thegoodfellas/blogset-br huggingface dataset:
happen. And she talks about that: "I still believed in possibilities then, still had the sense, so peculiar to New York, that something extraordinary would happen any minute, any day, any month."RavelingBy Peter Moore SmithMy brother wrote this book I had to put it on my list. It's a thriller, but it's also about the disintegration of a family and the ways in which our desire to protect one another can be destructive. I always thought writers were the bravest people, because they seemed to reveal so much of themselves in their work. My brother gave me an understanding of the process. He can take his experience and turn it 190 degrees, and it becomes something else, which is what I do with acting. He's made the art of writing not as foreign to me. I'm still so impressed by people who can create certain feelings on a page, but it was a revelation to see that what my brother and I do is, in a way, not so different.Tender Is The NightBy F. Scott FitzgeraldThe romance in this novel is so distinct, so interesting, and so surprising because it's so flawed. The couple Dick and Nicole Diver are gorgeous. You believe they're perfect, and then you find out that, in fact, they are deeply troubled she especially. Dick rescues Nicole for a time, but he can't save her; she's too unstable. So they don't make it they can't. It's an exquisite and unbearable love story.Our Bodies, OurselvesBy The Boston Women's Health Book CollectiveI've had a copy of this book since I was 18 years old. I used it when I was hoping that I wasn't pregnant, when I was hoping that I was, during my pregnancies, after my pregnancies, whenever I was sick. Two weeks ago, I was in bed with this horrible fever; I thought, "This is the flu." But on Monday, when I still had this ridiculous fever, I opened the book and realized I had an infection from nursing. It's a little crunchy in tone, but it's the best women's health reference book I've ever seen.BelovedBy Toni MorrisonI read Beloved when it came out in 1987, and it was one of the most difficult books I've ever encountered. The rhythm of the writing, the cadence it was like learning a new language where you're just banging your head against a wall. Then, after several chapters, a door opens and you're in. To me, the book is all emotion, a big morass of feeling. It's remarkable. What this woman goes through, what she believes she has to do is so horrific you can't help but think, "How does she survive?"
Oprah's BookshelvesAtrizes recomendando e falando sobre livros. Escolhas legais, curiosas e interessantes. Quais as surpresas, a melhor selecao, os gostos inusitados e os melhores comentarios?CLAIRE DANESI haven't lost myself in a book in a while I've been in a bit of a dry spell. I usually get books from friends whose taste I trust, and my dad did give me a subscription to the New York Review of Books this year. He likes it and thought I would, too. He's a voracious reader. I have friends who read entire novels in the bath, and I'm not like that I don't zip through books. But I invest in them completely. And I'm very interested in intimacy how people relate to each other, what the inherent limitations are of choosing to love someone, and how we are very limited, actually, in our efforts to escape our loneliness. I think there is a strong sense of loneliness in all the stories I've picked. They're full of people who feel a bit abandoned. I don't know why I am drawn to that, but I am.DeceptionBy Philip RothWhat struck me about this novel, which is the story of an affair between two people, is the unusual way Roth tells the story devoid of any description, stripped down to the dialogue alone. At times you aren't clear on who is speaking. His male characters are all so unsympathetic, brutal even, but vivid and charismatic and engaging. I don't necessarily like them, but I feel intimate with them. That's quite an achievement.Light YearsBy James SalterA friend gave this book to me, and I was just so struck by how beautifully the sentences were designed. The narrative is meditative and poetic. It seems a very accurate telling of what it is to be married that is, for a fairly privileged white person to be married. At moments I would just stop, amazed by how elegant Salter's prose is and how carefully he portrayed the inner lives of these people. The characters are estranged from each other, and I think maybe Salter is saying that it's impossible to ever know somebody that we can't fully connect: As much as we struggle to and want to, it's not entirely possible.Hills Like White ElephantsBy Ernest HemingwayLike the Roth novel, this short story contains some of the most exquisite dialogue I've ever read. It's only four pages, covering about 45 minutes, as a couple waits for a train in Spain. You come to realize that they're talking about her having an abortion. Actually, they never speak about it overtly, but their story is just heartbreaking. Again, it's about people who are recognizing the distance between them. It's a very appealing story for an actor because drama exists in what's not spoken.A Single ManBy Christopher IsherwoodI discovered Christopher Isherwood in college. His writing style is so direct, warm, and inclusive. There's one passage in this book, published in 1964, that has really stayed with me the description of America. The narrator is a British man teaching at a California college. He and a few colleagues
