Beautiful surroundings, the society of learned men, the charm of noble women, the graces of art, could not make up to him for the loss of those light-Beautiful surroundings, the society of learned men, the charm of noble women, the graces of art, could not make up to him for the loss of those light-hearted mornings of the desert, for that wind that made one a boy again.
These are the thoughts of a man who is deciding upon whether to retire to live in the country of his birth, France, or remain in New Mexico.
This is the most perfect and exquisite book that I have ever read. I actually don’t know however why I purchased it in the first place. The title was enough to discourage me and the blurb that mentioned two French priests going to New Mexico in 1851 to reawaken its slumbering Catholicism was not that exciting. Well when I finished page 1, I was well and truly hooked and became more captivated as I finished each page.
The writing style was all that I could wish for. The novel, actually more of a narration, is multi-faceted with its descriptions of the mountains and deserts, especially with the different colours in the landscape, situations with the local population, whether they be Indian, Mexican or American, and religious and spiritual aspects but it all nevertheless coalesced into one. The interesting fact is that most of the Indian practices were unknown to people outside the tribes.
The two priests, Father [Jean Marie] Latour, consecrated Vicar Apostolic of New Mexico and Bishop of Agathonica in partibus and Father [Joseph] Vaillant had known each other for many years in France and in the States. But what a difference in their personalities. Father Latour was an academic and looked one with a refined facial expression and elegant behaviour; and also a book lover. Whereas Father Vaillant, who spent a great deal of time, in a huge parish, visiting everyone on horseback to try and convert them, and though eventually highly liked, was extremely ugly with a wart on the end of his nose, short and bow-legged. He was also of a sickly disposition and several times in the book it looked as if “his number was up” but survived. He was known as “trompe-la-mort” – literally death cheater. This in fact happened several times when he was travelling in New Mexico and the only way he could be reached, normally in isolated places, was of course by horseback.
Over nearly forty years, the two friends leave converts and enemies, crosses and occasionally ecstasy in their wake.
The case with ecstasy was wonderfully portrayed in that of a Mexican slave to an American family, who kept a very close eye on her as they were concerned she would try and escape back to her family. Because of this she was not allowed to go to church. Father Latour then finds this old woman outside the door to his church in the middle of the night. He gently leads her into the church and the tears of joy and the look of ecstasy of her face of being in a church for the first time in nineteen years quite overwhelms him.
Father Latour, who spent most of his life in Santa Fe, was eventually made an archbishop, whilst Father Vaillant, latterly an archbishop, spent most of his time in the saddle firstly in Albuquerque and latterly in Colorado. Certainly extremes between the two regions with the earlier region greatly preferred.
In that period of the 19th century with the two priests, especially Father Vaillant, spending most of their time on horseback to visit their “parishioners”, it was not until the arrival of stage coaches (the first regular stage service for New Mexico was not inaugurated until 1850. In July of that year, a coach left Independence, Mo., for Santa Fe) but I guess they were insufficient for the two priests’ needs and requirements, as well as the train, of which the official arrival celebration was held 22 April 1880, were indeed two greatly welcome changes in their already enriched lives.
The tales that the local priests tell Father Latour and Father Vaillant are fascinating to say the least, especially that of Friar Baltazar at some time in the very early years of seventeen hundred, nearly after the great Indian uprising, in which all the missionaries and all the Spaniards in northern New Mexico were either driven out or murdered, after the country had been reconquered and new missionaries had come to take the place of the martyrs, a certain Friar Baltazar Montoya was priest at Arcoma.
He was ambitious and exacting and ruled the puebla of Acoma. The Indians there had to more or less put up with him until one fine day he accidentally killed an Indian boy working in his house. And what a delicious and yet incredible ending to that spectacular tale!
I could go on ad infinitum about this book and have already started a second reading. So I had better close here....more
Even those who didn’t darken the door of the church from one Christmas to the next could tell there would be more mourners thaIndeed a ten star book.
Even those who didn’t darken the door of the church from one Christmas to the next could tell there would be more mourners than seats. A bottleneck of black and grey was already forming at the entrance as Aaron Falk drove up, trailing a cloud of dust and cracked leaves.
I can take or leave thrillers or mysteries; on the whole they are good but they don’t have me craving for them not like a good Burgundy or steak. But do you want a gripping thriller, especially an Australian thriller, and you don’t mind missing your sleep, forsaking all your responsibilities, be it work, family or social, then you must read this book! This is one of those incredible serendipitous finds that one comes across so rarely. As one reviewer stated, the New York Times no less, this is a “breathless page turner”.
