Books I RED

I had a cat once, called Cleopatra, she was grey and white, she had a sister, all black, named Bathsheba. Whom you see in this picture above, is an image like an afterthought, of the human Cleopatra, by John William Waterhouse (1888). One could have presumed that my black cat for it's sinister allusions to female malice should have been the one named Cleopatra, whereas the grey one for it's mellow coloring could have been the namesake of King David's wife, or actually the wife he stole from Uriah, the man he first killed so he could get her, because Bathsheba was like a sheep, like wolves prey (2 Samuel chapter 11). C.S. Lewis, in his book The Discarded Image - lectures on the medieval mind was right in saying that Western culture builds on the antiquity and the Bible. The archetypes and female characters echo way back and still exist in our time. In the month of October a multitude of literary fans, book lovers and readers of mainly Western literature, gather in internet

I was supposed to read The Great Gatsby, inspired by this pod  P3 Klassikern, The Great Gatsby  but I just couldn't muster the strength for this weekend was hectic and I feel like I might be getting a sore throat. Anyway, I really wanted to gaze on the wonderful untouched land of the American Pilgrims just as the narrator envisions in Gatsby but that will have to be another time. Instead I read a book in swedish  Varför har inte fler bibliotekarier läderbyxor?  Yes, this book deserves a review. It is a collection of chronicles, small texts, written by Christer Hermansson, author and librarian. The book is entertaining, even phenomenal, it manages in its measly 150 pages to capture questions such as: What does it mean to be a man in the profession of librarian in Sweden today, a very female-dominated profession where you generally are not seen or heard. What is the role of men in the library and what is the role of the library today? He was referring to another book when he said tha

  A beautiful clip about Persuasion "You were single" Captain Wentworth said to Anne Elliot, the heroine of Persuasion, a modern novel published in year 1818.  Persuasion  is written by a middle aged Austen, prior to her death, published posthumously with one of her first works  Northanger Abbey. The story is about two lovers who are divided by the torrents of life. Anne is persuaded to give up her lover Wentworth, he sets out to sea and they are apart for seven years. The big question that persists through the novel is: Who is being persuaded and how?  At first evidently Anne is persuaded to terminate the engagement but her heart is ever engaged to Wentworth. The story begins with a woman who has loved and lost evolving then into a novel about adult love. They've both been hurt and withdrawn in their own ways, Wentworth into his hurt and pride, and Anne into the oblivion of acting a wallflower in her sister's home at Uppercross and the events that take place in Bath

  "I love you, most ardently" says Sir Fitzwilliam Darcy upon his first proposal to Elizabeth Bennet, the modern woman no older than one and twenty. Rosamund Pike who plays her sister Jane in the 2005 movie Pride & Prejudice narrated the book on Audible. I listened at 1,2 speed reading along, at a 20% faster pace than normally, enjoying every minute of this entirely splendid work, this all time classic of Western Literature, the core, it's beating heart, the greatest love story of all time unlocked for me the mystery of all others to Jane Austen's work. I set out to read this book to see if truly it is the great love story everyone says it is, and secondly to understand the frenzy nay, cult, that has been hence inspired. Women all over the world, on YouTube, Facebook and internet forums, having the hots for a fictional man, why is Mr. Darcy so great?  Until now I've struggled with Jane Austen's books, it took me months to finish Mansfield Park and a long

Dickens and Balzac have been clumped together for more than just humoristic purposes. Well versed literary critics agree that Honoré is for the French what Charles was for the English. They both describe an interesting shift in time, Balzac the decline of monarchy in France and Dickens the Victorian England and London in particular, the buzzing city life versus the life in the country. What thrilled me to read this book in particular was the foreword that described Honorés life as a struggling writer, always poor, always invested totally in his work. To value art above the struggles of survival is an art in itself.   Balzac's story Eugénie Grandet is about a young girl who lives in the village of Saumur with her mother and father. The father is a shrewd money loving uncivilized farmer who tactically expands his wealth sacrificing his relationship to his daughter and wife as he does so. One day, when the beautiful Eugénie is already come of age, they receive a visitor,  old Grandet&

 Once upon a time, a young woman named Lada chose to read The Handmaidstale. She bought the book from the Bookdepositry, it was a Penguin VINTAGE paperback. As she read she made miniscule notes and underlined parts of M. Atwood's well known story. I bought the book at an online antiquarian shop just for the marginalia, because of course I already have a hardback copy, also a vintage edition with read gilded edges.  Red, the color of sisterhood. Red, because we all bleed. Red because life and birth. Red, the color of love. In Margaret Atwood's dystopia the very segregated society of Gilead is, a sort of hyper republican, militant version of a fundamentalist Abrahamitic dictatorship. I believe the novels popularity has persisted since the 1980's when it first came out. The Vintage edition that I held in my hand was printed in 2010. The series by HBO came out in 2017. I first watched the series back in 2018 or 2019, I'm not sure precisely but I didn't come to know the