Monday, December 16, 2024
How Reading Changed My Life by Anna Quindlen—1997 - 75 Pages
Sunday, December 15, 2024
The Last Tsar : The Abdication of Nicholas II and The Fall of the Romanovs by Tsuyosh Hasegawa. 2024 - 467 Pages
The Last Tsar : The Abdication of Nicholas II and The Fall of the Romanovs by Tsuyosh HasegawaThe Last Tsar -2024 - 467 Pages
Anyone with a serious interest in late Romanov history, the Russian Revolution or World War One should seriously consider readingThe Last Tsar : The Abdication of Nicholas II and The Fall of the Romanovs by Tsuyosh Hasegawa.
When Tsar Nicholas II fell from power in 1917, Imperial Russia faced a series of overlapping crises, from war to social unrest. Though Nicholas’s life is often described as tragic, it was not fate that doomed the Romanovs—it was poor leadership and a blinkered faith in autocracy.
Based on a trove of new archival discoveries, The Last Tsar narrates how Nicholas’s resistance to reform doomed the monarchy. Encompassing the captivating personalities of the era—the bumbling Nicholas, his spiteful wife Alexandra, the family’s faith healer Rasputin—it untangles the dramatic struggle by Russia’s aristocratic, military, and legislative elite to reform the monarchy. By rejecting compromise, Nicholas undermined his supporters at crucial moments. His blunders cleared the way for all-out civil war and the eventual rise of the Soviet Union.
Definitive and engrossing, The Last Tsar uncovers how Nicholas II stumbled into revolution, taking his family, the Romanov dynasty, and the whole Russian Empire down with him.
Tsuyoshi Hasegawa is professor emeritus in history at the University of California at Santa Barbara. The award-winning author of many books on Russian history, World War II, and the Cold War, he lives in Santa Barbara, California.
Saturday, December 14, 2024
The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (La Charme Discret de la Bourgeoisie)- 1972 - Directed by Luis Bunuel - 1 Hour 29 Minutes
Thursday, December 12, 2024
The Soun̈d of Music - Directed by Robert Wise- Starring Julie Andrews and Christopher Plummer -175 Minutes- 5 Academy Awards including Best Picture and Best Director
Tuesday, December 10, 2024
The Shop Around The Corner - !940 - Directed by Ernst Lubitsch- Starring Margaret Sullivan and Jimmy Stewart
Monday, December 9, 2024
The Wizard of Oz -1939- Directed by Victor Fleming - Starring Judy Garland - Run Time 93 Minutes
Saturday, December 7, 2024
Blazing Saddles- Directed by Mel Brooks - 1974-Starring Cleavon Little, Gene Wilder, Harvey Korman, Madeline Kahn, Mel Brooks, and Slim Pickens
Friday, December 6, 2024
To Be or Not to Be - Directed by Mel Brooks - Starring Mel Brooks and Anne Bancroft - 1982 - inspired by Ernst Lubitsch's 1942 version of Two or Not to Be
To Be or Not to Be is a 1983 American war comedy film directed by Alan Johnson, produced by Mel Brooks, and starring Brooks, Anne Bancroft, Tim Matheson, Charles Durning, Christopher Lloyd, and José Ferrer. The screenplay was written by Ronny Graham and Thomas Meehan, based on the original story by Melchior Lengyel, Ernst Lubitsch and Edwin Justus Mayer. The film is a remake of the 1942 film of the same name.
Thursday, December 5, 2024
To Be or Not to Be. DIrected by Ernst Lubitsch - Starring Carole Bard and Jack Benny - 1942
To Be or Not to Be. DIrected by Ernst Lubitsch - Starring Carole Bard and Jack Benny - 1942 - set in Warsaw in 1939 with German invasion imminent has strong comedic elements, great lines but it is not the laugh a minute film that To Be or Not to Be, directed by Mel Brooks and following the plot of Lubitsch's earlier version is.
