Alone at night, when I was twelve years old, I looked at the planet Mars and I said, ‘Take me home!’ And the planet Mars took me home, and I never came back. So I’ve written every day in the last 75 years. I’ve never stopped writing. – Ray Bradbury I’ve been reading a lot
This isn’t a post about Downton Abbey. But it is a post about Wilfred Owen, and he seems to be popping up a lot lately because of Downton. Media Bistro recently published a “Downton Abbey Reading List” and The New York Times even did a piece about Downton and how publishers were using America’s interest
I spent the last few weeks eating pies and watching costume dramas and reading Claire Tomalin’s Dickens Biography. I gained five pounds, discovered the wonderfully squared jawline of a young Douglas Booth, and began to suspect that my favorite Victorian novelist was a wee bit fond of hallucinogenics (see: henbane). I also slept. A lot.
I’ve been listening to the Charlie Brown Christmas Album and various Vince Guaraldi holiday hits since mid-September. They’re all mildly sedative and put the calm in me. I spent most of last week in the hospital. I didn’t get there on my own merit – a certain someone decided to have a stroke, and there
Junot Diaz made me cry. Twice. Not his writing . Because, I’ve gotta be honest. I haven’t read any of it yet. (Not yet.) But his voice. I have absolutely zero in common with the man. Our backgrounds are not at all similar. Our lives, current, even less so. But hearing him speak really lit
You know stress is getting the better of you when you wake up at 4:00am-screaming. I used to do this routinely. The Euro found it amusing, until he didn’t. Then he started sleeping in the guest bedroom because “you’re going to give me a heart attack and I’d really rather you not, thanks.” But that
If you’re in London this summer stop by the National Portrait Gallery’s BP Portrait Award Exhibition and see “Mo and Kev” by artist Chris Holt. I’ve mentioned Chris’s artistic talents before and you’ll see from his bio on the National Portrait Gallery’s website that he’s also a BAFTA nominated director, writer, and producer. So you
Flynn and I have an ongoing fantasy involving Bill Murray and Steve Martin – circumstance throws the four of us together and we live happily ever after on an island in the south pacific, eating cheese and drinking wine and spearing the occasional sailfish. That sort of thing. On Tuesday I put on my traveling
I recently had the pleasure of being introduced to author Paul Elwork whose debut novel The Girl Who Would Speak For the Dead (Amy Einhorn Books/Penguin Group) was released in March. The title and cover are good and gothic and more than enough to pull you in – but it’s the story that keeps you
Whenever anyone mentions Westminster Abbey around Steph she gets all crazy-eyed and shouts out LONGSHANKS! It has to do with her obsession with William Wallace and a kind of temporary Tourette’s. London is a pretty camera-friendly place, but there’s no photographs allowed inside the Abbey. Unless you’re Steph. She’s a bit of a ninja and
Jane (Mia Wasikowska) and Mr. Rochester (Michael Fassbender) I am, quite frankly, aghast that the movie Jane Eyre is only on limited release – 300 theatres nationwide, or something ridiculous like that. I never was much a fan of Jane Austen. I read her entire library in middle school, because that’s what you do when
A man’s library is a sort of harem. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson The Euro spent some one-on-one time with his folks back in the autumn and I’ve just gotten around to downloading the photos from his trip. One of the things I love about the man is this: the way he loves books. One of his
