K -- she must be a fast reader! I remember being sooo happy when my baby could play by herself for a while, and I could read a bit! This summer she's been all over, with girlfriends and at camp, so me and the library have been having an affair!
'Bees' is in the top ten paperback best-sellers list in today's (Sunday's) Boston Globe.
The Piano Shop on the Left Bank
I just started this one...like it a great deal. Wonderful book about - pianos!
I HAD to come back and say that I've finally finished Blonde. I was up until 2:30 this morning desperately grasping for that last page for fear of spending another sleepless night. I think this is the first novel which has prompted me to use the description "brilliant." Disturbing, but brilliant.
Just started a Sherlock Holmes book of tales. I am excited; first frivilous reading I've done in a while!
Bill--I read the "Complete Stories" a few years ago. While the reading may be frivolous, it still taxes the brain. I found that I was eventually able to figure out "whodunnit" before Holmes. Funny (funny strange, not funny ha ha) thing is that Osama Bin Laden reminds me of Professor Moriarty...
Perhaps that's a sign that I have indeed lost my mind.
I just started reading After the Ecstasy, the Laundry by Jack Kornfield. I needed to calm my brain after the last one....Although another JCO, Zombie, keeps finding its way into my hands.
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I tend to read systematically, that is to say, all of the works of an author before going on to another. Last year I exhausted the works of Edith Wharton, and after that Philip Roth (actually, I couldn't finish Roth: not enough libido strength for that). I've just finished the six "Barsetshire novels" of Anthony Trollope, a wonder view of Victorian country and provincial urban life in the fictional county of Barchester, England. When I finished the series I found myself hating to leave the friends I made in the work. I am now working on Trollope's "Palliser Novels," an examination of life associated with the political workings of England. The writing is full of "anons," "fains" and the like, but the insights into human life (even if of a different culture and historical period) are better than I have gained from the formal study of psychology and sociology.
I also want to recommend a book I read long ago (twice): the only novel--but clearly a masterpiece--by the legendary art historian and critic, Sir Herbert Read: The Green Child. It's a "tryptich" of sorts that will grab you from beginning to end. If anyone has read or comes to read these works, please contact me; I'd love to know your responses.
"Cloud of Sparrows" by Takashi Matsuoka and I've posted a discussion about historical novels of the Orient.
...and next "The Return of the King" before I see the last film.
I just read "The Age of Consent" by Geoffrey Wolfe. Read it in two days. Not a long novel, but really compelling.
Geez, I am going to have to start a list.
Hmm, JL, I just bought a book by Anthony Trollope...The Tireless Traveler
Twenty Letters to the Liverpool Mercury, 1875.
Will report sometime soon...
Osso, you'd love the jacked design of "Cloud of Sparrows" -- worth it for me just to display in my orient influenced living room decor and it's the right colors!
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I never heard of that one; nor do I see it my bibliographical lists of Trollope's work. Is it a novel or a travelog? He did a lot of international traveling representing the British postal service. Yeah, let me know what you think of it.
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LW, orient-influenced decor? Sounds interesting. I have 80 plus Buddha and Kwan Yin Statues scattered descretely about the house, but for the most part it is done in Early Bordelo (real and faux antiques). We love it.
The living room decor is eclectic -- the one wall behind the sofa is a deep Chinese red (called "Molasses" but it's a very reddish molasses!) That's covered with three mirrors of different designs (like a Versailles wall), with red tassles of different sizes hanging between which match the color of the wall. Then a carved Chinese rug and a large ginger jar with a glass top as a coffee table ('cause we have room for two taupe silk chinille footstools for putting one's feet up while watching TV). Then the only other thing in the room that is Chinese is a Henredon two door chest with a deep blue Japanese jar filled with silk flowers on top. The art on the wall is not oriental.
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LW, undoubtedly a beautiful living room, bold, elegant, and comfortable. It's only fault (that I can detect from your comments and report without invitation) is that it contains a TV set.
It's a high definition set with the turner permanently bonded on PBS. If the den were large enough, it would be in there but big screens need big rooms.
But right now, I'm returning to my book -- it's getting complex and the Christians aren't doing so well.
Cloud of Sparrows, just the title is wonderful.
Both your houses sound neat to me. Since my computer room is called the Vintage Rose Room, I have some sympathy for roseate tones. I am not done painting the rooms yet since I am still getting down to the plaster and elastomeric compounding the cracks (aha, reason for wallpaper), but I have some rugs I like a lot and some drapery material in wait for my presence at the sewing machine.
My place is only asian insofar as old wood walled bungalows ref japanese architecture. But it rather oldfashioned in aspect...
Glight, where is this discussion, is it on a2k, or in your life...
I dunno, JL, since I typed that about Trollope's travel book I've read the intro and started a different book. Even Trollope didn't like his travel essays. It is pretty funny really, as intros go, as the intro writer and Trollope vie for desparaging remarks, including tedious, boring, and so on. Oh, well, it was $4.
All the Shah's men (non fiction)
Balzac and the little chinese seamstress (fiction)
Red seethrough drapes with large print cherry blossom branches hanging over the Persian rug in my purple-colored dining room. (Is the orient-decorations an implicit thread subject?)
Reading (and marvelling at) descriptions of beautiful rooms and homes, I see I have a long way to go. (First house, 2 months you know)
