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Member: bobsbestbooks

CollectionsYour library (539), Currently reading (1), All collections (539)

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TagsBritish (110), American (100), Fiction (86), British Literature (52), Art (44), Theatre (30), Classic (26), Spy Fiction (25), Crime Fiction (25), Detective Crime Fiction (24) — see all tags

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GroupsBest of British, British & Irish Crime Fiction, Crime, Thriller & Mystery, HMS Surprise, The Diogenes Club

About meA retired communications specialist with a BS in English Literature and an MA in Theatre.

My love of books came from my Irish Catholic mother and the Jesuits, especially one Jesuit Scholastic who would occasionally smack me on the back of the head with the Essentials of Latin Grammar.

Early career: taught speech, voice, diction, and oral interpretation at Loyola University in Chicago. As the Associate Director of the Loyola University Theatre, directed the undergraduate theatre productions.

Middle career: left teaching and worked as a professional actor and director at several theatres in the US. Also worked on-camera and off (voice-over narration) as a spokesperson for hundreds of television and radio commercials.

Later career: developed a marketing communications company specializing in product presentations and complex technology demonstrations for major corporations.

Spent over thirty years in the business of corporate marketing as a spokesperson, scriptwriter and producer. In addition to work in every major US city, developed, wrote, narrated, and produced the video for live English and bilingual marketing presentations in Paris, Moscow, Düsseldorf, Frankfurt, Geneva and Toronto.

My wife is an Arab-American, born in Jerusalem and educated in Jordan. In her early career she worked in advertising and film production. She switched gears and retired after 25 years in the airline business as a Ticket Office Manager. She’s also an outstanding cook and a 98 lb. exercise fanatic. When not lifting weights or running, she “kicks butt and gets buff” with kickboxing classes and high intensity Samurai sword fighting workouts.

Besides reading, we love theatre and movies. When we were both working and flush with funds, we were “American Friends of The Royal Shakespeare Company” and contributors to London’s National Theatre. When we’d seen everything worth seeing in New York, we’d fly to London for long weekends and see six shows in three days.

We’ve been living in New York City for over thirty years. However, in 2000, we retired from business and purchased a small villa, overlooking the Mediterranean, in Porto Rafael, a private community located on Punta Sardegna, the northernmost tip of the island of Sardinia.

Finding something to read in Sardinia is impossible, so we have books shipped by mail from New York. The Post Office folks tell us that it usually takes about 10 days to two weeks to arrive. We laugh when they say this because one box took over 8 months.

While in Sardinia we fortunately have the New York Times and our favorite progressive blogs on-line. Plus, thanks to a clever Sardinian friend, we have National Public Radio beamed in with our Satellite Dish, plus BBC and CNN from a second dish.

We currently spend a third of each year in Italy, and the rest of the time we are either in New York, Chicago, or Washington, DC visiting family and four granddaughters.

Sadly, we recently decided to sell our lovely Sardinian "villetta," and we posted the following sites on the World Wide Web: http://seasidehouseforsaleinitaly.com/
http://casainvenditainitalia.it/

About my libraryThe small size of our New York apartment, dictates the size of our library (see photo), so over the years we’ve been forced to give away many of our books to make room for others. We usually leave them on a table in the downstairs lobby of our building to be enjoyed by our neighbors.

The final five hundred or so that remain are symbolic of the Seven Ages of our lives.

First, there's the collection of children’s literature my mother read to me as a child, and that I in turn read to my sons at bedtime. ("Please Dad...just one more chapter"). My sons or daughters-in-law now read to my four granddaughters every evening.

On the very top shelves are the remnants of reference books, paperback classics and poetry anthologies I’ve lugged around since undergraduate and graduate school. Many of these have seen better days, but then, so have I.

Our love of theatre is indicated by the collection of theatrical literature, and Shakespeareana. We also have bound copies of playbills for every show we’ve ever seen.

Then, because my wife is Palestinian-American, there are the books on politics and the Middle East, specifically the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Next there are the hard covers and large “coffee-table” art books from the period when we were both working, and could afford lovely books like these.

And because we traveled a great deal and live part of the year in Italy, we have many books on travel and cooking. Most of these have not been cataloged on LT.

Finally, since retirement, we are back to paperbacks and the occasional hard cover when it’s a book we really must own, like the latest John Le Carré or Man Booker Prize winner.

My favorite authors are Patrick O’Brian, John Le Carré, Ian McEwan, Umberto Eco, John Updike, Larry McMurtry, Tom Stoppard, and Mr. William Shakespeare.

My wife’s favorite authors are Jane Austen, Jane Austen, and Jane Austen. Although she too loves the works of Patrick O'Brian, Len Deighton, Peter Robinson and Ian Rankin.

Homepagehttp://Defunct, like Buffalo Bill

Real nameBob Theis and Maysoun Rimawi-Theis

Location75th Street & Columbus Avenue, New York, NY 10023

Emailbobandmaysounmac.com

Favorite authorsNone

Account typepublic, lifetime

Connection NewsConnection News

URLs http://www.librarything.com/profile/bobsbestbooks (profile)
http://www.librarything.com/catalog/bobsbestbooks (library)

Common KnowledgeSeries (65), Awards (195), Characters (1768), Places (312)

Member sinceNov 16, 2008

Currently readingWolf Hall: A Novel by Hilary Mantel