Please note: I was trying out different themes for the site and a few recent comments got deleted. My apologies for this mistake.
Picture source Months and months before Christopher Tietjens had stood extremely wishing that his head were level with a particular splash of purposeless whitewash. Something behind his mind forced him to the conviction that, if his head–and of course the rest of his trunk and lower limbs–were suspended by a process of levitation to that […]
The Long Now Blog posted the above CG rendering of a concept for the Stockholm Library. Maybe not practical (yet), but starkly beautiful. Follow their links on the design team and how the design was generated.
Interior of the Gambling House at Wiesbaden Published in Harpers Weekly, October 7, 1871The text (translated by C. J. Hogarth) can be found at Project Gutenberg. The Wikipedia page for the book gives more details than what I provide below. The story behind Dostoevsky writing The Gambler has almost overshadowed the novella itself, which is […]
Bird Life in Wington: Practical Parables for Young People by John Calvin Reid, illustrated by Reynold H. WeidenaarFrom the preface: In seeking to stimulate the interest of children and young people in the worship services of the church, through the years I have used a number of ideas for Sermonettes. Just one has succeeded beyond […]
Well, it seems I can’t stay away from Ford right now. I had trouble starting Some Do Not… and No More Parades, having to read the first ten pages of each book several times before settling into the work. Not so with A Man Could Stand Up. So while I return to Parade’s End, I […]
Virginia Stephen (Woolf) in disguise on the far left, William Horace de Vere Cole in tophat on the far rightSomething a little lighter for today… On February 7, 1910, the HMS Dreadnought hosted a hastily arranged tour of four Abyssinian princes, or so they had been told. It turns out to have been an elaborate […]
Canadian soldiers in a trenchPicture source Tietjens had walked in the sunlight down the lines, past the hut with the evergreen climbing rose, in the sunlight, thinking in an interval good humouredly about his official religion: about the Almighty as, on a colossal scale, a great English Landowner, benevolently awful, a colossal duke who never […]
Picture source The one thing that stood out sharply in Tietjens’ mind when at last, with a stiff glass of rum punch, his, officer’s pocket-book complete with pencil because he had to draft before eleven a report as to the desirability of giving his unit special lectures on the causes of the war, and a […]
I haven’t mentioned The Neglected Books Page blog yet, but I’ll correct that now. They have linked to an online version of Isabel Paterson’s Never Ask the End. Comments on the book can be found here and here. While I haven’t read the book yet, I hope to correct that soon since every comment I […]
A while back I found a couple of sites that had color photograhs from World War I. I’ll let the sites outline the original sources. It is strange that black & white photos can add a ‘distance’ to the subject matter, both in time and connection, that color seems to ‘cure’. Both pictures here come […]
He said: “Yes I believe I did. I used to despise it, but I’ve come to believe I did…But no! They’ll never let me back. They’ve got me out, with all sorts of bad marks against me. They’ll pursue me systematically…You see, in such a world as this, an idealist–or perhaps it’s only a sentimentalist–must […]
the ache/toská: No single word in English renders all the shades of toska. At its deepest and most painful, it is a sensation of great spiritual anguish, often without any specific cause. At less morbid levels it is a dull ache of the soul, a longing with nothing to long for, a sick pining, a […]
Picture source Jumping down from the high step of the dog-cart the girl completely disappeared into the silver: she had on an otter-skin toque, dark, that should have been visible. But she was gone more completely than if she had dropped into deep water, into snow–or through tissue paper. More suddenly, at least! In darkness […]
Some Do Not Illustration by Stella BowenNote: check back for updates I will probably stay close to my usual pattern of posting during the read-along for Parade’s End. With “online resources,” I try to find sites or pages that are useful in understanding a work. If anyone would like to add a resource to these […]
Red Dawn by Pío Baroja Translated by Isaac Goldberg Alfred A. Knopf, 1924, 347 pages This would be the dawn of a new day, the dawn of justice, the cry of an entire people, which for so many years had been downtrodden, martyred, exploited, reduced to the wretched plight of a beast of burden. It […]
The Art of Eating Well by Pellegrino Artusi Translated by Kyle M. Phillips III Random House In 1982 I bought a copy of Pellegrino Artusi’s La Sceinza in Cucina e l’Arte di Mangiar Bene, “The Science of Cookery and the Art of Eating Well,” from a used-book seller who also carried a few new books […]
While I haven’t spent much time at C-SPAN’s video library, they (thankfully) have more than political events available for viewing. Here is the link to a talk by historian William Goetzmann: Mr. Goetzmann talked about the book My Confession: Reflections of a Rogue, written by Samuel Chamberlain. He focused on the life of Chamberlain, an […]
The only thing I’ve written lately has been notes on the books I’m reading, but I haven’t felt like organizing and posting discussions. The normal blather should return soon. There’s no other purpose for this post except to enjoy the look of the books that make up Baroja’s The Struggle for Life trilogy. Posts related […]
I have enjoyed owning works from The Library of America for at least 25 years now, and I’m happy to see they are posting a Story of the Week at their website. Mark Twain’s two-part newspaper article, later released as an essay, on Queen Victoria’s Jubilee appears as this week’s story. Here is the introduction […]
There have been a couple of comments on The Good Soldier Švejk, particularly in regard to Part One: Behind the Lines. I think a large part of Hašek’s accomplishment revolves around the ambiguity on how much of a simpleton is Švejk. Is he playing the part or is he really a fool? Or is he […]