Ataraxia

  De la Cezar la Churchill by Francois Bluche you find more than five thousand reviews on my blogs, the one I use now is at https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/20... and for the time being, I am present on Goodreads as Realini Ionescu – myself actually, unless I am already in that joke where this fella asks ‘do you know who I am, and the answer is no, but we can ask one of the nurses or something’ – if you read this on my web domains, Goodreads exiled me for some time, perhaps because I am so anti- Orange Jesus 9 out of 10 This is a capital book. Its use is self-evident, albeit in the age of the internet, you can always search for one quote or another, and then you find the answer, which can be false, misleading, or both, besides, it is one thing to search for one piece… - And another to have all these pages of bons mots In the background, as I write this note, I have The Rest of Politics, a podcast I tend to listen to lately, with Alistair Campbell and Rory Stewart, and the topic ...

  Ride the High Country by Sam Peckinpah is one of The New York Times’ Best 1,000 Movies Ever Made and this time I agree with them, there have been a few accidents in the past few weeks, when some features seemed unworthy – nevertheless, you find thousands of notes on films from the NYT 1,000 and other web pages on my blog https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/09/do-you-have-any-feedback.html     8 out of 10   Sam Peckinpah https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/09/the-ballad-of-cable-hogue.html was a magnificent director, The Ballad of Cable Hogue is excellent, but I think The Wild Bunch is the best-known masterpiece, I must say I had not heard of Ride The High Country, but it is about as good as Red River, or other classics   Joel McCrea is impressive as Steve Judd, one of the two, or maybe we can talk of three or four leading characters, and I must have seen him elsewhere, but he was relatively unfamiliar, just like the rest of the cast, w...

  The Bright Forever by Lee Martin A horrifying and yet extraordinary novel. The Bright Forever is not bright at all, on the contrary, it is rather gloomy, but for all that it is an excellent work. I have read it almost without a stop, very interested to know “who dunnit” and what on the earth was the meaning of it. The meaning of such horrifying acts is to be found in the childhood and the inherited genes of the authors of such crimes. Then there is the common guilt which is also explained at one stage in the book, when the questions like -            What if , pop up I believe in intervention and try and do that, sometimes on a limited scale and at other times with what looks like exaggeration. There are a few examples at the pool where I go- the Radisson- and I will mention this crazy guy who keeps making the most extravagant assertions- that the EU is funding him to prevent a community from having more children and other outrage...

  A Spool of Blue Thread by Anne Tyler I am not sure if I liked this better than Breathing Lessons, but I am inclined in favor of the latter, by the same excellent author After reading this good book, I thought about The Buddenbrooks and Joseph and His Brothers by Thomas Mann. A Spool of Blue Thread is the story of a family, much like The Buddenbrooks and less like Joseph and His Brothers. The Whitshank family is at the center of the novel, with its (at times too) many relatives, orphans and ancestors. From the start I must say that I lost about a third of the story, when the plot moves on to Junior Whitshank. Abby might be in the eye of the storm, as the woman who seems to control her husband, Red to an important degree. She is the mother of three children and has adopted (in a strange, convoluted and secret way) a fourth, who is nicknamed Stem. The most intriguing and often obnoxious is Denny, albeit I must confess that I liked at least some of his attitudes. For instance, there ...

  The Accidental Tourist by Anne Tyler   I have read Breathing Lessons by Anne Tyler about a year ago and enjoyed it very much. Then I found The Accidental Tourist on the Guardian list of 1000 books to read, listed under best humor…   I did not find the book particularly funny, in fact there is the shadow of a dead boy hanging over it, at least for me. Then there is the issue of the movie, inspired by the book, which presented an old problem for me: seeing instead of the characters the actors playing them: William Hurt, Kathleen Turner and I forgot who Muriel was…   There’s no denying the book is interesting and the passages on travel are sometimes fun to read: the way to cope with the unknown by going to familiar international chain restaurants (McDonalds?). Macon has a dog that needs training and this is when Muriel comes into the picture. I find her obnoxious at times, even if this is just a “Blink” feeling. I felt compassion for the dog that has to go through tra...

  Live Flesh by ruth Rendell is one of The 1,000 Novels Everyone Must Read, but it is only ranked 6409 th on the Greatest Books of All Time, it has just 134 reviews on Goodreads and more importantly for this obscure corner, it was not enjoyable for the under signed – you have thousands of reviews of magnum opera from the aforementioned and other web pages on my blog https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/09/do-you-have-any-feedback.html and YouTube channel, where my macaws are radiant   6 out of 10   Malice Aforethought https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/05/malice-aforethought-by-anthony-berkeley.html is such a mesmerizing mystery novel that I have problems in accepting other works, such as Live Flesh…"It was not until several weeks after he had decided to murder his wife that Doctor Bickleigh took any active steps in the matter." These are the first words in Malice Aforethought and think how valiant this is   You know that Doctor Bickleigh wan...