mahinder.bsky.social - Profile | ThreadSky | a Reddit-style client for Bluesky

Psssst ... Did you hear that @cornellupress.bsky.social is giving away its #MLA25 display copies to graduate students on Sunday? Visit the Cornell UP stand (#116) between 9:00 and noon!

submitted 43 days ago • 0 comments

@cornellupress.bsky.social is known for many wonderful things: award-winning books, engaged authors, dedicated staff … But really, it’s all about the SOCKS! And you can get your free pair at #MLA2025

submitted 43 days ago • 0 comments

Congratulations to our #MLA2025 award winners: Adhaar Noor Desai, Sean Franzel, and Eric Keenaghan & Rowena Kennedy-Epstein. You can find these books and lots more at the @cornellupress.bsky.social stand in the exhibit hall.

submitted 44 days ago • 0 comments

I’ve been away from the socials for a few months but #MLA2025 seems an especially gentle way to reengage. @cornellupress.bsky.social is here in New Orleans. Booth #116: Laissez les bons livres rouler!

submitted 45 days ago • 0 comments

Here’s my weekend hot take: Gladiator II, for all its flaws (the baboons!) and historical inaccuracies, is a more interesting and entertaining movie than Gladiator, which I always found too self-important and self-serious. GII undermines the pieties of the OG, which has clearly annoyed many

submitted 91 days ago • 1 comment

I’m trying to buy fewer books these days (mostly for reasons of space) so it’s a treat when I HAVE to buy a book, say when I’ve unexpectedly finished one on a trip and find myself at a good airport bookstore and can pick up @jonathancoe.bsky.social’s charming, cine-literate novel, MR. WILDER & ME

submitted 92 days ago • 3 comments

I’ve been drinking cocktails for a long time but somehow only had my first Perfect Manhattan last month and I’ve made it my seasonal drink for the winter. Perfectly balanced between sweet (vermouth) and astringent (dry vermouth) #cocktailhour

submitted 93 days ago • 1 comment

Grad students attending the @moderniststudies.bsky.social conference, I will be giving away the display copies at the @cornellupress.bsky.social table to starting on Saturday afternoon at 4:00 PM. Been coveting the brand new MODERNISM’S INHUMAN WORLDS by Rasheed Tazudeen? Now’s your chance!

submitted 106 days ago • 0 comments

I really appreciate how @moderniststudies.bsky.social connects its meeting to the city it’s taking place in, and in the spirit of Chicago modernisms, visit @cornellupress.bsky.social to browse Holly Baggett’s account of the Chicago-based #modernist journal, the “Little Review”: MAKING NO COMPROMISE

submitted 107 days ago • 0 comments

Excited to be in Chicago next week for the Modernist Studies Association conference to show off new books from @cornellupress.bsky.social and @leuvenup.bsky.social and to meet with scholars to discuss YOUR new book projects. Stop on by!

submitted 116 days ago • 0 comments

My current “fun read” is @polyalbion’s analysis of the weird (horror/SF/dark heritage) in postwar British film&tv. Was excited to watch The Changes (BBC YA apocalypse series featuring a helpful band a traveling Sikhs - my people!) but it’s currently unavailable on any streaming service!?! 😤

submitted 366 days ago • 0 comments

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I started my day early by constructing the perfect to-do list. Clearly I should have stopped there and then just taken the rest of the day off

submitted 381 days ago • 0 comments

I guess I am driving from Ithaca to Notre Dame for #MedievalAcademy next month? All of the flights from ITH or SYR were really inconvenient, whether to South Bend or Chicago. So I’ll be cueing up an audiobook or two and going off to look for America …

submitted 386 days ago • 0 comments

In between episodes of True Detective: Night Country, I watched all of the much-maligned second season of TD (with Colin Farrell, Rachel McAdams, and Vince Vaughn) and people: I do not get all the hate. I found it a compelling, knowing riff on the L.A. noir of Chandler, MacDonald, and Ellroy.

