Pauline talked to me about a new way of collecting art and then exposing it to others. I love this idea. Listen to her thoughts. I want to make it happen.
Pauline Shender
Episode 18 – Pauline Shender
Welcome To Art Lovers Forum. I met Pauline Shender a few years ago at Fountainhead Arts, an art residency in Miami. We are both members. She is a few decades younger than me but when I see her, I feel like I am looking at myself at her age. However, I’m far more brash, she is much more sophisticated.
Pauline has been studying contemporary art since 2012. What started as a curiosity about contemporary art has turned into a meaningful pursuit of further knowledge. An initial course with Kathleen Madden at Barnard College entitled: Conversations in Contemporary Art has led to collecting, Museum involvement and patronage of emerging artists. Pauline is currently or has been on the Acquisitions Committee at the ICA Miami, Emerging Collectors Committee at the Norton and is a Patron of the Fountainhead as well. She has amassed a growing collection of approximately 75 works from both emerging and established artists including: Azita Moradkhani, Nate Lewis, Tariku Shiferaw, Emily Mae Smith, Teresita Fernandez, Theaster Gates, Maynard Monrow, and William Kentridge. She made her first art donation to the Norton in 2023 of a Naama Tsabar “Work on Felt” and there is a performance planned at the Norton likely in 2025.
During a 19-song set at MetLife Stadium that spanned 60 years, the band tapped into what seems like a bottomless well of rock ’n’ roll energy.
Mick Jagger in a rare stationary moment. The Rolling Stones singer is flanked by Ronnie Wood (left) and Keith Richards, with the drummer Steve Jordan. Credit…Thea Traff for The New York Times
“This song’s for Manhattan!” Mick Jagger told the crowd on Thursday night at MetLife Stadium, before launching into a punchy rendition of “Shattered,” that agitated ode to late-70s New York City that closes out the band’s 1978 album “Some Girls.” In the ensuing 46 years, the city has changed in some superficial ways but somehow remained essentially the same — much, as they showed throughout an impressively energetic two-hour set, like the Rolling Stones.
The Stones’ first New York-area stadium gig in five years was sponsored, without a hint of irony, by AARP. It was appropriate: At times what transpired onstage felt not just like a rock concert but a display of the evolutionary marvel that is aging in the 21st century. (Albeit aging while wealthy, with every possible technological and medical advantage at one’s disposal. I’ll have whatever vitamins the Stones are taking, please.)
Ronnie Wood, the core group’s baby at age 76, still shreds on the guitar with a grinning, impish verve. Eighty-year-old and eternally cool Keith Richards pairs his bluesy licks with a humble demeanor that seems to say “I can’t believe I’m still here, either.” And then there is Jagger, who turns 81 a few days after the Hackney Diamonds Tour wraps in July. Six decades into his performing career, he is somehow still the indefatigable dynamo he always was, slithering vertically like a charmed snake, chopping the air as if he’s in a kung fu battle against a swarm of unseen mosquitoes, and, when he needs both hands to dance, which is often, nestling the microphone provocatively above the fly of his pants. Sprinting the length of the stage during a rousing “Honky Tonk Women” — the 13th song in the set! — he conjured no other rock star so much as Benjamin Button, as he seemed to become even more energetic as the night went on.
Jagger, right, was more Benjamin Button than rock singer, our critic writes — somehow becoming even more energetic as the night went on. Credit…Thea Traff for The New York Times
Last year’s “Hackney Diamonds” — the Stones’ first album of new material in nearly two decades — was the nominal reason for the tour, but they didn’t linger on it, and the crowd didn’t seem to mind. Across 19 songs, they played only three tunes from the latest release, including two of the best: The taut, growly lead single “Angry” and, for the first part of the encore, the gospel-influenced reverie “Sweet Sounds of Heaven.” Mostly it was a kind of truncated greatest hits collection, capturing the band’s long transformation from reverent students of the blues (Richards’ star turn on the tender “You Got the Silver”) to countercultural soothsayers (a singalong-friendly “Sympathy for the Devil”) to corporate rock behemoth (they opened, of course, with “Start Me Up”).
