Categories
Archives
-
Recent Posts
- Stories from Twitter: What’s in a name?
- Cat on a Hot Tin Roof in the Berkshires
- “We just always did what we fucking wanted to.” — Kevin Seconds
- “If you want to see the girl next door, go next door.” – Joan Crawford
- Review: Being Maria (2025)
- “Every choice I’ve ever made has been dictated by a formless hunch rather than by strict logic.” — Peter Brook
- March 2025 Supernatural Viewing Diary Season 11, working backwards
- “Reality is always extraordinary.” — Mary Ellen Mark
- “I think my cinema is minimalist because so is my gaze: I’m very interested in people.” — Joanna Hogg
- “I got my first guitar at age of 7 and never laid it down. Momma taught me G, C, and D. I was off to the races son!” — Jerry Reed
Recent Comments
- Lyrie on Stories from Twitter: What’s in a name?
- sheila on The Books: “Master & Commander” (Patrick O’Brian)
- sheila on The Books: “Master & Commander” (Patrick O’Brian)
- nighthawk bastard on The Books: “Master & Commander” (Patrick O’Brian)
- sheila on Don’t you DARE take Elvis away from me.
- sheila on Don’t you DARE take Elvis away from me.
- Lyrie on Review: Being Maria (2025)
- Lyrie on Don’t you DARE take Elvis away from me.
- sheila on Don’t you DARE take Elvis away from me.
- sheila on Don’t you DARE take Elvis away from me.
- Lyrie on Don’t you DARE take Elvis away from me.
- sheila on “Tennyson’s rank is too well fixed and we love him too much.” — Oscar Wilde
- sheila on “I think my cinema is minimalist because so is my gaze: I’m very interested in people.” — Joanna Hogg
- sheila on Review: Being Maria (2025)
- Kristen on Review: Being Maria (2025)
- Lee on “Tennyson’s rank is too well fixed and we love him too much.” — Oscar Wilde
- Maddy on “I think my cinema is minimalist because so is my gaze: I’m very interested in people.” — Joanna Hogg
- Michael James Cobb on The Books: “Master & Commander” (Patrick O’Brian)
- sheila on The Books: “Master & Commander” (Patrick O’Brian)
- sheila on The Books: “Master & Commander” (Patrick O’Brian)
-
Tag Archives: Victor Serge
“Carelessness on the part of revolutionaries has always been the best aid the police have.” — Victor Serge
Ever since my late-in-the-day discovery of Victor Serge (whose birthday it is today), a man I should have discovered much MUCH earlier, considering my interest in totalitarian regimes / dissident voices / revolution / Russia – I have read as … Continue reading
2022 Books Read
Some re-reads this year, but a lot of new-to-me authors as well. New novels written by faves. Been a year of upheaval and transitions. I’ve managed to keep up my regular reading schedule. I just don’t feel right if I’m … Continue reading
Posted in Books
Tagged A.S. Byatt, Alfred Hitchcock, Anne Fadiman, art, Australia, Biography, books read, Canada, Christopher Hitchens, Edmund Burke, Elinor Lipman, England, entertainment biography, essays, Eve Babitz, friends, Germany, Greece, Hitler, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Janet Malcolm, Joan Didion, Joseph Cornell, Lorrie Moore, Machiavelli, Master and Margarita, Memoirs, Michael Curtiz, Mikhail Bulgakov, Mitford sisters, nonfiction, Paul Zindel, politics, Quentin Tarantino, Robert De Niro, Russia, Ryszard Kapuściński, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Shakespeare, The Beatles, Tom Wolfe, true crime, Victor Klemperer, Victor Serge, war, William Hazlitt, William Wordsworth, WWII, YA fiction
10 Comments
Train travel, Sheila style
Dunkin Donuts, Jensen Ackles, and Victor Serge. Simultaneously.
Stuff I’ve Been Reading
— My good friend Charlie Taylor is on fire in the LA Review of Books, reviewing Steve Erickson’s American Stutter. — Conversations with Friends, by Sally Rooney. Like everybody else on the planet, I read and loved Rooney’s Normal People … Continue reading
Posted in Books
Tagged fiction, friends, Ireland, John Wayne, politics, stuff I've been reading, Victor Serge
2 Comments
Recommended Books: Memoirs
More recommendations: Recommended Fiction Recommended Non-Fiction MEMOIRS The Fervent Years: The Group Theatre And The Thirties, by Harold Clurman Probably the most famous of all the Group Theatre-related books. Harold Clurman writes his memories of that time and what those … Continue reading
Posted in Actors, Books, Directors, Music, writers
Tagged African Queen, Anjelica Huston, Austria, Baby Doll, Benjamin Franklin, Born Standing Up, Bruce Springsteen, Carroll Baker, Charles Grodin, Czechoslovakia, Diane Keaton, Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Elia Kazan, Ellen Terry, Elvis Presley, Frank McCourt, Ginger Rogers, Goldie Hawn, Group Theatre, Harold Clurman, Ireland, James Salter, Jeanette Winterson, John Strasberg, Katharine Hepburn, Kathleen Turner, Lana Turner, Lauren Bacall, Lee Strasberg, Marlon Brando, Maud Gonne, Memoirs, Patricia Bosworth, Primo Levi, Robert Evans, Rosalind Russell, Russia, Shane Leslie, Shelley Winters, Shirley MacLaine, Stefan Zweig, Steve Martin, The Kid Stays In the Picture, Victor Serge, WWII
2 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, ‘Victor Serge: Pictures from an Inquisition’, by Christopher Hitchens
On the essays shelf: Arguably: Essays by Christopher Hitchens Considering my long-standing fascination with all things Stalin, the fact that I had never read Victor Serge’s work was a major disconnect. I know his name came up in everything I … Continue reading
Posted in Books
Tagged Arguably, Christopher Hitchens, essays, Russia, Stalin, Victor Serge
Leave a comment
2013 Books Read
It’s been a hell of a year. Devastating as well as redemptive. I started it out in Memphis, and end it here in New Jersey. And now my new niece Pearl has arrived! It’s been both a busy year as … Continue reading
Posted in Books
Tagged A.S. Byatt, Anne Fadiman, Annie Proulx, Arthur Koestler, Balkans, books read, Darkness at Noon, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Edvard Radzinsky, Elinor Lipman, England, friends, George Eliot, H.L. Mencken, Henry James, Herman Melville, Hungary, Ireland, J.D. Salinger, Jeanette Winterson, Joan Acocella, Joan Didion, John Banville, Joseph Heller, Joshua Ferris, Lester Bangs, Lorrie Moore, Patricia Highsmith, Philip K. Dick, Russia, Sam Cooke, Shakespeare, Stalin, Tana French, The Netherlands, The Only Game In Town, Thomas Carlyle, Victor Serge, Yugoslavia
33 Comments