Top Posts @ 4 Deer Oak
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Liberate Your Art
Category Archives: Books
Peaceful Morning
Ingredients for a perfect breakfast: A cup of java, a slice of orange, a book, served on the deck while listening to the gulls and the surf. I could do this every morning. But, if I didn’t have the … Continue reading
An Old Book
I was rummaging at my sister’s today, looking for something at her request in her spare bedroom. Being easily distracted — I should have a bumper sticker that reads: “I stop to read books” — I saw a number … Continue reading
Sunday Quote, Cicero (2012, Week 50)
If you have a library and a garden, you have everything you need. ~ Cicero
Posted in Books, Photo, Sunday Quote
Tagged Cicero, Gardening, Hawthorne, Photography, PostADay, reading
Quick! What are you reading now?
It’s been months since I’ve answered one of the prompts on Booking Through Thursday. But I can’t pass this one up! Just finished: Wench, Dolen Perkins-Valdez A book about a young slave woman in the 1850′s who travels north with … Continue reading
What I’ll be reading tomorrow
I stopped into a branch of the library this afternoon to return some books. It wasn’t my usual branch so I felt a bit upended, like when you try shopping in an unfamiliar grocery store: you know what is there, … Continue reading
And the soup was still hot
I was saddened today to learn that the gifted and delightfully grumpy Maurice Sendak has died at the age of 83. I remember first reading Where the Wild Things Are in a children’s literature class in college. I thought it … Continue reading
Posted in Books
Tagged Children's Literature, Colbert, Maurice Sendak, Walken, Where the Wild Things Are
10 Comments
Blue Nights, Joan Didion
There was a time, about 25 years ago when I thought Joan Didion was the best essayist around. I thought she was a no-holds barred writer who was insightful and spot-on with her cultural commentary. At a certain point, … Continue reading
Posted in Books, criticism
Tagged Blue Nights, book review, death, grief, joan didion, john gregory dunne, literature, nonfiction, PostADay, writing
11 Comments
Year’s End – All the cool kids do a wrap up
There are traditions during the last week of the year that are just as certain to occur as those pre-Christmas traditions we’re all familiar with. The calendar turns to 12/26 and you can expect enormous crowds at the mall, long … Continue reading
Posted in Books, Movies, theatre
Tagged Abrahame Verghese, Ann Patchett, Best of, Bill Cunningham, books, Coriolanus, movies, NaBloPoMO, opera, Patti Smith, PostADay2011, Ralph Fiennes, Royal Shakespeare Co, Sleep No More, Theatre, Year End
2 Comments
Books, Art: Reflecting Life
I recently came across this video, part of the Metropolitan Museum’s Connections series, an interesting view of books from Ken Soehner, Chief Librarian at the museum. I almost didn’t watch this video because of the quote on the cover page … Continue reading
Posted in Art, Books
Tagged art, books, ebooks, Metropolitan Museum of Art, NaBloPoMO, PostADay2011, Van Gogh, Vincent Van Gogh
Standing Back to See What’s There
Today, I started reading The Ghost Map, Stephen Johnson’s book on the cholera epidemic in 1850′s London and how John Snow’s approach to the disease changed the way we think about many things, not just cholera specifically, or even disease, … Continue reading
Posted in Books, Maps
Tagged birds-eye view of things, London, maps, NaBloPoMO, PostADay2011, The Ghost Map, things not seen
