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- 2026 Shakespeare Reading Project: Much Ado About Nothing
- “I don’t represent anything.” — Liz Phair
- “I don’t really know why, but danger has always been an important thing in my life – to see how far I could lean without falling, how fast I could go without cracking up.” — William Holden
- “Some syllables are swords.” — Metaphysical poet Henry Vaughan
- “To me, music is no joke and it’s not for sale.” — Ian MacKaye
- “All I need to make a comedy is a park, a policeman and a pretty girl.” — Charlie Chaplin
- “As a cinematographer, I was always attracted to stories that have the potential to be told with as few words as possible.” — Reed Morano
- “Even though I’m writing about very dark material, it still feels like an escape hatch.” — Olivia Laing
- “It’s just one of the mysteries of filmmaking that sometimes you do something that you don’t even think it’s important, then it turns out to be.” — Lili Horvát
- “Ballet taught me to stay close to style and tone. Literature taught me to be concerned about the moral life.” — Joan Acocella
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- sheila on 2026 Shakespeare Reading Project: Much Ado About Nothing
- sheila on 2026 Shakespeare Reading Project: Much Ado About Nothing
- Mike Molloy on 2026 Shakespeare Reading Project: Much Ado About Nothing
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- sheila on 2026 Shakespeare Reading Project: Much Ado About Nothing
- Scott Abraham on 2026 Shakespeare Reading Project: Much Ado About Nothing
- sheila on 2026 Shakespeare Reading Project: Much Ado About Nothing
- Mike Molloy on 2026 Shakespeare Reading Project: Much Ado About Nothing
- sheila on March 2026 Snapshots
- sheila on “I don’t really know why, but danger has always been an important thing in my life – to see how far I could lean without falling, how fast I could go without cracking up.” — William Holden
- Jessie on March 2026 Snapshots
- Helen Erwin Schinske on “To me, music is no joke and it’s not for sale.” — Ian MacKaye
- Maddy on “I don’t really know why, but danger has always been an important thing in my life – to see how far I could lean without falling, how fast I could go without cracking up.” — William Holden
- sheila on “To me, music is no joke and it’s not for sale.” — Ian MacKaye
- Helen Erwin Schinske on “To me, music is no joke and it’s not for sale.” — Ian MacKaye
- Joseph Pedulla on Susan Hayward Sleeps Raw
- sheila on “For I am of the seed of the WELCH WOMAN and speak the truth from my heart.” — Christopher Smart
- P Nickel on “The realization of ignorance is the first act of knowing.” — Jean Toomer
- Melissa Sutherland on “For I am of the seed of the WELCH WOMAN and speak the truth from my heart.” — Christopher Smart
- Bryce on The Books: “Nine Stories”- ‘The Laughing Man’ (J.D. Salinger)
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Tag Archives: bookshelves
Bookshelf Tour #11
Renegades, iconoclasts, “new journalism” and gonzo journalism. Individualists, all. Irreplaceable, all. The world wouldn’t know what to do with such voices now, and they didn’t know what to do with such voices then. None of them really “fit.” They are … Continue reading
Bookshelf Tour #10
An extremely dog-eared section of my library. These books are rarely on the shelf since I dip into them so often. — The mighty Joan Acocella, dance critic for The New Yorker, but also so much more. Her dance writing … Continue reading
Posted in Books
Tagged bookshelves, F. Scott Fitzgerald, George Orwell, H.L. Mencken, Joan Acocella, Lester Bangs, William Hazlitt
4 Comments
Bookshelf Tour #9
The books of Robert Conquest: first and foremost his masterpiece, one of the most important books of the 20th century: The Great Terror: A Reassessment, but also Reflections on a Ravaged Century, The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and the … Continue reading
Posted in Books
Tagged Afghanistan, Balkans, bookshelves, politics, Robert Conquest, Russia, The Great Terror, war
9 Comments
Bookshelf Tour #8
Welcome to the Tyranny section of my bookshelves. First up: Collapse of Communism by the correspondents of The New York Times. A really interesting in-real-time book about the various gigantic events which signaled the crackup of the Soviet Union, as … Continue reading
Posted in Books
Tagged Afghanistan, bookshelves, Hannah Arendt, Iran, Iris Chang, Russia, Ryszard Kapuściński
4 Comments
Bookshelf Tour #7
Moving on to biographies. Please ignore my wretched ceiling. I had nothing to do with it. I also lost the top shelf of my bookshelves when I moved here in February. Still room for a row of books though. I … Continue reading
Bookshelf Tour #6
More plays! First up: the essential two volumes of Paddy Chayefsky’s stuff (and there’s still more out there). The Stage Plays and The Collected Works of Paddy Chayefsky: The Television Plays. He’s so good for acting classes, both his plays, … Continue reading
Posted in Books, Theatre
Tagged Anton Chekhov, Arthur Miller, bookshelves, Christopher Marlowe, Clifford Odets, Paddy Chayefsky, scripts
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Bookshelf Tour #5
Moving into the script section. Samuel French dominates. Most of the Samuel French scripts here are plays I acted in. Hence, their terrible condition. And hey look there’s Cousin Mike’s play, Diverting Devotion. It was such a huge deal when … Continue reading
Bookshelf Tour #4
Poetry is important to me. My collection is small but each volume is loved, read, dipped into, used constantly as references. Six Centuries of Great Poetry: A Stunning Collection of Classic British Poems from Chaucer to Yeats, edited by Robert … Continue reading
Posted in Books
Tagged bookshelves, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Ireland, Irish poetry, poetry, Sylvia Plath, Ted Hughes, W.H. Auden, William Blake
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Bookshelf Tour #3
Some of the most well-worn books in my library. Real Life Drama: The Group Theatre and America 1931-1940 is Wendy Smith’s exhaustive history of The Group Theater. I consider it essential reading. It’s an important part of the history of … Continue reading
Posted in Books, Theatre
Tagged August Strindberg, bookshelves, Group Theatre, Harold Clurman, Jack Garfein, Michael Caine, Stella Adler
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Bookshelf Tour #2
A section of primary sources section. To anyone who knows my script (July and Half of August), you’ll see where the whole Warren Report joke comes from. On one of my tours of Graceland, they had Elvis’ books laid out … Continue reading