Tag Archives: Mark Twain

Our DVD Collection

I love reading books and I love films.

We have quite a library of DVDs we have acquired over the years. We do not buy them as often lately. I borrow many DVDs from my local public library.

I recently purchased some great DVDs from PBS that I thought would be good additions to our collection. They were on sale so I decided to go for it. My husband and I have been watching them the past few days.

A perk of owning DVDs is that you can watch them over and over. If I haven’t watched something in a while I forget enough parts of it that I can enjoy it all over again. Or even if I remember the story, because I love them so much, I don’t care how many times I have seen them. Like re-reading a beloved book. I may even see more of the nuances that I may not have seen with the first viewing.

I like collecting older films or classics. We have a few. One reason I want to collect them is I am afraid that eventually we won’t be able to find them. That they won’t be available anymore. It is like old books that go out of print.

We just finished watching The DVD of Mark Twain by Ken Burns. Very good. It is a 2 Disc set. It covers Mark Twain’s life from beginning to end. It includes many great and funny quotes and excerpts from his books and some great photos.  I really love many of his quotes  and will be using them from time to time. There are interviews with some Mark Twain scholars, Hal Holbrook and Arthur Miller. It has special features that go into the making of the film and more Mark Twain quotes and photos.

The scholars, Holbrook and Miller share their knowledge, insights and impressions of Twain’s writing, motivations and personality. It is interesting to hear about the man behind the writing.

We all like to think that we are revealing our truth(s) with our blogs. Here is a quote from Mark Twain about honesty:

I think we never become really and genuinely our entire and honest selves until we are dead–and not then until we have been dead years and years. People ought to start dead, and then they would be honest so much earlier.

Do you like having your own collection of films? Have you watched this particular film about Mark Twain and what did you like about it or learn from it? Do you have some favorite classic or older films?

|Nano Poblano| among other things.