are having a conversation, and an American woman is saying how romantic Mexico is. She's critical of America. The protagonist argues with her, talking about the virtues of the United States. He says that its beauty is in its abstraction. I thought that was an amazing insight possibly true and compelling at least.AnagramsBy Lorrie MooreMoore is completely unsentimental but able to stir enormous feelings in the reader, or, certainly, in me. Her style is so original: The way this book is structured, the narrative is like an anagram. It begins with Benna, a singer, and her neighbor Gerard. The characters in each succeeding chapter have the same names, but they're different people. In one, she's a schoolteacher and he's a graduate student. I've never read a book where the identity is the same but always changing.The Wind-Up Bird ChronicleBy Haruki MurakamiThis is a kind of Alice In Wonderland premise: A man is looking for a cat. Murakami describes these banal domestic experiences, but, cumulatively, he spins an outrageous, trippy story. That's a kind of magic to make the magical seem ordinary and vice versa. It's such a tender story, his search for the cat and, by extension, a life. That one task leads him on a labyrinthine journey.
CATE BLANCHETTVeronica Guerin was an Irish journalist who, in the early 1990s, wrote about drug dealers and major drug importers in Dublin. She railed against the ineffectual nature of the Irish legal system how the government couldn't get these guys, who were blatantly guilty and walking into pubs and shooting people. Guerin had a sense of moral outrage, but also I think she loved to be at the center of life, doing something to make a difference.The great tragedy was that none of the laws changed during her lifetime. She had been threatened and beaten up for her writings and was killed in 1996. As a result of her death, there was a lot of marching, Concerned Parents Against Drugs became an important force, and changes finally occurred.What stuck me about Veronica Guerin was that she believed in the power and necessity of writing. I've tried to read popular books the ones people are all abuzz about and I can't help but think, "Oh, it's like fashion, where you feel this will be gone in a week." The other thing with a lot of books out now is that they're begging to be turned into films; they're being written with a cinematic eye, and I find it hard to spend time with something that's a bit cynically conceived.The books and the play I've picked feel to me as if they had to be written. They are intimate books, full of issues and characters that need to be heard.The Uses Of EnchantmentBy Bruno BettelheimI read this in drama school. It's an analysis from a psychologist's perspective of the meaning and power of fairy tales. One example that sticks in my mind is the metaphor of a child going into the forest. Bettelheim makes the point that the structure of this story parallels children's experiences in life how you can be frightened but eventually make it through to the other side. One can feel expendable particularly in this day and age, and especially working in film and for me, this reinforces the power of storytelling and the necessity of it.The True History Of The Kelly GangBy Peter CareyCarey is one of my favorite writers. The first book of his I ever read was a collection of short stories called The Fat Man In History. He also wrote Oscar And Lucinda a beautiful story which was turned into a film that I made. In Kelly Gang, the narrative voice is so unique. We Australians all know that outlaw Ned Kelly was hung after the famous shoot-out in 1880. But what Carey does is get inside his character's mind in such an illuminating and heartrending way. And there's not a trace of sentimentality in it. I so admire that as an actor, because I realize how difficult it is to do.Tender Is The NightBy F. Scott FitzgeraldThis novel was handed to me on a silver platter by my husband, who said, "You cannot die without reading this." I keep coming back to it because it's so detailed in recording the inner life of Dick Diver, the
central character. His yearning to save his mentally unstable wife, Nicole just keeps unfolding. That aching is quite destructive but also so understandable. The word I think of with this story is "fragile." I was utterly struck by the fineness of Fitzgerald's writing and the timelessness of Dick and Nicole's failures.VossBy Patrick WhiteNobel Prize-winner Patrick White is one of Australia's great novelists and playwrights. This story is about Voss, a German explorer, and Laura, a young Sydney woman, who meet very awkwardly in a drawing room one hot afternoon. Voss embarks on a trek across Australia and writes her a series of letters, most of which never reach her; at the same time she writes letters he doesn't receive. It turns out that the act of expressing their true selves in the small, shut-down environment of colonial Australia allows them to fall in love. As a reader, you are in the most intimate position privy to each one's thoughts. Voss's quest takes him