Tuesday, December 3, 2024
Panama Fever: The Epic Story of the Building of the Panama Canal by Matthew Parker - 2007 - 442 Pages
Sunday, December 1, 2024
The Reading Life Review- December 2024
The Reading Life Review- December 2024
The Great Kosher Meat War of 1902: Immigrant Housewives and the Riots That Shook New York City by Scott D. Seligman - 2020- 277 Pages
Novels
1, Castle Gripsholm - 1931- by Kurt Tucholsky- 244 Pages- translated from the German by Michael Hofmann -2019
2. The Most Precious of Cargoes by Jean-Claude Grumberg - 2019 - Translated from French by Fred Wynne - 2020 - 60 pages
3. Green Witch by Alice Hoffman- 2021 - 70 Pages
4. Legacy by Sybille Bedford- 1956 -385 Pages - Introduction 2015 by Brenda Wineapple
1. Germany- 4
2. USA- 2
3. France - 1
Four featured writers are deceased, all but one we're featured for the first time, 4 writers are men, three women.
Blog Stats
There are currently 4,627 posts on line
In November our posts were Viewed 39,967 times
Since in inception our posts have been viewed 8,204,099 times
Originating Countries of visitors
1. Canada
2. Singapore
3. Singapore
4. Brazil
5. USA
6. India
7. Philippines
8. United Kingdom
9. Netherlands
10. Germany
The posts most viewed were on stories by South Asian authors
Friday, November 22, 2024
The Great Kosher Meat War of 1902: Immigrant Housewives and the Riots That Shook New York City by Scott D. Seligman - 2020- 277 Pages
The Great Kosher Meat War of 1902: Immigrant Housewives and the Riots That Shook New York City by Scott D. Seligman - 2020- 277 Pages
2020 National Jewish Book Award Finalist
The Great Kosher Meat War of 1902 tells the twin stories of mostly uneducated women immigrants who discovered their collective consumer power and of the Beef Trust, the midwestern cartel that conspired to keep meat prices high despite efforts by the U.S. government to curtail its nefarious practices.
With few resources and little experience but steely determination, this group of women organized themselves into a potent fighting force and, in their first foray into the political arena in their adopted country, successfully challenged powerful, vested corporate interests.
Keeping a Kosher household was a prime duty of Jewish housewives in New York City. Most were immigrants from Russia or Poland but some were born in America. The custom was the husband supported the family and the wife ran the household.
Seligman goes into very welcome details about the women. They were tough , smart and not afraid of the police and hired thugs
In the early hours of May 15, 1902, three thousand Jewish women quietly took up positions on the streets of Manhattan's Lower East Side. Convinced by the latest jump in the price of kosher meat that they were being gouged, they assembled in squads of five, intent on shutting down every kosher butcher shop in New York's Jewish quarter.
What was conceived as a nonviolent effort did not remain so for long. Customers who crossed the picket lines were heckled and assaulted and their parcels of meat hurled into the gutters. Butchers who remained open were attacked, their windows smashed, stock ruined, equipment destroyed. Brutal blows from police nightsticks sent women to local hospitals and to court. But soon Jewish housewives throughout the area took to the streets in solidarity, while the butchers either shut their doors or had their doors shut for them. The newspapers called it a modern Jewish Boston Tea .
Seligman throughly explains the processes by which Beef can be certified as Kosher. I knew nothing about the way midwestern raised cattle passed through Chicago on the way to New York City, The process was controlled by six companies know as The Beef Trust. The secretly set prices and demanded kick backs in collusion with the railroads, Butchers, Kosher and Gentile, had to pay their price. Butchers depended on short term credit, they would buy on credit then repay after making sales. If they resisted the Beef Trust their credit needs were denied.
Thursday, November 21, 2024
The Most Precious of Cargoes by Jean-Claude Grumberg - 2019 - Translated from French by Fred Wynne - 2020 - 60 pages
Tuesday, November 19, 2024
Young Frankenstein- Directed by Mel Brooks - 1974 - Starring Gene Wilder, Madeline Kahn, Marty Feldman, Peter Boyle, Cloris Leachman and Teri Garr
Young Frankenstein- Directed by Mel Brooks - 1974 - Starring Gene Wilder, Madeline Kahn, Marty Feldman, Peter Boyle, Cloris Leachman and Teri Garr
Fifty years ago Mel Brooks, with an incredibly talented cast, gave the world one of the funniest most brilliant comedies ever done, Young Frankenstein.
