Mary Bannister (MaryB)
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maryb2004.bsky.social
Mary Bannister (MaryB)
@maryb2004.bsky.social
920 followers 300 following 6.3K posts
If you repost me I’ll probably block. Retired M&A lawyer. Lifelong learner. Reader. Favorite Authors: Dorothy Dunnett, Louise Erdrich, AS Byatt, Iain Pears, Robertson Davies. New France history buff.. http://alonewitheachother.blogspot.com
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maryb2004.bsky.social
Edith Wharton in the future, her character in the past. 🏹
It was a sombre snowy afternoon, and the gas-lamps were lit in the big reverberating station. As he paced the platform, waiting for the Washington express, he remembered that there were people who thought there would one day be a tunnel under the Hudson through which the trains of the Pennsylvania railway would run straight into New York. They were of the brotherhood of visionaries who likewise predicted the building of ships that would cross the Atlantic in five days, the invention of a flying machine, lighting by electricity, telephonic communication without wires, and other Arabian Night marvels.
November 22, 2025 at 2:54 PM
maryb2004.bsky.social
I mean, the first paragraph of the introduction is this, where does it go from here :
A few years ago, my old Russian friend Larissa Salmina Haskell showed me a sepia-tinted photograph that was lying on a pile of old newspapers. I asked who it was, this young boy in military uniform. 'Ah,' she replied, 'that's my cousin. He was eaten by a bear.'
November 20, 2025 at 9:30 PM
maryb2004.bsky.social
I requested the library acquire this book so I could read it. I enjoy his fiction (Dream of Scipio is a favorite novel of mine) but this is non fiction.
Cover of Parallel Lives: A Love Story from a Lost Continent by Iain Pears. The cover picture is a photograph in sepia tones taken from above from possibly a stone bridge, showing a man and a woman walking along cobblestoned embankment.
November 20, 2025 at 9:28 PM
maryb2004.bsky.social
One must have the perfect Archery dress.
Photo of movie May in a white jacket and skirt. Leafy embroidery on collar and cuffs. A beige belt with the arrow holder attached. Gauntlets(?) on her left arm, holding the bow in her right hand.
November 15, 2025 at 11:22 PM
maryb2004.bsky.social
Today’s reading in The Age of Innocence: Newland is still thoughtful but ultimately a wannabe mansplainer. 🏹
but she was nearing her twenty-second birthday, and he wondered at what age "nice" women began to speak for themselves. "Never, if we won't let them, I suppose," he mused,
November 6, 2025 at 6:36 PM
maryb2004.bsky.social
Last week I forced myself to catch up with Don Quixote and was relieved he was finally free of the Duke and Duchess. So it was easier to sit down and read this week’s installment. 🫏

He agrees:
When Don Quixote saw himself in the open countryside, free and clear of Altisidora's wooing, it seemed to him that he had returned to his own element, that his spirits had revived and were ready to resume his chivalric pursuits, and turning to Sancho, he said:
November 2, 2025 at 5:18 PM
maryb2004.bsky.social
Why did I not know that Edith Wharton was so funny? I would have read her sooner.

And descriptive details … 🏹
A visit to Me. Manson Mingott was alwavs an amusing episode to the young man. The house in itself was already an historic document, though not, of course, as venerable as certain other old family houses in University Place and lower Fifth Avenue. Those were of the purest 1830, with a grim harmony of cabbage-rose-garlanded carpets, rosewood consoles, round-arched fire-places with black marble mantels, and immense glazed book-cases of mahogany; whereas old Mrs. Mingott, who had built her house later, had bodily cast out the massive furniture of her prime, and mingled with the Mingott heirlooms the frivolous upholstery of the Second Empire.
November 2, 2025 at 4:50 PM
maryb2004.bsky.social
Chapter one reminds me of this Mary Cassatt painting of a woman in a box at the Paris Opera with a mirror behind her. She is looking out. In the mirror you can see the people in the other boxes looking at her, not at the stage.

upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/co...
Redhaired woman in a pink dress, lots of decolletage. She is wearing a pearl necklace and hold a furled fan. On the dress is a corsage.
November 1, 2025 at 4:43 PM
maryb2004.bsky.social
I think I’m going to enjoy The Age of Innocence. 🏹
She sang, of course, "M'ama!" and not "he loves me," since an unalterable and unquestioned law of the musical world required that the German text of French operas sung by Swedish artists should be translated into Italian for the clearer understanding of English-speaking audiences.
November 1, 2025 at 3:35 PM
maryb2004.bsky.social
This is the tea shelf at my local grocery store.

Lots of empty slots. T***p tax issues?
1/2of the slots are empty.
October 3, 2025 at 4:33 PM
maryb2004.bsky.social
my hold just came in from the library. It’s … long. Maybe that’s why it came in faster than I expected, people borrowed and then said “Over 900 pages, to be read in 21 days? I’ll wait.” But I’m going to give it a shot.
Cover of The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny by Kiran Desai, Booker Prize Winning Author of The Inheritance of Loss. It’s blue. With 9 blue and gold circles (?) in the background.
September 28, 2025 at 9:09 PM
maryb2004.bsky.social
Taking a break from Booker nominees and heading back Up North via novel.

