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Totally amazing structure!
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Van Gogh and the Postman
A wonderful painting and so full of feeling.
“I’m now working on the portrait of a postman with his dark blue uniform with yellow. A head something like that of Socrates, almost no nose, a high forehead, bald pate, small grey eyes, high coloured full cheeks, a big beard, pepper and salt, big ears.” Vincent van Gogh
READ FULL ESSAY: Christie’s
“While Roulin isn’t exactly old enough to be like a father to me,” Van Gogh described to Theo in April 1889, “all the same he has silent solemnities and tendernesses for me like an old soldier would have for a young one. Always—but without a word—a certain something that seems to mean: we don’t know what will happen to us tomorrow, but think of me in any event. And that does one good when it comes from a man who is neither embittered…
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I really liked his “The Glass Room” and enjoyed the film too. A very interesting writer.
Although I have a tempting pile of new Australian releases waiting for me, I’m continuing my holiday reading from the TBR, with an added reason to take up Simon Mawer’s Prague Spring from 2018, because I have just bought Ancestry, his most recent one — and I really should read what I already have first, right?
There’s a review at The Guardian which recounts how in 1975 Mawer was caught in an avalanche on the North Face of Ben Nevis and had to cling to an ice ledge for 22 hours. Whether this experience informed his ability to capture the suspense of existential moments I do not know, but while Prague Spring is not a cliffhanger, it becomes unputdownable as the pages move towards their inexorable conclusion.
It is history that makes the conclusion inexorable. Set in 1968 when Czechoslovakia enjoyed a brief taste of freedom under Dubček before…
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Sounds like a deeply significant and informative read.
A Jewish family sits together peacefully in their home. It is an ordinary night. After dinner. Mother, father, six children, the oldest still under ten years.
Suddenly, agents of the Inquisition are at the door, there to take away Edgardo, age six, claiming he was secretly baptized by one of the family servants, therefore a Christian, therefore in need of Christian parents. The panicked family try to stop this, to save their young son, but there is nothing they can do. The inquisitors take him away starting a year’s long legal battle that will end with the fall of the Papel States.
They never get their son back.
The year is 1858!!!
What shocked me about this story was the year it took place. I expected this to be a story about the middle ages, but 1858 is modern times. Post Enlightenment. Post Industrial Revolution.
Turns out this is not…
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Autoportrait Day 314~ Erica Deeman
A random survey of self-portraits created by women through the centuries
British (active in USA) interdisciplinary artist
Erica Deeman (born 1977)
3. Self Portrait #2, 2020 / Instax film / The Svane Family Foundation, San Francisco, CA
[4 embedded links above]
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Crook O’ Lune by E. C. R. Lorac
Lovely Lancashire- would be nice to visit when we have the railway again!
In recent years, the British Library has been doing a sterling job with its reissues of various vintage mysteries by the English crime writer Edith Caroline Rivett. While many of these novels were written under Rivett’s main pen name E. C. R. Lorac, others were published in the guise of Carol Carnac – including the excellent Crossed Skis, a fabulous winter holiday read.
Crook O’ Lune (aka Shepherd’s Crook) is another splendid addition to the list, an absorbing slow-burn mystery with an excellent sense of place. The setting is the fictional farming community of High Gimmerdale, which Lorac based on the parish of Roeburndale in the Lancashire fells, an area she knew very well. It also features her regular detective, Chief Inspector Macdonald, who continues to impress with his sharp mind, likeable manner and thorough investigative skills.
With an eye on his future retirement plans, Macdonald is staying…
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Rooftops, Paris, France
Wish I was there!!
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10 things to know about poet painter Chu Teh-Chun
Chu Teh chun: The Man Behind the Legendary Painter
Chu Teh-Chun in Three Works: Symphonic, Calligraphic, Lyrical
Thanks…
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The role of the Irish involvement in both World Wars was more complex than it may seem. Google says-“Over 200,000 men from the island of Ireland served in the British military during the First World War. Around 35,000 lost their lives. Those who returned found that commemoration of their service was controversial in a way that it was not in Britain.”
This is just a quick review because I am a bit preoccupied with rescuing some data from a trial software program before I lose access to it. (Because #LongBoringStory I am not going to pay for it all over again!)
Nora is, as the subtitle says, a love story of Nora Barnacle and James Joyce, known to booklovers as the author of Ulysses and Finnegans Wake, even if they haven’t read them. Nora was selected for the One Dublin, One Book program and I won a copy of it in a giveaway for Reading Ireland Month from Cathy at 746 Books.
#Digression: Intrigued, I looked up the previous books chosen for the One Dublin, One Book program. It turns out that I’ve read or have on the TBR some of the titles chosen over the years, and a couple are reviewed on this blog:
- 2006: At Swim Two Birds
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penwithlit 
