Ataraxia

  Citations by Francois Bluche is an easy, entertaining book – you find thousands of notes on magnum opera from The Greatest Books of All Time 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 main attraction   10 out of 10   I have already written https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2026/06/de-la-cezar-la-churchill-by-francois.html about this, and I forgot, nevertheless, the conclusion is the same: this is a great read, and that should be the end of the ‘review’, except I will keep mumbling here, and you have been warned, spoiler alert!   I am thinking to include here the joke about Mitza and her visitors: these two ladies who could be my age visit Mitza, and the host offers some coffee, then again, after some ten minutes, and again, because she says ‘what kind of a person am I? Not to make some coffee?’ when they are out, the other two ladies say: ...

  It was Serena who'd told Maggie that marriage was not a Rock Hudson-Doris Day movie. It was Serena who'd said that motherhood was much too hard and, when you got right down to it, perhaps not worth the effort. Now this: to have your husband die. It made Maggie nervous, although she knew it wasn't catching. There's times I think, Shoot, maybe I ought to just fire off another telegram. Jesse, I'd say, / love you still, and it begins to seem I always will. He wouldn't even have to answer; it's just something I want him to know. Or I'll be down in Baltimore at my sister's and I'll think, Why not drop by and visit him? Just walk in on him? Just see what happens?" "Oh, you ought to," Maggie said. "But he'd say, 'What are you doing here But Maggie remembered, and sometimes, feeling the glassy sheet of Ira's disapproval, she grew numbly, wearily certain that there was no such thing on this earth as real change. Y...

  About Ashenden by Somerset Maugham 10 out of 10     Somerset Maugham is one of the best two writers ever, the other one is Marcel Proust, and therefore reading Ashenden-  even in an abridged form this time, to be revisited later for the full enjoyment – was an absolute joy…we can find Of Human Bondage on The modern Library’s 100 Best Novels https://www.modernlibrary.com/top-100/100-best-novels/   Ashenden is a secret agent enlisted during World War I – and inspired by the experience of Somerset Maugham as an intelligence officer – and based in Switzerland, although there would be at least one story that takes him as far as Russia, on the brink of the Bolshevik Revolution, when the agent will have an unlimited supply of money, but the impossible task of trying to do something about the unstoppable Apocalypse of the Bolshevik Revolution – a calamity that would propagate to our lands, albeit later – this is a catastrophe for which we still pay so much and wi...

  75 out of 100 for Asterix and Obelix Mission Cleopatra | realini

  Cold Mountain  That movie was filmed near my former house, in Rasnov. I made the effort to go to the cinema to see it, albeit at the time I was only spending few days in Bucharest, only once every few months. What a disappointment! A very good cast, albeit Zelwegger was not a favorite of mine and she did win the Oscar for this failed production. Kidman was wasted as was Philip Seymour Hoffman. I am reminded of the film by the cold of today and the beauty of the scenery in the forests. I walked the mile or so that separate the Lycee from the bus station, with tens of cars moving at a slow pace, as the road was covered with branches and the snow not yet removed. This experience will be repeated tomorrow, even if the salt thrown on the street might make the experience less positive, if dirt lands on my clothes from the speeding cars.

  Nadja by Andre Breton is ranked 50 th on Le Monde’s Best 100 Novels, it is 394 th on The Greatest Books of All Time site, and is also part of The 1,000 Novels Everyone Must Read compilation, but notwithstanding that, it does not make it on my Top 300, or 6,000 for that matter, mea culpa for that…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, perhaps ten items might be worth the trouble   6 out of 10 for no good reason   Magister Ludi Kingsley Amis https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/03/the-kings-english-guide-to-modern-usage.html wrote about ‘The Checkoff formula: you take a lot of characters, all miserable because of something they won't do, and let them talk without influencing each other for three acts, and at the last moment…     You introduce some arbitrary calamity, or some proposed change l...

  Note on Gods and Monsters, with Ian McKellen, Brendan Fraser | realini

  Williwaw by Gore Vidal 10 out of 10 The exhilarating Williwaw is one of the masterpieces that make staying at home such a peripatetic, glorious experience, given the chance to travel the wide world in the company of exuberant characters, in intense, stormy, exotic surroundings, created by the brilliant minds of angelic creators…a few days ago, this reader had the chance to fly over to Africa in the company of 007, as imagined by William Boyd (somewhat unexpectedly not by his original Maker, Ian Fleming) in the intriguing Solo http://realini.blogspot.com/2020/08/solo-by-william-boyd-10-out-of-10.html In Williwaw, the story takes us to the Aleutian Islands, where the wondrous Gore Vidal has been stationed and thus has had the chance to get inspiration for this wonderful Magnum opus, written when he was only 19 (!), an aspect that made the under signed think of two ways to take this incredible detail, one being the jealousy, chagrin that one is not able to write anything close to th...

