The Content Reader

Rose City Reader , is hosting Book beginnings on Friday. She says: Please join me every Friday to share the first sentence (or so) of the book you are reading, along with your initial thoughts about the sentence, impressions of the book, or anything else the opener inspires. Please remember to include the title of the book and the author’s name. Freda’s voice is hosting Friday 56 and the rules are: *Grab a book, any book. *Turn to page 56 or 56% in your eReader (If you have to improvise, that's ok.)  *Find any sentence, (or few, just don't spoil it) *Post it. *Add your (url) post below in Linky. Add the post url, not your blog url. *It's that simple. My book this week is The Go-Between by L.P. Hartley This absolutely fantastic book has one of the most famous book beginnings ever. Beginning "The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there." Page 56 "I decided it would be impossible to like him, and immediately...

"Four women connect four men by a slender but steely thread. One man is an earl, and three times prime ministers; the second a Nobel prizewinner who turned down a knighthood, the Poet Laureateship and the Order of Merit; the third is a baronet, who has been both director of the National Gallery and president of the Royal Academy. The thread is the Macdonald sisters - four women who were the mothers of Stanley Baldwin and Rudyard Kipling and the wives of Edward Burne-Jones and Edward Poynter. " Alice, Georgiana, Agnes, Louisa and Edith Macdonald, five sisters of which four of them married into  the history of the Victorian cultural age. The Macdonald sisters came from the lower middle classes without any great prospects of social advancement. However, they made their name, as wives and mothers, to some of the most famous men (yes, they were all men) of their times. The sisters received an education and through their one surviving brother, Frederic, who studied at Univer...

Joining Guiltless Reading for Bookmark Monday. Today I have two bookmarks from Argentina! Yay! My husband, Martin,  was there last week for a business trip, and I asked him to go to Corrientes to check out this street with all the book shops. If you read my review of All Roads Lead to Austen , you know what I mean. I don't think he found that actual book shop, but he found a lot of others and came back with beautiful photos of one, which seemed to have been adapted from a theatre, Grand Splendid El Ateneo.  He also bought me a couple of bookmarks. One with the, maybe, most famous thing about Argentina, the TANGO and one magnetic one with wise words from Einstein. "Life is lika riding a bicycle. To keep your balance you must keep moving." Einstein

I have read another excellent biography by Claire Tomalin. The first one was about Charles Dickens and this is about Mrs Jordan, one of the best known actresses of her time. Claire Tomalin creates a fascinating and vivid portrait of a remarkable woman. Dorothea Bland was born on 22 November 1761, as one of six siblings. It is not clear whether her parents Francis Bland and Grace Phillips were married. Her mother was an actress and that is the career that Dorothea, or as she was commonly known, Dora, entered into. She was very talented, worked her way up towards the stages of London. But it started on the darker side. She was raped by a friend of the family, became pregnant and gave birth to her first daughter Frances, or Fanny, when she was hardly more than a child herself. After some years touring the countryside she came to London and success was almost immediate. She met Richard Ford, a police magistrate and lawyer, moved in with him and got three daughters. She left him several y...

Last weekend we took the car and drove over to Namur. There is an old Citadel which casts its shadow over the city. The old city is small and quite nice, and we took a stroll through the narrow streets. Passing by the church of Saint-Loup we ventured inside for a look. A beautiful church with a row of confession boots on each side along the church, beautifully carved and art pieces in themselves. Furthermore, there was an exhibition of a Russian artist, Aidan Salakhova. In the information sheet I read: " Her sculptures in the Église Saint-Loup continue the overarching theme of "Vices and Virtues", questioning how religions take account of the flesh or whether they deny it. How the female body is stigmatised as a symbol of temptation or modesty and how it can be protected. Her work addresses the taboos of our society, particularly those relating to desire and sexuality ." What attracted me specifically were the marble books she had created: " Another di...

I have read a variety of books lately, but not really had time to write about them. Here are three books that I finished recently, and that I enjoyed. The Holy Grail, History, Myth, Religion by Giles Morgan is an interesting summary of the Holy Grail and how it has appeared through history. From the very first pre-Christian sources on a magical vessel to the Cup of Christ. Continuing we enter into the magic world of King Arthur and the Holy Grail, where we also meet Merlin, Excalibur as well as Lancelot and Lady Guinevere, Camelot and visits the Isle of Avalon.

I wanted to read Virginia Woolf for a long time but somehow did not get around to do it. One day recently, I grabbed To the Lighthouse which I have had in my bookcase for quite some time. If this is something typically of her, I am a new fan. A wonderfully written book, with mesmerising characters. While reading I was thinking of the Bloomsbury group and her own family. How people gathered in the summers to be creative, social or anti-social, meeting friends and enjoying themselves. I read that this novel is partly autobiographical and it was a great strain for her to write it. The novel is divided into three parts; in the first part, we meet Mrs and Mr Ramsay, their family of eight children and invited friends and colleagues. The story starts when their son James wants to go to the Lighthouse and Mrs Ramsay promises to take him there tomorrow, should the weather be fine. Mr Ramsay spoils it by saying that the weather will not be fine.