#booksky
#reading
#mystery
Novel cover showing a minnesota lakeshore at sunset with bluegreen water and pine trees in shadow. Author’s name, William Kent Krueger, is above the book title, Apostle’s Cove.
September 25, 2025 at 12:24 AM
maryb2004.bsky.social
New book I’m reading. It’s not at all what I expected.
#booksky
Cover of the novel Audition. Black with the words Audition Katie and Kitamura on three separate lines, with stripes of color running through the words. Below it says “A novel by the author of Intimacies” in script.
September 22, 2025 at 9:03 PM
maryb2004.bsky.social
Today’s theater experience. A modern comedy in the style of Noel Coward.
Program for The Cottage at The Repertory Theatre of St. Louis directed by Risa Brainin. It shows 2 legs, one of a woman in black stockings and high heels and the other a man’s in athletic shoes and socks pulled up to the knees.
September 22, 2025 at 12:25 AM
maryb2004.bsky.social
I’ve been reading some Booker longlist novels. Just finished Flesh by David Szalay.
I often complain that dialog in novels isn’t the way people really talk. Szalay writes very realistic dialog for a main character who is monosyllabic and relatively uncurious. In other words, it bored me. #booksky
Cover of Flesh. Dark brown background with a large apple core in the middle. Book title above. Author below.
September 21, 2025 at 3:18 PM
maryb2004.bsky.social
Almost finished with this and loving it. Main character is seeking the daughter she gave up for adoption 40 years ago. The writing is like a memoir, written realistically. She can’t always remember details.
#booksky #litfic 📚💙
Green cover of the novel Love Forms by Claire Adams with picture of an apple and orange slices.
September 17, 2025 at 11:16 PM
maryb2004.bsky.social
I’m always happy when a local restaurant makes a national list but …

This restaurant is right next door to another restaurant, which is next to a big brewhouse. And down the street from other restaurants. In an area (Maplewood) that sees well reviewed startup restaurants all the time.

NYTimes?
In a block of drab storefronts near the Bouffant Daddy Hair Salon, Robin is an unlikely find, a boxy place made inviting with soft lighting and soothing earth tones. Alec Schingel, the chef and owner, offers a four-course tasting menu — five with optional snacks - with lively takes on Midwestern specialties that are playful and surprising but demonstrate Mr. Schingel's serious chops. Don't stint on those exuberant snacks, like a chicken liver mousse served between two corn cookies like a savory Oreo. A late-spring meal included a bracing cold green garlic soup, a clever take on surf-and-turf with mushroom-cured trout bathed in horseradish foam and crowned by fried green tomatoes, and pork schnitzel wrapped around Swiss cheese, cabbage, apple and mustard, a beautiful display of controlled contrasts. A mille-feuille of amaro-infused chocolate mousse sandwiched by thin slices of caramelized toast is a perfect, sweet exclamation point.
September 14, 2025 at 3:13 PM
maryb2004.bsky.social
Re-reading What’s Bred in the Bone by Robertson Davies.
IT WAS IN A GARDEN that Francis Cornish first became truly aware of himself as a creature observing a world apart from ware of himself as a creature observing a world apart from himself. He was almost three years old, and he was looking deep into a splendid red peony. He was greatly alive to himself (though he had not yet learned to think of himself as Francis and the peony, in its fashion, was also greatly alive to itself, and the two looked at each other from their very different egotisms with solemn self-confidence. The little boy nodded at the peony and the peony seemed to nod back. The little boy was neat, clean, and pretty. The peony was unchaste, dishevelled as peonies must be, and at the height of its beauty. It was a significant moment, for it was Francis's first conscious encounter with beauty-beauty that was to be the delight, the torment, and the bitterness of his life-but except for Francis himself, and perhaps the peony, nobody knew of it, or would have heeded if they had known. Every hour is filled with such moments. big with significance for someone.
August 25, 2025 at 1:38 AM
maryb2004.bsky.social
Perfect weather and good air quality for our last day at the lake.
View of blue water through green trees. Islands in the distance.
August 15, 2025 at 10:04 PM
maryb2004.bsky.social
Really Spelling 🐝?
Spelling bee did not take neology.
August 3, 2025 at 11:46 PM
maryb2004.bsky.social
From the Missouri Independent. 👍
Respect Missouri Voters, a bipartisan constellation of organizations, this month submitted 38 versions of a new initiative petition seeking to undermine the legislature's ability to overturn voter-approved measures. Most would require 80% of the legislature to agree before a law or constitutional amendment enacted by initiative petition could be revised or repealed. They also would prohibit the legislature from making the initiative and referendum process more difficult. The group's PAC reported $200,000 cash on hand on July 1, with another $170,000 in large donations since then. That includes $10,000 from former Republican U.S. Sen. John Danforth.
July 28, 2025 at 6:05 PM
maryb2004.bsky.social
A Delahaye roadster.
Sleek gray 2 seater car with brown interior.
July 17, 2025 at 6:33 PM
maryb2004.bsky.social
Here’s a 1930 Alfa Romeo.
Slerk red 2 seater
July 17, 2025 at 6:31 PM
maryb2004.bsky.social
Isn’t it great? Also great fashions.
Here’s a Molyneux evening dress.
Black evening dress with short train and pink feather sleeves.
July 17, 2025 at 6:14 PM
maryb2004.bsky.social
A Hispano-Suiza
Brown wood veneer sleek car with silver details.
July 17, 2025 at 6:08 PM