I like having few material possessions, so the vast majority of books I've read in the last ten years have been either ebooks, or – more frequently – paper books borrowed from libraries. Once in a while, I like a book so much that I buy a copy for keeps.
One such book was Independent People, a novel by Halldór Laxness. I got it from a library eight years ago and immediately bought a copy. But I haven't re-read it; perhaps I never will.
Sansho the Bailiff is a 1954 Japanese film directed by Kenji Mizoguchi. In a New Yorker article, film critic Anthony Lane wrote:
I have seen "Sansho" only once, a decade ago, emerging from the cinema a broken man but calm in my conviction that I had never seen anything better; I have not dared watch it again, reluctant to ruin the spell, but also because the human heart was not designed to weather such an ordeal.
