Ataraxia

  Enemies – A Love Story by Isaac Bashevis Singer is one of The 1,000 Novels Everyone Must Read, but only 2322 nd on The Greatest Books of All Time site, my own evaluation would place it somewhere between, following the Golden Mean of Aristotle…you find 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   8 out of 10   Enemies – A Love Story has the Holocaust at its core and I was reminded of https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/01/mans-search-for-meaning-by-victor-frankl.html Man’s Search for Meaning, the classic by Victor Frankl, who has been through the extermination camps – ‘where there is a will, there is a way’   The Holocaust is the cause of (almost) all that happens in the narrative, except of course Herman Broder is a peculiar, outré (anti) hero, he is married to Yadwiga, the Polish woman who saved his live during World ...

  The Red Shoes written and directed by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, based on a story by Hans Christian Andersen won two Oscars in 1949, and was nominated for the Academy Awards for Best Picture and Best Writing, Motion Picture Story, and it is one of The New York Times’ Best 1,000 Movies Ever Made – you find thousands of notes on films from The NYT 1,000 and other lists on my blog https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/09/do-you-have-any-feedback.html and YouTube channel where my macaws have the leading roles   8 out of 10   Harvard Professor Tal Ben Shahar https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/02/happier-by-tal-ben-shahar.html had the most popular lectures in the history of that Ivy League institution, and he had some wondrous advice, one that I can remember- form watching them on YouTube, I have never been there – was:   Find your calling – there are three groups of attributes, first the things one likes, second the things one is good ...

  The Sport of Kings by C.E. Morgan For an important part of this long, complex narrative, a reader could enjoy, appreciate the complex structure, the fresco depicted with great talent, follow the stories of intriguing characters and expect a fulfilling read. Alas, when it comes to the stage where incest is not just mentioned in one of the side yarns, but it becomes the core of the plot, some, including this reader, could look at the many pages left and wonder- Do they want to continue exploring this side of human character, which, even if it does occur, it is on the fringes of behavior and maybe not worth delving into for so long? Henry Forge appears to be both the hero and antihero of this long novel, a personage that challenges his father,  a racist, retrograde, conservative individual, only to embrace so much of his thinking later. The first part is gripping, interesting and promises so much more, with wonderful characters like the amazing cook who is so smart it remi...

  The Magician’s Nephew by CS Lewis is the prequel of the very popular Chronicles of Narnia, which are ranked 261 st on The Greatest Books of All Time, and are also included on The 1,000 Novels Everyone Must Read list – you find thousands of reviews of magnum opera from those two and other compilations on my blog https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/09/do-you-have-any-feedback.html and YouTube channel   8 out of 10   CS Lewis https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/01/surprised-by-joy-shape-of-my-early-life.html is one of my favorite authors, thinkers, even more than that, if I ‘convert’, and find absolution, redemption, then I owe him – and Andrei Plesu, perhaps a few others, after God – perpetual gratitude, for I have been, still are skeptical   I have read a series of his magnum opera on the subject of religion: The Abolition of Man, The Problem of Pain, The Screwtape Letters – for the latter, I should be ashamed to confess that, when I read th...

  A Bell for Adano by John Hersey Not my cup of tea Coming on the footsteps of The Beach by Alex Garland it would have been difficult for The Bell to offer an equal satisfaction. But I must say that I did not like this novel and it might have been due to the circumstances or a pure failure to get its value. In other words, from here on the discourse will be rather negative and not just that, but I venture to say not interesting. If anyone is interested to read A Bell… and takes a note by chance, then the opinion has been expressed. From here on I try to make sense of what I have read and see what I can still get from this brief encounter. I stopped over this work because it won the Pulitzer Prize and with all my hostility I can still grasp why. The writing is interesting and funny- for a reader with a better vision and more relaxed than the undersigned, it can be wonderful. There are many passages that seen from a different perspective would prove rewarding and the read worthwhile....

  Scarlet Sister Mary by Julia Peterkin 10 out of 10 It seems somewhat sad to see that quite a number of formerly acclaimed chefs d’oeuvre have fallen into neglect and if you look them now on the world’s database, you tend to find very little about them and this looks to be the case of Scarlet Sister Mary, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1929 ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulitzer_Prize_for_Fiction ) but not much read these days. One reason might be that phenomenal as this novel is, it could be difficult to read and the undersigned thought himself lucky to have the habit of reading for some hours every day, for without that ritual, the dialogue specific to the Gullah people of the Low Country in South Carolina, which is hard to comprehend, given that it includes expression such as ‘chillen’ and there are words that the locals have not heard about and thus are twisted, like diploma, which Seraphin is trying so hard to get, only it had never been heard of and therefore ...