Double Think—Wouldn't it be wonderful if we could leave 1984 in the past where it belongs? George Orwell's ever-timely novel gets the stage treatment this week when the Actor's Gang brings it to UNM's Popejoy Hall. War as peace? Ignorance as strength? Hey, some things never go out of style. The production occurs Tuesday, March 27, at 7:30 p.m. The show contains partial nudity and strong language. You can purchase tickets by calling 925-5858.

Tuesdays With Morrie at Albuquerque Little Theatre

Tuesdays With Morrie is not a surprising play. Writers Jeffrey Hatcher and Mitch Albom chart a predictable course and rigidly stick to it. The message: Live. Give of yourself. Nothing new there, either.

How do the images of the past determine what we see today? Is there some secret music to the universe around which human life arranges itself? And to what degree are humans making more and more of that music today? Lawrence Weschler has good reason to ask these questions, because for the past two decades he has been experiencing "uncanny moments of convergence, bizarre associations, eerie rhymes, whispered recollections." He sees Time magazine covers of Slobodan Milošević and Newt Gingrich that look alarmingly alike; he notices that Monica Lewinsky and the Mona Lisa have a similar knowing eye.

The season's most notable releases

April comes like an idiot, Edna St. Millay wrote, babbling and strewing flowers. If she were alive today, Edna might add: books, too. The publishing lists are overflowing with titles. Mohsin Hamid, however, seems to get the wisdom of the less-is-more ideology. His streamlined second novel, The Reluctant Fundamentalist (Harcourt, April 3), fights well above its weight of 192 pages. Set in Lahore, and fashioned after Camus’ The Fall, it recounts a young Pakistani man’s tale of falling in and out of love with the U.S. after 9/11.