Vanessa M. > Recent Status Updates

Exiles=meh. Too much of using one another to cause hurt for another. Chamber Music and assorted poems= Good. Not that I know a thing about poetry but I liked it all. Excerpts from Ulysses=familiar and enjoyable. Makes me want to read it in its entirety again.

Dubliners=chef's kiss. Portrait of the Artist...=fine lines and I know it's Dedalus's stream-of-consciousness but it's too much Stephen Dedalus for me. I like him in Ulysses with Bloom and Buck Mulligan, et. al. On to The Exiles.

We finished this afternoon--absolutely fabulous--I cried at the end. A great, short audio listen that we both enjoyed very much.

Our breakfast listen. One can't go wrong with the narration of Charleton Heston. I was curious to know this story better after listening to my book of Hemingway short stories. Joe's thrilled for us to explore the works of Hemingway together.

Ok not twee anymore as the war orphans were brought into the story. I'm ruining my makeup...

A little twee--but 'tis the season. A little post-WWII historical fiction, a little romance.

"She took a look at life, for she had a clear sense of it there, something real, something private, which she shared neither with her children nor with her husband. A sort of transaction went on between them, in which she was on one side, and life was on the other, and she was always trying to get the better of it, as it was of her; and sometimes they parlayed (when she sat alone); ..."

"That loss was the greatest thing that ever happened to me. It taught me that some lessons can only come to us in the guise of sadness. Some of our greatest gifts start in ways that will tempt us to turn away from what is being offered. But if we have the strength and the will and the faith to accept the bad with the good, we can be rewarded with a richness that is truly beyond human understanding."

I see his brilliance as a writer. 'The Snows of Kilimanjaro,' 'The Gambler, The Nun, and the Radio,' 'A Clean, Well-Lighted Place,' and 'A Day's Wait' are among my favorites. He's not one I can cozy up to but I see the masterful strokes in the sparse wording, the gritty language, the hard edging surrounding his stories. I also see him as a person in each story. His presence is in every one of them.

I don't take naturally to Hemingway's writing and thus want to dig deeper to glean appreciation for his style. I began with the story 'Fathers and Sons.' which was an excellent start. I made some parallels to Turgenev's story of the same title and read about how Nick Adams is a fictional representation of Hemingway that captures some of the real-life relations between he and his father.

I'm very emotionally keyed up after reading this. I've cried most of the morning. There's something about his common sense, "tell-it-as-it-is" form of writing that moved and has shaken me. I'm so grateful to "meet" him via this book, and to learn about his life, his family, his career, his depression, his stroke, and his way back up from the murky depths.

Thank God Gisele noticed the signs of a stroke and pushed to get Senator Fetterman to Lancaster General.

Whoopsie daisy! We watched Gangs of New York over the weekend and I want to know more about Five Points. Excellent thus far.

This is a print-on-demand copy; no pagination.

General Franks's mother-in-law, Gaynelle, took care of his mother and was with her when she passed from cancer. "I recognized again that the bond of love extended past the ties of blood." This concept has been on my heart for many years. The family umbrella encompasses not only blood family but found family, chosen family, blended families, etc. These connections and relationships are vitally important.