Sitting By My Bedside
“One sure window into a person’s soul is his reading list.”
~ Mary B. W. Tabor ~
What are you reading? Are you looking for your next great read? Here is a look at what is sitting by my bedside, and which I am pleased to recommend. Let me know what you think!
Jewett, Novels and Stories, Sarah Orne Jewett, Library of America College Edition, 1996, distributed by Penguin Books, New York, New York.
“The world goes on year after year. We can use its forces, and shape and mould them, and perfect this thing or that, but we cannot make new forces; we only use the tools we find to carve the wood we find. there is nothing new; we discover and combine and use.”
~M~
The Paris Wife, by Paula McLain, 2012, Ballantine Books Trade Paperbacks, New York, New York.
“Though I often looked for one, I finally had to admit that there could be no cure for Paris. Part of it was the war. The world had ended once already and could again at any moment.
~M~
The Greater Journey, Americans in Paris, by David McCullough, 2011, Simon & Schuster, New York, New York.
“The Greater Journey is the enthralling, inspiring – and until now, untold – story of the adventurous American artists, writers, doctors, politicians, architects, and others of high aspiration who set off of Pairs in the years between 1830 and 1900, ambitious to excel in their work.”
~M~
An Island Called Home, Returning to Jewish Cuba, by Ruth Behar, Photographs by Humberto Mayol, originally published in 2007, second paperback printing 2013, by Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick, New Jersey, and London.
“Yiddish – speaking Jews thought Cuba was supposed to be a mere layover on the journey to the United States when they arrived there in the 1920’s. They even called it “Hotel Cuba.” But as the years passed, the many Jews who came from war-torn Europe remained, and the beloved island ceased to be a hotel and eventually became ‘home.’ When Fidel Castro came to power in 1959 the majority of the Jews left in a mass exodus, remaking their lives in the United States, yet mourning the loss of the Jewish community they had built.”
~M~
Tropical Diaspora, The Jewish Experience in Cuba, by Robert M. Levine, originally published in 1993, current edition 2010, by Markus Wiener Publishers, Princeton, New Jersey.
From the Foreword: “In proportional terms, Cuba offered refugee or migrant status to more Jews than did any other Latin American country. Proportionally more, in fact, that was offered by the United States. . . . In this scholarly and informative book, Robert M. Levine offers three reasons for this unusual circumstance.” ~ Anthony P. Maingot ~
“I go into my library and all history unrolls before me.”
~ Alexander Smith ~