  Morgan – A Suitable Case for Treatment by David Mercer was nominated for two Oscars in 1967, including for Best Actress in a Leading Role for Vanessa Redgrave, it is one of The New York Times’ Best 1,000 Movies Ever Made, albeit it does not make it on my Top 10,000, if I ever make one, I did not like it…you have thousands of notes on films from The NYT 1,000 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 better than most features I see these days   6 out of 10   Vanessa Redgrave https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2026/05/foxcatcher-screenplay-by-max-frye-and.html has a leading role in Morgan A suitable Case for Treatment, she was nominated for an Oscar for her performance, as well as for other awards, and if she did act radiantly in quite a few features, this film failed to impress me   This is a subjective note, and furthermore, you have all that is re...

  The Children of Dynmouth by William Trevor is ranked only 17120 th on the Greatest Books of All Time, and I see three possibilities here: 1. Nobody should bother with my notes, because this is one of my Top 200, or 500 at the very least 2. That GOAT algorithm is nonsense 3.   The answer is given by Aristotle’s golden mean, which ‘is the ethical principle that virtue lies at the balanced midpoint between two extremes: excess and deficiency’, in other words, this should be placed at 500, and I am obviously jesting here…you find thousands of reviews on magnum opera from The GOAT site, even the bottom of the list apparently, on my blog https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/09/do-you-have-any-feedback.html and YouTube channel   10 out of 10   I had been enchanted by three novels by Willaim Trevor https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/07/mesmerized-by-reading-turgenev-by.html already, before coming to The Children of Dynmouth with some mixed feelings: on...

  De la Cezar la Churchill by Francois Bluche you find more than five thousand reviews on my blogs, the one I use now is at https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/20... and for the time being, I am present on Goodreads as Realini Ionescu – myself actually, unless I am already in that joke where this fella asks ‘do you know who I am, and the answer is no, but we can ask one of the nurses or something’ – if you read this on my web domains, Goodreads exiled me for some time, perhaps because I am so anti- Orange Jesus 9 out of 10 This is a capital book. Its use is self-evident, albeit in the age of the internet, you can always search for one quote or another, and then you find the answer, which can be false, misleading, or both, besides, it is one thing to search for one piece… - And another to have all these pages of bons mots In the background, as I write this note, I have The Rest of Politics, a podcast I tend to listen to lately, with Alistair Campbell and Rory Stewart, and the topic ...

  Ride the High Country by Sam Peckinpah is one of The New York Times’ Best 1,000 Movies Ever Made and this time I agree with them, there have been a few accidents in the past few weeks, when some features seemed unworthy – nevertheless, you find thousands of notes on films from the NYT 1,000 and other web pages on my blog https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/09/do-you-have-any-feedback.html     8 out of 10   Sam Peckinpah https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/09/the-ballad-of-cable-hogue.html was a magnificent director, The Ballad of Cable Hogue is excellent, but I think The Wild Bunch is the best-known masterpiece, I must say I had not heard of Ride The High Country, but it is about as good as Red River, or other classics   Joel McCrea is impressive as Steve Judd, one of the two, or maybe we can talk of three or four leading characters, and I must have seen him elsewhere, but he was relatively unfamiliar, just like the rest of the cast, w...

  The Bright Forever by Lee Martin A horrifying and yet extraordinary novel. The Bright Forever is not bright at all, on the contrary, it is rather gloomy, but for all that it is an excellent work. I have read it almost without a stop, very interested to know “who dunnit” and what on the earth was the meaning of it. The meaning of such horrifying acts is to be found in the childhood and the inherited genes of the authors of such crimes. Then there is the common guilt which is also explained at one stage in the book, when the questions like -            What if , pop up I believe in intervention and try and do that, sometimes on a limited scale and at other times with what looks like exaggeration. There are a few examples at the pool where I go- the Radisson- and I will mention this crazy guy who keeps making the most extravagant assertions- that the EU is funding him to prevent a community from having more children and other outrage...