Five Bullets 3.28.26: March Roundup
What captured my interest this month: The Wager, The Wire, The Beatles & more.
Hi Friends -
Hope you’re enjoying the weekend! Thank you for sticking with me while I figure out a new schedule that works best for posting.
But I couldn’t let March go by without giving you my roundup, so here’s what I’ve learned, read, seen, and heard this month:
As I wrote last month, I’ve been into David Grann’s writing lately. After listening to Grann speak with How I Write I finally sat down and started reading The Wager. I posted about the book back in 2023 and it’s been sitting on my shelf ever since! I can happily report that I’m about 50 pages from finishing and, boy, is it a wild ride. Shipwreck, disease, mutiny, storms - just about everything went wrong on this doomed voyage. But Grann, talented writer that he is, keeps it lean; this isn’t a dense book at all and worth a read if you enjoy epic sea tales.
Check out this month’s playlist! It’s a bit of everything, and inspired by The Ruffian’s deep dive into The Beatles tune “I Feel Fine”.
If you can’t tell from the playlist, I’ve been rewatching The Wire. Season 1 is better than I remember. The writing is excellent. Maybe the best crime drama series out there? Let me know your thoughts in the comments. But now I’m slogging through Season 2 and it feels like a different show, a shell of the magic that made Season 1 so great.
The New Yorker war correspondent Luke Mogelson is one of my favorite writers today but he hasn’t published anything (that I can find) in about two years. So while I anxiously await whatever Mogelson’s been secretly working on, I listened to his conversation with the Longform podcast. Mogelson describes his writing like photography, accurately capturing what’s occurring without coloring the details. In fact, he says he tries to go to places where there aren’t many journalists, and prefers to set up right behind a photographer.
Before Rodgers and Hammerstein, there was Rodgers and Hart. Ethan Hawk plays lyricist Lorenz Hart in Richard Linklater’s Blue Moon. The entire film takes place in one evening at Sardi’s following opening night of Oklahoma!. Hawk is captivating as the creative, depressed, and alcoholic Hart.
What captured your interest this month? Email me by hitting reply or by leaving a comment below.
Have a great weekend,
Keith
