Categories
Archives
-
-
-
-
Recent Posts
- NYFCC 2025 winners
- A Streetcar Named Desire: That’s What Williams Wrote. Deal With It.
- “Intellect and taste count, but I cut with my feelings.” — legendary editor Dede Allen
- “My aesthetic is that of the sniper on the roof.” — Jean-Luc Godard
- “I have trouble working off things that are too preconceived, like storyboards.” — Terrence Malick
- “I thought girls in their teens might like to read [Anne of Green Gables], that was the only audience I hoped to reach.” — L.M. Montgomery
- “I have ever hated all nations, professions, and communities, and all my love is toward individuals.” — Jonathan Swift
- “Look in thy heart and write.” — Sir Philip Sidney
- For Busby Berkeley’s birthday: Remember My Forgotten Man and Sucker Punch
- “Well, if I can’t be happy, I can be useful, perhaps.” — Louisa May Alcott
Recent Comments
- Krsten Westergaard on “I thought girls in their teens might like to read [Anne of Green Gables], that was the only audience I hoped to reach.” — L.M. Montgomery
- Gemstone on “Well, if I can’t be happy, I can be useful, perhaps.” — Louisa May Alcott
- Jincy Willett on The Books: “Send Yourself Roses: Thoughts on My Life, Love, and Leading Roles” (Kathleen Turner)
- Son on Boyhood (2014); directed by Richard Linklater
- Matheus on “I’m not the person I was at 28. The passion is still there but the rage mostly isn’t.” — Marshall Mathers
- mutecypher on Frankenstein, Mary Shelley, and Guillermo del Toro: a live event
- mutecypher on “There’s nothing you can tell me about guilt.” — Martin Scorsese
- sheila on Frankenstein, Mary Shelley, and Guillermo del Toro: a live event
- Mike Molloy on Frankenstein, Mary Shelley, and Guillermo del Toro: a live event
- sheila on Frankenstein, Mary Shelley, and Guillermo del Toro: a live event
- Mike Molloy on Frankenstein, Mary Shelley, and Guillermo del Toro: a live event
- sheila on Frankenstein, Mary Shelley, and Guillermo del Toro: a live event
- sheila on Frankenstein, Mary Shelley, and Guillermo del Toro: a live event
- sheila on Frankenstein, Mary Shelley, and Guillermo del Toro: a live event
- Lyrie on Frankenstein, Mary Shelley, and Guillermo del Toro: a live event
- Mike Molloy on Frankenstein, Mary Shelley, and Guillermo del Toro: a live event
- Lyrie on Frankenstein, Mary Shelley, and Guillermo del Toro: a live event
- Melissa Sutherland on Review: Die My Love (2025)
- Gale on For John Wayne’s Birthday: Hondo (1953) at MoMA: John Wayne in 3D
- Pam on The Books: “Rally Round the Flag, Boys!” (Max Shulman)
-
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, 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, Shakespeare, Stalin, The Great Terror, The Soccer War, Tom Wolfe, true crime, Ukraine, Vincent Bugliosi, 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
Leave a comment
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
2 Comments
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