Pedro Paramo

Now, many movies and books cross this threshold merely to scare the bejesus out of us.

But the greatest ghost stories aim to do something more, such as capturing the weight of Mexico's past, like Juan Rulfo's Pedro Páramo, or exploring one's own madness, as Stanley Kubrick does in his adaptation of Stephen King's much saner The Shining.

You find that brand of ambition in My Sad Dead, a new Spanish-language Netflix series centering on a woman who can see and talk to ghosts.

Weaving together three short stories by Mariana Enriquez, who's been dubbed the Sorceress of Buenos Aires Horror, this four-part show was directed by Pablo Larraín, the Chilean filmmaker who's best known here for movies about Jackie O, starring Natalie Portman, and Lady Di, starring Kristen Stewart.

I have enjoyed García Márquez.

I have enjoyed Rulfo Pedro Páramo.

I have enjoyed Vargas Llosa.

I have laughed, I have cried with Vargas Llosa, who, by the way, very free market thinker as well, wrote an essay, a non-fiction collection on liberal thinkers.

But anyway, that's The White Album by Joan Didion.

Okay, my next book, on the note of being a more experienced and astute reader and wanting to reread something to try and get more out of it, I have got Pedro Paramo by Juan Rufo, translated by Margaret Sayers-Pedin.

I don't know.

I do believe the emphasis is on the first A. I think it's Paramo.

whatever.

Yeah.

Pedro Paramo.

Paramo.

It hits the vast indifferent system and the endurance vectors perfectly.

The second book was Pedro Paramo by Juan Rulfo.

Let me guess, because it's like the blind owl.

Nailed it.