Tuesday, November 12, 2013

TWO GOOD READS

 
 
Woody Allen's  movie "Midnight in Paris" is not Academy Award material.
In fact I found the lead actor's whiney voice very annoying
but the scenes of my beloved Paris made the film a winner for me.
 
 
 
 Dabbling in the world of Hemmingway and Fitzgerald and those fascinating times in Paris when artists and writers gathered there, sparked an interest in Hemmingway in particular.
 
 
So when I came upon this book
 
 
 
I was eager to read it.
The writer, Paula McLain, has done her research, using personal diaries of Hadley, the wife in question, letters between Hadley and Hemmingway and also Hemmingway's own memoir "A Moveable Feast" to inform her characters.

In the final pages of Hemingway’s memoir, A Moveable Feast, about his early years in Paris. , he writes of Hadley, “I wished I had died before I ever loved anyone but her.”
 
I highly recommend it.
 
~~~~~~~~~~
 
"The Sandcastle Girls" is my most recent read.
 
It was written by Chris Bohjalian -- the grandson of  survivors of the Armenian genocide ( or ethnic cleansing ) by the Turks in 1916.
This is a story of ethnic destruction and endurance that seems to have slipped below my radar.
 
Now that I have read about it I have picked up snippets in current affairs programs but with a million and a half people killed it seems to me to have had little coverage.
 
Of course this may be because it has been denied by the Turks and therefore never managed to have been afforded the recognition it deserved.

 
I highly recommend it.
 
Cheers.
 

3 comments:

  1. Woody Allen movies...nah, I just never liked them much. The book about Hadley and Hemingway sounds good. The book about genocide, I don't know. I like learning about that sort of thing but it worries me. It's emotionally taxing.

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  2. I loved Midnight in Paris and I even bought the DVD so I could see it again.I think,like you,it was because of the lovely memories of Paris.I am going to put The Paris Wife on my wish list for Xmas.

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  3. Helen, don't know if you follow Mr Owl Wood but thought you particularly would enjoy this film review of his of Gravity ~ and a little cinema in the UK he is recommending, maybe one fr your next itenary http://theowlwood.blogspot.com.au/2013/11/realising-full-gravity-of-trip-to.html

    Always on the hunt for Summer reading ~ thank you.

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