The style, the story telling, the multi-faceted layers indeed show a remarkable debut author who can only get better. I understand that this is to be the beginning of a series. I was however interested to read in the acknowledgements that the author had in fact participated in a Curtis Brown Creative 2014 online course. Curtis Brown, as you all know, is closely related to the London-based Christopher Little Literary Agency, who were the original agents for J. K. Rowling. Their submissions incidentally are “currently closed”, have been for a long time in fact.
I thought first of all in my naivety that this was just going to be one of those books. Well imagine my surprise when from the first paragraph I was indeed well and truly hooked. This is so, so good…
The hero, well to me indeed, is thirty-six year old Aaron Falk, who had left Kiewarra under a cloud, a small country town in Australia, twenty years ago, that was living through the worst drought in history.
His friend Luke Hadler had died and it was felt that he had been responsible for the deaths also of his wife and child. Aaron, a Federal Agent from Melbourne, was there at the behest of Gerry, Luke’s father and his wife Barb, to try and find out what exactly had happened. He frankly could not believe his son had been responsible for his family’s deaths.
One of the beauties of this book are the characters involved, for example: Raco, the police officer, who worked relentlessly with Aaron to find out the actual murderer if not Luke; Gretchen, a friend of Aaron as a teenager, involved with Luke, now the mother of a child and no-one knew who the father was ; Ellie Deacon, a girlfriend of Aaron who had been found drowned in the river; Mal Deacon her somewhat drunken father; Scott Whitlam, the principal at the school, a rather unknown quantity as a stranger from Melbourne to the area.
But the descriptions are incredible and also the flashbacks. Voices and thoughts permeate the book from the past and so skillfully executed and with such precision. The enticing clues scattered here and there but I missed the most important one unfortunately.
And yes, there’s always a section in a book that I immediately remember when I finish reading and here we have it - the river.
He turned back in the direction of the river, a feeling of foreboding still fluttering in his chest. When the answer came, it crept up slowly, then thundered home all at once. Where Falk stood now, he should be hearing the rush of water. The distinct sound of the river carving its way through the country … There was only an eerie nothingness. He opened his eyes and took off at a run … The huge river was nothing more than a dusty scar in the land. The empty bed stretched long and barren in either direction, its serpentine curves tracing the path where the water had flowed. The hollow that had been carved over centuries was now a cracked patchwork of rocks and crab-grass. Along the banks, gnarled grey tree roots were exposed like cobwebs. It was appalling.
Towards the end of the book, my attention for some obscure reason was drawn to the rock tree, a tree that had in fact grown more or less into a rock. Both Aaron and Ellie had loved it when they were teenagers. Unbeknown to them at the time it would prove to be their place both then and for eternity. I was expecting something here, I don’t know why. And then…
So my final recommendation - just jump into the sheets of this rather remarkable book and enjoy it as much as I have…The beauties of books. My mantra....more
So that she would not have to stop for food she kept a hard-boiled egg on the passenger seat of the Corvette. She could shell and eat a hard-boiledSo that she would not have to stop for food she kept a hard-boiled egg on the passenger seat of the Corvette. She could shell and eat a hard-boiled egg at seventy miles an hour (crack it on the steering wheel, never mind salt, salt bloats, no matter what happened she remembered her body).
Which author could possibly begin a novel with the words:
What makes Iago evil? Some people ask. I never ask.
Well surprisingly enough Joan Didion. And these words set in motion the inevitable direction that this book is going to take.
When Didion wrote this book, she was thirty-five and had moved a few years before with her husband, John Gregory Dunne, to Los Angeles where they were to spend twenty years working in the film industry;
The review on the back cover portrays quite succinctly the atmosphere of the setting of this book:
A ruthless dissection of American life in the late 1960s, “Play It as It Lays” captures the mood of an entire generation, the emptiness and ennui of contemporary society reflected in spare prose that both blisters and haunts the reader.
This was the period when the pill for contraceptive purposes had been in place for nearly a decade. This was meant to emancipate women and stop the worry of unnecessary pregnancies, however, as with many “modern” occurrences in life, problems did occur.
Maria (“that is pronounced Mar-eye-ah, to get it straight at the outset” – I love this attention to detail!) Wyeth is a thirty-one year old, somewhat failed actress, married to, and then divorced from Carter, a film director. She is indeed cool at times in trying to keep her emotions in check but nevertheless she fails miserably.
