Visiting the Frick Collection

Until today, my favorite museum in New York had been the Met - especially because it houses my favorite painting. But today a strong contender to the #1 museum spot came up - The Frick Collection.
Eventhough it is one of the more famous 'small museums', I had never bothered to read up about the Frick, so when I visited it today on a whim, the pleasure of seeing the rare collection was doubled by surprise. And oh my, the collection suits me so very much!!

Housed in 18th-century styled palace of Mr. Frick, the collection of European paintings is absolutely astounding - if you get a chance, in addition to observing Rembrandt's self portrait from close up, go all the way back to the end (near the boucher room) and see the painting. It is a long way, but the effect of his golden dress and the face in shadows is worth the walk! Turner's waterfronts are as pleasing as ever, but Paulo Veronese touches your wisdom with The Choice Between Virtue and Vice and Wisdom and Strength. The house itself is as breathtaking as some of its paintings - the elegant drawing room nearly, not quite, as appealing as Rembrandt's The Polish Raider or Renoir's portrait of a young mother with her two children.

One of the special attraction to me were the books - the elegant display all along the walls in the reading room adds a special, rarely seen, effect to the display of other art work.
Also, almost none of the paintings are 'protected' behind ropes and enclosures - on the downside, though, you cannot take your kids if they are less than ten years old :(

Museum entrance is at 70th street, 5th Avenue. It is open 10 AM to 6 PM from Monday through Saturday, whereas on Sundays it operates from 11 AM to 5 PM

The Lost Symbol

Disappointing. Dan Brown's new novel was utterly frustrating. The storyline is dull, and writing lacks the rigor of 'Da Vinci Code'. Only thing I could remember after reading this was an old saying: "It is much harder to stay somewhere than to get there". Dan Brown has definitely not lived upto the high standards set by his previous novel - The Lost Symbol is more in the league of his earlier works, like Angels and Daemons, which were, in my opinion, mediocre at their best.

The identity of the antagonist was not well-hidden, and the plot is very predictable. One of the reasons Da Vinci Code was so exciting, at least for me, was that the whole mystery unfolded gradually, without explicitly forcing a treasure hunt on the readers. It started out as a genuine murder mystery - but Lost Symbol forgets all such pretense and jumps into a treasure hunt from page one, and the ideas he has used for the mystery lack the pull. And the science seems to be a bunch of words :(. Dan Brown's style of emphasis - using impressing statements in italics - works only if the content is powerful. Without that, his new novel is something like poor style without good content.

Thor vs Odin

The second installment of Dirk Gently's adventures, 'The Long Dark Tea Time of the Soul', was much more exciting than the first. Full of typical Douglas Adams quips, it was an awesome read.

The last time I saw such humane side of gods was in the great epics - Mahabharatha, Iliad etc etc. Douglas Adams reminds of a lost style of writing - free of all the mundane philosophy into the true imaginations of humans who create the gods. To put it in a nutsehll, there is a difference between talking about imaginations and imagining things - and Adams is a citizen of the latter class :).

It was a pity I lost the book when I had another 50 pages left to finish the book - the first time I lost a book in at least four years :(. Well, pain of losing a book is nearly as bad as joy of buying one.

Edgar Allan Poe

Thanks to the tip from Anj, visited the street on upper west side where Edgar Allan Poe once lived - on 84th street between Broadway and West End Avenue.Adding to the environment, there is a cosy cafe called "Edgar's Cafe", where unfortunately I did not like the food :(. But this walk certainly reminded me of those boyhood weekends when I had just started to read English literature - stories like 'The Gold Bug' and 'The Tell-tale Heart' have a place of their own in every reader's heart, as does my family's old-fashioned, leather-bound, red coloured short stories of Poe in our village bookshelf.

My Golden Treasury - Snatched Away in Beauty's Bloom

I sure love Lord Byron a lot :). Well, his romance always seems to have a purity to it, a rare purity and love that can make the stoniest philosopher go soft. At least, that is what I feel whenever I read, and re-read, Oh! Snatched away in Beauty's Bloom. The blend between the solemness of death, the grief, and the innate emotions of human life in this poem is amazing for me. The perspective provided by nature, and the disdain for the philosopher, make the poem a truly moving one.
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