Books

• Viet Thanh Nguyen, The Refugees

Sometimes a book gets lucky with its publication date? Not as overwhelming as The Sympathizer (also I don’t particularly care for the short story as a form), but Nguyen’s range impresses, as does his empathy.

• Corrado Augias, The Secrets of Rome: Life & Death in the Eternal City

There aren’t many books that can be put on a shelf next to Georgina Masson’s Companion Guide to Rome but this is one of them. Not quite Carlo Levi’s L’Orologio, but what is? An old Italian guy telling stories about the cities: most of these are familiar, but they’re well-told, and there are entertaining digressions.

• Pramuan Burusphat, Destination: Still Unknown

It’s not often that there’s an art show in Bangkok that’s actually interesting: most everything seems to be aimed at providing decorations for hotels or is cartoonishly amateur. (That said: right now is a weird high point.) This show at BACC was surprisingly good: though I wonder if my reaction to it was that he was educated in the U.S. and his references (conceptualism in the 1970s) are familiar?

• Ellery Queen, Calamity Town

(for a writing project.)

• Flann O’Brien, The Hard Life: An Exegesis of Squalor

A list claims that I read this when I was in college. I have absolutely no memory of it at all, which is mildly worrying. Maybe I was confusing this with The Poor Mouth?

Films

• A Day at the Races, directed by Sam Wood
• Little Sister, dir. Zach Clark
• Love and Friendship, dir. Whit Stillman
• La stanza del figlio, dir. Nanni Moretti
• The Last Movie, dir. Dennis Hopper
• The River, dir. Jean Renoir
• Spider Baby, dir. Jack Hill
• Il racconto dei racconti (Tale of Tales), dir. Matteo Garrone

Exhibits

• “Pramuan Burusphat: Destination: Still Unknown,” BACC
• “Erwin Wurm: The Philosophy of Instructions,” BACC
• “Noppanan Thannaree: Simple-Truth,” People’s Gallery, BACC
• “For Those Who Died Trying,” BACC
• “Sopheap Pich: New Works,” H Gallery Bangkok
• “Peeraya Suphasidh: Iterations of a Dream,” H Project Space
• “Harit Srikhao: A Boy Who Was Kidnapped by Time,” Kathmandu Photo Gallery