Recommended by Crystal who loves books about this period. And what a great recommendation it was. This is a history of the Dust Bowl, an area stretching from Lubbock, Texas through the panhandles of Texas and Oklahoma through Kansas to a sliver of Nebraska on the north, and from the middle of Kansas on the east to a large section of Colorado on the west. The focus are the two panhandles. After...
Audiobook. The beauty of the language in this book is limited to creating a stark and grim world very effectively; that is to say, beauty was rarely on display. The story is that of a man whose possibilities in improving his life were limited by troubles of his family when he was young. His mother's ill health resulted in him marrying the woman who came to help him out of...
Audiobook. Peter Gay, an eminent historian who wrote, among many books, The Age of Enlightenment, appears to have written this with a great love for the music of Mozart. And a lively interest in Mozart’s strangest weirdness (more about that in a moment), and in debunking the Mozart myths. He says Salieri did not poison him; he likely died of an especially bad episode of rheumatic fever...
Audiobook. Another 8 hours of happy walking and other exercise. Persuasion is said to be Jane Austen's most romantic book and I suspect that is right. Poor Anne Eliot agreed to withdraw from a relationship with a man deemed beneath her by her snobby father and older sister. She seems to have become a veritable Cinderella in the family in the following 8 years...
A clever book about the five women and one man who meet to discuss the Jane Austen books. For at least part of the time the narrator refers to her/himself as one of the group, but all members are described by the narrator. So we must understand the group as having a life of its own? The members are all pretty interesting in that they are unlike each other: a high...
Audiobook. What a grim story this is. Dr. Sloper loses his beloved young son and wife and is left with a daughter, Catherine, whom he regards as dull and unattractive. When an adventurer takes her up in hopes of having her considerable inheritance, the doctor says he will disinherit her if she marries him. She has money enough to be comfortable, left to her by her...
Audiobook. I have come to believe that 19th century novelists are meant to be read aloud. To Edith Wharton and Henry James, I now add Jane Austen as a true delight to listen to. We know the story of Emma — after all, we all saw Clueless or one of the BBC productions. So there are no surprises. I did grow weary of hearing Miss Bates (“very obliging of you, I’m sure,”...
Alice Waters opened Chez Panisse, named for the lovable generous Panisse of Marcel Pagnol’s trilogy (Marius, Fanny, César) in Berkeley in 1971 in an ordinary looking old house. At the outset, they had no trained chefs, no one really knew what they were doing in the front of the house, and they consumed huge amounts of champagne and drugs. But somehow they managed to make dinner. And...
Audiobook. Listening to Henry James is truly a treat. The language is languorous, circuitous, beautiful and funny, which makes him a wonderful companion for the tedious business of the elliptical or a walk around the track. For example, take the following: Isabel, however, gave as little heed as possible to cosmic treacheries; she kept her eyes on her book and tried to fix her mind. It...
I had thought of Madame de Stael as one of those famous French women who presided over a salon where all the most interesting political and literary figures of the era met. Turns out she was so much more. Her father was Jacques Necker, the Timothy Geithner of the era a few years before the French Revolution. (Now there’s a worrisome thought.) Necker was brilliant at the nuts and bolts...