The London Telegraph has published its list of the 50 crime writers you must read before you die.
Predictably, the list is sprinkled with European favorites unfamiliar to many U.S.-centric American readers. I certainly applaud the inclusion of the Scots author Denise Mina and the Dutchman Janwillem de Wetering (whose book on his stay in a [...]

Modern Art Notes blogger Tyler Green visited town for last weekend’s College Art Association meeting at the Adam’s Mark hotel. He fired off some quick observations about various exhibitions in town, including this little bullet: “There should be about eight fewer sculptures in the garden at the Nasher Sculpture Center. One clever critic said to [...]

When the Quill Awards were announced in 2005, I wrote in The Dallas Morning News that they seemed relatively pointless. Of course, the Quills were given a high-minded purpose by Reed Business Information, the owner of Publishers Weekly and the creator of the Quills Literacy Foundation, which oversaw the awards. The Quills were intended to [...]

Erykah Badu throws a party for her new album and Private Lives is on public display in Fort Worth. If those events don’t interest you, Gini certainly has more.
[Audio clip: view full post to listen]

Ever wondered what became of Cliff Redd?
The former, longtime director of the Shakespeare Festival of Dallas, the former executive director of the 500, Inc., the former executive director of the ArtCentre of Plano and the founder of Theatre Arlington left the area in 2004 — to become the executive director of the Long Center for the [...]

The Austin Museum of Art has unveiled plans for a new, three-story museum, one that’s likely to be dwarfed by the new 30-story office tower going up next door. The museum has owned the block downtown at 4th and Guadalupe for years and just sold half of it to the Houston developer who will build the office tower. The budget for [...]

Larry McMurtry writes about George Armstrong Custer for The New York Review of Books:

No one should think that because 130 years have passed since the battle the passions between tribes and within tribes have abated. Much of Michael Elliott’s book [Custerology: The Enduring Legacy of the Indian Wars and George Armstrong Custer] is devoted to [...]

It’s the first literary evening from the Texas Bound series tonight with short stories by Kinky Friedman and Cristina Henriquez, plus a Taste of Collin County fundraiser for Habitat for Humanity — all of this and more from Gini:
[Audio clip: view full post to listen]

“A glitzy building-as-brand, all 13-storey blades of glass and posey curves it seems to think are sexy” — this is “the kind of building that looks as if it’s permanently checking itself in the mirror, seemingly airlifted from Dallas or Phoenix.”
– Tom Dykhoff on Glaxo SmithKline’s Headquarters in West London
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It’s relatively rare that a big-time publication will [...]

Searching for the perfect Hamlet. Personally, I haven’t found a perfect Hamlet — and I’ve seen Laurence Olivier, Ralph Fiennes, Richard Burton, Derek Jacobi, Kenneth Branagh, Kevin Kline, Mel Gibson (one of the more underrated), Zeljko Ivanek (at the Guthrie), Maximillian Schell (in a hilarious German version available through Mystery Science Theatre 3000), Ethan Hawke [...]