Please note: I was trying out different themes for the site and a few recent comments got deleted. My apologies for this mistake.
Lionel G. Fawkes, “Mr Melmotte speculates”, Chapter 62Picture source Having had a stomach virus work its way through the family this past week, I’m hoping things are returning to some sense of normalcy. While recuperating from my bout Tuesday, I watched about three-fourths of the BBC adaptation of The Way We Live Now. I hope […]
I may have stretched the truth a little in this post’s title, but then maybe Nabokov did as well. While listening to Nabokov’s Speak, Memory the following passage caught my ear, probably because I read Hadji Murad recently. The following scene takes place in southern Crimea in the spring of 1918: One morning, on a […]
I know, I know…I still need to finish Trollope, Thucydides awaits in the wings, but for some reason Vienna keeps calling me. I ran across a used copy of Fin-de-Siécle Vienna: Politics and Culture by Carl E. Schorske and after browsing a few pages on Hugo von Hofmannsthal I had to buy it. Now if […]
I’m not sure what links I followed to get to this article on Apt Adaptation: 10 Cool Converted Bookstores (otherwise I would be sure to credit them), but I’ll pass the link on regardless for your perusal. Note: the link still works but their pictures no longer load. My favorite is the Selexyz Dominicanen Church in […]
Cynthia Ozick: “Though Trollope belongs with the permanent enchanting few (he educates domestically in the manner of Jane Austen, and in a worldly sense in the manner of Balzac), he has been a diminished figure ever since—except in the unbiased regions of literary truth.” Her essay “Our Kinsman, Mr. Trollope” looks to offset that diminishment […]
“You, I think, are Miss Melmotte.” Picture sourceA reminder for anyone interested in Trollope, The Classics Circuit is underway with a tour of the author. SFP at pages turned has posted a good review of The Way We Live Now. I just finished Volume One so here are a few quotes and comments on Chapters […]
Forgive the extended quotation in this post, but the opening of Chapter 49 captured so much of what makes The Way We Live Now enjoyable. Trollope has created a wonderful villain in Mr. Melmotte yet that character is rarely on the stage (so far). Watching how others respond to him is the delicious part. “As […]
Year-end brings out the list-makers—I’m hoping to use this post to help focus on where I want to go with my reading. In addition, any comments on specific works or the direction I’m going are always appreciated. I’ve mentioned that I have some general plans on what I want to read but I try to […]
Paul Montague, a likeable enough fellow but a moral weakling, goes to visit the American widow Mrs. Hurtle with whom he has tried to break off their engagement. Mrs. Hurtle represents herself as the fiancée of Paul when taking a room in London. Here is Paul upon entering the house where Mrs. Hurtle is staying: […]
What follows are a few thoughts on Trollope’s world in The Way We Live Now…or at least through Chapter 24. ReligionTrollope clearly takes aim at religion, but it is more how he does it as well as his issue (or target) that interested me. We are introduced to two men of the church in the […]
The Leo Strauss Center at The University of Chicago has begun to make available audio files from some of the courses Strauss taught and will add transcripts starting next year. The first course released is “Plato’s Political Philosophy: Apology and Crito”. From the page noting the release of this course: The Leo Strauss Center is […]
Mr Longestaffe was a tall, heavy man, about fifty, with hair and whiskers carefully dyed, whose clothes were made with great care, though they always seemed to fit him too tightly, and who thought very much of his personal appearance. It was not that he considered himself handsome, but that he was specially proud of […]
Having run through most of what our local library had available in audiobooks, I took the plunge and joined Audible.com. So now I’m like a kid in the candystore…I want this. And this. And all of that. Like Earl in the movie Diner, I feel like ordering the entire left side of the menu. I […]
Lionel G. Fawkes, Chapter 37: ‘The Board-Room”, The Way We Live Now “My Lords and Gentlemen,” said Melmotte. “I hope that you trust me.” This is part of The Classics Circuit, which is currently reading and posting on Anthony Trollope’s novels. Never having read anything by Trollope, I thought I would take the plunge with […]
The Truth about the Savolta Case by Eduardo Mendoza Translated from the Spanish by Alfred Mac Adam, Pantheon Books, 1992 Mendoza’s novel, released in 1975, is set in Barcelona at the end of World War I amid political, economic and social turmoil. When reading about the political movements during the early part of last century, […]
The dedication of the Soldiers’ National Cemetery in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, November 19, 1863: Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that […]
At the risk of mentioning the book too often, Katie Low has a review of Carthage Must Be Destroyed: The Rise and Fall of an Ancient Civilization by Richard Miles in The Oxonian Review (link is dead). Her review and summary are pretty spot on. Here’s part of the review: Miles weaves into his account […]
Picture source I want to make sure I give proper credit for these amazing pictures so I highly recommend checking out the other pictures and write-up from Martino – NL on his visit to an abandoned castle in Spain. The bookcase above looks nice from a distance, but upon closer inspection (below) the books have […]
Reading has taken a back seat lately so it follows that writing about reading has as well. But since I can’t write about what I’ve read, I’ll write about what I’m planning to read. While reading Petersburg I kept thinking that it reminded me of something I had already read and it finally dawned on […]
Demonstration on October 17, 1905 by Ilya Yefimovich Repin Picture sourceWhat an amazing, strange, wonderful, funny, frustrating, magical book. Needless to say, I highly recommend it. So what have you heard about Petersburg? Vladimir Nabokov declared it one of the most important works of the twentieth century, but he also stated no good English translation […]