When the book begins, she is in some kind of psychiatric hospital and prior to this her friends had been so concerned for her safety, that when an intolerable situation occurred she inevitably turned up there. I found her entire lifestyle terrifying. Speed on the freeway was of major importance to her – she drove to places like someone demented, like a bat out of hell; it seemed that she had to keep the adrenaline flowing. Then her mood could unaccountably turn to another extreme with the realisation that life was futile and meant nothing. She cried a lot and on one occasion bled a lot. That was a mesmerising part of this book. Sex came and went and was all rather meaningless. The relationship with her husband Carter ended in divorce and I’m unsure who left whom but their situation was dire. Constant attempts at reconciliation failed as there was such hatred it was impossible to overcome.
There’s a rather strange relationship between Maria, Carter and BZ (bisexual movie producer, BZ -an abbreviation for benzodiazepines, sedative drugs) and his wife Helena. I was unsure what was really going on there.
Maria’s childhood was rather unusual. Her father had been a gambler, winning a town – Silver Wells - that began with twenty-eight individuals but was soon zero. As he had gambled away his Reno house, he recalled that he owned a town and so they lived there.
Kate, Maria’s four year old daughter is in a clinic with an imprecise disorder. Carter was responsible for her being there and Maria is trying to get her out. She plays only for Kate.
My feelings towards Maria and BZ changed dramatically from confusion and coldness to a sudden sense of place in regard to admiration for their identical views on existence on this earth. It could be seen that they had this kind of symbiotic relationship:
“I never expected you to fall back on style as an argument.”
“I’m not arguing.”
“I know that. You think I’d be here if I didn’t know that?”
She took his hand and held it? “Why are you here?”
“Because you and I, we know something. Because we’ve been out there where nothing is. Because I wanted – you know why.”
This novel is very symbolic with references to rattle snacks and also in the biblical sense; dreams, music and speed.
The prose throughout the novel is not only riveting reading but so stark in its intensity that it disturbed me no end. Nevertheless this has certainly put me on track to read more of Didion’s works, both fiction and non-fiction. She has such a style about her, which can indeed flow from one extreme to the other but with so much depth.
At eighteen, Beth Harmon has established herself as the queen of American chess. She may be the most gifted player since Morphy or Capablanca; no oAt eighteen, Beth Harmon has established herself as the queen of American chess. She may be the most gifted player since Morphy or Capablanca; no one knows just how gifted she is – how great a potential she holds in that young girl’s body with its dazzling brain. To find out, to show the world if America has outgrown its inferior status in world chess, she will have to go where the big boys are. She will have to go to the Soviet Union.
Imagine this story though. Beth, a plain, shy eight year old becomes homeless when her parents are killed in a car crash. She had no choice in the matter but to be taken to the Methuem Home in Mount Sterling in Kentucky. Here she, as were all the other children, was given a tranquilizer twice a day to even their dispositions. Regrettably she was going to become addicted to these …
But Beth’s life is transformed when she is asked to go into the basement to clean the blackboard erasers. She sees Mr Shaibel, the janitor, playing a game on a board and by himself and soon finds out that it is called chess. She never would understand what caused her fascination with this game but she managed to persuade the janitor to teach her. Beth soon discovers remarkable chess openings, such as the Sicilian defense, the Queen’s Gambit and the Stonewall Attack. She proves to be a natural and soon she receives her first chess rating. Beth in no time at all is the American Chess Champion. However, along the way she finds out what disappointment can be in a male-dominated chess world and at what price. And as for the ending, well...
I found the chess sequences absolutely riveting. Beth actually planned the moves out in advance in her head and ended up stunning everyone with her play. Plus throw in her adoption, and her mother Mrs Wheatley, upon seeing how good Beth is with chess, soon encourages her to enter all the chess tournaments. Also Beth’s various relationships certainly helped her no end and then she meets the Russian Grandmasters.
I'm not at all surprised that the author is no stranger to chess. He learned to play as a seven year old and is now a class C player.
I was really taken with the title and upon research found out that the Queen's Gambit is one of the oldest known chess openings. It was mentioned in the Göttingen manuscript of 1490.
I play chess but really badly. Nevertheless, this book has certainly encouraged me to try and improve my game.
This remarkable gem has been languishing on my bookshelf for five months. Why I haven’t read it before I really don’t know but I’m glad I finally did.
Overall, this is a poignant, multi-faceted, exquisitely written and stunning book. ...more
This novel is written by a woman who is working at the height of her intellectual and literary powers. I do believe that she is unsurpassed in this no This novel is written by a woman who is working at the height of her intellectual and literary powers. I do believe that she is unsurpassed in this novel and that this book, as already mentioned by a reviewer, will prove to be an American classic.
