Mary Costello – A New Voice

03 Sunday May 2015

Posted by Richard in Escapes and Pleasures

Tags

"Academy Street", "Brooklyn", "Stoner", Colm Toibin, Irish fiction, John Williams, Mary Costello, MillersTime Favorite Reads, Politics & Prose Bookstore

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Rather than wait until the December posting of favorite reads, let me draw your attention to an author and a book I recently found delightful — Mary Costello’s Academy Street.

This first novel is quite short, 146 pages, but somehow this Irish writer has managed to pack a full life into the story of Tess, an Irish woman who comes to live and to stay in America after spending the first part of her life in Ireland.

Initially, Academy Street reminded me of a favorite read of a few years ago, Colm Toibin’s Brooklyn, also a story of an Irish immigrant (female) who comes to America.

But in the short time it took me to read Mary Costello’s lovely gem, I thought of another favorite, John Williams’ Stoner, also a portrait of a person’s whole life. Both Williams and Costello seem to ask the question of the value of their main character’s entire life.

Home Is Only Two Blocks Away

01 Friday May 2015

Posted by Richard in Escapes and Pleasures

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Almost, Anna Bakery, Chinatown, Chinese Food, Millerstime, Sam Wo, Sam Wo Bakery & Restaurant, San Francisco, Thommie Award. Thomas Wolfe, You Can Go Home Again, You Can't Go Home Again

Thomas Wolfe, it turns out, is not entirely correct.

Though, in this case,”Home” has moved two blocks (three minutes walking or 52 seconds by car).

Pix by Anita Rechler

Yes. Yes. Yes.

Sam Wo’s is coming back.

Maybe as soon as this summer.

Films, Films, Films

21 Tuesday Apr 2015

Posted by Richard in Escapes and Pleasures

≈ 2 Comments

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"A Brilliant Young Mind", "About Elly", "Clouds of Silas Maria", "Gemma Bovery", "GETT: The Trial of Viviane Amsalem", "Seymour: An Introduction", "The Curious Incident of the Dog at Midnight", "The Farewell Party", "The Kugelmass Episode", "The Salt of the Earth", "While We Were Young", "Wild Tales", Films, Movies

Ten films for you to keep in mind. Six of these are in the theaters now.

Five of the ten get my highest ratings — four and a half or five stars.

A Brilliant Young Mind *****

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You’ll have to wait for the summer for this one — Samuel Goldwyn Films just purchased the US distribution rights — but mark it down. It’s a very good one.

A Brilliant Young Mind is Morgan Matthews’ drama about a 16 year old autistic math prodigy; it was inspired by Matthews’ own 2007 documentary, Beautiful Young Minds. That documentary followed the young British International Mathematical Olympiad team through their selection process, their training, and the actual contest itself in 2006.

A Gentle Gem

12 Sunday Apr 2015

Posted by Richard in Escapes and Pleasures

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

"Seymour: An Introdcution", Classical Music, Composer, Documentary, Ethan Hawke, Pianist, Seymour Bernstein, Teacher

Seymour: An Introduction *****

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I suspect most of us have never heard of Seymour Bernstein.

Although I enjoy classical music, I did not know his name nor his work, until last night.

Thanks to the actor Ethan Hawke, however, Bernstein may gain some recognition outside of a small circle of people in the music world. In his first work as a movie director — this a documentary – Hawke has given us a gem.

MillersTime Wins an Award

25 Wednesday Mar 2015

Posted by Richard in Escapes and Pleasures

≈ 9 Comments

Tags

"A Sad Apology", "Thomas Wolfe Was Wrong", "You Can Go Home Again...Almost", Millerstime, Sam Wo's Chinese Restaurant, Thommie Award, You Can't Go Home Again

For real.

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Normally I wouldn’t brag, but my wife Ellen insists I post the following:

While looking at my email in the middle of the night recently (I know, bad form), I saw this: Congrats! You’ve won a Thommie Award for outstanding work on your blog “MillersTime”. I thought it was spam and almost deleted it.

But I took a chance and opened the email. Don’t we all like winning awards?

