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.