If we in America know Colette at all, we know her through Gigi, the 1954 movie starring Leslie Caron and Louis Jourdan, and featuring the now problematic little song, Thank Heaven for Little Girls, performed by the inimitable Maurice Chevalier. I like it anyway. Read more about Colette, Again
reads rather like a glimpse into the lives of the passengers on the HMS Titanic. As a matter of fact, toward the end of the narrative, Elinor Glyn, one of Ms. Nicolson’s cast of characters, thinks to start a new life in New York and very nearly books passage on the pride of the White Star Line. Her sister goes without her, and survives the journey. Read more about The Perfect Summer
You are about to begin reading Italo Calvino’s new novel, . Read more about Calvino
Distingué: adjective
having a distinguished manner or appearance
Demotic: adjective
Read more about From Distingué to Demoticdenoting or relating to the kind of language used by ordinary people; popular or colloquial:
synonyms: popular · vernacular · colloquial · idiomatic · vulgar · common
I was stoned on my first voyage through Ulysses. That was back in 1970-something, and I was living with my second husband and the child of my first marriage in a small house in Green Bay, WI. Smoking pot was not something to which I had become at all accustomed in the course of my nearly 30 years - it wasn't until I reached Green Bay that, if I remember correctly, the neighbors across the street turned me on. Read more about Reading Ulysses
How do you fall in love with a city? I've fallen in love with a few of them: London, Venice, Istanbul. I fell in love with London before I ever got there, so when I did get there, I don't think I even saw the London of today. It seemed as if I already knew it like the back of my hand. Everywhere I went, familiar names called out to me. Baker Street, Bloomsbury, Tower Bridge. The Clink. The Clink!? Well, that explains that. Istanbul. Read more about Roman Reverie
Even with my reservations, I think every one of these is worth the price of admission - and should you use one of my links to buy a ticket, I get a piece of the action. Happy reading.
Written by a great-granddaughter of Vita Sackville-West about a summer a couple of years before the Great War, it is a reminder that the days of our innocence were not only not quite as innocent as we might have imagined, but far more innocent than we knew in light of the horror that is to come. A cautionary tale. Read more about Reading List October 2014
If you tell me the wars are over, then I know the shield walls will be made very soon. Uhtred of Bebbenburg, hero of Bernard Cornwell's .
One hundred years ago this month, the shield walls were made once again, this time with artillery. Yesterday, today, and tomorrow, the walls have, are, and will be raised again and again and again, wherever people seek to end war once and for all. Read more about The Forever War
Elizabeth of York's mother, Elizabeth Wydville, queen to King Edward IV, died in 1492. When I read that, I thought well, there goes the Middle Ages. Because elsewhere in the world, completely unknown to the English crown, a sailor from Genoa thinks he's about to land in Japan. Cipango, he called it, after a tale told by Marco Polo. Read more about The Last Medieval Queen
In the early years of the 20th century, there was only one damned lawyer that the damned themselves could turn to, and John A. Farrell tells his riveting story in . Read more about One Damned Lawyer