Apart from the excellent structure and the mesmerizing prose, religious and spiritual leitmotifs, such as grace, old man, the colour red, and the four elements permeate the text. The word "grace" in biblical parlance can, like forgiveness, repentance, regeneration, and salvation, mean something as broad as describing the whole of God's activity toward man or as narrow as describing one segment of that activity. An accurate, common definition describes grace as the unmerited favour of God toward man.
But the most remarkable aspect is the skilful way in which the past (Lila’s life with the scarred Doll) and the present (her life with the widower, Reverend John Ames) coalesce and form intricate layers throughout this work.
Can you imagine an unnamed, neglected child aged about four or five with rickety legs, thus having difficulty walking, and then tossed out onto the stoop at night by those supposedly taking care of her? Luck however comes the child’s way with Doll, who cleans around the cabin, and hated by the child, and decides on the spur of the moment to steal the toddler. So off they go; the child’s only regret being that she doesn’t have her rag doll with her.
The first night they stay with an old woman who decides the child should have a name:
I been thinking about ‘Lila’. I had a sister Lila. Give her a pretty name, maybe she could turn out pretty.
Doll never does know why she stole the child and this would remain their secret throughout their itinerant life of many years. Doll and Lila fall in with Doane, a proud man, good at finding work, and feeding his family. These are good and bad times and they are even paid with apples one time which the children sell. Nevertheless, it was a lifestyle for Lila and she doesn’t know any better. In all it is a relatively safe haven with Doane and his family, where Doll and Lila become known as the cow and calf.
Doll then decides, wisely, that Lila needs an education and so at the age of twelve she goes to school to learn to read and write. The child is so badly informed about life that she doesn’t even know where she lives in the world, only that it is in the United States of America. But a year later, Doll is on the move again. She’s aware, as she knew would inevitably happen, that people will come looking for Lila. Thus, she carries a knife that she is constantly sharpening and advises Lila to ensure that she never cuts anyone as there could be problems. Indeed, Doll’s fall from grace is rather spectacular and very colourful too.
After meeting the preacher at the church for the first time, Lila is aware that he’s looking at her but he actually “sees” her and in fact inevitably soon will “know” her in the biblical sense and I think he realizes at this stage that she will play an important part in his life. Lila starts finding work from people in Gilead and even plants vegetables in the preacher’s garden and tends the roses on his first wife’s and child’s grave. It seems right to Lila to do this. She is drawn to the preacher in an odd way and cannot understand it.
Lila doesn’t wish to complain about her life before she meets the preacher, otherwise referred to as the old man. The paradox is that when she marries Rev. Ames and has a comfortable life, she still thinks of the abandoned shack that she stayed in when she first came to Gilead as she feels she is her own person, even though she’s lonely.
I have never before come across a character in a novel with whom I could empathize with so totally as Lila. She mistrusts people, even the preacher, often tells him so, even tries to annoy him; in fact she cannot bring herself to say “thank you” and I feel that she even isn’t truly aware she loves John Ames until she is baptized by him.
There is very little description about Lila. We know that she doesn’t like to look at her own face, whereas there is more about the preacher. He’s an old man, with silver hair, a beautiful voice, to whom prayer is important and he’s gentle and caring with everyone; he also laughs which I found endearing. He takes nothing for granted and the fact that he loves Lila is a continual joy for him; it’s all part of life’s rich tapestry. He prays for her past and realizes her need to keep the knife as it was part of her history. The pair of them are matched in loneliness which, to their own amazement, turns into love.
Lila delights in touching Ames, to enjoy when he helps her on with her coat, his caring way with her, and the way that he looks at her. He still blushes from time to time. She steals his sweater as she wants to be reminded of him. She tells him that he ought to marry her, even surprising herself, and he’s more than happy to agree. On their wedding night she slips quite naturally into bed with him. She does wonder though whether she can become pregnant but this all seems to be part of her learning process. Nevertheless, she always needs to know that she can leave whenever she wants to, and through work by helping people in Gilead, she saves enough money to buy a bus ticket. This was her escape clause and she needs it, married or not.
Lila knows so little about life and is still learning (as I am) and then she steals a pew bible from the church (I feel to actually annoy the preacher), purchases a tablet and pencil and begins to read it. She was rather taken with Ezekiel and rewrote sections ten or so times.
