Ataraxia

      ‘Good evening, Smith,’ said Lovell, rather grandly. ‘’Evening,’ said Smith, speaking without the smallest suggestion of warmth. ‘How are you, Smith?’ Smith looked Lovell up and down as if he considered the enquiry not merely silly, but downright insulting. He did not answer. ‘Is her Ladyship upstairs?’ ‘Where do you think she’d be—in the basement?’ . I am more and more coming to think that Smith is more trouble than he is worth. It’s convenient to have a manservant in the house, but I found this morning we were completely out of gin, and I know at least two inches remained in the bottle left when we went to bed last night.’ ‘Sherry, m’lord?’ It was impossible to tell from Smith’s vacant, irascible stare whether he had never before been asked for sherry since his first employment at Thrubworth; or whether he had himself, quite simply, drunk all the sherry that remained. Erridge’s voice admitted the exceptional nature of the enquiry. He asked a...

  The Life of Emile Zola by Norman Reilly Raine, Heinz Herald Geza Herczeg was nominated for nine Academy Awards in 1938 and won three of the most important: Best Picture, Paul Muni, Best Actor in a Leading Role, also Paul Muni, Best Actor in a Supporting Role, Joseph Schildkraut, Best Writing, Original Story – 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   8 out of 10   I have seen another excellent motion picture, J’accuse https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/07/jaccuse-aka-officer-and-spy-written-by_28.html which deals with the same subject, although J’accuse had Roman Polanski at the helm, and thus it was controversial, though I found it radiant   The Life of Emile Zola leaves the climax, The Dreyfuss Affair for the last part, while we find more about Emile Zola in the rest: h...

  Of the seven deadly sins, Roger considered himself qualified in gluttony, sloth and lust but distinguished in anger. The first time the two men met, an incident with a briefcase lock had suggested to him that here was a formidable rival in the last-named field The notion of the universe as the handiwork of the Almighty received a severe check at Pargeter. It was no wonder that people were so horrible when they started life as children.   Irving Macher runs off with Helen Americans pursue the dollar; the British had an empire. Fascinating to see the underlying assumptions and goals of a culture laid bare in its idiom. Fascinating, but not surprising. Language is before anything else the great social instrument The character’s promiscuous womanising and inordinate drinking certainly had autobiographical sources. For the novel’s American setting, Amis was drawing on his experience as a Visiting Fellow at Princeton University in 1958–9, when, he informed his frie...

  Lord of The Flies by William Golding is on a series of paramount lists: The Modern Library’s 100 Best Novels, 1,000 Novels Everyone Must Read, on The Greatest Books of All Time site it is ranked 50 th , and it is a chef d’oeuvre selected for my own favorites’ compilation, if you want the conclusion in a sound bite:   Jack has moved into the White House, in the meantime   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 and YouTube channel where my macaws are the stars     10 out of 10   I was impressed by The Lord of The Flies https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2024/12/lord-of-flies-by-william-golding.html the first time I took it on, I even remember reading in while taking a bath – and with this, here we have the spoiler alert: you should not be reading this, not because I will say what happens, it is mayhem ...

  Hearing Secret Harmonies by Anthony Powell is the twelfth volume of the chef d’oeuvre A Dance To The Music of Time, which is included on some of the most prestigious (perhaps all of them) lists: The All-TIME 100 Best Novels, The Modern Library’s Best 100 Novels, and it is ranked 329th on the Greatest Books of All Time site, most important for this space, it is one of my Top 50 Favorites…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, where my macaws are the stars   10 out of 10   Alas, I have reached the end of A Dance To the Music of Time https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/10/hearing-secrets-harmonies-by-anthony.html for the second time, in a few years, maybe there will be a return to Hearing Secret Harmonies and the rest of this magnum opus   There is a lot going on, and after a spoiler alert – which s...

  A Work of Art by Anton Chekhov is one of The Short Stories of Anton Chekhov, which are included on The Bokklubben World Library’s Best 100 Books of All Time list, and they are ranked 127th on The Greatest Books of All Time site…you have thousands of reviews on magnum opera from the aforementioned and other web pages on my blog https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/09/do-you-have-any-feedback.html and YouTube channel, where my macaws are the stars   10 out of 10   The Short Stories of Anton Chekhov https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2026/05/the-short-stories-of-anton-chekhov-are.html is one of The Best 100 Books of All Time – I am curious to see what AI, or autocorrect until them will do with the verb – because we have ‘Stories’ it looks like plural, except this is just ‘one chef d’oeuvre’   This Work of Art is both thought provoking and jocular: “SASHA SMIRNOV, the only son of his mother, holding under his arm, something wrapped up in No. 223 of t...