Ataraxia

  Lovely, Dark Deep by Joyce Carol Oates was shortlisted for The 2015 Pulitzer Prize for Literature; Joyce Carol Oates is one of the two writers who have been nominated for this award four times, the other is Philip Roth – you could check my blog for more reviews https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2026/08/do-you-have-any-suggestions-how-to-make.html   9 out of 10   Joyce Carol Oates https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2026/08/mastiff-by-joyce-carol-oates-is-second.html is one of two writers to be nominated four times for The Pulitzer Prize for Literature, and the collection Lovely, Dark, Deep is one of the four oeuvres, I have been first mesmerized by Black Water, a fabulous novel…   Which is based on fact, senator Kennedy has been involved in an accident, in which his lover was killed, a film was made about this, the car was driven into the Black Water, the man may have been drunk, this is how I recall it, but I may be wrong, then he did not do much, i...

  Genesis by Anonymous is the first book of The Bible, which is 21 st on The Greatest Books of All Time site, clearly The Absolute Number One, nec plus ultra for billions of Christians, and millions of Jewish people, seeing as it is part of The Hebrew Bible https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2026/08/do-you-have-any-suggestions-how-to-make.html this is the address of my blog, where I have more reviews on books and films   9 out of 10   Rating Genesis, writing about the bible could https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2026/08/genesis.html be blasphemous, indeed, by itself, if the point is to criticize, do anything except express awe, faith, and absolute admiration, I could be exposed to serious punishment, although there is a difference between mortal and venial sin   I have been reading again A Married Man and within it we have this exchange of letters between Claire, the wife of The Married Man, and a priest, she is ready to commit adultery, and then t...

A Married Man by Piers Paul Read is one of The 1,000 Novels Everyone Must Read, although it is only 5577 th on The Greatest Books of All Time; it used to be in my Top 200, now, after reading it for the second time, I don’t know, but maybe I have a conclusion by the time I finish this note…you may have some suggestions if you visit https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2026/08/do-you-have-any-suggestions-how-to-make.html   9 out of 10   Piers Paul Read https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/09/a-married-man-by-piers-paul-read-is-as.html mesmerized me, when I first met A Married Man, only now it is a second encounter, and I have had some objections, if minor, while the first time I placed in the headline of my note ‘as close to perfection as possible’   Barrister John Strickland is probably more distant from yours truly, and that may be part of the ‘problem’ – though let me conclude from here that the oeuvre is excellent, even if the maximum expectations have ...

  When Breath Becomes Air is The 2016 Winner of The Goodreads Choice Award for Memoir & Autobiography, the finalist for The Pulitzer Prize, Biography or Autobiography, it has about 850,000 ratings on Goodreads, and some 68,000 reviews, an average of 4.41 out of 5 stars, it is just 3186 th on The Greatest Books of All Time site, you could visit   https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/09/do-you-have-any-feedback.html my blog for more reviews   7 out of 10   I thought of Joyce Carol Oates https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2026/02/the-wheel-of-love-and-other-stories-by.html as I have been reading more of her short stories, and one, Sex With Camel, has some morbid jokes, including one with ‘there are some good news and bad news’, with the question, what bad news?   ‘They stopped chemotherapy, and the good news? They stopped chemotherapy’ in fact, I am pretty sure that I made a mistake, and said this in the wrong order, it should have been the ...

  Mastiff by Joyce Carol Oates is the second story in the Collection Lovely, Dark, Deep, which was shortlisted for The 2015 Pulitzer Prize for Literature; Them is the highest ranking oeuvre by Joyce Carol Oates, it is 658th on The Greatest Books of All Time site, though I do not see why Black Water is not somewhere in the first 1,000, for more reviews you could visit my blog https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/09/do-you-have-any-feedback.html and/or the YouTube channel   9 out of 10   Joyce Carol Oates https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2026/02/the-wheel-of-love-and-other-stories-by.html is one of the best novelists of our time, and I need to get the stamina to start with Blonde, though I am daunted by the size of it, 1110 pages, which on the flip side, could offer so many hours of dazzling narrative   Mastiff has a lot of drama, unfolding rather quickly, seeing that this just a short story: Mariella is the main character, she is on this hike, a f...

  Genesis   I try to find the Absolute Truth and where else it could be explained if not in the bible… In my childhood, an old woman was talking nothing but the Holy Scriptures to my sister and me. If she is a believer, in my case this over exposure has somehow burnt the feeble interest in the stories of the bible. For most of the time I have been not just an atheist, but one who enjoyed mocking various religious <<misconceptions>> - as I saw them. I had great fun watching Religulous and comedians poking fun at Christian texts. I did not turn around. Not yet, but I try to see the light, be good, stop lying and try compassion for a change, The highest expectation comes from a different approach- Instead of finding holes in the story of creation, which could not possibly take place a few thousand years ago, as fundamentalists maintain- I try to use a spiritual reading. Go beyond the literal sense and see the paradise as possible here and now. Not in Eden as a place s...