Light reading

IT'S IN HIS KISS audio serialization on BEGUILING HOLLYWOOD

Prologue

Chapter One
Chapter Two
and more....

Pippa Rathborne on Audible 

S..A..D.

It's not true that what doesn't kill you makes you stronger....

Travels in Audioland continued

 

New audiobook available on iTunes, Audible and Amazon

Pippa Rathborne narrates Margaret Eleanor Leigh's recent picaresque adventures across three continents in search of personal Utopia which turns out to be....

THE WRONG SHADE OF YELLOW

Night reading

photo © Martin Hübscher

Woman in the middle of reading Vickie Lester's novel "It's In His Kiss".

Listen to the first chapters on Vickie Lester's blog BEGUILING HOLLYWOOD

"A life larger than the sentence" (2)

photo by Martin Hübscher

 Flight into High Fantasy:

The audiobook of THE DRAGON AND THE UNICORN by A.A. Attanasio, read by Pippa Rathborne,
is available on Amazon, Audible and iTunes.

If you would like a complimentary copy, please contact me by email or leave a message on the comment section of Pippa Rathborne's blog by clicking here and I will be delighted to send you a promo code.

"A life larger than the sentence"

or

THE AUDIO VERSION

 

The barely visible author

  IS SO PRE-OCCUPIED WITH TURNING OBSERVED LIFE INTO WORDS,
THEY FORGET HOW TO LIVE

Nurture & Nourishment

Exclusive: AN ORIGINAL STORY BY NOËLLE MACKAY

curve against austerity

Megalithic art © MARTIN HÜBSCHER PHOTOGRAPHY September 2015

Related: Curvature of Linear Interpolation on MARTIN HÜBSCHER PHOTOGRAPHY WEBSITE

Self-promotion of a nakedly political kind

Sir George Villiers and Lady Katherine Manners as Venus and Adonis 

by Van Dyck c. 1620. Oil on canvas. Private collection. Image WGA

CONTEXT IS EVERYTHING

PINK

 THE VAGUEST IMPRESSION

 

 ANGEL IN A PINK DRESS UNDER A PINK CEILING

part one

 

 ANGEL IN A PINK DRESS UNDER A PINK CEILING
part two

PRETTY POWERFUL IN PINK

DON'T CHANGE COLOUR

Bloggers End?

Rippl-Rónai, Girl with Cage 1892 Oil on canvas Magyar Nemzeti Galéria, Budapest. Image: WGA

....She handed me the bird in the gilded cage. I don't even know if I want a blog, and I sure as hell don't know where I should be going with it. I've carried it around in my head for three years, and now I don't know where to put it.

Supposing the bird has fled or died, and I'm just lugging an empty cage? I really don't have anything to say. I try to have the Last Word, and Beetley Pete squeezes another one out of me.

The moment a blog starts singing about itself, is the moment the blanket should be put over it.

"I made this [letter] very long, because I did not have the leisure to make it shorter." (Je n'ai fait celle-ci plus longue que parce que je n'ai pas eu le loisir de la faire plus courte.) Blaise Pascal, apologizing to his correspondents in Letter XVI, Provincial Letters, 1656.

or:  If I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter

A shaggy dog story for children of all ages...

  Pomeranian Bitch and Puppy by Thomas Gainsborough, circa 1777 © Tate, London. The dogs in this most sensitively observed, tender and fluffy of all canine portraits belonged to the painter’s good friend, the musician Carl Friedrich Abel.

A heart-warming tale for children written by LaVonna Moore about the rescue of a young Great Pyrenees dog who becomes the guardian angel and protector of her human family:

narrated by Pippa Rathborne

On sale now on Audible, iTunes and Amazon.

CLICK HERE FOR MORE DETAILS

A limited number of promo codes for free downloads will be available upon request.

The gap in time

"Truth is rightly named the daughter of time, not of authority." Francis Bacon

 "The eternal silence of these spaces frightens me." 

("Le silence eternel des ces espaces infinis m'effraie.") 

Pascal

Epistolary (Half-) Eschewed

Portrait of a Young Woman, writing a letter, by Gilbert Stuart, c. 1802 -1804. 

Image courtesy of the Indianapolis Museum of Art. 

I am sorry to have interrupted her; she is rather lovely, rather to be loved and written about than briefly employed as a cover girl.

All roads in this land lead to Pemberley. Jane Austen, the prosaic revolutionary, waits quietly, with gloves and bonnet on, at the crossroads of 18th century and modern novels. The bonnet conceals the expression in her eyes, which isn't quiet at all.

