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- 2026 Shakespeare Reading Project: Much Ado About Nothing
- “I don’t represent anything.” — Liz Phair
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- “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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Tag Archives: Roman empire
“I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat or a prostitute.” — Rebecca West
It’s her birthday today. It is hard to talk about her without referencing the generations of writers she inspired, all of whom admit their debt. Robert Kaplan is the most open about it (in Balkan Ghosts, which launched his career, … Continue reading
Posted in Books, On This Day, writers
Tagged Austria, Balkans, D.H. Lawrence, Ford Madox Ford, France, George Bernard Shaw, Germany, Katherine Mansfield, Leo Tolstoy, Mark Twain, nonfiction, politics, Rebecca West, Roman empire, Russia, Serbia, W.B. Yeats, war, Warren Beatty, Yugoslavia
21 Comments
2020 Books Read
What a year, huh. What a dumpster-fire year. I read a lot, mostly in the mornings, and it helped create rituals for the days, which often seemed endlessly the same, interchangeable. I read a lot of long and challenging books … Continue reading
Posted in Books
Tagged Austria, ballet, Ballets Russes, Belfast, Biography, books read, Croatia, Czechoslovakia, Czeslaw Milosz, dance, Dubravka Ugrešić, Elinor Lipman, Elizabeth Bishop, Eminem, essays, Ezra Pound, fiction, H.D., Hannah Arendt, Hitler, Ireland, Jane Austen, Jean Arthur, Marcel Proust, Nick Tosches, nonfiction, Olivia Laing, poetry, Poland, politics, Rebecca West, Robert Kaplan, Roman empire, Russia, Ryszard Kapuściński, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Shirley Jackson, Stalin, true crime, Ukraine, war, WWII, Yugoslavia
38 Comments
Recommended Books: Non-Fiction
I have been meaning to do a Part 2 to my Recommended Books: Fiction list – put together years ago. I wanted to recommend non-fiction, from history books to biographies to essays to whatever. Here is the Non-Fiction list. I’ve … Continue reading
Posted in Books, Founding Fathers, Theatre
Tagged Abraham Lincoln, Afghanistan, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Alexander Hamilton, Austria, Balkan Ghosts, Balkans, baseball, Belfast, Black Lamb and Grey Falcon, Catherine Drinker-Bowen, Central Asia, China, Crowds and Power, Dava Sobel, David McCullough, Edmund Burke, Edvard Radzinsky, Elias Canetti, Elvis Presley, England, Federalist Papers, Founding Brothers, France, Germany, Group Theatre, Gulag Archipelago, Hitler, Hunter S. Thompson, Imperium, Ireland, Iris Chang, Isaac Newton, James Madison, Janet Malcolm, Japan, Joseph Ellis, Michael Schmidt, Miracle at Philadelphia, nonfiction, Olivia Laing, Philip Gourevitch, poetry, Primo Levi, Rasputin, Rebecca West, Red Sox, Robert Conquest, Robert Kaplan, Roman empire, Russia, Rwanda, Ryszard Kapuściński, science, Serbia, Stalin, The Great Terror, The Soccer War, Tom Wolfe, true crime, Ukraine, Vincent Bugliosi, William Shakespeare, WWI, WWII, Yugoslavia
19 Comments
The Books: Twenty-Eight Artists and Two Saints, ‘Becoming the Emperor’, by Joan Acocella
On the essays shelf: Twenty-eight Artists and Two Saints: Essays by Joan Acocella. The next essay I want to excerpt is called ‘Becoming the Emperor’, originally published in The New Yorker in 2005. It is about the French author Marguerite … Continue reading
Posted in Books
Tagged essays, France, Joan Acocella, Roman empire, Twenty-Eight Artists and Two Saints
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November 8: “Prope est a te deus, tecum est, intus est.”
Excerpted from Christopher Morley’s A Book of Days: Being a Briefcase packed for his own Pleasure: NOVEMBER 8, SUNDAY 1931 Non sunt ad coelum elevandae manus nec exorandus aedituus, ut nos ad aurem simulacri, quasi magis exaudiri possimus, admittat. Prope … Continue reading
On The Stairmaster in the Roman Empire
I’m reading Rubicon: The Last Years of the Roman Republic, this book on the fall of the Roman Empire. And the author uses words such as “big business”, “working out”, “blitzkrieg”, “fiscal-military establishment” … There are more. I should keep … Continue reading
The Books: “The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire” (Edward Gibbon)
I’m on my history bookshelf. Next book on this shelf is called The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (Penguin Classics) by Edward Gibbon. It’s one of those things where you say … uh … SOME … Continue reading
Posted in Books
Tagged Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, England, nonfiction, politics, Roman empire, war
11 Comments
LM Montgomery on “Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire”, by Edward Gibbon
LM Montgomery read the entire 3-volume thing 3 or 4 times in her life. She loved it. I read it, because she read it. I’m nuts. But it is extraordinary indeed. “I am on my third volume of him now … Continue reading
Posted in Books
Tagged Canada, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, England, L.M. Montgomery, Roman empire
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LM Montgomery on “Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire” by Edward Gibbon
More on Decline and Fall. “I finished ‘Decline and Fall’ this evening. It is the third time I have read it…It is a monumental piece of work. I know of no historian so coldly impersonal as Gibbon. He seems more … Continue reading
Posted in Books
Tagged Canada, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, England, L.M. Montgomery, Roman empire
3 Comments