Jagger, Richards and Wood all still emanate a palpable joy for what they are doing onstage. But those joys also feel noticeably personal and siloed, rarely blending to provide much intra-band chemistry. That is likely a preservation strategy — the surest way to keep a well-oiled machine running and to continue sharing the stage with the same people for half a century or more. But when Jagger ended a charming story about a local diner that had named a sandwich after him (“I’ve never had a [expletive] sandwich named after me! I’m very, very proud”), I did not quite buy his assertion that he, Keith and Ronnie were going to go enjoy one together after the show.
Wood, left, is the baby of the core group at 76. Richards is 80 and still eternally cool. Credit…Thea Traff for The New York Times
Some of that fractured feeling is likely due to the absence of the great Charlie Watts, the band’s longtime drummer who died in 2021; the Hackney Diamonds Tour is the Stones’ first North American stadium tour without him. His replacement, Steve Jordan, does about as good a job as anyone could — like Watts, he balances a rock drummer’s power with a jazzy agility — and his presence never overwhelms. Though they are surrounded by plenty of talented backing musicians, the staging makes it clear that the Rolling Stones are now a trio.
The night’s breakout star, though, was Chanel Haynes, a backing vocalist who took center stage to sing with Jagger during two of the night’s best performances. Haynes — who played Tina Turner in the West End production of the jukebox musical “Tina” before joining the Stones’ touring band in 2023 — ably filled the shoes of the mighty Merry Clayton on a blazing “Gimme Shelter,” and sat in for Lady Gaga on “Sweet Sounds of Heaven,” matching the megawatt intensity of her “Hackney Diamonds” cameo. Though Haynes could be velvety soft when the song called for it, at her most impressive she sang with a low, grumbling hunger that often swelled into ferocity, as if she were taking big, meaty bites out of the songs.
Jagger, for his part, delivered many of his lines in his signature bark: The second song, a somewhat slowed down and blues-ified “Get Off of My Cloud,” was transformed by his almost scat-like delivery. But in fleeting moments — including a few falsetto runs — he showed that a certain tenderness in his tone remains intact.
Decades into their career, the band members still emanate a palpable joy at performing onstage. Credit…Thea Traff for The New York Times
That was most apparent on a gorgeous rendition of “Wild Horses,” the song that gained inclusion in the set by winning the nightly online “fan vote.” For so much of this show, the Stones effectively proved they could outrun age, irrelevancy and all the other indignities that time brings to mere mortals. But here they settled into something more contemplative, elegiac and vulnerable, and the show was better for it.
At a time when their few remaining peers are wrapping farewell tours and bands that have been together for half as long are running on fumes, the Stones are an anomaly. It’s not that their show is devoid of nostalgia, but it’s not coasting on it either. They don’t look like they did in the ’70s — who does? — but when their sound is gelling they are able to tap into some kind of eternal present. For better or worse, they seem intent to be the last band of their generation standing, to ride rock ’n’ roll all the way to its logical endpoint. Astoundingly, they don’t sound like they’ve reached it yet.
“Before we hear what Reese has to say, let me recommend
Both authors give you a blow by blow description of what it’s like living with the worst possible circumstances, Suleika (Cancer) and Danielle, (Hitler). These books were so captivating that I missed work deadlines and cancelled social engagements. I can hear your reaction now, “I don’t want to read anything so depressing.” Yes, you do. You will become more alive and appreciative with this knowledge.” —LWH.
When her career hit a wall, the Oscar-winning actor built a ladder made of books — for herself, and for others.
Reading is the antidote to hate and xenophobia,” Reese Witherspoon said. “It increases our empathy and understanding of the world.”
“You’d be shocked by how many books have women chained in basements,” Reese Witherspoon said. “I know it happens in the world. I don’t want to read a book about it.”
Nor does she want to read an academic treatise, or a 700-page novel about a tree.
Sitting in her office in Nashville, occasionally dipping into a box of takeout nachos, Witherspoon talked about what she does like to read — and what she looks for in a selection for Reese’s Book Club, which she referred to in a crisp third person.
“It needs to be optimistic,” Witherspoon said. “It needs to be shareable. Do you close this book and say, ‘I know exactly who I want to give it to?’”
But, first and foremost, she wants books by women, with women at the center of the action who save themselves. “Because that’s what women do,” she said. “No one’s coming to save us.”
