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In the United States most people might know the author Colette through the musical Gigi based on a story she wrote, which was filmed as a musical directed by Vincente Minnelli. This pair of novels is not that, although it is also set in the same kind of demimonde French society at the turn of the 20th century. In her native France Colette is well known as a recipient of the of the prestigious Prix Goncourt and the Legion of Honor, a peer of her contemporary writer Marcel Proust. In the two forwards to this audiobook we learn about how difficult it is for the English reader to get an accurate sense of what it is like to read her writing in previous translations. The present translation by Rachel Careau preserves the syntactic innovations Colette introduced as much as possible, a kind of a punchy stripping down of the language by eliminating unnecessary words. In the audiobook you can really sense the tension this gives some of the dialogue and narration in this book.

The two novels are basically centered upon the character of a young, wealthy man nicknamed by the title of the first novel who started his life as a young gigolo in a six-year relationship with a courtesan twice his age named Léa. The first novel centers mainly on Léa's point of view although Colette is by no means strict about staying within one character's skull. The topic of sex is not shied away from as you would expect in about with courtesans and gigolos and affairs.

By the second novel, published some six years after the first one, we jump forward a decade to when the two of them have separated Chéri having settled into marriage after having been mobilized for the First World War. We find out that Léa is now a woman well along in years, overweight and showing her age. And there are the passages which luxuriate in the description of beauty both masculine and feminine. One of the key things that led Léa to take in a Chéri as a lover was his extraordinary physical beauty. He was a boy toy you might say by the standards of those days, a youth who knew little of the world and yet a delight for her to have around. The inciting event in the first novel is the announcement of Chéri's marriage to a wealthy society woman by the name of Edmée. It was a practical way to maintain his lifestyle yet his forced separation from Léa as a result took a heavy toll on them both. By the end of that book the two of them began to recognize that their relationship was no passing fling but precisely one of love, unequaled by any other in their lives, forever gone. The scene where the two of them have, starting out as a relatively light and frivolous discussion, only gradually coming to this deeper realization is crafted beautifully.

In a second book we start out seeing a glimpse into the someone distant marriage between Edmée and Chéri after World War I. Society's changed since the early years of the turn of the 20th century and Edmée has a position of responsibility in a hospital for the war wounded. Chéri's mother, herself a former courtesan, occupies much of her time in financial speculation, something new as a result of the absence of men during the war. Léa's name comes up by chance it seems in a conversation and this impels Chéri to look up his old mistress. The scene where he arrives at her apartment after a number of years absence to find her old and a great deal stouter is a kind of amazing. You can tell that the large degree play has moved on much more than Chéri and he finds something break inside him when he realizes that the special relationship they had is something that could never return for him. The devastation of his world completely changed is revealed in little bits at the end of the novel which I will not spoil here. All through these two novels there are these dazzling turns of phrase which remind me of what was said at the outset about Colette's use of language. She had true mastery of how to turn a phrase so that it could be cutting, or ambiguous in precisely a teasing and yet not provoking way, or hint at some character's action that's about to happen. Many times I noticed these touches in some bit of interior reverie or sometimes in a description of a scene, or of some characters appearance or a character, in instances of telling instead of showing. I cannot think of many instances where they came up in the course of some action or gesture the characters performed. They were really subverting the injunction to writers to show and not tell, but if you pay attention to these breathtaking passages, you find that that rule should not be taken as absolute.

The kind of person who might like these novels is one who does not require their fictional content to have plenty of action or snappy dialogue. There are long stretches where you just have two persons conversing in a room, or description of a woman changing clothes perhaps, or someone just thinking about someone else they know. I see in other people's reviews that some people find these books boring and I understand that. But for a reader who allows themselves to be seduced by the heady atmosphere of the early years of the 20th century in France and and wallow in the beauty of the words assembled on the page it's really a splendid experience. The characters in these books situate themselves beyond religion and beyond traditional morality. But if you take a bigger view of the entire arc of Chéri's story you see that the author wrestles with ideas about a new morality: who is it right to enter into relationship from? and what can one person expect from another to whom they consider themselves bound? There's vice in this book, but there is also an exhilarating view of characters working out what matters to themselves and what matters in life. The narration of this translation of Colette's work felt like a warm caress to my ear. This is one of the reasons I give this book the highest of recommendations.

