Must Do’s: What we like this week
"Game of Thrones" launches into its third season and "The Shining" theorists get their due in "Room 237"
Topics: Our Picks, Our Picks: Books, Our Picks: Movies, What to Read, The Listener, literature, Science Books, Evolution, Charles Darwin, Stanley Kubrick, The Shining, Room 237, Game of Thrones, Entertainment News
BOOKS

For anyone interested in epic adventure tales, Laura Miller recommends “Between Man and Beast: An Unlikely Explorer, the Evolution Debates, and the African Adventure That Took the Victorian World by Storm,” a study of Paul du Chaillu, an explorer whose remarkable journey is part Charles Darwin, part Indiana Jones:
“This elusive, gallant and endearing man was born on a date and in a place unknown, to a mother who has never been identified. His story, as told by Reel, is both a tale of plucky self-invention and an ironic reflection on the sometimes ugly inner workings of the scientific world.”
Kyle Minor learns the secrets of the restaurant industry in Scott Haas’ audiobook “Back of the House.” He explains why the book reveals more than any television show ever can:
“This problem – the desire to get closer, down in the trenches of the daily life of a person who belongs to a world not one’s own – can never find its solution in television, because the medium is too distorting, and there is too much money at stake to offer the kind of screen time that a closer look would require, and, anyway, the presence of the documentary cameras would change the behavior of everyone involved so much that any hope for closeness would be dashed.
Faced with these constraints, the book begins to seem like an advanced and exciting technology. It can be whatever length it needs to be. It can see its subject not only from the outside, but also from the inside, through careful reconstruction.”
Prachi Gupta is an Assistant News Editor for Salon, focusing on pop culture. Follow her on Twitter at @prachigu or email her at pgupta@salon.com. More Prachi Gupta.





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