Inspired by Mary Shelly's novel, the movie begins with the grandson of Victor Frankenstein, played by Gene Wilder,giving a lecture at an American medical college in New York. A student asks him about his feelings on his grandfather's work focusing on bringing corpses back to life. He is so against his work that he insists his name be pronounced differently. He tells the class his grandfather's work was total nonsense. In the class room is a man has come five thousand miles, from Transylvania to bring him the will of his great grandfather, Baron Von Frankenstein. He has inherited the castle where his grandfather worked,
After a bizarrely repressed goodbye at the train station with his finance, played perfectly by Madeline Kahn, he sets out for Transylvania. In nezrly every seen in the movie there are marvellous comic moments (" pardon me boy is this the Transylvania station")
At the Transylvania Station he is picked up by Igor, played by Marty Feldman and accompanied by Terri Garr playing his lab assistant.
I do not wish to reveal more of the plot to first time viewers of the movie.
I love this movie. In these darking times I needed this movie.
Friday, November 15, 2024
Green Witch by Alice Hoffman- 2010 - 70 Pages
The Green Witch by Alice Hoffman- 70 Pages
Monday, November 11, 2024
Legacy by Sybille Bedford- 1956 -385 Pages - Introduction 2015 by Brenda Wineapple
Sunday, November 10, 2024
"CHRISTMAS NOT JUST ONCE A YEAR" - A Short Story by Heinrich Böll - 1952 (Nicht nur zur Weihnachtszeit" )
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Wednesday, November 6, 2024
Castle Gripsholm - 1931- by Kurt Tucholsky- 244 Pages- translated from the German by Michael Hofmann -2019
Saturday, November 2, 2024
"A Man Becomes a Nazi" - 10 Pages-A Short Story by Anna Seghers - 1943 - translated from the German by Margot Bettauer Dembo - 2021
"A Man Becomes a Nazi" - A Short Story by Anna Seghers - - - 1943 -
Friday, November 1, 2024
The Reading Life Review October 2024 -
The Reading Life Review October 2024
Nonfiction Featured in October
1. Sybille Bedford An Appetite for Life by Selina Hastings - 2020 - 432 Pages
2. The Snakehead : An Epic Tale of the Chinatown Underworld and the American Dream by Patrick Radden Keefe —2009 - 252 Pages
3.Empire of Pain : The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty by Patrick Radden Keefe - 2021- 633 Pages
4.The Undocumented Americans by Karla Cornejo Villavicencio- 2020 -
5. Wine and War: the French, the Nazis, and the Battle for France’s Greatest Treasure by Don and Petie Kladstrup.- 2002 - 334 Pages
6. Erasing History: How Fascists Rewrite the Past to Control the Future by Jason Stanley - 2024 - 233 Pages
7. Everyone Who is Gone is Here : the United States, Central America, and the Making of a Crisis by Jonathan Blitzer.-2024 -544 Pages
October Novels
1.The Book Lovers Library by Madeline Martin - 2024 - 396 Pages
2. When We Flew Away: A Novel of Anne Frank Before the Diary - by Alice Hoffman- 2024 - 192 Pages
3.The Gustav Sonata by Rose Tremain- 2015 - 244 Pages
4. Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver- 2022- 720 Pages
October Short Stories - all by Carol Shields - included in the Stories of Carol Shields - 2004
1. "Good Manners"
2. "Collision"
Birth County of October Authors
1, USA- 7
2. Canada - 1
3, China - 1
4. England - 1
Four October authors are men, 7 were featured for the first time and only one is no longer living.
Blog Stats
As of today our posts have been viewed 8,164,356 times. In October there was 79,212 page views.
Per Google Stats the origin countries in October were
1. Singapore
2. USA
3. India
4. Philippines
5. Canada
6. United kingdom
7. Hong Kong
8. Brazil
9. France
10. Russia
Of the ten post viewed posts 9 were on stories by South East Asian and Indian authors, one on an Irish story.
Thursday, October 31, 2024
"Good Manors" - A Short Story by Carol Shields -5 Pages - Included with The Short Stories of Carol Shields- 2004
This year, Buried in Print, a marvelous blog I have followed for over ten years,is doing a read through of the short stories of Carol Shields. I hope to participate fully in this event.
The more I read in the stories of Carol Shields the more grateful I am to Buried in Print for turning me on to her work. There are sixty some stories in the collection, it is my hope to read and post on them all.
