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.
* * * * * *
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”
* * * * * *
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.
* * * * * *
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”
* * * * * *
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)
* * * * * *
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”
* * * * * *
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.
* * * * * *
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”
* * * * * *
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.
* * * * * *
Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2024 All rights reserved.
Book review: “Bartleby, the Scrivener”
Loneliness beyond understanding…
by Herman Melville
–
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”
* * * * * *
by Richard Subber | Sep 22, 2024 | Book reviews, Books, History, Human Nature, Power and inequality, World history
not everything is vanity
Book review:
The Bombing of Auschwitz:
Should the Allies have Attempted It?
Michael J. Neufeld and Michael Berenbaum, eds.
New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2000
350 pages with extensive notes, bibliography, and index
The Bombing of Auschwitz: Should the Allies have Attempted It? is a retrospective, somewhat repetitive but broadly didactic selection of 15 arguments for and against the bombing of Auschwitz, with more than 40 primary source documents.
You’ll learn a lot about the terrible dilemma that the Allies faced—and some of them tried to ignore—during World War II. If the Allies had tried to bomb the crematoria, would Jewish lives have been saved? At what cost to the overall war effort?
Neufeld and Berenbaum offer 15 points of view, but, of course, the questions can’t be answered with full confidence.
Sadly, we can’t re-do the solitary track of history.
* * * * * *
Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2024 All rights reserved.
Book review: Lord of the Flies
Never more relevant…
by William Golding
–
In other words: Poems for your eyes and ears with 64 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”
* * * * * *
