Seraphic Secret

Robert J. Avrech: Emmy Award winning screenwriter. Movie fanatic. Helplessly and hopelessly in love with my wife since age nine.

Books

Books On My Night Table

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As a Torah Jew I look to the wisdom of the written and oral Torah, knowledge and wisdom that goes back over 3,000 years. Thus, it’s natural for me (and a majority of Orthodox Jews) to be drawn to the philosophy of American Conservatism which traces its fountain of wisdom from Hobbes and Locke to the political thought of the founding fathers. Pulitzer Prize winning writer and Conservative icon George F. Will has written an astonishing volume that seeks to explore and explain what it means to be an American who believes in liberty and the principals of limited government. This is not an easy, breezy read but an in-depth analysis that demands the reader’s full attention.

K: A History of Baseball in Ten Pitches is a perfect companion to George Will for the leading conservative is also famously mad about baseball. The pitcher controls the game because batters react to each pitch, thus setting the plays in motion. Author Tyler Kepner  has written an enchanting and informative work that goes into the craft, mechanics and legends of pitching.Who threw the first curve ball? What’s the difference between a splitter and a slider? How does a pitcher grip the seams in order to throw a 96 mph fastball? This is a fascinating volume that makes you—meaning me—want to try hurling a knuckleball. Oh, regarding the title; In baseball scorekeeping, a swinging strikeout is usually recorded as a K.

Friday Photos: True Hollywood Confessions

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“Nobody’s going to tell me how to live. I go by the rules of decent behavior. The most important rule to live by is the Golden Rule. I don’t do anything to anybody I wouldn’t want done to me. I drink, but I’m not tough and rough. I don’t brawl outside of movies. I act tough in movies but that’s what I get paid to do. Despite what they say, I don’t go around in restaurants waving guns and picking fights. I live my own life and I do what I want. That’s Bogart.”
—Humphrey Bogart (b. Humphrey DeForest Bogart, New York City, 1899 – 1957)

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Books on my Night Table

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In the year 1000 there was the fervent belief that the oceans would rise, the crops would fail, and that the world was going to end in fire and ice and fury. In short Democrats would have felt right at home in Medieval Millennium Europe. Modern critics dubbed Roth, Bellow and Malamud as important Jewish writers. Chaim Grade was a real Jewish writer whose subject matter was the vanished world of the European Jew in the years before World War II. A great and sadly neglected writer. Before Peter Bogdanovich directed the best movies of the 70s, Targets, The Last Picture Show, What’s Up Doc?, and Paper Moon he wrote some of the best, most well observed essays about movies and movie people.

Friday Photos: True Hollywood Confessions

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“I was always a rebel and probably could have got much farther had I changed my attitude. But when you think about it, I got pretty far without changing attitudes. I’m happy with that.”
—Veronica Lake

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