submitted 392 days ago • 0 comments

More #Oscar re-noms: I realize that am virtually alone in finding Robbie Robertson's score for KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON intrusive, but I'd sub in Hildur Gudnadottir's scratchy, spooky score for A HAUNTING IN VENICE, which is as much a part of the film's sound design as it is a soundtrack proper.

submitted 397 days ago • 0 comments

Another #Oscar re-nom: Nicholas Cage for the terrifying DREAM SCENARIO over Bradley Cooper (MAESTRO). I liked Cooper as Leonard Bernstein, but Cage was perversely relatable in a self-contained, lived-in, and tragic performance, while Cooper was exhausting.

submitted 397 days ago • 0 comments

Let the #Oscar re-noms begin: In Supporting Actor, DeNiro didn't need another nom for another (slightly miscast?) DeNiro role. And Ryan Gosling was more (amusing) caricature than acting. Instead: Harris Dickinson (THE IRON CLAW, completely overlooked) & Charles Melton (MAY DECEMBER)

submitted 397 days ago • 0 comments

Settling in at the end of a too-short weekend to watch Monsieur Spade on AMC+, with Clive Owen as Hammett’s private eye, living in the south of France in the 1960s. The sharp dialogue could have been written by Hammett and Owen is world-wearier than ever. If #BlueSkyNoir is a thing, get on this!

submitted 399 days ago • 0 comments

Found at the Westfield (Mass) Salvo for $2, a film noir I haven’t previously seen: 1949’s SCENE OF THE CRIME. Variety called it “Taut, tough and often relentless.” Sold! #FilmNoir #PhysicalMedia

submitted 422 days ago • 0 comments

With wintery New England having its cultural moment—Noah Kahan’s anthemic STICK SEASON & Alexander Payne’s bittersweet prep school-at-the-holidays character study THE HOLDOVERS—it’s good being back with the fam in Western Mass for Christmas.

submitted 426 days ago • 0 comments

BLUE EYE SAMURAI (on Netflix) is an unexpected delight. Set in Edo-period Japan, it's beautifully animated (with gorgeous backgrounds) and surprisingly bloody, and has complex characters and great voice work. I'm three (of eight) episodes in and having to restrain myself from bingeing the rest.

submitted 444 days ago • 0 comments

Huzzah! Rowena Kennedy-Epstein’s “audacious,” “refreshingly forthright” exploration of Muriel Rukeyser’s archive, UNFINISHED SPIRIT, has been awarded the MLA’s 2023 Matei Calinescu Prize for distinguished scholarship in 20th & 21st century thought & literature.

submitted 445 days ago • 1 comment

Congratulations to Professor Theodora Dragostinova on being awarded the 2023 John D. Bell Book Prize from the Bulgarian Studies Association for her book, "The Cold War from the Margins: A Small Socialist State on the Global Cultural Scene" (Cornell, 2021) www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9781501...

submitted 446 days ago • 0 comments

Only six years late to the party, my favorite viewing experience of 2023 was TWIN PEAKS: THE RETURN, 18 hours of the maddest, funniest, scariest, smartest television ever filmed. Runner-up: Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves. (I contain multitudes, dammit!)

submitted 450 days ago • 0 comments

At a serious coffee-head cafe in Philly and there’s something really heartening listening to the baristas complain about their jobs and their schedules, rather than rhapsodizing about their craft. Makes this Gen Xer nostalgic. And despite their bitterness, the coffee is … bitter (but in a good way)

submitted 450 days ago • 0 comments

My profound thanks to the University of Tokyo’s International Publishing Initiative for inviting me to Japan to talk about the future of academic publishing and to meet with UT scholars to discuss their book projects. It’s been an amazing week of conversations and new experiences

submitted 472 days ago • 0 comments

The bleakest opening in detective fiction? "The events I am about to describe are filled with such darkness and sadness, are so cursed and hate-filled, that not a word I write can possibly offer the faintest glimmer of hope or relief."—Seishi Yokomizo's THE DEVIL'S FLUTE MURDERS

submitted 476 days ago • 0 comments

In the middle of our family’s traditional Halloween Double-Double-Toil-and-Trouble Feature, the same two movies every year …

submitted 481 days ago • 0 comments