through the center of Australia, which no white man has ever conquered and from which he won't return. But along this fruitless journey, he becomes more self-aware and more involved with this woman he will never meet again. It's horrible and tragic and unforgettable.OleannaBy David MametThis play represented such a turning point for me as an actor. I'd just come out of drama school and I was playing opposite Geoffrey Rush. I had to leave my own baggage at the door and take on this character who would be understood by some and hated by others. Mamet has taken all the extraneous stuff away and left you with just this searing, polemic essential battle to the death. Geoffrey and I keep saying Oleanna is an inkblot test, because your reaction to it reveals to you your own sense of politics. It's so provocative afterward, people were shouting at one another passionately. To see that happen in the theater lobby, which can be such a bourgeois, polite space, I just knew this is what I should be doing with my life.The Tibetan Book Of Living And DyingBy Sogyal RinpocheI've been dipping in and out of this book since my early 20s. I completely respond to one of its basic notions self-responsibility. It's about preparing for a good death, and I've found that in having a child, you're confronted by your mortality each day as the child grows and blossoms. But every single element in our Western society is a denial of death. We don't want to think about it, which compounds the terror we feel about it. This book helps one to navigate one's way through the terror.
MARY-LOUISE PARKERI am such a book geek. I have been since I was young. My mother says that I used to stay inside and read in the dark. She would come into my room and open the curtains. I lived a lot in my head then.Everyone in my family loves words. My father taught me to appreciate books. He still finishes three a week and retains everything. My niece and I have sat around on a Saturday night reading the dictionary and trying to find the perfect use of a gerund. We once spent a weekend on the word codify. We're always writing some manifesto or other and asking the other to read it.I hope my child enjoys reading, because I think books are important in the development of a person. They teach you on some small level a sense of empathy. They help you hear a different voice in your head; they reveal a different sensibility. They get you thinking about unfamiliar topics, in ways and rhythms that you wouldn't normally encounter. A good book it opens you up.Mr. Ives' ChristmasBy Oscar HijuelosThis book is easily the simplest and cleanest meditation on the act of forgiveness I can imagine. It's about a horrific event the murder of Mr. Ives's son and how a father's heart is shattered. It's like a Greek tragedy in the way it's constructed: There's a protagonist, his suffering and, finally, the benediction. I was so moved by Hijuelos' writing how his Mr. Ives is almost taken down by the loss and how, decades later, he's brought back to life through his forgiveness of the killer.The AmericansBy Robert FrankI love photographs; I have a small collection of black and whites, but not a Robert Frank. If you gave me a choice between the Hope diamond and one of his images, I would take the Robert Frank. This is a book of pictures he took in the mid-1950s while traveling across America. I love the one of the men at a funeral in South Carolina, the picture of the man standing in front of the jukebox, the girl in the elevator and the one of the open road. I also go back to the image of a nanny she's black, very dark-skinnedholding this baby who is so white, and it almost seems as if the baby has an expression of entitlement on his face. Each of Frank's photographs is like a little novella or little movie, and I get so lost in them.Selected PoemsBy Mark StrandI read mostly poetry, and Mark Strand is absolutely my favorite poet. His poems are economical, but they have such weight to them. I carry "Lines For Winter" from this collection in my wallet. It just explodes within me every time I read it; it gets right into my bloodstream. A good poem makes you feel as if you've had a shot of tequila or walked into a freezer. "Lines For Winter," "The Story Of Our Lives" and several others in this book do exactly that.Fugitive PiecesBy Anne MichaelsA boy named Jakob is discovered
hiding in the mud of an archaeological site in Poland by Athos, a Greek geologist. The child's family had been massacred by the Nazis. The novel follows the pair to Greece, then Toronto. Athos' rescue of Jakob, that one gesture, affects countless lives. To me the book is about the courage it takes to be generous. It's about manifesting your compassion, and how that requires actual bravery.One Hundred DemonsBy Lynda BarryI'd hesitate to call this simply a collection of cartoons, because they're so subtle and sophisticated and humane. Among other things, Barry is able to conjure up the colloquial rhythms of adolescent girls. That was such a tricky time in my life I was not a happy 12-year-old. Barry is so unflinching with her own memories. There's no romanticizing her younger self as anything other than awkward; she doesn't gloss over the embarrassing incidents in her later life, like a bad boyfriend. She's