Witherspoon, 48, has now been a presence in the book world for a decade. Her productions of novels like “Big Little Lies,” “Little Fires Everywhere” and “The Last Thing He Told Me” are foundations of the binge-watching canon. Her book club picks reliably land on the best-seller list for weeks, months or, in the case of “Where the Crawdads Sing,” years. In 2023, print sales for the club’s selections outpaced those of Oprah’s Book Club and Read With Jenna, according to Circana Bookscan, adding up to 2.3 million copies sold.
So how did an actor who dropped out of college (fine, Stanford) become one of the most influential people in an industry known for being intractable and slightly tweedy?
It started with Witherspoon’s frustration over the film industry’s skimpy representation of women onscreen — especially seasoned, strong, smart, brave, mysterious, complicated and, yes, dangerous women.
“When I was about 34, I stopped reading interesting scripts,” she said.
Witherspoon had already made a name for herself with “Election,” “Legally Blonde” and “Walk the Line.” But, by 2010, Hollywood was in flux: Streaming services were gaining traction. DVDs were following VHS tapes to the land of forgotten technology.
“When there’s a big economic shift in the media business, it’s not the superhero movies or independent films we lose out on,” Witherspoon said. “It’s the middle, which is usually where women live. The family drama. The romantic comedy. So I decided to fund a company to make those kinds of movies.”
In 2015, Witherspoon was nominated for an Academy Award for her performance as Cheryl Strayed in “Wild.”
In 2012, she started the production company Pacific Standard with Bruna Papandrea. Its first projects were film adaptations of books: “Gone Girl” and “Wild,” which both opened in theaters in 2014.
Growing up in Nashville, Witherspoon knew the value of a library card. She caught the bug early, she said, from her grandmother, Dorothea Draper Witherspoon, who taught first grade and devoured Danielle Steel novels in a “big cozy lounger” while sipping iced tea from a glass “with a little paper towel wrapped around it.”
This attention to detail is a smoke signal of sorts: Witherspoon is a person of words.
When she was in high school, Witherspoon stayed after class to badger her English teacher — Margaret Renkl, now a contributing opinion writer for The New York Times — about books that weren’t part of the curriculum. When Witherspoon first moved to Los Angeles, books helped prepare her for the “chaos” of filmmaking; “The Making of the African Queen” by Katharine Hepburn was a particular favorite.
So it made sense that, as soon as Witherspoon joined Instagram, she started sharing book recommendations. Authors were tickled and readers shopped accordingly. In 2017, Witherspoon made it official: Reese’s Book Clubbecame a part of her new company, Hello Sunshine.
The timing was fortuitous, according to Pamela Dorman, senior vice president and publisher of Pamela Dorman Books/Viking, who edited the club’s inaugural pick, “Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine.” “The book world needed something to help boost sales in a new way,” she said.
Reese’s Book Club was that something: “Eleanor Oliphant” spent 85 weeks on the paperback best-seller list. The club’s second pick, “The Alice Network,” spent nearly four months on the weekly best-seller lists and two months on the audio list. Its third, “The Lying Game,” spent 18 weeks on the weekly lists.
“There’s nothing better than getting that phone call,” added Dorman, who has now edited two more Reese’s Book Club selections.
Kiley Reid’s debut novel, “Such a Fun Age,” got the nod in January 2020. She said, “When I was on book tour, a lot of women would tell me, ‘I haven’t read a book in four years, but I trust Reese.’” Four years later, on tour for her second novel, “Come and Get It,” Reid met women who were reading 100 books a year.
Witherspoon tapped into a sweet spot between literary and commercial fiction, with a few essay collections and memoirs sprinkled in. She turned out to be the literary equivalent of a fit model — a reliable bellwether for readers in search of intelligent, discussion-worthy fare, hold the Proust. She wanted to help narrow down the choices for busy readers, she said, “to bring the book club out of your grandma’s living room and online.”
She added: “The unexpected piece of it all was the economic impact on these authors’ lives.”
One writer became the first person in her family to own a home. “She texted me a picture of the key,” Witherspoon said. “I burst into tears.”
Witherspoon pulled up a favorite quote from Laurie Frankel’s novel, “This Is How It Always Is.” Then she read it aloud: “‘Easy is nice, but it’s not as good as getting to be who you are or stand up for what you believe in,’ said Penn. ‘Easy is nice, but I wonder how often it leads to fulfilling work or partnership or being.’”