This is the first book I have read by this poet even though I have been inspired to write by individual poems of hers before. I knew that she focusses on a number of different concerns, not just nature and animals but also thoughts on mortality, passion, loss. This is a late collection which includes all of these themes along with some of a very different sort which all come through her facility with poetic expression. The diction is easy on the ear most of the time but will throw in a slightly unusual choice of words at a spot where a pause needs to go, such as when the poem takes a turn. What can I say about the devastating closing lines some of these have? It feels as if the author relishes having a reader reset their conceptions and have to start over again when these happen, a neat trick. Then there are the pieces which come off as straight rhapsodies climbing up on one single mood all the way through, just deepening at the end. The author was a well-regarded teacher for a long time who I think knew her audience well and how they read.

The title comes from a painting by Franz Marc in the early part of the twentieth century. It serves as the occasion of one of the poems collected here.

For me the advice in this book amounted to things I had already been doing, without the names the author has been attaching to old concepts. The one actionable takeaway I found was to list the daily activities you already do out of habit and the ones you either want to do in the future or want to avoid. Doing this periodically is a good part of a discipline to accomplish what you want to do. He goes through a process of breaking a habit into its components and telling the reader how to facilitate this (for habits one wants) or to try to hinder this (for bad habits). He draws from other books the thinking about about the rewards system of the mind so these can be used to improve the habit. Accompanying the text is a set of very simple worksheets online. He talks about how to track habits to reinforce them when attention flags.

Unfortunately he does not mention whether there is a way to make activities on another automatic habits. For instance, if I need to pay off a list of bills once a month, what kind of one can I devise to kick that off? It would require another list of chores with deadlines which I had to habitually check daily in a way to serve as a cue for the chain that would happen at that time. To me a simple description of how to set this up would have been more valuable than some of the rest of the topics he covers.

I listened to this light memoir of the author's experiences growing up on Corfu in the 1930s with his eccentric British family and menageries of animals he collected. I would say that it fits in the category of creative nonfiction with humorous anecdotes recounted with somewhat heightened details for comedic effect. He is sometimes mean to his family of mother, two brothers, and sister in the unflattering way he describes them, but the native Greek and Turkish characters he encounters on Corfu are all pretty much depicted with affection and appreciation for their qualities. He does not spare himself, either, with his impractical animal acquisitions that would have been trying for any family. It's a cozy way of life living on a sun-drenched Mediterranean island with only absurd (usually self-inflicted) cares without fears of European war or harsh treatment by the neighbors. It is just the right kind of story for someone who is crazy about nature and wildlife, whatever their age. The book was turned into a 1987 miniseries and a 2005 television movie.

The narrator had great fun coming up with the vocal mannerisms for the various characters as they spoke.

This book came out seven years ago but still has an immediacy these days because of the war between Israel and Hamas. A group of writers each contribute chapters to the volume based on their experiences in the Palestine communities in Israel in the West Bank and Gaza. The origin of this project was organized by the group Breaking the Silence which is made up of ex-Israeli Defense Forces troops who witnessed the lives of the Palestinians they were responsible for policing. The chapters differ in styles, in settings and in details, but there are so many accounts of abusive detentions, capricious arrests, and fatal shootings without consequences it becomes hard to doubt the veracity of the reports. The many types of daily humiliations, the outbreaks of unexpected hostility or outright violence, the bureaucratic obstacles to movement and other impediments to living an ordinary life also recur in a nearly overwhelming way. It is hard not to come away with the conviction that something has to change, not only for the Palestinians but for the health of Israel. The current armed conflict makes this feel as far off as ever.