Ataraxia

  About Ashenden by Somerset Maugham 10 out of 10     Somerset Maugham is one of the best two writers ever, the other one is Marcel Proust, and therefore reading Ashenden-  even in an abridged form this time, to be revisited later for the full enjoyment – was an absolute joy…we can find Of Human Bondage on The modern Library’s 100 Best Novels https://www.modernlibrary.com/top-100/100-best-novels/   Ashenden is a secret agent enlisted during World War I – and inspired by the experience of Somerset Maugham as an intelligence officer – and based in Switzerland, although there would be at least one story that takes him as far as Russia, on the brink of the Bolshevik Revolution, when the agent will have an unlimited supply of money, but the impossible task of trying to do something about the unstoppable Apocalypse of the Bolshevik Revolution – a calamity that would propagate to our lands, albeit later – this is a catastrophe for which we still pay so much and wi...

  75 out of 100 for Asterix and Obelix Mission Cleopatra | realini

  Cold Mountain  That movie was filmed near my former house, in Rasnov. I made the effort to go to the cinema to see it, albeit at the time I was only spending few days in Bucharest, only once every few months. What a disappointment! A very good cast, albeit Zelwegger was not a favorite of mine and she did win the Oscar for this failed production. Kidman was wasted as was Philip Seymour Hoffman. I am reminded of the film by the cold of today and the beauty of the scenery in the forests. I walked the mile or so that separate the Lycee from the bus station, with tens of cars moving at a slow pace, as the road was covered with branches and the snow not yet removed. This experience will be repeated tomorrow, even if the salt thrown on the street might make the experience less positive, if dirt lands on my clothes from the speeding cars.

  Nadja by Andre Breton is ranked 50 th on Le Monde’s Best 100 Novels, it is 394 th on The Greatest Books of All Time site, and is also part of The 1,000 Novels Everyone Must Read compilation, but notwithstanding that, it does not make it on my Top 300, or 6,000 for that matter, mea culpa for that…you have thousands of reviews of magnum opera from the aforementioned and other lists on my blog https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/09/do-you-have-any-feedback.html and YouTube channel, perhaps ten items might be worth the trouble   6 out of 10 for no good reason   Magister Ludi Kingsley Amis https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/03/the-kings-english-guide-to-modern-usage.html wrote about ‘The Checkoff formula: you take a lot of characters, all miserable because of something they won't do, and let them talk without influencing each other for three acts, and at the last moment…     You introduce some arbitrary calamity, or some proposed change l...

  Note on Gods and Monsters, with Ian McKellen, Brendan Fraser | realini

  Williwaw by Gore Vidal 10 out of 10 The exhilarating Williwaw is one of the masterpieces that make staying at home such a peripatetic, glorious experience, given the chance to travel the wide world in the company of exuberant characters, in intense, stormy, exotic surroundings, created by the brilliant minds of angelic creators…a few days ago, this reader had the chance to fly over to Africa in the company of 007, as imagined by William Boyd (somewhat unexpectedly not by his original Maker, Ian Fleming) in the intriguing Solo http://realini.blogspot.com/2020/08/solo-by-william-boyd-10-out-of-10.html In Williwaw, the story takes us to the Aleutian Islands, where the wondrous Gore Vidal has been stationed and thus has had the chance to get inspiration for this wonderful Magnum opus, written when he was only 19 (!), an aspect that made the under signed think of two ways to take this incredible detail, one being the jealousy, chagrin that one is not able to write anything close to th...