Witherspoon considers a handful of books each month. Submissions from publishers are culled by a small group that includes Sarah Harden, chief executive of Hello Sunshine; Gretchen Schreiber, manager of books (her original title was “bookworm”); and Jon Baker, whose team at Baker Literary Scouting scours the market for promising manuscripts.
Not only is Witherspoon focused on stories by women — “the Bechdel test writ large,” Baker said — but also, “Nothing makes her happier than getting something out in the world that you might not see otherwise.”
When transgender rights were in the headlines in 2018, the club chose “This Is How It Always Is,” Laurie Frankel’s novel about a family grappling with related issues in the petri dish of their own home. “We track the long tail of our book club picks and this one, without fail, continues to sell,” Baker said.
Witherspoon’s early readers look for a balance of voices, backgrounds and experiences. They also pay attention to the calendar. “Everyone knows December and May are the busiest months for women,” Harden said, referring to the mad rush of the holidays and the end of the school year. “You don’t want to read a literary doorstop then. What do you want to read on summer break? What do you want to read in January?”
Occasionally the group chooses a book that isn’t brand-new, as with the club’s April pick, “The Most Fun We Ever Had,” from 2019. When Claire Lombardo learned that her almost-five-year-old novel had been anointed, she thought there had been a mistake; after all, her new book, “Same As it Ever Was,” is coming out next month. “It’s wild,” Lombardo said. “It’s not something that I was expecting.”
Sales of “The Most Fun We Ever Had” increased by 10,000 percent after the announcement, according to Doubleday. Within the first two weeks, 27,000 copies were sold. The book has been optioned by Hello Sunshine.
Witherspoon preferred not to elaborate on a few subjects: competition with other top-shelf book clubs (“We try not to pick the same books”); the lone author who declined to be part of hers (“I have a lot of respect for her clarity”); and the 2025 book she’s already called dibs on (“You can’t imagine that Edith Wharton or Graham Greene didn’t write it”).
But she was eager to set the record straight on two fronts. Her team doesn’t get the rights to every book — “It’s just how the cookie crumbles,” she said — and, Reese’s Book Club doesn’t make money off sales of its picks. Earnings come from brand collaborations and affiliate revenue.
This is true of all celebrity book clubs. An endorsement from one of them is a free shot of publicity, but one might argue that Reese’s Book Club does a bit more for its books and authors than most. Not only does it promote each book from hardcover to paperback, it supports authors in subsequent phases of their careers.
Take Reid, for instance. More than three years after Reese’s Book Club picked her first novel, it hosted a cover reveal for “Come and Get It,” which came out in January. This isn’t the same as a yellow seal on the cover, but it’s still a spotlight with the potential to be seen by the club’s 2.9 million Instagram followers.
“I definitely felt like I was joining a very large community,” Reid said.
“Alum” writers tend to stay connected with one another via social media, swapping woot woots and advice. They’re also invited to participate in Hello Sunshine events and Lit Up, a mentorship program for underrepresented writers. Participants get editing and coaching from Reese’s Book Club authors, plus a marketing commitment from the club when their manuscripts are submitted to agents and editors.
“I describe publishing and where we sit in terms of being on a river,” Schreiber said. “We’re downstream; we’re looking at what they’re picking. Lit Up gave us the ability to look upstream and say, ‘We’d like to make a change here.’”
The first Lit Up-incubated novel, “Time and Time Again” by Chatham Greenfield, is coming out from Bloomsbury YA in July. Five more fellows have announced the sales of their books.
As Reese’s Book Club approaches a milestone — the 100th pick, to be announced in September — it continues to adapt to changes in the market. Print sales for club selections peaked at five million in 2020, and they’ve softened since then, according to Circana Bookscan. In 2021, Candle Media, a Blackstone-backed media company, bought Hello Sunshine for $900 million. Witherspoon is a member of Candle Media’s board. She is currently co-producing a “Legally Blonde” prequel series for Amazon Prime Video.
This month, Reese’s Book Club will unveil an exclusive audio partnership with Apple, allowing readers to find all the picks in one place on the Apple Books app. “I want people to stop saying, ‘I didn’t really read it, I just listened,’” Witherspoon said. “Stop that. If you listened, you read it. There’s no right way to absorb a book.”