Audio: Till this moment, I never knew myself

 

Pride and Prejudice, which seems so fresh and spontaneous on every reading, took eighteen years to evolve, from the first draft written in 1796-97 to publication in 1813. It had a gestation period almost as long as the heroine's life 

The Human Condition

 MHPhotography © May 2015

A communication crisis reblogged from MARTIN HÜBSCHER PHOTOGRAPHY

Epistolary

Part One

The Love Letter by Fragonard. 1770s. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Image: WGA

Part Two

 Clarissa Harlowe in the Prison Room of the Sheriff's Office by Landseer, 

exhibited 1833 © Tate Gallery London

TO BOOK PIPPA RATHBORNE AS A NARRATOR, PLEASE LEAVE A COMMENT AT
PIPPA RATHBORNE ACTRESS CONTACT
OR GO TO ACX

Are you sitting comfortably?

Then, if you dare, listen to extracts from Vickie Lester's Hollywood mystery novel, IT'S IN HIS KISS:

All words and images are copyright Vickie Lester © 2015

Vickie Lester is a novelist and blogger, and former screen writer, based in Hollywood, with whom I've just had the pleasure of collaborating.

Or listen here:

Opening scene

Poolside

The Hierarchy

TO BOOK PIPPA RATHBORNE AS A NARRATOR, PLEASE LEAVE A COMMENT AT
PIPPA RATHBORNE ACTRESS CONTACT
OR GO TO ACX

Facing the world through perdition

I'M KILLIN' TIME

Facing the world through acedia

THE BLUES ARE BREWIN'

Facing the world through Martin Hübscher Photography

KEEP SMILING

Martin Hübscher Photography © May 2015

Nothing

Part eight

Part nine

Part ten

Almost Nothing

Part seven

More of Nothing

Part four

Part five

Part six

Nothing

Part one of Nothing

Part two of Nothing

Part three of Nothing

But Gentlemen Marry Brunettes

Part One

Part Two

Republican

Part one
Woman for Today

Part two
"Calm down, dear"
(remark made by UK Prime Minister David Cameron to fellow MP Angela Eagle during a parliamentary debate in 2011)

The Power of Pink - finale

 

Part twelve

The Power of Pink (parts 10 -11)

 Part ten

Part eleven

The Power of Pink

Part eight

Part nine

The Power of Pink

Part six

Part seven

The Power of Pink

 Boucher, The Blonde Odalisque, traditionally supposed to be Louise O'Murphy, but possibly another blonde...

Part four

Part five

The Power of Pink

Boucher The Setting of the Sun, Wallace Collection. Image: WGA

Madame de Pompadour is welcoming Louis XV to bed

Part one

 Part two
Part three

Foreshades of Grey

 © Trustees of the British Museum

Part 1: Moral Dangers of Reading

 

Part 2: To Love and Be Loved

Part 3: Les Liaisons Dangereuses

The one where Rachel rattles the teacups

click here for THE ONE WHERE RACHEL RATTLES THE TEACUPS

"How do I love thee" collateral

A marriage of true minds, a Roman courtesan, Venetian glass, a boy dressed as a girl, werewolves and vampires, all in a name

click to be redirected to LAST POST

AN ACTOR'S TRAGEDY

 

"Though the world is so full of a number things,
I know we should all be as happy as...."
from 'Make 'em Laugh' sung by Donald O'Connor, Singin' in the Rain, 1952, music by Brown, lyrics by Freed, indebted to Cole Porter's 'Be a Clown', sung by Judy Garland and Gene Kelly, in The Pirate, 1948

One of the saddest and most repeated histories in the world is of the child who knows they are not as great as the parent they spend their life trying to emulate.

Hero with a fatal flaw: the tragically bad actor Henry Siddons (1774 - 1815) by Samuel John Stump, watercolour portrait miniature, 1808. "He is a fine, honorable, but alas! melancholy character. He is not well indeed..."* His anxiety and lack of self-confidence are apparent, even painted on a piece of card 79mm x 64mm. (NPG) Image source: Wikipedia

They are the collateral damage of celebrity, or genius, or romance, compelled to follow the same vocation as their mother or father, deaf to other callings, dazzled by star dust, enthused with idealism, often determined to work hard, unable to shine, unable to be happy.

The falling-off is steepest in public or artistic careers, and is not confined to celebrity families. The freeloading brats of celebrities raised by nepotism in any industry, political, business or entertainment, get all the press, but there are noble failures, who feel much and barely leave a mark.


Fame and talent are not indivisible. Children of unlucky actors are just as likely to be inspired to go into the same profession as children of rich and famous ones. It’s not a career choice, it’s an hereditary gift or curse; they are not sure which until there is no going back. Sometimes they have talent and ability, but not the temperament to withstand the slings and arrows of their vocation.

Of all the members of the Kemble dynasty of Shakespearean tragedians, the most tragic is Sarah Siddons' eldest son, Henry, because he inherited all her passion for performance and her intellect for analysing character, without her talent and resilience.


All he had ever wanted to be was an actor, and he was entirely unsuited for an actor's life. He was perfectionist, and acutely, even morbidly, sensitive to rejection and criticism. The family was fully aware that he suffered from excessive anxiety. His mother worried about his "melancholy character."