the stories i were about to list-

i realize are so painful -

to understand as they chronicle my life -

but i love these books - i felt a connection:

Sidaartha - Herman Hesse

The Rocking Horse Winner - DH Lawrence

Candide - Voltaire

The Cantebury Tales - Geoffrey Chaucer

The Flying Change - Henry Taylor (poetry)

The Thorn Birds - Christine McCullough (hehe)

A Midsummer Night's Dream - Will's Shakespeare(play)

The Consolation of Philosophy - Boethius

Piers the Plowman (a medieval English text - forget who wrote it - perhaps Piers - seriously - I only read parts - but loved it)

The works of JD Salinger.

A few William Faulkner Books - so cool - it was over twenty years ago but the stream of conscious style - was almost like reading a movie today.

Novella - by Rainier Maria Rilke

The Gardener and the Frog. - Italo Calvino


The Name of the Rose - by Umberto Eco. (awesome.)

....

Right now - this is what i am remembering -
I'll come back to it.
Please -

can you say what you liked?

i was so connected to my books that i would keep them in boxes -

with a cataloguing of each box - completely -name and date of publication - edition -

I finally had to sell them - since I had no room -and also - the money helped -

There were art books and novels - histories -etc..

It's good to clear them out I think -
but superb books -

please forgive me - but I had a weakness for 1920's decadence-

the huge balls in Paris - put on by artists - sponsored by the people like the Vicompte de Noailles -

I liked Jean Cocteau - and

the surrealists-

and

Gertrude Stein and Alice Toklas etc..

also

there's a book.

Genius in Disguise - The Story of Harold Ross -
founder of the New Yorker mag
by Thomas Kunkel.
a fun page turner.

right now that 'age' though fun -
seems so much an age of denial.

I liked the parties though -

I so wanted to escape. Still do sometimes.

I hopefully will wear a costume this Halloween -

Pierrot?

maybe not - maybe some weird Greek/Canadian Mounty hybrid thing.

I remember seeing a picture of the face of Nijinsky - a Russian dancer -

oh the poor guy - he looked so upset -

It must have been a horror to be gay back then.

But he's a Giant in Dancing History. He triunphed despite that hurdle.

markgreyblue,

I love the scene in the newer movie "Phantom of the Opera" of the masquerade ball sponsored by Vicompte. Wow, that would have been great to be there.

I love Daphne Du Maurier's "Rebecca" (both the book and the movie starring Laurence Olivier.

"The Kite Runner," "Simple Abundance," "To Kill a Mockingbird" (book and movie), "Memoirs of a Geisha," and there are many older short stories my dad used to read to me, "The Night," "The Last Lesson," "The Willows," and I'm not sure of the authors right now.

nice!

I haven't seen Phantom yet - for some reason it spooks me.

I did love To Kill a Mockingbird so much!

But some of those balls I read about sound super -
did you ever see GiGi- ? The topic may not be great - but you sort of get a 1950's
verson of the balls that Gaston LaChaille -(Louis Jordan) go to kind of look just bizarre but fun -
Costumes - Art themes etc...

I can image getting lost in a dance - or then collapse in a corner - drinking talking ...


I will check out your list too - copy and paste it right now.

Thanks.

isn't Rebecca - the story of Madame X - by
John Singer Seargent?

what a painting!

lavendar ears...

I'm not familiar w/ a painting by that artist...this is a story written about a young girl (Joan Fontaine) who falls in love w/ a sophisticated man (Laurence Olivier) but their idyllic life in a huge manor house by the sea in England is haunted by his dead first wife, Rebecca. Lots of suspense and the book is so well-written you vividly feel you are *there.*