Ataraxia

Trapnel based on Julian I loved Of love and hunger link ‘Christ, what a marvellous idea. You mean I’d call at their place and hand back the pound?’   He pondered this extravagant – literally extravagant – possibility. comment. The lights were on all over the flat, the sound of running water audible. No one seemed to be about. Widmerpool listened, his head slightly to one side, with the air of a Red Indian brave seeking, on the tail of the wind, the well-known, but elusive, scent of danger. The splashing away of the water had a calming effect. ‘As a matter of fact the message was – ”I’ve left” Of course Tolstoy’s inordinately brilliant. In spite of all the sentimentality and moralizing, he’s never boring – at least never in one sense. The material’s inconceivably well arranged as a rule, the dialogue’s never less than convincing. The fact remains, Anna Karenin’s a glorified magazine story, a magazine story of the highest genius, but still a magazine story in that it te...

  The Private Life of Henry VIII written by Lajos Biro, Arthur Wimperis was nominated in 1934 for The Oscar for Best Picture, and it won The Academy Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role, Charles Laughton as Henry VIII; it is also one of The New York Times’ Best 1,000 Movies Ever Made – you have thousands of notes on films from the NYT 1,000 and other sites on my blog https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/09/do-you-have-any-feedback.html and YouTube channel, where my macaws are radiant   8 out of 10   Let me use a sound bite: I see Henry VIII as a sort of predecessor of The Orange ‘Abrascam’ (as Jimmy Kimmel called him) except in this motion picture, Henry VIII was amusing, although keeping things in proportion this modern day Caligula has not killed wives, just divorced two (maybe more in the future) even if he is responsible for many deaths   The other king that comes to mind is Richard III https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/07/richard-iii-by...

  Quarantine by Jim Crace – from the 1,000 Novels Everyone Must Read list https://www.theguardian.com/books/2009/jan/23/bestbooks-fiction 12 out of 10     For this lay creature, Quarantine is better than the bible in that it brings Jesus closer, it is less overwhelming, even if absolutely fantastic, mesmerizing, Unforgettable, Troubling, profound, impressive' so deep and thought provoking that I am still wondering about what I have just finished, what is the significance of Jesus and his passage through the caves – Quarantine by the way refers to a period of forty days during which five people try to fast, pray and thus obtain some miracles, or goals they aim at and not the lockdowns during the pandemic that we have grown accustomed to, unless of course we are the very precious Djokovic – what the various other characters mean beyond their mere presence in this Magnum opus.   The under signed has already been enthused, exuberant after reading Harvest by the same fabu...

  The Wind in The Willows by Kenneth Grahame is one of The 1,000 Novels Everyone Must Read, it is ranked 139 th on The Greatest Books of All Times site – you find thousands of reviews of books from these and other web pages on my blog https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/09/do-you-have-any-feedback.html   7 out of 10   Animal Farm https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2024/08/animal-farm-by-george-orwell-one-of.html is one of the masterpieces of world literature and maybe the only book with animals that I enjoyed, fauna as in they populate the narrative, there are fish, dogs and what not in other novels, evidently, like here In The Willows   Alas, Wind in The Willows was not my cup of tea, and here my ‘review’ should end, your interest, if there ever was one, should also fade, or disappear, so I hope I will not get some retribution, like a few days ago, when this fella read what I posted and then he got aggravated because I am vain, it was a note abou...

  Note on The Lost World Jurassic Park, director Steven Spielberg, with Je... | realini

  One Fat Englishman by Kingsley Amis is a spectacular novel, I have read it for the second time now and I was enthused…you find thousands of reviews of magnum opera from The Greatest Books of All Time and other web pages on my blog https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/09/do-you-have-any-feedback.html 10 10 out of 10   I have already read A Fat Englishman https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/02/one-fat-englishman-by-kingsley-amis.html and I was so enchanted that I took it up again…indeed, I will read all of the Kingsley Amis oeuvre a second time, this time in chronological order, that is, following the order of their publishing   One Fat Englishman appears to be unique in that the main character is obnoxious, or at least he could appear that way, I for one sympathized, and surely identified with his shortcomings – some of them, I am not fat, and I am joking now, the repulsive sides, the homophobia, and there is so much I better stop do not represent me ...