'As with all good things in life, balance is the word.' 'The trick: we walk a lot.' 'French women happily don't suffer from those extremes of good or e'As with all good things in life, balance is the word.' 'The trick: we walk a lot.' 'French women happily don't suffer from those extremes of good or evil. Wellness is a grey area of balance.' 'Being a French woman requires continual fine-tuning. Practice it and soon you won't need to give it a second thought.' 'POSTURE A little plug for posture. Weight is related to height, or at least a sense of it. French women learn to hold their chins high and have a good posture ( just pretend you have a rope or wire attached to the centre of your head, pulling you up).' 'DR MIRACLE'S PRESCRIPTION For the next three weeks, I was to keep a diary of EVERYTHING I ate.' 'Never be hungry.' 'Zipper Syndrome' 'Know thy food and know thyself.' SEASONINGS 'As you play with herbs and spices, keep in mind that the latter are by nature more pungent. Strive to become an adventurous seasoner, but learn your boldness peu á peu. A little tumeric goes far, and you can always add but never subtract.'...more
I read a Pan Books 1986 edition, (without an Introduction by another writer,) just a Preface by Maugham. This account of Maugham's travels in the lateI read a Pan Books 1986 edition, (without an Introduction by another writer,) just a Preface by Maugham. This account of Maugham's travels in the late 1920s is a valuable record of the place and time. All material for future novels. This is a good document detailing Maugham's travels, a rich source of experience to draw on. The book covers Maugham's travels between Rangoon in Burma, and Haiphong in Annam by various means of transport. Rangoon, now known as Yangon, Burma now Myanmar. Haiphong is still Haiphong, Annam was a French protectorate encompassing Central Vietnam. Before the protectorate's establishment, the name Annam was used in the West to refer to Vietnam as a whole, the Vietnamese people were referred to as Annamites.
There are many episodes worth covering here, but one will suffice. 'While riding a mule through the country in caravan - 'I could not put two thoughts together. I resigned myself at least for that day to make no attempt at serious meditation and instead, to pass the time, invented Blenkinsop.' About an invented author of no talent, writing a book quite unreadably boring but of purity and purpose became a best seller that nobody read. 'There can be nothing so gratifying to an author as to arouse the respect and esteem of the reader. Make him laugh and he think you a trivial fellow, but bore him in the right way and your reputation is assured.'...more
What a History book. Always good to look through and reread the text which relates to each iconic graphic cover and images that span the twentieth cenWhat a History book. Always good to look through and reread the text which relates to each iconic graphic cover and images that span the twentieth century to early 2000s. There's the LIFE magazine cover May 1970 of the Tragedy at Kent State. The TIME cover of a multiple identical photo of Richard Nixon interspersed with images of the Vietnam War, the headline asks the question, "What if we just pull out?". There is the 1965 Sunday Times Magazine cover image of Dunkirk in 1940, the photo by German photographer Hugo Jaeger. His colour pictures lay buried for years in a tin box in Baveria, published for the first time in 1965. So, so much history in this book....more
"Some thing only dimly remembered tells us something interesting about ourselves. Something only dimly remembered tells us that the secret point of mo"Some thing only dimly remembered tells us something interesting about ourselves. Something only dimly remembered tells us that the secret point of money and power in America is neither the things that money can buy, nor power for power's sake. American's are uneasy with their possessions. Guilty about power. All of which is difficult for Europeans to perceive because they are themselves so truly materialistic, so versed in the uses of power, but absolute personal freedom, mobility, privacy, it is the instinct that drove America to the Pacific all through the nineteenth century, the desire to be able to find a restaurant open in case you want a sandwich, to be a free agent, to live by one's own rules. Of course we do not admit that. The instinct is socially suicidal and because we recognize that this is so, we have developed workable ways of saying one thing and believing quite another."
From the essay, '7000 Romaine, Los Angeles 38'. Slouching Towards Bethlehem...more
Loading...
