The narrow mindedness of 1958 American media mentality can be clearly seen in interviews conducted by the gold standard bearers of the time, smoking Parliaments, talking to women like Pearl Buck, winner of the Nobel Prize for literature. Rather than base his interview on the masterful storytelling, the themes she covers and how she was able to write such captivating work, Mike Wallace focuses on clarifying her position on the role of the American woman in her family and community, and in relation to her man. She was diplomatic. If she were living today, and interviewed this way, she could sincerely have told him to fuck off. But she wouldn’t. She has class. Read her novel: The Good Earth. #katyamills
Tag Archives: books
lemon
Goodreads Giveaway for a free e-copy of my book: https://www.goodreads.com/giveaway/show/362455
maybe 7 years old
pushing lemon wedges into my mouth
until my face stretched out
from the sour
acid
eliciting laughter by my diversion
better than any excuse
for bad behavior
#katyamills
silence
like the greatest adversary
i once fought it. many are the ways to silence
silence
today it lives
among the things
i cherish most
#katyamills
by the way
you can find and read the many books i have written here…
nine ten
you know a life was lived
when you cannot say
the book was better than
the real thing
#katyamills
proliferation of books
working i made barely enough money
to pay off the service repairs the utilities
groceries petrol clothes hair and nails
taxes insurance credit and mortgage
license registration renewals…
with what remained i
bought and gave away
books
#katyamills
book review
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
I did not love it. I liked it. I was able to conquer my attention span and read 1,000 pages. That was more enlightening than the book itself. Tolstoy of course – a master. You see him in Levin. You find the most honorable writing in tribute to the Russian peasants. They are like the true heroic figures of this novel. All the society crap Anna was destroyed by. So sad. So predictable and timeless. All countries’ societies are the same. How people treat people. Drive some to suicide. Vronsky was very typical in many ways. A typical man with ambition and a sex drive. I hate how he left his horse to die and didn’t seem to care. In a way he treated Anna the same. But not on purpose. Unconsciously. The peasants with their scythes clearing the million acres of fields. Laughing. Not caring. Working. Living. Beautiful the way Tolstoy describes them. Levin aspires to live with them before he gets married. Maybe even after. Anna’s son and the scene where she returns to see him one final time – this scene is truly magnificent. Tolstoy’s gem. The best thing I got from this book was humbled (as a writer). Also delighted. By the tour of Moscow, St Petersburg, and the descriptions of hunting and farming in the Russian countryside.
View all my reviews
may 18
i have this aching in my bones. but it’s ok. summer is about to strike. the sun the source of energy. i love this feeling. i know this feeling. i’m at the edge of a jagged cliff. preparing for a deep dive… into a book.
#katyamills
book giveaway!
https://www.goodreads.com/giveaway/show/343070-up-from-the-downtrodden
free e-copy of my new poetry book
Up from the DownTrodden
Book synopsis: Divided into quintets, Up from the Downtrodden offers the possibility of hope to anyone feeling hopeless in the world today. The poems within, culled from a period of inspiration and resurgence after more than a decade of hopeless struggling and despair, honor both the darkness and the light. There is a chance, when the two are integrated, to turn what is bitter in life, sweet.
‘heavy metals’
dissociative
staring at the wall again
they turned up the volume
zero calorie heavy
metals to defend against they
demons
Get your copy here: https://www.amazon.com/Up-Downtrodden-Katya-Mills/dp/B09T66LP1G
book review
‘s reviewFeb 02, 2022 ·
editliked it
Read 2 times. Last read October 27, 2020 to February 2, 2022.
I love the way this book wraps up, it was well worth it, after having struggled somewhat through hundreds of pages of half-drunken petty vainglorious power struggles within the web of social strata in 19th century Russia. [No spoilers here]. Traveling home to ‘the fatherland’ from the Swiss sanitarium by train, our prince makes the random acquaintance of Rogozhin, the second point in the tragic love triangle, to start the narrative. They have a lively conversation and there is little concern that such a well-meaning and honest/transparent man as our beloved so-called ‘idiot’ could get tangled up in such complicated and dangerous affairs. But the saying goes ‘if you hang around a barber shop long enough, you’re bound to get a haircut.’ And he is noticed by those who wish to take advantage, as a clear and easy mark. Everyone’s hoping to get ahead. Everyone but him. The prince only uses his royal stock to survive, as he is close to destitute at the start, and becomes quite naturally embedded in society circles in and around St Petersburg. He welcomes it, seeking out the company of not so distant relatives, the Epanchins, upon coming home. A wise thing to do back then, if you hoped to survive. He is in fact much wiser than they give him credit for. Most write him off for an idiot the moment he offers up a single honest remark in their company, making the judgment that he is oblivious to social cues and cannot know his place. The younger ones, however, like Kolya and Aglaya, can cut through the bullshit and know him for treasure and gravitate toward him. Even the madwoman Nastasya takes him for a gem amongst the innumerable sharp pebbles that make up her circles. He has the gift of a loving and compassionate nature, and the curse of falling spells at the worst possible time aka ‘dinner parties’ (known all too intimately by our beloved author who had epilepsy). Witnessing him navigate the world is a bit of a heartache for this reader. I confess I may not have completed the text were it not for my familiarity with the other great texts of our beloved author. One of my favorite characters was Nastasya, another Lebedev, and a third would be Ippolit, the 18 year old boy dying of consumption who knows his time is up. If you read Dostoyevsky’s biography, you will find a lifetime full of tragedy: the loss of 2 of his children (one just after birth, the other from an epileptic seizure), his first wife, and both his parents when he was just a teenager. He himself was sentenced to 4-5 years in the work camps in Siberia for the terrible crime of joining a literary circle and reading banned letters! Could anything be more Russian? He himself was condemned to death by firing squad and was already out on the square trying to make sense of his own life and untimely death before the Tsar called it off last minute. True story! Ippolit and the prince to me represent the tragic figures who sound out the author’s own strange and terrible experiences in life, and then let us listen to the voices as they echo through the canyons, trying and perhaps honestly failing to make sense of them. Having read the final page of this 600+ enormity, I am left with a sense of relief and gratitude for life, which comes without clear instructions for how exactly to live it, yet here we are provided a stern and dire warning: don’t ever think you can escape the influence of society.
K IS SILENT 