by Richard Subber | Oct 19, 2024 | Book reviews, Books, Human Nature, Joys of reading, Tidbits
give your arm to a loved one…
Book review:
The Gifts of Imperfection:
Let Go of Who You Think You’re Supposed to Be
and Embrace Who You Are
by Dr. C. Brené Brown (b1965)
Center City, MN: Hazelden, 2010
135 pages
Dr. Brown offers this “tough lesson” from her life:
“How much we know and understand ourselves is critically important,
but there is something that is even more essential to living a Wholehearted life:
loving ourselves.”
This book moved me to think about changing the way I think about life, and my life.
Give yourself a gift: take time to read The Gifts of Imperfection and then D.I.G. into your life.
That is, start consciously thinking about wholehearted living and tell yourself a lot of truth, and then:
Get Deliberate about doing the right things for you, in all your glorious imperfections,
Get Inspired to acknowledge what you’re doing in all your loving relationships, and
Get Going, take the next steps in actually living a love affair with yourself and all you can be…
…and don’t mind if you stumble now and then, and give your arm to a loved one now and then…
…and have good intentions, and take the agony and the ecstasy as they come.
Quote is from The Gifts of Imperfection, p. xi.
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2024 All rights reserved.
Book review:
American Scripture:
Making the Declaration of Independence
…basically, it’s trash talk to King George
by Pauline Maier
–
Writing Rainbows: Poems for Grown-Ups with 59 free verse and haiku poems,
and the rest of my poetry books are for sale on Amazon (paperback and Kindle)
and free in Kindle Unlimited, search Amazon for “Richard Carl Subber”
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by Richard Subber | Oct 15, 2024 | Reflections, Tidbits
A lesson for mornings…
“Life is wide. There’s room to take a new run at it.”
Ivan Doig (1939-2015)
American novelist
Our country is suffering in these parlous times. Optimism isn’t the first thing I think of when I wake each morning.
Nevertheless, this epigram from Ivan Doig is a lesson.
I’m going to keep working hard at taking a new run at life.
The track is wide, indeed.
There’s room to do some good things.
By the way, it’s a good bet you’ll like everything by Ivan Doig. My favorite is This House of Sky, his memoir of growing up in Montana. The Bartender’s Tale is really good, too.
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2024 All rights reserved.
Home Team: Poems About Baseball (book review)
Edwin Romond hits another homer…
–
Seeing far: Selected poems with 47 free verse and haiku poems,
and the rest of my poetry books are for sale on Amazon (paperback and Kindle)
and free in Kindle Unlimited, search Amazon for “Richard Carl Subber”
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by Richard Subber | Oct 12, 2024 | Poetry, Tidbits
orange you going to read this?
Someone said, “Nothing rhymes with orange.”
I said, “No, it doesn’t.”
Take your time with this one.
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Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2024 All rights reserved.
For a change of pace,
read this book review
of one woman’s desperate childhood,
The Homeplace by Marilyn Nelson
–
As with another eye: Poems of exactitude with 55 free verse and haiku poems,
and the rest of my poetry books are for sale on Amazon (paperback and Kindle)
and free in Kindle Unlimited, search Amazon for “Richard Carl Subber”
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by Richard Subber | Oct 8, 2024 | Theater and play reviews
Versailles is what it used to be, mostly…
Movie review:
A Little Chaos
A Little Chaos (2014, rated R, 117 minutes) didn’t win any prizes but it’s a modest prize of a movie.
It’s a fictional story about the very real gardens at Versailles, the almost unimaginable residence for French kings that first existed in 1623 as a hunting lodge.
Kate Winslet, as Madame Sabine de Barra, rather stoically portrays a talented woman (garden designer) who cannot be ignored in an undeniably man’s world.
Alan Rickman adds some comic touches to his character as King Louis XIV, and he learns from Madame de Barra and encourages her to design the spectacular Ballroom Grove (a tourist destination today).
There is an almost incidental love interest that frames the final, almost frivolous moments of the movie.
The drama is in the intrigues and the blunderings and the jealousies of the men who surround Madame de Barra and make her life difficult.
(Rated R for two seconds of inoffensive nudity)
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Movie Review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2024 All rights reserved.
Old Friends (book review)
Tracy Kidder tells truth about old age…
–
My first name was rain: A dreamery of poems with 53 free verse and haiku poems,
and the rest of my poetry books are for sale on Amazon (paperback and Kindle)
and free in Kindle Unlimited, search Amazon for “Richard Carl Subber”
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by Richard Subber | Oct 3, 2024 | Book reviews, Books, Human Nature, Theater and play reviews
bergin makes it worse…
Play review:
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
A 1962 play by Edward Albee
New York: Scribner Classics, 1962, 2003
243 pages
It’s not a feel-good play.
After you start to move again after you finish reading it, probably you’ll end up thinking that your life is better than you thought it was. George and Martha do a pretty good job of proving that hell on earth is possible.
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? is almost a non-stop exaltation of how to be mean, sad, vicious, heartbroken, desperate, delirious, murderous, inhibited, ignorant, ambitious, empty, and longing, more or less all at the same time.
George and Martha, an aging couple on a rundown college campus, stage their terrible show for the benefit of a young professor, Nick, and his young wife, Honey, in the wee hours of a morning when each of them has something better to do, but isn’t doing it.
None of them make you think of the Cleaver family.
Arthur Hill was George and Uta Hagen was Martha in the first stage presentation in October 1962.
In the 1966 film version, Richard Burton was George and Elizabeth Taylor was Martha.
Both productions are slam bang downers, just like the play.
No production of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? will make you think of the Cleavers.
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Play review. Movie review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2024 All rights reserved.
Book review: Shantung Compound
They didn’t care much
about each other…
by Langdon Gilkey
–
Seeing far: Selected poems with 47 free verse and haiku poems,
and the rest of my poetry books are for sale on Amazon (paperback and Kindle)
and free in Kindle Unlimited, search Amazon for “Richard Carl Subber”
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by Richard Subber | Sep 26, 2024 | Tidbits
spread the word
The wise one said:
“I’ve started telling everyone
about the benefits of eating dried grapes.
It’s all about raisin awareness.”
Just take some time to think about what’s important to you.
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Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2024 All rights reserved.
Book review: “Bartleby, the Scrivener”
Loneliness beyond understanding…
by Herman Melville
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Above all: Poems of dawn and more with 73 free verse poems,
and the rest of my poetry books are for sale on Amazon (paperback and Kindle)
and free in Kindle Unlimited, search Amazon for “Richard Carl Subber”
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