Hedda Gabler by Henrik Ibsen is 2229th on The Greatest Books of All Time site, and that is a sort of relief, since I did not find it glorious, notwithstanding this, A Doll’s House is in the 409th place at the same address, and it is actually included among The 100 Best Books of All Time – The Norwegian Books Clubs have asked luminaries, Salman Rushdie, the late, regretted Umberto Eco, John Irving, Nadine Gordimer and others to list their best and then you can see the result – now for the plug: you find more than five thousand reviews on magnum opera from the aforementioned and other sites, plus notes on films from The New York Times’ Best 1,000 Movies Ever Made and other lists on my blog and YouTube channel https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/09/do-you-have-any-feedback.html there are amazing things there, that is what they say, right?

 

Hedda Gabler by Henrik Ibsen is 2229th on The Greatest Books of All Time site, and that is a sort of relief, since I did not find it glorious, notwithstanding this, A Doll’s House is in the 409th place at the same address, and it is actually included among The 100 Best Books of All Time – The Norwegian Books Clubs have asked luminaries, Salman Rushdie, the late, regretted Umberto Eco, John Irving, Nadine Gordimer and others to list their best and then you can see the result – now for the plug: you find more than five thousand reviews on magnum opera from the aforementioned and other sites, plus notes on films from The New York Times’ Best 1,000 Movies Ever Made and other lists on my blog and YouTube channel https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/09/do-you-have-any-feedback.html there are amazing things there, that is what they say, right?

 

 

8 out of 10

 

I have seen Hedda Gabler and wrote my opinion https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/07/hedda-gabler-by-henrik-ibsen.html some years ago, I was not thrilled and I see that I thought Hedda Gabler mean

 

There is a new adaptation produced by Amazon, and it has an impressive Metascore, 70 seems much more than I would have expected for this, indeed, one of the reasons why I watched some of it and then started writing these lines

The ‘new’ Hedda appeared quite sensual, philandering, at least the impression I had for the fifteen minutes or so that I watched it, I rely on The Thin Slicing Theory https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/01/blink-power-of-thinking-without.html explained in the classic Blink

 

The Power of Thinking Without Thinking by Malcolm Gladwell: we form opinions in under one minute, not that this is always correct, mistakes are made, but we do not need to see the whole thing to know we are not exhilarated

You can – on the pretentious presumption that anyone is still here – check The Harding Effect, and how so many tall people get top jobs, it was even in The Economist I listened to earlier today, it has to do with first impressions

 

Intellectuals https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/01/intellectuals-by-paul-johnson.html by Paul Johnson is a wonderful book, and you get there portraits of Leo Tolstoy, Ernest Hemingway, Jean Jacques Rousseau

More to the point, you have Henrik Ibsen in there, and these are Intellectuals that have written magnum opera – not so much for Hedda Gabler - but as human beings they could be deplorable – just like the MAGA- Hilary was right

 

Jean Jacques Rousseau abandoned his children at the door of an orphanage, at a time when nine out of ten died in those circumstances let me say that A Doll’s House was excellent https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/07/a-dolls-house-by-henrick-ibsen.html even for the under signed

Finally, the reason why I would not spend too much time with a future adaptation, just like it happened with this 2025 new version, is given by Schopenhauer “One can never read too little of bad, or too much of good books: bad books are intellectual poison; they destroy the mind. In order to read what is good one must make it a condition never to read what is bad; for life is short, and both time and strength limited.

Evidently, we find this idea in Seneca https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/08/letters-of-seneca-byseneca-10-out-of-10.html who said that life is not short, the problem is that we waste time, acting as if we have an infinity ahead of us

 

Now for my standard closing of the note with a question, and invitation – I am on Goodreads as Realini Ionescu, at least for the moment, if I keep on expressing my views on Orange Woland aka TACO, it may be a short-lived presence

Also, maybe you have a good idea on how we could make more than a million dollars with this https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/09/do-you-have-any-feedback.html – as it is, this is a unique technique, which we could promote, sell, open the Oscars show with or something and then make lots of money together, if you have the how, I have the product, I just do not know how to get the benefits from it, other than the exercise per se

 

 There is also the small matter of working for AT&T – this huge company asked me to be its Representative for Romania and Bulgaria, on the Calling Card side, which meant sailing into the Black Sea wo meet the US Navy ships, travelling to Sofia, a lot of activity, using my mother’s two bedrooms flat as office and warehouse, all for the grand total of $250, raised after a lot of persuasion to the staggering $400…with retirement ahead, there are no benefits, nothing…it is a longer story, but if you can help get the mastodont to pay some dues, or have an idea how it can happen, let me know

 

As for my role in the Revolution that killed Ceausescu, a smaller Mao, there it is http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/03/realini-in-newsweek-participant-in.html

 

Some favorite quotes from To The Hermitage and other works

 

‘Fiction is infinitely preferable to real life...As long as you avoid the books of Kafka or Beckett, the everlasting plot of fiction has fewer futile experiences than the careless plot of reality...Fiction's people are fuller, deeper, cleverer, more moving than those in real life…Its actions are more intricate, illuminating, noble, profound…There are many more dramas, climaxes, romantic fulfillment, twists, turns, gratified resolutions…Unlike reality, all of this you can experience without leaving the house or even getting out of bed…What's more, books are a form of intelligent human greatness, as stories are a higher order of sense…As random life is to destiny, so stories are to great authors, who provided us with some of the highest pleasures and the most wonderful mystifications we can find…Few stories are greater than Anna Karenina, that wise epic by an often foolish author…’

 

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