While plenty of people dread the colder seasons, there’s one undeniable joy that comes with frosty weather: reading a book while wrapped up in a blanket. As the snow, rain, hail, or wind flies around outside, envelope yourself in one of these cozy creations and immerse yourself in another world for a few hours. From a novel by Ocean Vuong to Jia Tolentino’s brilliant essays, …
In 1982, The Jim Henson Company—hot off the first Muppet movie, but a few years before their masterpiece Labyrinth—set a new puppet-populated fantasy-fiction standard with The Dark Crystal. Featuring newly imagined characters—in original creature categories called Gelflings and Skeksis—and an immersive world known as Thra, it pioneered immersive animatronics and set design. This year, more than three decades later, Netflix viewers returned to Thra with …
Reflecting on Toni Morrison’s Life, From Her Point of View The first African-American woman to win the Nobel Prize, a Pulitzer prize winner for penning Beloved and a mentor to millions, among many other things, Toni Morrison lived unapologetically but with unmatched empathy, intelligence and insightfulness. She famously told Terry Gross (of NPR’s Fresh Air) that she “regret[s] everything” about her life. She explained in …
