And what Brandon’s assignment makes clear is the degree to which a good gift is not only about the object itself—but about the time we’ve spent moving through the world with someone else in mind.
Manifesto! A Podcast
A great episode on Thomas Hardy’s “The Oxen,” T. S. Eliot’s “Journey of the Magi,” and The Pogues “Fairytale of New York.”