brought me to tears more than once.The Country Girls TrilogyBy Edna O'BrienThe Irish have a gift for telling dark, rich stories with a sense of compassion, so you don't feel like you're drowning when you read them. O'Brien is one of those writers. Unlike some of her heavier novels, this one has some levity, some sweetness. It follows two Irish girls who move to Dublin, then England. More than anything, it's the tone of this book the romantic yearning of young girls that really stayed with me.An Ocean In IowaBy Peter HedgesThis book is a perfect little jewel. It's about seven-year-old Scotty Ocean and the unraveling of his family as his parents divorce. I was blown away by it partly because one of my best friends wrote it (he also wrote the novel What's Eating Gilbert Grape) and also by how spare, almost Chekhovian the writing is. It's all about the natural cadences of these people, which he captures and which are so hilarious.
HOPE DAVISLast summer I was reading The New York Times Book Review and saw a mention of The Jane Austen Book Club by Karen Joy Fowler. I was pregnant and not feeling that great, but the novel sounded intriguing, so I tried it. I finished it quickly and was left with this great curiosity about Jane Austen I hadn't read her in college so I picked up Pride And Prejudice. I couldn't stop; by now I've read almost all her novels.I love Austen's wit and style she's incomparable. But I'm more often drawn to books about America. I've seen a lot of the United States, having stayed in so many different cities and towns for work. It's such a strange and fascinating country, and instead of learning about it through a textbook, I would rather discover its history and traditions and institutions through fiction and nonfiction writers. I'm so interested in understanding this place where we live.SiddharthaBy Hermann HesseI came across this short novel in college, when I was first introduced to all things Eastern: religion, literature, and history. It's about this notion that life is a journey you should undertake as an adventure, and you should never think there's a single goal to be reached. This is what a young man named Siddhartha learns while traveling through ancient India. At the time I read it, turning 20, I was waiting for things to unfold before me. I kept thinking, "Oh, when I get out of college, then I'll start my life." I found Siddhartha's quest to be a powerful lesson: The answer is in the journey. It has stuck with me and comforted me at different points in my life.Rabbit Angstrom: The Four NovelsBy John UpdikeNo author captures the feeling of this country the way Updike does. These four novels my all-time favorite books follow one man, Rabbit (born Harry Angstrom), from his post-high school years in a blue-collar Pennsylvania city until his death. The result is an amazing history of America, especially what it was like to be an average Joe from the 1950s through the 1980s. If I have any understanding of the 1960s the years when I was a baby it's mostly from Rabbit.Up In The Old HotelBy Joseph MitchellMitchell was a writer for The New Yorker, and this is a collection of essays and stories about New York City in the early to mid-20th century. Most of the people he profiled were ordinary New Yorkers like an old Staten Islander recalling the oyster business in that area but through his writing, they become the most fascinating characters. I did a movie about Mitchell with my friend Stanley Tucci called Joe Gould's Secret. (Gould was one of Mitchell's subjects.) What I love most about this book is that the city it portrays has all but vanished from the one I live in now.Little House In The Big WoodsBy Laura Ingalls WilderThis is the first in a series of books that are based on Wilder's childhood, in the late 1800s. I love stories that give me a perspective on
how easy American life has become in the 21st century. This was my introduction to what the people who settled this country went through. It's about how the Ingalls family spends the days just trying to obtain food and shelter and how the hardships they endure bring them closer together.My AntoniaBy Willa CatherThis is another story of intrepid pioneers a novel told primarily from the point of view of a boy, Jim, who lives near a girl whose family left Europe for the Nebraska prairie. I reread this novel every couple of years because Cather beautifully depicts the place and the people of that era people who were tough and resourceful. Life now is physically so easy how much time do we have to spend planting wheat or baking bread? and the challenges have changed so much. It's appealing to be reminded of what hardy stock we come from.Travels With Charley: In Search Of AmericaBy John SteinbeckI love John Steinbeck. Like Updike, he is one of the great observers of American life. This is a chronicle of a trip Steinbeck took with his dog, Charley, in 1960 when they traveled cross-country in a camper van. Steinbeck watches a school anti-desegregation demonstration in the South and gives a firsthand account of how ugly things were. Other passages are more rueful and funny. His companion, the dog, has his own opinions about everything. It's such an intimate tale of these two souls going across the United States.