I saw that a group named Thomas Wolfe Was Wrong was looking for writers who have commented on whether or not you can go home again (the adage taken from Wolfe’s 1940 novel You Can’t Go Home Again).

In choosing MillersTime as “our first recipient of the prestigious Thommie Award” — for excellence in literary interpretation — they cited me for “rescinding (my) initial comment regarding Thomas Wolfe’s faultiness.” They cited my post A Sad Apology and quoted from what I had written:

In October of last year, I wrote, “Thomas Wolfe was wrong. You can go home again – almost.”… . Sam Wo’s is closing. You can read about the details as written in the SF Chronicle, but basically, the place is so far from being acceptable to the Health Department, that it would take a mammoth rebuilding to keep it open… … And so my apologies to the also deceased Thomas Wolfe. After going ‘home’ to Sam Wo’s for the last 50 years, that is now no longer possible.

Basically, after returning to my favorite San Francisco Chinese Restaurant, Sam Wo’s, I wrote a review (You Can Go Home Again…Almost), saying it was still a good restaurant, and, therefore, Thomas Wolfe was wrong in his famous adage.

Not long after that post, I was ‘forced’ to write another one acknowledging the closing of Sam Wo’s. I think it was that post (A Sad Apology) that accounted for my winning of the Thommie Award.

I sincerely want to thank the Thomas Wolfe Was Wrong folks for this ‘prestigious’ Thommie Award.

Miami Film Festival – 2015

12 Thursday Mar 2015

Posted by Richard in Escapes and Pleasures

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"Cut Snake", "Paco de Lucia", "Set Fire to the Stars", "The Fool", "The Salt of the Earth", "Warsaw 44", "Wild Tales", #MiamiFF, 32nd Miami Film Festival

We spent an all-too-brief time this past weekend at the Miami Film Festival. As we found and enjoyed in last year’s Philadelphia Film Festival, we loved the idea and actuality of seeing three films a day, often very different films.

The main drawback, of course, is the lack of time to savor each film. Still, I suspect we will make a habit of going back to both Philly and Miami, where it is possible to get into almost every film, assuming just a bit of advanced planning. And the costs are reasonable.

Six of the seven films we saw over two plus days are ones that are worth considering if you love movies.

Here are very brief notes on them:

“He Wanted the Moon”

26 Thursday Feb 2015

Posted by Richard in Escapes and Pleasures

≈ 1 Comment

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"An Unquiet Mind", "Darkness Visible", "He Wanted the Moon", bipolar disease, Dr. Abigail Zuger, Dr. Perry Baird, Eve Claxton, Kay Redfield Jamison, Mimi Baird, NYTimes, William Styron

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He Wanted the Moon: The Madness and Medical Genius of Dr. Perry Baird, and His Daughter’s Quest to Know Him. By Mimi Baird, with Eve Claxton. Crown. 272 pages.

The book is autobiography, biography, science, history and literature all in one, as instructive as any textbook and utterly impossible to put down.

from NYTimes review by Abigail Zuger, M.D.

If you’ve read William Styron’s small masterpiece Darkness Visible, you’ve ‘heard’ from a wonderful writer what “madness” is and what it feels like.

If you’ve read Kay Redfield Jamison’s An Unquiet Mind, you know, from both a personal and a scientific perspective, what it is to experience bipolar disease today (manic depression).

Now comes a just released book, He Wanted the Moon, to add to those two wonderful insights into what it is like to experience mental illness. Or in the case of this book, what it was like to experience bipolar disease before we understood it or had any treatment for it.

This one has many of the strengths of the two previous books, and more. I indeed agree with the review quoted above that it is “autobiography, biography, science, history and literature all in one, as instructive as any textbook and utterly impossible to put down.” And, I would add, it is told in such a manner that you haven’t read anything quite like it before.

At least I haven’t.

