My Sunday morning ritual for some time now, has been to make a pot of coffee and red the Sunday New York Times. I can't tell you what a luxury and a treat it is for me! The original reason I subscribed to delivery of the Sun.NYT was for the book review. I couldn't possibly read all the books I would like to read and the bk rev gives me summaries that keep me up to date and also show me how to think about books. One of the two features that tickle me about the bk rev are the questions for guests on page 6 and the graphic review on the end page. The graphic reviews are often hilarious and ALWAYS creative and thought provoking. Two of my favorites were drawings of the animals reviewing books and drawings of favorite protagonists. It got me to thinking of my all-time favorite main characters such as Anne of Green Gables, Jane Eyre, Hans Brinker of the Silver Skates, the girls in the Oudoor Girls on a Hike and later, Billy Pilgrim from Slaughterhouse Five, and the fireman Montage in Fahrenheit 451, just to name the ones who popped into mind right off.
I like the questions in the guest reviewers page:
1.What books are on your nightstand?
2.What was the last Great book you read?
3.Are there any classic novels you read for the first time?
4.Describe your ideal reading experience (when,where,what,how).
5.What's your favorite book no one has heard of?
6.Which writers working today do you admire most?
7.What genre do you enjoy reading most?
8.What 'classic' did you think was overrated?
9.What 3 writers would you invite to a dinner party (living or dead).
And I would like to add a question:
10.What writer or book do you think was underrated?
The article I liked most this Sunday was a review of the work of two British painters: Celia Paul and Cecily Brown, neither of whom I had ever heard of before. I looked up their work on my computer and took great interest in their lives and careers and their paintings.
There are generally four or five articles in the paper that catch my attention, sometimes more. The Sun.NYT is so good there are often articles in sections that I would NEVER read, articles in the Sports section or the Real Estate sections. Often the articles I read there populate my conversation for the next few weeks or even years such as an article I read on how to get rid of your antiques so you can sell your place. It fit in with a series of review of books on "Swedish Death Cleaning" and Marie Kondo's Tidying Up, that really got on my nerves. and in sports, I was interested in reading about the Williams sisters always, and also about how football is facing up to the reveation of the consequences of traumatic concussion.
On Television this week, I watched, spellbound, a newly released series on Netflix WORLD WAR II GREATEST EVENTS, in film footage from all over the world newly restored and colorized. It covered all the classic battles such as DDay, the Battle of Britain, The Ardenne Forest, Stalingrad, Midway and many more. An interesting fact of which I was not aware was that the result of a plea from Stalin for citizens to enlist was that ONE MILLION WOMEN enlisted as combat soldiers and that they specialized as snipers due to "dexterity, precision, and patience." They were a big factor in the street fighting at Stalingrad. I knew from the many movies I had seen on Stalingrad that women fought, but didn't know the number or about the snipers.
The other show I watched right after WWII was THE DEVIL NEXT DOOR about the arrest and trial of John Demjanjuk, the retired autoworker in the Midwest who was accused of being Ivan the Terrible, a sadistic gas chamber guard at Treblinka. A very interesting character in the series was the Israeli lawyer who defended him on trial in Israel. The lawyer took so much heat from his community over this as Demjanjuk was already convicted in everyone's minds and the most hated man in the country. No one wanted to see him defended, they wanted to string him up and kill him with their own bare hands! The lawyer was such a complex mix of ego, contrariness, courage and legal devotion, that he was a literary character all on his own.
By the way, I was never fully convinced that Demjanjuk was Ivan. I couldn't imagine that a man could be a sadistic psychopath for a year or two then be a normal good citizen and family man for 44 years, but my brother, who had been a marine in Vietnam said he could easily understand how a man can be bent by war and return to normal when returned to normal living. He had a good point.
Well, I am on my second cup of coffee and my second day with the paper, I save the Book Review for another day, so goodbye, it is time to get back to my reading!
Happy Trails,
Jo Ann
wrightj45@yahoo.com
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