I’m not really religious. My father was an atheist and didn’t attend my baptism. My mother, of course, had to go. As a result, I didn’t go to Sunday school and was not confirmed. But interestingly enough I loved Religious Instruction whilst at school and I continue to find the bible, especially the Old Testament, a literary masterpiece. There is nothing more enjoyable than browsing through the various Books and Ezekiel happens to be my favourite. So when I came across Ezekiel in the following text, I was enchanted:
And they had the hands of a man under their wings on their four sides; and they four had their faces and their wings thus: their wings were joined one to another; they turned not when they went; they went every one straight forward. As for the likeness of their faces, they had the face of a man; and they four had the face of a lion on the right side; and they four had the face of an ox on the left side; they four had also the face of an eagle.
Lila is also compassionate as seen when she revisits the shack and finds that someone has been living there. She reminds me of Ruth here from the Old Testament. She also discovers her money has been taken from under the floorboard. When the current occupant, a boy, turns up and tells his sorrowful tale, his belief that he has killed his father and finally admits to finding the money, Lila tells him to keep it but he wants to return half to her. Then circumstances get quite out of control, through the intervention of her husband, as he was worried about her, and his old friend, Rev. Robert Boughton.
Such beauty studs this remarkable literary work even when Lila is working in the whore house in St Louis when unfortunate circumstances with Doll force her to leave, resulting in Lila finally ending up in Gilead. She is indeed touched by the hand of grace upon arrival there.
I’m so taken with this book I’m having difficulty expressing myself, as Lila also finds. So in conclusion, I can only add that this is the most beautiful and yet haunting novel that I have read for a very long time; the descriptions are excellent and poetic; a mesmerizing tour de force. I cannot stop thinking about the words, their sheer beauty.
Islam tells us that on the unappealable Day of Judgement, all who have perpetrated images of living things will reawaken with their works, and will beIslam tells us that on the unappealable Day of Judgement, all who have perpetrated images of living things will reawaken with their works, and will be ordered to blow life into them, and they will fail, and they and their works will be cast into the fires of punishment.
Only Borges could possibly have made such a statement at the beginning of a short story called “Covered Mirrors” under “The Maker” (1960) in this multi-faceted selection of mesmerizing and fascinating short stories.
Why I began with “The Maker” which is halfway through the book still deludes me but I’m glad that I began here. Admittedly the author is now beginning to enter into an older period in life as he’s now sixty. It’s basically rather a random collection of works but they immediately entice one and show the broad spectrum of Borges’ works. His themes are rather fascinating, that of dreams, mirrors, slashing of throats, libraries amongst other things but more bizarre is his love of tigers. When he was young he was just rather taken with them and I guess that was that:
In my childhood, I was a fervent worshipper of the tigers – not the jaguar, that spotted “tiger” that inhabits the floating islands of water hyacinths along the Parana and the tangled wilderness of the Amazon, but the true tiger, the striped Asian breed that can be faced only by men of war, in a castle atop an elephant.
Can you imagine, one moment we have a short story on dreamtigers, one on toenails (now that was extraordinary to say the least!) and then one on mirrors. Diverse indeed but fascinating.
I would love to be able to understand Borges’ thought processes but I never will of course. He has tantalized me with his views on life and it never ceases to amaze me how authors come up with these brilliant ideas.
The book is divided up into different sections during Borges’ life starting with “A Universal History of Iniquity” in 1935 with further sections “Fictions” – 1941, “Artifices” - 1944, “The Aleph” - 1949, “The Maker” - 1960, “In Praise of Darkness” - 1969, “Brodies’ Report” - 1970, “The Book of Sand” - 1975 and “Shakespeare’s Memory” – 1983.
The short stories are all brilliant and one can literally open up at any page and continue to be delighted.
And my favourite section? Well it has to be the final one: “Shakespeare’s Memory”. It says it all and it is for you to read this book to find out!
But the “Library of Babel” is also a must read under “The Garden of Forking Paths” (1941). This is the most exquisite writing on a library. I loved it! And remember Borges was Director of the Argentine National Library from 1955 until 1973.
The beauty of this book is that the translator, Andrew Hurley very kindly gave copious notes on all sections. I felt as though I was at university again while a lecturer went into full flight with his favourite subject.
Ove stayed there with her hand in his for several hours. Until the hospital staff entered the room with warm voices and careful movements, explainiOve stayed there with her hand in his for several hours. Until the hospital staff entered the room with warm voices and careful movements, explaining that they had to take her body away. Ove rose from his chair, nodded and went to the undertakers to take care of the documentation. On the Sunday she was buried. On the Monday, he went to work. But if anyone had asked, he would have told them that he never lived before he met her. And not after, either.
