Categories
Archives
-
-
-
-
Recent Posts
- “Life was bitter and I was not. All around me was poverty and sordidness but I refused to see it that way. By turning it into jokes, I made it bearable.” — Max Shulman
- “I couldn’t keep a dog and a James Joyce and a bookshop.” — Sylvia Beach
- 2026 Shakespeare Reading Project: A Midsummer Night’s Dream
- “Make the most of what you have and enjoy being female; enjoy being you.” — Bunny Yeager
- “My mother gave me my drive but my father gave me my dreams.” — Liza Minnelli
- “I had nothing to offer anybody except my own confusion.” — Jack Kerouac
- “I am not descended from flesh. I am God.”: It’s Vaslav Nijinsky’s Birthday
- “My aim is to imply rather than to overstate. Whenever the reader participates with his own interpretation, I feel that the book is much more successful.” — Ezra Jack Keats
- “A good director must be able to inspire whoever he was coaching so that the actor would live the scene. Make-believe must become reality.” — Raoul Walsh
- February 2026 Snapshots
Recent Comments
- sheila on 2026 Shakespeare Reading Project: Romeo & Juliet
- Duncan Gillies MacLaurin on 2026 Shakespeare Reading Project: A Midsummer Night’s Dream
- Jessie on Supernatural: Season 2, Episode 13: “Houses of the Holy”
- Ian on 2026 Shakespeare Reading Project: Romeo & Juliet
- sheila on “I am not descended from flesh. I am God.”: It’s Vaslav Nijinsky’s Birthday
- Frances on “I am not descended from flesh. I am God.”: It’s Vaslav Nijinsky’s Birthday
- dres on Supernatural: Season 2, Episode 14: “Born Under a Bad Sign”
- sheila on 2026 Shakespeare Reading Project: Romeo & Juliet
- sheila on 2026 Shakespeare Reading Project: Romeo & Juliet
- sheila on 2026 Shakespeare Reading Project: Romeo & Juliet
- Ian on 2026 Shakespeare Reading Project: Romeo & Juliet
- dres on Supernatural: Season 2, Episode 13: “Houses of the Holy”
- JAMES DAVID BAIN on The Books: “Collected Plays of Anton Chekhov” – ‘Swan Song’ (Anton Chekhov)
- dres on Supernatural: Season 2, Episode 12: “Nightshifter”
- sheila on “I am not descended from flesh. I am God.”: It’s Vaslav Nijinsky’s Birthday
- Scott Abraham on “I am not descended from flesh. I am God.”: It’s Vaslav Nijinsky’s Birthday
- sheila on “I am not descended from flesh. I am God.”: It’s Vaslav Nijinsky’s Birthday
- dres on Supernatural: Season 2, Episode 12: “Nightshifter”
- Frances on “I am not descended from flesh. I am God.”: It’s Vaslav Nijinsky’s Birthday
- sheila on February 2026 Snapshots
-
Tag Archives: Animal Farm
“I knew that I had a facility with words and a power of facing unpleasant facts.” — George Orwell
Orwell was born on this day. When Animal Farm was released in a new edition, Christopher Hitchens wrote specifically about the quote from Orwell shown in the title above. Very few people can “face unpleasant facts”. Hitchens: A commissar who … Continue reading
Posted in Books, On This Day, writers
Tagged 1984, Animal Farm, dystopia, England, essays, George Orwell, nonfiction, politics, Russia, war
7 Comments
2018 Books Read
2018 Books Read 1. Tamburlaine, Part 1, by Christopher Marlowe I finished 2017 with Paradise Lost, in the mood to continue with rigorous challenging poetry. I decided to read the complete plays of Christopher Marlowe (re-read in most cases). The … Continue reading
Posted in Books, James Joyce
Tagged Animal Farm, Annie Proulx, books read, Christopher Hitchens, Christopher Marlowe, Clifford Odets, Edgar Allan Poe, England, Evelyn Waugh, fiction, Finnegans Wake, friends, George Orwell, H.L. Mencken, Hunter S. Thompson, Ian McEwan, Ireland, Italy, Jack Kerouac, Joan Didion, nonfiction, Olivia Laing, Pauline Kael, poetry, Poland, politics, Robert Kaplan, Romania, Ron Chernow, Russia, Ryszard Kapuściński, Sergei Kirov, Stalin, The Soccer War, Tom Wolfe, true crime, Truman Capote, Victor Serge, Waiting for Lefty
7 Comments
The Books: Arguably, ‘On Animal Farm’, by Christopher Hitchens
On the essays shelf: Arguably: Essays by Christopher Hitchens Christopher Hitchens wrote an entire book on Orwell called Why Orwell Matters (it’s great, no surprise). His mentions of Orwell in print probably run into the hundreds of thousands. And not … Continue reading
Posted in Books
Tagged Animal Farm, Arguably, Christopher Hitchens, essays, George Orwell, Stalin
Leave a comment
The Books: A Collection of Essays, ‘Such, Such Were the Joys …’, by George Orwell
On the essays shelf: A Collection of Essays, by George Orwell While I admire and love both 1984 and Animal Farm (and have done so, really, since I was first introduced them, in junior high and high school), it was … Continue reading
The Books: “Animal Farm: A Fairy Story” (George Orwell)
Daily Book Excerpt: Adult fiction: Animal Farm: Anniversary Edition, by George Orwell. Nothing like starting off the weekend with a little Orwell. And I am of the mind that we should never forget Why Orwell Matters … to borrow a … Continue reading
Posted in Books
Tagged Animal Farm, fiction, George Orwell, politics, Russia, Stalin, Trotsky
13 Comments
1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die
Jessa Crispin has an interesting interview with Peter Boxall, editor of 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die. I loved what Boxall said at the end: Having benefited from an extraordinary number of emails and letters as well as … Continue reading
Posted in Books, James Joyce
Tagged 1984, A Prayer for Owen Meany, A Tale of Two Cities, A.S. Byatt, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Alice in Wonderland, Amongst Women, Animal Farm, Annie Proulx, Antoine de Saint-Exupery, At Swim-Two-Birds, Atonement, Cat's Eye, Catch-22, Charles Dickens, Charlotte Bronte, D.H. Lawrence, Don DeLillo, E.M. Forster, Edgar Allan Poe, Edna O'Brien, Emily Bronte, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Finnegans Wake, Flann O'Brien, Flannery O'Connor, Frankenstein, Franny and Zooey, George Eliot, George Orwell, Great Expectations, Gulliver's Travels, Handmaid's Tale, Herman Melville, House of Leaves, Hunter S. Thompson, Ian McEwan, In Cold Blood, J.D. Salinger, J.R.R. Tolkien, James Ellroy, Jane Austen, Jane Eyre, Jeanette Winterson, John Irving, John McGahern, John Steinbeck, Jonathan Swift, Joseph Heller, Kazuo Ishiguro, Leo Tolstoy, Lewis Carroll, Lord of the Rings, Margaret Atwood, Mark Danielewski, Mary Shelley, Master and Margarita, Middlemarch, Mikhail Bulgakov, Moby Dick, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Notes From the Underground, Possession, Pride and Prejudice, Primo Levi, Sexing the Cherry, Stephen King, The Catcher In the Rye, The Country Girls, The Great Gatsby, The Hobbit, The Passion, The Shipping News, The Things They Carried, Thomas Mann, Tim O'Brien, Tom Wolfe, Truman Capote, Ulysses, Underworld, Vladimir Nabokov, Wuthering Heights
9 Comments