"In all of her fiction, Carol Shields excels at character creation. She conjures up a character in a few lines of dialogue, in a pungent authorial aside." Penelopy Lively from her introduction to Stone Diaries by Carol Shields
"Good Manors" is the 32nd Short Story by Carol Shields upon which I have posted. I found it to be a disturbingly haunting work that in five pages tracks a ten year old child, almost molested by an older neighbour up to her sixties. She never marries and never forms an enduring relationship though she has brief encounters in which she is used for sex.
"THE STERN, PEREMPTORY SOCIAL ARBITER, Georgia Willow, has been overseeing Canadian manners for thirty-five years. She did it in Montreal during the tricky fifties and she did it in Toronto in the unsettled sixties. In the seventies she operated underground, so to speak, from a converted Rosedale garage, tutoring the shy wives of Japanese executives and diplomats. In the eighties she came into her own; manners were rediscovered, particularly in the West, where Mrs. Willow has relocated. Promptly at three-thirty each Tuesday and Thursday, neatly dressed in a well-pressed navy Evan-Picone slub silk suit, cream blouse and muted scarf, Georgia Willow meets her small class in the reception area of the MacDonald Hotel and ushers them into the long, airy tearoom—called, for some reason, Gophers—where a ceremonial spread has been ordered. Food and drink almost always accompany Mrs. Willow’s lectures. It is purely a matter of simulation since, wherever half a dozen people gather, there is sure to be a tray of sandwiches to trip them up. According to Mrs. Willow, food and food implements are responsible for fifty percent of social unease. The classic olive pit question. The persisting problem of forks, cocktail picks and coffee spoons."
To me the enduring questions are whatever are good manors really meant to do, what purpose do they serve and why did Gloria Willow make teaching good manors her life work.
Sunday, October 27, 2024
"Collision" - A Short Story by Carol Shields- 16 Pages- Included with The Short Stories of Carol Shields- 2004
Buriedinprint.com
This year, Buried in Print, a marvelous blog I have followed for over ten years,is doing a read through of the short stories of Carol Shields. I hope to participate fully in this event.
The more I read in the stories of Carol Shields the more grateful I am to Buried in Print for turning me on to her work. There are sixty some stories in the collection, it is my hope to read and post on them all.
"In all of her fiction, Carol Shields excels at character creation. She conjures up a character in a few lines of dialogue, in a pungent authorial aside." Penelopy Lively from her introduction to Stone Diaries by Carol Shields
"Collision" is the 31st story by Carol Shields upon which I have posted, it perfectly exemplifies Penelopy Lively's description.
"Collision" is an amazing story, not just two lives created in 15 pages but the history of how movements of continents create biographies.
I wish to quote enough from the story to give a sense of her wonderful prose.
""TODAY THE SKY IS SOLID BLUE. It smacks the eye. A powerful tempered ceiling stretched across mountain ranges and glittering river systems: the Saône, the Rhine, the Danube, the Drina. This unimpaired blueness sharpens the edges of the tile-roofed apartment block where Martä Gjatä lives and hardens the wing tips of the little Swiss plane that carries Malcolm Brownstone to her side. What a dense, dumb, depthless blue it is, this blue; but continually widening out and softening like a magically reversed lake without a top or bottom or a trace of habitation or a thought of what its blueness is made of or what it’s for. But take another look. The washed clarity is deceiving, the yawning transparency is fake. What we observe belies the real nature of the earth’s atmosphere, which is adrift, today as any day, with biographical debris. It’s everywhere, a thick swimmy blizzard of it, more ubiquitous by far than earthly salt or sand or humming electrons. Radio waves are routinely pelted by biography’s mad static, as Martä Gjatä, trying to tune in the Vienna Symphony, knows only too well. And small aircraft, such as the one carrying Malcolm Brownstone eastward across Europe, occasionally fall into its sudden atmospheric pockets. The continents and oceans are engulfed. We are, to speak figuratively...
Where else in this closed lonely system can our creaturely dust go but up there on top of the storied slag heap? The only law of biography is that everything, every particle, must be saved. The earth is alight with it, awash with it, scoured by it, made clumsy and burnished by its steady accretion. Biography is a thrifty housewife, it’s an old miser. Martä Gjatä’s first toddling steps are preserved, and her first word"
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