She feels that Hollywood has changed over the years: “Consumers are more discerning about wanting to hear stories that are generated by a woman.”
Even as she’s looking forward, Witherspoon remembers her grandmother, the one who set her on this path.
“Somebody came up to me at the gym the other day and he said” — here she put on a gentle Southern drawl — “‘I’m going to tell you something I bet you didn’t hear today.’ And he goes, ‘Your grandma taught me how to read.’”
Another smoke signal, and a reminder of what lives on.
Elisabeth Egan is a writer and editor at the Times Book Review. She has worked in the world of publishing for 30 years.
We were so honored that the owner of Books & Books, Mitchell Kaplan, attended and participated in the book signing party for “Fearless Flying Fannie.” This was a dream come true. Mitchell is one of the most respected members of the book industry. He is one of the best reasons to live in Miami. Books & Books is considered to be the best book store chain in the country. Thank you Mitchell. We will remember your generosity forever. Thank you everyone who took photos of this event.
An auditorium filled with Democrats and concerned Republicans were in attendance last night at the Adrienne Arsht Center in Miami to hear former congresswoman Liz Cheney warn Americans that we are living in very dangerous times. She said “if Donald Trump gets into office your children will be living under a dictatorship. It’s the end of freedom in America.” She was interviewed by Republican political strategist and television commentator Ana Navarro about her new book, Oath and Honor: A Memoir and a Warning.
The two women both admitted that the Republican Party is falling apart because everyone is afraid of Trump. Politicians who have been chastised by Trump, in the most embarrassing ways, are pretending to support him because they are afraid they will lose their positions.
The women were ruthless when discussing how many different groups in America should fear for their lives. They named the groups but I don’t have the heart to list them. The entire audience gave them a standing ovation several times during the discussion.
Cheney’s recent book about the January 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol, the Wyoming Republican’s experience on the Congressional Select Committee that investigated the insurrection and her views on former president Donald Trump and his supporters.
I posted all of the above on Facebook, X, Instagram, and LinkedIn. My girl friend Gail shared my post and added a very important fact. Liz Cheney’s response regarding the ages of Biden and Trump, “Yes, they are both old, but only one is depraved! I wish people would wake up. Trump has told us he wants to be a dictator. He is a serious threat to our democracy and constitution.”
Thanking Members For Our Support | Annual Celebration of Generosity—Baptist Health Foundation.
Thank you for joining us at the Annual Celebration of Generosity honoring our major donors and Corporate Philanthropy Partners. Over 200 guests attended the reception at the Loews Coral Gables Hotel event and enjoyed cocktails, dinner and live entertainment.
Your belief in Baptist Health Foundation is making an enormous impact. Last year alone… $60.6 million was raised through your generosity $30 million was raised in support of our Institutes $5 million was donated to establish new Endowed Chairs More than $10.5 million was raised in support of research at Baptist Health More than 60 clinical trials and research projects were funded across several Baptist Health institutes Thank you for your commitment and dedication to Baptist Health. We are so grateful for your generosity. Sincerely, Alex Villoch Chief Executive Officer Baptist Health Foundation
An Oxford comma walks into a bar where it spends the evening watching the television, getting drunk, and smoking cigars.
A dangling participle walks into a bar. Enjoying a cocktail and chatting with the bartender, the evening passes pleasantly.
A bar was walked into by the passive voice.
An oxymoron walked into a bar, and the silence was deafening.
Two quotation marks walk into a “bar.”
A malapropism walks into a bar, looking for all intensive purposes like a wolf in cheap clothing, muttering epitaphs and casting dispersions on his magnificent other, who takes him for granite.
Hyperbole totally rips into this insane bar and absolutely destroys everything.
A question mark walks into a bar?
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Papyrus and Comic Sans walk into a bar. The bartender says, “Get out — we don’t serve your type.”
A mixed metaphor walks into a bar, seeing the handwriting on the wall but hoping to nip it in the bud.
A comma splice walks into a bar, it has a drink and then leaves.
Three intransitive verbs walk into a bar. They sit. They converse. They depart.
A synonym strolls into a tavern.
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A gerund and an infinitive walk into a bar, drinking to forget.
A hyphenated word and a non-hyphenated word walk into a bar and the bartender nearly chokes on the irony.
DigiDame 