Welcome to Litsy!

I‘ve mentioned a couple of times that I read all of Bourdain‘s books last year. His still photographer is doing a sale of these fairly reasonably priced prints ($120 US shipping included), and I ended up buying 3 (at his writing desk) and 4 (the iconic middle finger). After all that time with him last year, it‘ll be nice to have him near my bookshelves! Sale ends tomorrow.

http://www.davidscottholloway.com/bourdain-print-sale

This book is a great way to get to know (better) the artist, it focuses mainly on Pärt's search for innovation and inspiration, his quest for finding his musical language. The political background about how his work was impacted by the Soviet government is also interesting.
I loved how the illustrations managed to incorporate the music theme.

#OffMyShelf Nonfiction

Why I bought this book 18 years ago? 😂 I think I must have read a review, probably in EW? Glad this challenge finally made me pick it up. I too rarely read nonfiction - this was about Mary Shelly‘s half-sister‘s short life. Quite sad but I found it interesting. How Fanny‘s might have been different had her mother lived. Since little is known about Fanny Wollstonecraft, a lot of the book is more about her famous family.

😳 Yes, that seems like a good place to draw the line. In fact, it seems to me that the psychiatrists who performed that service, teaching torturers to suppress their feelings of guilt, were doing the exact opposite of what their mental health mandate ought to be!

"The very same people who had it constantly drummed into them that the only language they understood was that of force, now decided to express themselves with force . . . To the expression: 'All natives are the same, the colonized reply: 'All colonists are the same.'"
Given the brutality of colonization, expressions of explosive violence by the oppressed were, in his view, inevitable in the opening phase of a liberation war.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ This was interesting—a biography of Queen Elizabeth told through more than a hundred vignettes from throughout her life. I enjoyed the author‘s similar book, 99 Glimpses of Princess Margaret. This one was long at 20 hours, but the vignettes break it up nicely. A pick for anyone predisposed to be interested in books about the royal family.

Been going through my beloved Mom‘s book collection today and found quite a few memoirs and biographies. I have a feeling many of these will wind up on my TBR list. 🤩📚

#MartinLutherKingJrDay