Ethos (Free subscription) | 09/28/2008
Reading Irving Stone's Depths Of Glory, a riveting biography of Camille Pissarro, makes me appreciate Pissarro's art (and Stone's writing) in such an extraordinary way. Here Pissarro portrays one of his favorite retreats with light, balance and color that is...
The Blog Herald (Free subscription) | 07/20/2008
The writer is… an athlete required to break the four-minute mile every morning. — Irving Stone Replace writer with blogger and you have a good description of what the job of blogging is. I’ve been collecting quotes since I was very young. One of my favorite books is the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, which just celebrated it’s [...]
Business World (Free subscription) | 06/03/2008
Irving Stone's biographicalnovel of Michelangelo, dedicates several chapters to the Renaissance artist's four-year quest to paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel while perched atop a scaffold that allowed him to reach the vault, 20 meters above the floor. "No matter which way he leaned, crouched, lay or knelt, on his feet, knees or back, it was always in strain," says one particular passage.
The Liberal Blog Network (Free subscription) | 04/13/2008
Like many of you I'm enjoying the HBO series on John Adams. My first in depth introduction to John and Abigail Adams came some forty odd years ago from Irving Stone's Those Who Love a book that does an wonderful job of capturing the very special relationship John and Abigail shared. More recently I read Founding Brothers by Joseph Ellis, a book Charles recommends, a recommendation with which I heartily...
Blogging My Books (Free subscription) | 01/03/2008
What's better than a new challenge? A new challenge I can join without adding any more books to my reading list. I’ve already got 6 books planned for 2008 that qualify for this one. Dana is hosting THE CHUNKSTER CHALLENGE 2008 Here are the guidelines: To qualify the book must be 450 pps regular type OR 750 pps large text. You must read FOUR chunksters (one each quarter), you OBVIOUSLY may read more...
Blogging My Books (Free subscription) | 12/03/2007
3M is hosting another Decades Challenge – appropriately named Decades 08 . I didn't participate in the 2007 version of this, but the rules for the 2008 version make it just too hard to pass up: The rules are simple: 1. Read a minimum of 8 books in 8 consecutive decades in ‘08. 2. Books published in the 2000’s do not count. 3. Titles may be cross-posted with any other challenge. 4. You may change your...
Ethos (Free subscription) | 11/23/2007
This Thanksgiving weekend finds me totally immersed in Irving Stone's great autobiographical novel of Michelangelo. Here are quotes that have engrossed me so far... "The olives are pressed for oil and the wood is burned cooking soup. Both are consumed....
Jessica Schneider (Free subscription) | 09/16/2007
Frederic Edwin Church: Twilight in the Wilderness. The thing about these landscape painters is that I was fortunate enough to see the exhibit. These paintings are huge, like the size of a wall. I saw all the Thomas Cole paintings in a single room and they too are huge. The guard told me not to get any closer than 12 inches. Alright, I'm doing another post because my last post on paintings went over...
S. S. Trudeau (Free subscription) | 09/10/2007
Following up on my free techie books post, wherein I realize I’m keeping a bunch of heavy atoms in my orbit I’d be more free without, I’ve finally decided to seriously break up with my books. This is really part of a much longer process that began the first time I had to move, [...]
Polemica (Free subscription) | 08/11/2007
I've just finished reading Irving Stone's colossal tome, The Agony and the Ecstasy , a fictionalised biography of Michelangelo Buonarotti. Having recently visited Firenze (Florence) and gazed upon Michelangelo's David and his works within the Medici chapel in San Lorenzo, the book provided a lot of interesting historical context around the great works undertaken by the infamous artist throughout his...
anonymous (Free subscription) | 07/29/2007
Mr. M-mv and I watched Devil's Playground yesterday afternoon. While it was not nearly as disturbing as Jesus Camp (which, as I've mentioned before , is a horror movie masquerading as a documentary), it did make both of us a little — for lack of a better adjective — uncomfortable. Yes, the images of Amish teenagers attending what amounts to rave parties fueled by copious amounts of alcohol, drugs,...
LisNews (Free subscription) | 06/18/2007
Some priceless mementoes of our sixteenth president, including one of only three extant stovepipe hats, will now be housed in his Library and Museum in Springfield IL, thanks to a large acquisition from private donor Louise Taper of Beverly Hills,California. Taper began her fascination with Lincoln as a young mother upon reading Irving Stone's 'Love Is Eternal' (reference this article from American...