“Ghost Boy” and “Wonder”

24 Tuesday Feb 2015

Posted by Richard in Escapes and Pleasures

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

"Ghost Boy", "Wonder", Books Most Enjoyed by MillersTime Readers in 2014, Martin Pistorius, Megan Lloyd Davies, NPR, R.J. Palacio, Raquel Jaramillo

I’ve read two books recently that I think will have interest for some MillersTime readers, especially for those of you who have had some involvement with children, adolescents, and/or adults with some form of disability, either in your teaching or counseling, in your own family or with someone you know. Both books have been ‘out’ for a while but are new to me. Both books are quick reads. One is nonfiction; the other is fiction. They address somewhat similar issues, and both are positive books that have much to teach all of us.

Easter Island: Thru Ellen’s Lens

18 Wednesday Feb 2015

Posted by Richard in Escapes and Pleasures

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

"Ahu", "Moai", "Pukai", Ahu Akivi, Ahu Tongariki, Anakena, Easter Island, Elllen Miller, Explora Lodge, Orongo, Rano Raraku, Rapa Nui, Tahai

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As I wrote earlier (see The Trip: Easter Island & Antarctica), the time we spent on Easter Island was a revelation to us. Tho it was an ‘add on’ to our Antarctica trip, it turned out to be a fascinating few days.

I’m posting here a few of Ellen’s photos from that part of the trip and then linking below to her full slide show of Easter Island (Rapa Nui).

A bit of explanation might help as you look at the photos. The island is small and the moai (pronounced mo-eye – statues representing ancestors) and their ahu (platforms) are spread over the 64 square mile island. While there are remnants of as many as 887 statues spread throughout the island**, only about 100 are ‘standing’. There are only about 5 or 6 principle sites where they have been restored to their ‘original’ positions. There are also other historic sites on the island which relate to how the Rapa Nui people lived. The Explora Lodge, where we stayed, arranged guided hikes which often took in visits to several sites on the same day. (We couldn’t always arrange these at the optimal time from a photographic point of view, but Ellen has made the best of what she had to work with.)

Antarctica: Thru Ellen’s Lens

15 Sunday Feb 2015

Posted by Richard in Escapes and Pleasures

≈ 16 Comments

Tags

Antarctic Circle, Antarctica, Ellen Miller, Photos

A dozen or so to start you off.

These, and those in Ellen Miller’s Antarctica slide show (see instructions below), come from Ushuaia & the Beagle Channel, the Drake Passage, the South Shetland Islands, the Lemaire Channel, Booth & Petermann Islands, the Antarctic Circle, Port Lockroy and Paradise Bay.

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The Trip: Easter Island & Antarctica

12 Thursday Feb 2015

Posted by Richard in Escapes and Pleasures

≈ 7 Comments

Tags

"Ahu", "Moai", Anarctica Peninsula, Antarctica, Drake Passage, Easter Island, Icebergs, Lindblad Expeditions, National Geographic, Rapa Nui, The Explorer, Ushuaia

Usually, I’m not at a loss for words.

But we have just returned from a three-week trip, first to one of the smallest, most isolated and most fascinating islands in the middle of the Pacific Ocean and then on to the most remote, virtually uninhabited and most picturesque continent on our planet, and I’m having trouble trying to capture what we experienced.

Nothing I can write will match the photos that my wife Ellen has taken and that I’ll post on this site when she has sorted through her 1600 saved pictures.

In the meantime, however, here are two iPhone photos I took and an attempt at relating some of the impact these two very different places had on me.

“American Sniper” – Two Conflicting Views

20 Tuesday Jan 2015

Posted by Richard in Escapes and Pleasures

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

"American Sniper", 9/11, Autobiography, Chris Kyle, Clint Eastwood, David P. Stang, Film, Iraq War, Richard Millier, Terrorism

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A long time friend suggested we both see Clint Eastwood’s American Sniper and then get together to talk about the film.

We haven’t had that talk in person yet, but I suggested we could both write about the film, and I’d post what we both wrote (without having seen each other’s comments).

I’ve posted his first and mine afterwards.

Please feel free to add your thoughts, civilly of course, in the Comment section of this post.

32 Hours in NYC*

05 Monday Jan 2015

Posted by Richard in Escapes and Pleasures, Family and Friends

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

"The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time", Blue Fin, Chinatown, Civic Hall, Eataly, Excellent Dumpling House, Genesis, International Center of Photography, New York City, Rockefeller Center, Saks, Sebastiao Salgado, Tarallucci E Vino, Times Square, Union Square, Upland Restaurant

* Any resemblance to the NYTimes series “36 Hours in ____” (you name the city) is mostly accidental.

