I just finished “Rubicon” by Tom Holland. I don’t have time to write at length about it, I found it to be very interesting. Rubicon is a historical narrative about the end of the Roman Republic. I thought I knew something about Roman history, having been married to someone who was ABD’d in Roman History, [...]
I hadn’t been to the Harper’s Magazine website in a while. I subscribe, and barely have enough time to read the magazine. Scott Horton’s blog there is a gem.
Here is a bit from a letter written by Count Leo Tolstoy to a young lawyer in South Africa in 1910. The lawyer, who had launched [...]
My daughter, Bookzilla, got that nickname for purposes of this blog because of her reading habits. One day, she was sprawled across a chair and there was a pile of books to be read on once side and a pile of books she had already read on the other. These were not difficult books to [...]
“Revolutionary Road” is a bad movie. Who could have guessed that it would be?
The movie replaces character with plot, and the result lands with a wet flop. It tells the story of Revolutionary Road and makes us see how thin the plot is: Self-identified creative souls must escape suburbia; maybe Paris would be nice; pregnancy [...]
via Boing Boing, a chap on MySpace has done the whole 25 random things about me to the most. Wm. Shakespeare’s 5 and 20…..
14 On the topic of dating, my daughter Susanna loues to remind me: ~Jvliet was only thirteen! And I remind her that i) she was Italian, an impulsive race ii), she [...]
Donald Westlake has died.
Prolific mystery writer Donald Westlake has died at the age of 75.
Westlake’s wife, Abigail, tells The New York Times the author collapsed as he headed to a New Year’s Eve dinner while on vacation in Mexico. His wife says he apparently had a heart attack.
Westlake is considered one of the most successful [...]
I’m watching a movie called “Wild Hearts” on the Hallmark Channel. Having a post-op shoulder means I can type on my laptop while my hind quarters are anchored to the sofa, so I see a lot of movies. This movie has all of the story beats that I would put in it. [...]
I’m glad I found the Captain Underpants books. JMan, who can read pretty well, eschews books for toys of action. He has just turned 7, and before I found those books by Dav Pilkey, he had a hard time sitting still for books. He can add numbers in his head, but is [...]
BBC has the news about the code that appeared in the Da Vinci Code judgement.
A code hidden by a judge in his written judgement in the failed Da Vinci Code plagiarism case has been broken.
And, how did he do it?
The judge had told The Guardian and The Times that the code was based on [...]
There is a good article by John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt in the London Review of Books called The Israel Lobby. (via James Wolcott) It is good reading. I don’t have the time or space to talk react in depth, but here are the lead paragraphs.
For the past several decades, [...]