May 17 – July 5, 2024

Some of my favorite memories are spending time at my grandparents’ cabin in Appalachian Ohio. My grandfather would take us for walks up the holler, naming the different kinds of trees and pointing out the various animal tracks in the mud. Now, as an adult, I’m drawn to reading rural, working-class stories. So today, for Riot Recs, I’m sharing two of my favorites. But first, as always, bookish goods!

Bookish Goods

New Books

Riot Recommendations

Hi, mystery fans! A Family Affair is now streaming on Netflix, and the trailer had me howling with laughter, so I am absolutely watching it this weekend!

Bookish Goods

New Releases

Welcome to Read This Book, your go-to newsletter if you’re looking to expand your TBR pile. Each week, I’ll recommend a book I think is an absolute must-read. Some will be new releases, some will be old favorites, and the books will vary in genre and subject matter every time. I hope you’re ready to get reading!

Do you love haunted house stories? You know I do. But Marcus Kliewer’s novel We Used to Live Here is like a haunted house inside your brain. If you don’t know what that could possibly mean, I’d rather not spoil it for you. I will try to do my best to explain this book without ruining any surprises!

Season three of The Bear and why 'monstrous' Carmy still appeals

Sitting in the octangular room at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, surrounded by seven of Agnes Martin’s grid and row works, I settled first on Night Sea (1963), a turquoise blue painting laced with shimmering lines—a near-faultless impression of an ocean, as if illuminated for an instant by the moon or a lighthouse. Drift of Summer (1965), with its off-white grid, appears like a notebook crying out for ideas. Even the bright and broadly lined work Untitled #9 (1995), which Martin completed in her eighties, looked to me from afar impeccable, its colorful sections seeming to have been generated by a machine or a god. Here the spiritual resurfaced. In Martin’s grids and rows, the possibility not only of excellence—the apparent perfection of her lines—but of a grander, near-divine plan.

A decade ago, my mother died of metastatic melanoma, an illness that lasted about four years. It dragged our family across the country for radiation trials; it made the question “Where are you staying?” frequently answerable with either “Hospital room cot” or “Bed in hotel.” In the wake of her death, I sought out Martin’s grids. I saw them at SFMOMA but also at Dia Beacon, the Whitney, MoMA, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Tate Modern, and the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice, where Rose (1966) remains my favorite work of hers. The painting’s title at first seems a bizarre one: no flower is figuratively depicted. But in the painting’s cream-colored acrylic, as the lightness of its lines disappear in parts, a natural order underlies its beauty (a rose being, perhaps, beauty’s essence).

Combining linear rigidity and spatial abstraction, in Martin’s works I saw an idea of the world that is guided by plans and sure outcomes—a world made whole again. Martin’s own life was imperfect and traumatic (though she’d likely bristle at the word): she said she was raped as a girl on four occasions, dissociating each time; she lived a seemingly lonely existence, chafing against middle-class sensibilities. I figured she desired, like me, exactness and rightness, apparent salves for the broken. I supposed this aspiration was a core reason for her grids and lines. In fact, she suggested something of the opposite: to view the world as though it were perfect but to understand that it is not—and to see that perfection need not be pursued. “Perfection is not necessary. Perfection you cannot have,” she once said. “If you do what you want to do and what you can do and if you can then recognize it you will be contented.”

This spring I flew to Chicago to see three drawings of hers at the Art Institute. Some were not on view so I made my way to a back room, where a staff member had placed them in front of a bookshelf. Looking at them—Untitled (1961), Untitled (1964), and Untitled #8 (1990)—I got closer than I’d been before to any of her artworks.

It’s business time. And up yours, England are still in the mix. Marcus, Luke and Jim are joined by Andy – fresh back from Germany – to preview the knockouts and discuss our favourites for the tournament now we know what (the incredibly unbalanced) draw looks like.

Plus, Gareth Southgate is to blame for bad Guinness, Anthony Gordon flies over the handlebars of his bike rather than down the wing, and there’s mosquitoes in the Germany camp and – wait for it – Italian spies up Stuttgart's TV tower. But disgracefully, European football ‘expert’ Andy doesn’t know a thing about it.

We're back on stage and tickets are out NOW! Join us at London Palladium on Friday September 20th 2024 for 'Football Ramble: Time Tunnel', a journey through football history like no other. Expect loads of laughs, all your Ramble favourites, and absolutely everything on Pete's USB stick. Get your tickets at footballramblelive.com!

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From Deadpool & Wolverine to Twisters and Despicable Me 4

March 3 – June 30, 2024