Ataraxia

  Gilead by Marilynne Robinson is one of The 1,000 Novels Everyone Must Read, it won the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the National Book Critics Circle Award, it is also ranked 462 nd on The Greatest Books of All Time – for more reviews you could check my blog https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/09/do-you-have-any-feedback.html     8 out of 10   Marilynne Robinson https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/07/housekeeping-by-marilynne-robinson-one.html is the wonderful author of Housekeeping, which I found exhilarating, and that now makes the failure to engage with Gilead ever more frustrating, I do not know why, for this is a Winner of The Pulitzer Prize for Literature   It is also on the 1,000 Novels Everyone Must Read list and then you find it in the 462 nd place on The Greatest Books of All Time site, yet, mea culpa, though I could see there is value here, it did not shine its light upon yours truly, one reason might be (it surely ...

  The Goverment Inspector by Gogol Wonderful play I am rating this a second time, because I have just finished it again. And it is a pleasure even when the plot is familiar. In fact, it is part of everyday life, in many parts of the world. Corruption is at the center of the Government Inspector and what a widespread phenomenon that is. We have seen the scandal of the Panama Papers erupting in the past days. And those documents point out that families of the mighty in Russia, China and other supposedly "egalitarian" places have stashed fortunes in fiscal paradises. All the while pretending that they care so much about the poor and that they want everyone to pay their dues and taxes. - Yeah, right...everybody but me The story of Gogol centers on a government official that is coming to a town to check on the local grandees. They hear about the visit and fall into their own trap, caused by mistaken identity. Actually, it is not so much mistaken, as a willed identification of a vi...

  The Inspector General by Nikolai Gogol   This is outrageously funny, but with a twist. You have all the good time in the world reading or listening to it, but you might also feel pity for the people of the world who live with such administrators and crooks. I know that one of my eyes cried with laughter and the other with bitterness. The regime I have known was communist…corrupt to the bone by definition. This was replaced, and I played my small “revolutionary” part, being mentioned in Newsweek, on about 12 (small) lines. But the system we have in place now, albeit way better than the one before, produces corruption like there is a huge conveyer belt, wherever there are public money, contracts and somehow, instead of reaching the infrastructure, health care projects they end up lining the pockets of big “wise guys” and politicians. One recent scandal had one of our Forbes richest embezzling money by cheating on …cancer patients. This makes the characters of The Inspector Gen...

  Therese Raquin by Emile Zola is one of The 1,000 Novels Everyone Must Read, it is also ranked 734 th on The Greatest Books of All Time site, for more reviews: https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/09/do-you-have-any-feedback.html   8 out of 10   Emile Zola https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2026/06/the-life-of-emile-zola-by-norman-reilly.html was not just an impressive author, with four books on the 1,000 Novels Everyone Must Read list, but also a formidable activist and progressive thinker, he was instrumental in overturning the horrible Dreyfuss verdict   The Dreyfuss Affair was a scandalous conspiracy (oh, how I hate this word, for conspiracy theories are the defining trait of MAGA and those alike, which represent the quintessential evil for yours truly) following which an innocent Jewish officer is sentenced for treason, just because he is of Judaic faith and a scape goat as such This was an immense scandal, dividing French society, I would ...

  A Thousand Years by Jane Smiley is The 1992 Winner of The Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, it is also one of The 1,000 Novels Everyone Must Read, ranked 974 th on The Greatest Books of All Time site, and more importantly for this corner here, this has entered Realini’s Top 1,000 Favorites – more reviews on those and more on my blog https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/09/do-you-have-any-feedback.html and YouTube channel     10 out of 10   A Thousand Acres was so exhilarating and surprising, I have read Moo https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/07/moo-by-jane-smiley-included-on-1000.html by Jane Smiley and it was not exactly dazzling, and then the subject, people on a farm, was not enticing, it could have gone either way   Indeed, in my part of the world, we used to call ‘peasants’ (I still do, when drivers seem to run me over, on my bicycle) those who were ignorant, rudimentary, when in fact, these are the folks that provide the food…this no...

  Absolute Power written by William Goldman, directed by Clint Eastwood. William Goldman was one of the best writers in Hollywood, he has won two Oscars, for All The President’s Men and Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid – more notes on films are available at https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/09/do-you-have-any-feedback.html Absolute Power vs The Orange Caligula and MAGA 8 out of 10   Clint Eastwood https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2024/09/unforgiven-by-david-webb-peoples-my.html is one of the greatest film makers of all time, despite the fact that he is a republican, I just hope he is not MAGA (which for me means gaga, in the sense of mentally challenged), Unforgiven is one of my Top 50 Movies   Almost every day now, on the Public Station they have documentaries about thespians, directors, and Clint Eastwood was on the other night, with The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, his status could be called ‘polyamorous’, notwithstanding his conservatism, he ha...