Need a great book to read, album to listen to, or TV show to get hooked on? The Flavorwire team is here to help: in this weekly feature, our editorial staffers recommend the cultural object or experience they’ve enjoyed most in the past seven days. Click through for our picks, and tell us what you’ve been loving in the comments.
Literary Journal Little Star
Issue five of Little Star is 2014’s first lit journal you really need to pick up. Packed full of fiction and poetry from some of our favorites like Lydia Davis, Caleb Crain, Anthony Madrid, and Joy Williams, the latest issue also offers up letters from W.G. Sebald that you might flip to first when you get your copy. — Jason Diamond, Literary Editor
Ruth Ozeki’s A Tale for the Time Being
I know Michelle mentioned it last week, but the recommendation bears repeating. Ozeki’s novel of a bulled teen girl in turn-of-the-millennium Tokyo and the isolated writer in British Columbia who finds her diary after the 2011 tsunami begins as a fascinating story — and remains addictive, even as it delves deep into Eastern and Western philosophy, bending time and drawing on both religion and science to elegantly explore the big questions of life on Earth. Recently released in paperback, it might just be last year’s best novel. —Judy Berman, Editor-in-Chief
Game of Thrones
This week, I became belatedly obsessed with Game of Thrones. I know, I know – it’s just one of those things I’ve never quite gotten around to watching, but I was laid up sick yesterday with a stupid sore throat and cold, and I figured I’d give it a try. Seven episodes later… yeah, it’s pretty great, isn’t it. Huzzah. — Tom Hawking, Music Editor
What We Loved Was Not Enough by Thee Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra
Since ending the sabbatical I took from life to read the prolix title of the new Thee Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra’s album, “Fuck Off Get Free We Pour Light on Everything,” I’ve given it quite a few listens, and have settled on an obsession with the equally maximalist track “What We Loved was Not Enough.” The post-punk band, whose music is sometimes Sigur Ros-y, sometimes Arcade Fire-y, and sometimes some other y, here presents an 11-minute apocalyptic catalogue of ephemera — “All our cities gonna burn/All our bridges gonna crack/All our pennies gonna rot” — moves onto bountiful repetition of “All our children gonna die,” then lands on the conclusive mantra, “what we loved is not enough.” This deceptively rapturous anti-ditty is a rewarding and exhausting listen, which may necessitate some light-comedown music — I personally have been following it with by “rockin’ with Kidz Bop and the Kidz Bop Kidz.” —Moze Halperin, Editorial Apprentice
The Wolf of Wall Street (dir. Martin Scorcese)
Sometimes, you have to own up to when you are wrong. Or, perhaps not wrong, but misguided. I had no interest in seeing The Wolf of Wall Street simply because I don’t really need more movies like it in my life. Well, I thought that was the case. But I realized, after I watched a screener of it over the weekend, that it’s quite an entertaining blast of a movie. Yes, it has its problems (it’s too long. IT’S TOO LONG!), and while I don’t think it’s perfect by any means, I was astounded by its technical achievement, the layers upon layers of thoughts I had about the nature of power and greed and selling while and after I watched it, and, obviously, that damn quaalude scene. I did not want that to end. I could have watched Leo crawl around for another hour, quite frankly. —Tyler Coates, Deputy Editor