As I slowly and effortlessly slid between the sheets, I became engulfed and absorbed in the world of a miserable, curmudgeonly fifty-nine year old Swedish man called Ove and what an unexpected individual did he turn out to be.
The plot is simple: man loves woman, marries her, is more than happy with this life and then she dies and life ceases to exist for Ove but then there is always something serendipitous that is going to happen and from quite an unexpected source. For then all the neighbours come into the mix…
Flashbacks of Ove’s life with his wife Sonja gently flow throughout this work. She was colour, particularly red. Ove was black and white. She was day whereas he was night. She was always late. He was the opposite and a truly organized and functional man. And yet, their marriage worked as the equilibrium was maintained between them.
Her death made him determined that he had to join her and various mishaps with suicide added the tragicomedy element to this wonderful book.
The spanner in the works proves to be Pananeh. A pregnant, foreign woman and a new neighbour. She’s more or less like a guardian angel and always manages to appear whenever something awful is going to happen to Ove or does in fact happen. Life is indeed a curious thing.
I’m so taken with this book that it is impossible to write a review on it. I’ve made notes galore. All I can say is that I’m so pleased that I came across this work and read it.
It’s absolutely super and that’s all there is to it.
Eric Karpeles’s lavishly illustrated and comprehensive guide offers a feast for the eyes as it celebrates the close relationship between the visualEric Karpeles’s lavishly illustrated and comprehensive guide offers a feast for the eyes as it celebrates the close relationship between the visual and literary arts in Proust’s masterpiece. Karpeles has identified and located all of the paintings to which Proust makes exact reference. Where only a painter’s name is mentioned to indicate a certain mood or appearance, he has chosen a representative work to illustrate the impression that Proust sought to evoke……..Extensive notes and a comprehensive index of all painters and paintings mentioned in the novel provide an invaluable resource for the reader navigating “In Search of Lost Time” for the first time or the fifth.
This is a visual companion to “In Search of Lost Time” by Marcel Proust. I always thought that the translation was “Remembrance of Things Past”?
This work is absolutely exquisite. I cannot believe that I allowed it to languish on my bookshelves for eighteen months!
How can one even attempt to comment on how skillfully Karpeles achieved matching the paintings referred to in Proust’s work. I particularly liked the précis at the top of each page of the extracts from Proust’s seven volumes.
I still haven’t read “In Search of Lost Time” in its entirety – I think the length is actually the stumbling block but this book has helped to a certain extent. I had not realized beforehand that Proust's text would be quite as inspiring as it proved to be. Dare I say it? Yes. Sublime is indeed the word.
Out of all the places visited, the trip made by the narrator and his mother to the Arena Chapel in Padua is memorable. The painting and the text match beautifully.
Some of the paintings that remain entrenched in my mind, and I marked the pages with a post-it in case I forgot, are:
The Birth of Venus – Sandro Botticelli, 1482-86 Spring, or the Earthly Paradise, Nicolas Poussin, 1660 (You can actually see “some apparition of the life of the gods” in the clouds on the top right-hand side of the painting). The Creation of the Planets (detail of Sistine Chapel ceiling), Michelangelo, 1511 (Rather saucy but invigorating to behold). A ‘Star of Bethlehem’ and Other Plants, Leonardo da Vinci, 1505 Philosopher in Meditation, Rembrandt (Harmensz.) van Rijn, 1632 (I would love to own that). Portrait of a Young Man, Il Bronzino, 1530s St Sebastian, Il Sodoma, 1525 Interior of the Arena Chapel (Padua) facing the Last Judgment, west, Giotto, 1304-6 (Remarkable). Portrait of a Lady, Pierre-Auguste Cot, 1879 (I would love to look like the woman here). Woman Holding a Balance, Jan Vermeer, 1662-63 (Exquisite!)
I cannot recommend this book highly enough. It excites all the senses in a magnificent way. I will certainly revisit this book and many times in all likelihood....more
This is the most wonderful book imaginable. I really cannot say anything further.
How can I possibly expound being a mere mortal on what this individual went through in his life and then finally to commit suicide with his wife in a joint pact. Such philosophical thoughts. It's mind blowing.
An absolutely remarkable book. I actually confess to being humbled in reading it and I'm so glad I did. A book that I shall often return to in order to remind myself how unimportant I am as a human may fly on this incredible planet of ours....more
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