What We Are Reading Today: Cinema Speculation

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Updated 13 November 2022
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What We Are Reading Today: Cinema Speculation

Author: Quentin Tarantino

The book reads like a series of lectures that Quentin Tarantino might give on his favorite films, and it is very entertaining in that light.
Tarantino is an Academy Award-winning American film director, screenwriter and actor.
He rose to fame in the early 1990s as an independent filmmaker whose films used nonlinear storylines and stylized violence.
His films include “Reservoir Dogs,” “Pulp Fiction,” “Jackie Brown” and “Death Proof.”
“Cinema Speculation” is a very entertaining set of pieces on 70s cinema that’s eminently readable and brimming with passion.
It’s a must-read for 1970s film buffs or movie fans in general, loaded with recommendations and tips of the hat to films that fly under the radar.
Tarantino’s screenplays are also muscular acts of film criticism and revisionist history.
His take on 1960s and 1970s Hollywood, for instance, is already firmly embedded in his 2019 film, “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.”
The book also weirdly acts as a unifying theory of his own movies, even though he doesn’t really talk about them.

 


What We Are Reading Today: Invisible Hands by Margaret S. Graves

Updated 14 February 2026
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What We Are Reading Today: Invisible Hands by Margaret S. Graves

In the heyday of Islamic art collecting around the turn of the 20th century, thousands of premodern ceramic objects circulated on the international antiquities market. 

“Invisible Hands” tells the story of how traditional craft skills of the Islamic world, often thought to have died out with the advent of industrialization, were redirected toward a thriving new market in the colonial era: the fabrication and fictionalizing of antiquities, especially ceramics.

In this stunning work of art history, Margaret Graves shakes the foundations of the discipline, challenging us to reconsider what is and is not art.