The Cloudspotter's Guide
Want to know what I think about books? Check out https://biisbooks.wordpress.com/
Perfume: The Story of a Murderer
Patrick Süskind
The stars, that nature hung in heaven, and filled their lamps with everlasting oil, give due light to the misled and lonely traveller
"From the Earth to the Moon" by Jules Verne.
I ran out of science fiction to read months ago and now I'm happy I have a new one.![]()
Tomorrow always holds the promise of something new and exciting. I am the Jetsons meet the Flintstones.
Want to know what I think about books? Check out https://biisbooks.wordpress.com/
eleven minutes by paulo quilho and in the country of men by hisham matar
"The Horn of Merlyns" Violet Needham - Not one of her best, I think.
Voices mysterious far and near,
Sound of the wind and sound of the sea,
Are calling and whispering in my ear,
Whifflingpin! Why stayest thou here?
"Lone Survivor" by Marcus Luttrell with Patrick Robinson 'The Eyewitness Account Of Operation Redwing and the Lost Heroes of Seal Team 10" {a real page turner} quasimodo1
"The Hours" by Michael Cunningham. I wanted to buy it for a long time. I have watched the film based on it and I liked it, I have read "Mrs. Dalloway" and I was curious. May be a month ago I have read one of his other books - "A Home at the End of the World" and I was impressed, so it was about time
I have also bought a copy of French edition of "La Peau de chagrin" by Balzac. When last year I read "Le Père Goriot" I quite liked it so I've decided to try something else by Balzac. I actually have a translation of the whole "La Comédie humaine", but I wanted to work a bit on my French too.
Currently reading:
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon
Well... this past week lead to several new purchases. Among these was Inner Voices a volume of collected poems by Richard Howard. I also got a new collection of translations of Aristophanes plays. Closer to my own area of expertise... the visual arts... I got a book entitled Degas and the Dance which focuses on Degas' marvelous pastels drawings of ballerinas. I almost forgot how much I loved his work... and how much I use to love working in charcoal, terra-cotta and paste. Another art book is a brief essay entitled The Piero Della Francesca Trail by the art historian John Pope-Hennessy exploring the work of the marvelous Italian Renaissance painter. How could I resist after this opening line?:
"There comes a point in life when the artists one has known cease to be objects of research and become friends."
In perhaps perfect compliment to the Degas book I also had to get Whistler and his Circle in Venice which includes many of his great prints and pastels... but also paintings and prints by other ex-patriots... most importantly, John Singer Sargent.
Three books that I have torn into already include a newer translation of The Gospel of Thomas with comments by Harold Bloom, The Schools We Need (& why we don't have them) by E.D. Hirsch (one of those books geared at my professional interests as a teacher) which argues convincingly for standards and points out that progressive notions of "higher order thinking skills" are useless without a student having a core knowledge upon which to build. And then... A Splendor of Letters by Nicholas A. Brisbanes, the bibliophile author of A Gentle Madness who has made his own bibliophilia/bibliomania into a career. The chapter entitled From the Ashes which examines the deliberate destruction of the library of Sarjevo by the Serbs during the recent Bosnian/Serbian war, the destruction of the library of Louvaine by the invading Germans in WWI or almost the entirety of written history by the Khmer Rouge is quite heart-wrenching for any book-lover.
Beware of the man with just one book. -Ovid
The man who doesn't read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read them.- Mark Twain
My Blog: Of Delicious Recoil
http://stlukesguild.tumblr.com/
To stlukesguild: Great information and you do have diverse interests. Now to find what I can't remember about Richard Howard, quite the scholar and poet. quasimodo1
Tess of the D'Ubervilles~ Thomas Hardy... 1 buck!!!