"Bach" is the German word for a little stream or brook. Of Johann Sebastian Bach, Ludwig van Beethoven said: "His name should not be Brook, it should be Ocean." [Schwarzenbach (black brook in Vrbov) Without History: Marta Chamilova]
-via Boyton on Bach’s Birthday
A NEW Book Club for Busy People Blog who know that a bad day writing is better than a good day in the office... Sometimes We Read
Art of Living & Literature Across Frontiers: Kiss Me Like a Stranger
Sexual-excess memoirs often have a spiritual-discovery aspect to them, as do illness memoirs. Spirit-of-place memoirs often shade into the ethnic-identity memoir, which can, in certain instances, merge with the food memoir ...
The memoir has been on the march for more than a decade now. Readers have long since gotten used to the idea that you do not have to be a statesman or a military commander - or, like Saint-Simon or Chateaubriand, a witness to great events - to commit your life to print. But the genre has become so inclusive that it's almost impossible to imagine which life experiences do not qualify as memoir material.
• Every Life's Worth A Story... (But Do You Have To Publish It?) [There is no such thing as Women's Writing. Just as there is no such thing as Left-Handed Writing, Red-Headed Writing, European Writing, Northern Hemisphere Writing, or Writing from the Planet Earth. All of these categories are so large as to be meaningless The Stupidity Of Women's Writing (Whatever That Is) ; Catherine Keenan meets Rick Gekoski, whose quest for ever more rare and wonderful books has led to the Booker prize The treasure hunter ]
• · A convicted murderer and prison escapee led a secret life as a Chicago-area poet for nearly two decades Chicago Poet Was Mass. Murderer ; Tasmanian Tiger ; The Dragon curve (the paperfolding sequence) was discovered by physicist John Heighway and described by Martin Gardner in 1978. It is defined as follows: we fold a sheet of paper in half, then fold in half again, and again, etc. and then unfold in such way that each crease created by the folding process is opened out into a 90-degree angle. The Crakow Cathedral still has surviving Romanesque fragments including the St.Leonard crypt. The massive prehistoric bones suspended by chains to the left of the entrance are supposedly the bones of Krakus' dragon legend has it that when they fall the end of the world will be at hand Hunting hidden dragon curves in Bratislava
• · · Once movies can be delivered directly into the home all the cheap popcorn and clean floors in the world won't matter Is The Movie-Going Experience Running Out Of Steam? ; The intimate details of Hitler's life - from his fear that his lavatory might be poisoned to his habit of scratching his neck until it bled - are obsessing Germans once again amid a huge revival of interest in the Nazi era Hitler books 'show new obsession gripping Germans' ; Czech Republic ranks second in Europe in Ecstasy use Ecstasy
• · · · Amazon.com Knows, Predicts Shopping Habits ; Of the 300 or so foreign books that are translated into English and published each year in the United States, it is not difficult to imagine why Bloomsbury's Children's Books chose to publish a translation of Valérie Zenatti's When I Was A Soldier The experience of an outsider "looking in" ; Bolsheviks at the Australian Academy of Ballet The Kirov Ballet owes its name to Jozef Stalin
• · · · · Unpredictable life: Crowded House drummer dead: Paul Hester; They say the blues is the devil's music: Byron Bay provides blues and roots with a few laughs along the way Charisma comes in all shapes
• · · · · · Narrators of first-person claptrap like this often greet the reader at the door with moist hugs and complaisant kisses. I won't. I will not endear myself. I won't put on airs. I am not that pleasant. The older I get the less pleasant I am / A way to get very rich very easily and speedily by taking full advantage of the infinite gullibility of homo sapiens: Round up of Weekend Book Reviews ; Many psychologists are traumatised by the stories of those they help Putting therapists on the couch