Categories
Archives
-
-
-
-
Recent Posts
- February 2026 Snapshots
- “I’ve never thought of my characters as being sad. On the contrary, they are full of life. They didn’t choose tragedy. Tragedy chose them.” — Juliette Binoche
- Happy Birthday, “Mr. Personality” Lloyd Price
- For International Women’s Day: Ladies I Love
- “Have you ever noticed how a cat stretches after a nap? We can learn from watching animals.” — Cyd Charisse
- Review: Pompei: Below the Clouds (2026)
- “Since when was genius found respectable?” – Elizabeth Barrett Browning
- Happy Birthday, Dean Stockwell
- “Character roles definitely age better than your ingenues. You don’t get to keep doing that.” — Catherine O’Hara
- “Silence is necessary to tyrants and occupiers, who take pains to have their actions accompanied by quiet.” — Ryszard Kapuściński
Recent Comments
- dres on Supernatural: Season 2, Episode 8: “Crossroad Blues”
- Michael James Cobb on “The hope is that in rediscovering Chicago, audiences will rediscover what theater was. It was sophisticated, complicated, adult.” — Ann Reinking
- dres on Supernatural: Season 2, Episode 7: “The Usual Suspects”
- mutecypher on “I just love telling stories. That’s what we do and it’s a good business to be in, especially if you know you have talent.” –Jensen Ackles
- dres on Supernatural: Season 2, Episode 6: “No Exit”
- dres on “I just love telling stories. That’s what we do and it’s a good business to be in, especially if you know you have talent.” –Jensen Ackles
- mutecypher on “I just love telling stories. That’s what we do and it’s a good business to be in, especially if you know you have talent.” –Jensen Ackles
- dres on Supernatural: Season 2, Episode 5: “Simon Said”
- dres on “I just love telling stories. That’s what we do and it’s a good business to be in, especially if you know you have talent.” –Jensen Ackles
- Lyrie on “I just love telling stories. That’s what we do and it’s a good business to be in, especially if you know you have talent.” –Jensen Ackles
- Lyrie on “I just love telling stories. That’s what we do and it’s a good business to be in, especially if you know you have talent.” –Jensen Ackles
- dres on “I just love telling stories. That’s what we do and it’s a good business to be in, especially if you know you have talent.” –Jensen Ackles
- dres on Supernatural: Season 2, Episode 1: “In My Time of Dying”
- Jessie on “I just love telling stories. That’s what we do and it’s a good business to be in, especially if you know you have talent.” –Jensen Ackles
- dres on “I just love telling stories. That’s what we do and it’s a good business to be in, especially if you know you have talent.” –Jensen Ackles
- dres on “I just love telling stories. That’s what we do and it’s a good business to be in, especially if you know you have talent.” –Jensen Ackles
- dres on Supernatural: Season 2, Episode 4: “Children Shouldn’t Play With Dead Things”
- Jessie on Review: EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert (2026)
- sheila on “I just love telling stories. That’s what we do and it’s a good business to be in, especially if you know you have talent.” –Jensen Ackles
- sheila on Review: EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert (2026)
-
Tag Archives: Leo Tolstoy
“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
Book Meme: Pick One
Hard to pick one answer for each. Got this from Ted. One book youâre currently reading: I am only reading one. I cannot read fiction right now. I can barely read, if you want to know the truth, but I … Continue reading
Posted in Books
Tagged Charlotte Bronte, Crime and Punishment, Evelyn Waugh, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Geek Love, Harriet the Spy, Helter Skelter, Jane Eyre, Katherine Dunn, Leo Tolstoy, Louise Fitzhugh, Mating, Norman Rush, Nureyev, Scoop, Shakespeare, Villette, Vincent Bugliosi, War and Peace
14 Comments
Middlemarch and Tolstoy
Ted is reading Middlemarch and I have so been loving his thoughts on the book. One of the main responses I had to the book was that it actually excited me. It was an exhilarating read. Omniscient and personal, at … Continue reading
Tolstoy Zingers
One of the things I love best about War and Peace is how action-packed it is … and yet how, suddenly, seemingly out of nowhere, we get these psychological ZINGERS thrown at us – which have such the ring of … Continue reading
War and Peace: An Entire Society In One Paragraph
Part Four: Chapter III On the 3rd of March all the rooms of the English Club were full of the hum of voices, and the members and guests of the club, in uniforms and frock-coats, some even in powder and … Continue reading
Family: What We All Are Reading
Bren: re-reading The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay (with bonus content): A Novel Jean: reading The End of the Affair, and also Milkweed by Jerry Spinelli Dad: reading The Far Side of the World (he finished Treason’s Harbour) Siobhan: … Continue reading
The Books: “Anna Karenina” (Leo Tolstoy)
Daily Book Excerpt: Adult fiction: Anna Karenina, by Leo Tolstoy There was a time in Chicago when my entire group of friends read this book. It spread like a virus. One person started it, and began raving about it, so … Continue reading
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
“I Beat Mr. Turgenev.”
Here’s another quote from Ernest Hemingway. Hemingway was asked, by an interview, about another so-called “war writer”, who thought of himself as Tolstoy: He never hears a shot fired in anger, and he sets out to beat who? Tolstoy, an … Continue reading