Bibliofilos anonimos ARTHUR DAPIEVE02/06/00Duas semanas atras, sob o titulo "Melomanos anonimos", tentei descrever a angustia do sujeito que visita regularmente lojas de discos atras do sentido da vida e, mal as deixa, se ve tomado pela certeza de que o sentido da vida na verdade estava nao no CD que carrega no saquinho da Satisfaction, mas naquele outro, descartado por alguma razao ja nebulosa. Nao no Beck, mas no Belle & Sebastian, era so avancar um tiquinho mais na bancada do B. O tal sujeito nao encontra sossego nem dormindo. Dias atras, por exemplo, sonhei que tinha achado, numa loja naoidentificada, um CD desconhecido do Grateful Dead um CD que simplesmente nao existe, composto por musicas que jamais foram compostas. Talvez seja uma mensagem do alem, alo, Pigpen e Jerry Garcia falando, mas va acordar com uma frustracao dessas.Pois bem. Saca essa paranoia colossal, essa sensacao de que a industria fonografica mundial conspira contra voce, essa compulsao culturalconsumista, saca? Bom, ela e a parte boa da minha busca pelo sentido da vida. Porque aos CDs pelo menos consigo dar vazao. Escuto tudo o que compro ou ganho. Nao e pouca coisa, mas escuto. Uma vez posto na estante do corredor, talvez o disquinho nunca de la retorne, la, daquele vasto cemiterio de sentidos da vida. No entanto, mesmo assim sua morte nao tera sido em vao: durante 30 ou 74 minutos o mundo tera tido uma ordem. Estante no corredor? Sim. Nao ha espaco para CDs no escritorio porque ele esta tomado por livros, acumulados compulsivamente, ganhos, encomendados na Amazon, comprados na Leonardo da Vinci ou na mao do Franca, o vendedor de livros sem o qual as redacoes cariocas seriam bem menos cultas. Eles sao a parte ruim da minha busca pelo sentido da vida. Acumulamse, sem que eu os consiga ler na velocidade em que os adquiro. Filmes, voce pode ver ou perder, tudo bem, eles nao ficam ali na sua cara, acintosos, concretos como a nausea do Sartre. As vezes, os livros me lembram aqueles carros empoeirados, nos quais algum gaiato riscou um apelo com os dedinhos nao "laveme!" mas "leiame!" Ha um coro de livros nas estantes do escritorio.Outro dia, numa conversa sobre esse assunto com dois amigos, tambem vorazes frequentadores de livrarias e sebos, cultissimos, um deles soltou uma frase amarga que definiu com perfeicao nosso desalentado estado de espirito: "Eu sou uma farsa". Queria dizer com isso que, diante de suas estantes galopantes, sentiase como um ignorante socratico, aprendendo apenas que nada sabia. Acho que tentei consolalo com minha tese de que todos os livros de 800 paginas que realmente importam ja haviam sido escritos, "Moby Dick", "Ulysses", "Ana Karenina". E que, portanto, nos sobrava a esperanca de flagrar o sentido da vida em pequenas iluminacoes, no "Novecentos", do Alessandro Baricco, 72 paginas, formato pequeno, demandando menos tempo, oferecendo nao pouco prazer. Nao adiantou muito. Sou pessimo para consolar as pessoas. Vivo a dizer para elas que, let it be, um dia todos vamos morrer e que, entao, nossos terriveis problemas ja nao terao mais a