Reviews, roundups and general commentary on what I’m currently reading … or watching.
The last shelfie on this blog was in June 2017?! Get with the program, Randi. Yeesh. This year has started off pretty well in terms of reading. I really enjoyed The Light of Paris by Eleanor Brown, In Other Words by Jhumpa Lahiri (translated by Ann Goldstein), Strangers to the City by Michael Casey, and Standing Up by Kate … Read more
Folks, I fell off the wagon. I’m sure you’re not surprised to hear it. Even when I made that 4-book diet resolution, I was already cheating on it. BUT IT’S ‘KAY because the books I’m reading this month are even better than last month’s! My spiritual reading pick hasn’t changed (I’ll be reading The Imitation … Read more
Her name was Marceline Desbordes-Valmore. Born just before French Revolution, she lived at a time of great upheaval and hardship. However, like the best poets, she was able to spin her suffering into beauty, into poetry that still strikes the heart today. I discovered her while reading a little pocket book, sensibly titled French Poetry, several … Read more
Sometimes it’s possible to read too much. Not horizontally — that is, too often, or too widely — but vertically. By which I mean reading too many books at once. If you’re as excitable and easily distracted as I am, you know the pain. You start off reading one, maybe two books — a fiction and … Read more
It all started with Joyeux Noël. I watched it in January, fell in love, and decided I was missing out by not watching more foreign films. Anton Tchékhov 1890 followed, seen in a Novosibirsk theater (Russian-dubbed), and then later in the summer I rented a few films advertised in the theater’s own French film festival. Add to that an upcoming … Read more