Most New Yorkers stay as far away from the city as they can the last few days of the year, but we actually love it. So, we planned to meet our KC daughter there just before New Year’s. In the end, she couldn’t make the trip. But we did.

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32 Hours in New York City

“Selma” *****

27 Saturday Dec 2014

Posted by Richard in Escapes and Pleasures

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

"Selma", Ava DuVernay, Carment Ejogo, Coretta Scott King, Dr. Martin Luther King, LBJ. David Oyelowo, MLK, Paul Webb, Pres. Lyndon Johnson, Tom Wilkinson

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Selma *****

If you lived through the 60’s, then there is a lot in this film that you will remember and some that you may have forgotten or not known. But it’s certainly a film to see.

If you are of a later generation and only know MLK because of his “I Have a Dream” speech and/or because of a national holiday that now takes place in his honor, I hope you’ll see this film.

Similar to the recent film Lincoln, where the focus was on a slice of President Lincoln’s life, so too is Selma a slice of a man’s life, Martin Luther King’s life.

Know that Selma is not a biography of King, but as is sometimes the case, when we look at a part of the whole, we can learn and see perhaps much of the whole. It also leaves room for the imagination and the opportunity to seek further information.

The Books Most Enjoyed by MillersTime Readers in 2014

26 Friday Dec 2014

Posted by Richard in Escapes and Pleasures

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

Books Most Enjoyed in 2014, Favorite Reads, MillersTime Readers Favorite Books

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“A Best Friend Is Someone Who Gives Me a Book I’ve Never Read”- A. Lincoln

Once again, you’re gonna need some time for this post.

And probably pen and paper to jot down some titles that you’ll likely want to add to your ‘to read’ list for 2015.

Despite a recurring theme in contributors’ emails about not reading as much this year, not finding as many memorable books and not remembering the titles read, I think you’ll find a diverse and rich list of titles and comments.

Seventy-four of you contributed this year, listing approximately 450 books, with fiction leading nonfiction 60% to 40%. At least 300 of the titles were only listed once. The female-male division of contributors was 56%-44% (F/M), about what it has been in the past. The contributors are listed alphabetically to make it easier to find specific individual’s choices.

Titles that appeared three times or more were:

All the Light We Cannot See (F) by Anthony Doerr (12)
The Goldfinch (F) by Donna Tartt (11)
The Boys in the Boat (NF) by Daniel James Brown (6)
No Place to Hide (NF) by Glenn Greenwald (6)
Americanah (F) Chimananda Ngozi Adichie (6)
The Lowland (F) by Jhumpa Lahiri (6)
Stoner (F) by John Williams (6)
The Invention of Wings (F) by Monk Kidd (5)
A Constellation of Vital Phenomena (F) Anthony Marra (5)
The Children’s Act (F) Ian McEwan (4)
The Signature of All Things (F) by Elizabeth Gilbert (4)
The Light Between the Oceans (F) by. M.L. Stedman (4)
Gone Girl (F) by Gillian Flynn (4)
Zealot (NF) by Resa Azlan (3)
Wonder (F) by R.J. Palacio (3)
The Woman Upstairs (F) by Claire Messud (3)
The Narrow Road to the Deep North (F) by Richard Flanagan (3)
Orphan Train (F) Christine Baker Kline (3)
To Kill a Mockingbird, (F) Harper Lee (3)

For me, however, the strength and value of this (and previous) years’ lists have more to do with what contributors said about the books they enjoyed than the number of times a book was listed.

At the suggestion of one contributor, I have linked each book to Amazon’s site so you can read more about that particular book. I am not a fan of Amazon nor am I encouraging purchasing through them, but I did want to give readers a link to more information about each book. Hopefully, you will consider supporting your independent bookstore if you have one in your area.

Just a reminder that this list is not meant to be the best books published in 2014, but rather what the title of this posting states – The Books Most Enjoyed by MillersTime Readers in 2014.

The List: