WARREN BUFFET READS 500 PAGES A DAY
Letter from Paris
Little Missy cannot say the same thing. But if Warren can manage 500 pages, then I think the rest of us can as well. In my youth, about a million years ago I labored under the delusion that you either read or you wrote and I chose to write. Even Bertrand Russell said (and I paraphrase) "you either read or you write". Just today in the International edition of the New York Times, in an interview with Philip Roth, one if the most prolific writers of his generation, Philip said he had retired from writing and has shifted to reading.
It's a cozy, rainy night in Paris. I just got in today, and I'm tucked away in my room thinking about the last three hit books I've read. They are as different as all get out. Leonardo da Vinci by the great biographer Walter Isaacson was almost as compulsive a read as his Steve Jobs biography. And indeed Isaacson made constant references to his Steve book in his da Vinci bio. Like there is a similarity? Much as I have loved Steve for decades, I think not! If you want to know what colour Leonardo was obsessed with in his clothes choices, Walter knows! Walter's also good at explaining all the things Leonardo figured out, and what commissions he either completed or not, as well as personal studies he abandoned or pursued with sustained intensity. Michaelangelo is portrayed as a gauche and filthy angry genius who refused the older, more genteel Leonardo's advice. I was inspired to read it after having a peek at Salvator Mundi, the last Leonardo painting to go on auction.
Tina Brown's The Vanity Fair Diaries was a bitch for me to read. Tina is exactly my age and at the thirty was given the limping Vanity Fair magazine to edit and turn into a huge success, which she did. Si Newhouse, her boss, apparently had a thing for English girls with fathers in the publishing business. Tina breezily recounts all those boring dinners with the likes of Henry Kissinger, Ben Bradlee, Warren Beatty and so on. And if you are looking for a loyal best friend, don't pick Tina. Her best friend, in whose house Tina was married, wrote a book and Tina thought nothing of having Christopher Buckley do a hatchet job on it. Tina still doesn't understand why her friend stopped speaking to her. Tina is just too disingenuous for words!
Now I'm reading What We Cannot Know by Marcus du Sautoy. Marcus is Professor of Mathematics at Oxford (Tina's alma mater in fact) and in 2008 was appointed as the Simonyi Chair for the Public Understanding of Science. This means he has the gift of explaining all kinds of scientific knowledge in a way that even I can get it! I'm loving the history of logic through the history of gambling with dice. I already feel more intelligent! Warren Buffet is on to something! I am going to try to read at least 250 pages a day and see where I go from there! If any of you have any good book ideas, send them along!
Love from Paris
Little Missy
Letter from Paris
Little Missy cannot say the same thing. But if Warren can manage 500 pages, then I think the rest of us can as well. In my youth, about a million years ago I labored under the delusion that you either read or you wrote and I chose to write. Even Bertrand Russell said (and I paraphrase) "you either read or you write". Just today in the International edition of the New York Times, in an interview with Philip Roth, one if the most prolific writers of his generation, Philip said he had retired from writing and has shifted to reading.
It's a cozy, rainy night in Paris. I just got in today, and I'm tucked away in my room thinking about the last three hit books I've read. They are as different as all get out. Leonardo da Vinci by the great biographer Walter Isaacson was almost as compulsive a read as his Steve Jobs biography. And indeed Isaacson made constant references to his Steve book in his da Vinci bio. Like there is a similarity? Much as I have loved Steve for decades, I think not! If you want to know what colour Leonardo was obsessed with in his clothes choices, Walter knows! Walter's also good at explaining all the things Leonardo figured out, and what commissions he either completed or not, as well as personal studies he abandoned or pursued with sustained intensity. Michaelangelo is portrayed as a gauche and filthy angry genius who refused the older, more genteel Leonardo's advice. I was inspired to read it after having a peek at Salvator Mundi, the last Leonardo painting to go on auction.
Tina Brown's The Vanity Fair Diaries was a bitch for me to read. Tina is exactly my age and at the thirty was given the limping Vanity Fair magazine to edit and turn into a huge success, which she did. Si Newhouse, her boss, apparently had a thing for English girls with fathers in the publishing business. Tina breezily recounts all those boring dinners with the likes of Henry Kissinger, Ben Bradlee, Warren Beatty and so on. And if you are looking for a loyal best friend, don't pick Tina. Her best friend, in whose house Tina was married, wrote a book and Tina thought nothing of having Christopher Buckley do a hatchet job on it. Tina still doesn't understand why her friend stopped speaking to her. Tina is just too disingenuous for words!
Now I'm reading What We Cannot Know by Marcus du Sautoy. Marcus is Professor of Mathematics at Oxford (Tina's alma mater in fact) and in 2008 was appointed as the Simonyi Chair for the Public Understanding of Science. This means he has the gift of explaining all kinds of scientific knowledge in a way that even I can get it! I'm loving the history of logic through the history of gambling with dice. I already feel more intelligent! Warren Buffet is on to something! I am going to try to read at least 250 pages a day and see where I go from there! If any of you have any good book ideas, send them along!
Love from Paris
Little Missy
