“So many books, so little time.”-Frank Zappa Continue reading
A Reading List a Mile Long: Daedalus Books Late Spring 2013
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Tag Archives: Biography
[Intermezzo] Lost Words
It’s a true story. I know how it ends, but I can’t move forward. The last twenty pages are as weighty as a boulder, as immovable as a broken vault door. My heart refuses to face the acrid, bloody truth, to acknowledge the twisted metal and shattered dreams. His unwritten novels poke through the years like torpid headlights in a fog. Am I a horrid person for lamenting the tragedy of lost words?
Daily Diversion #109: So I Walked into a Bookstore…
…and walked out with only 3 books!
- Silent Movies The Birth of Film and the Triumph of Movie Culture by Peter Kobel and the Library of Congress
- Gene Kelly A Life of Dance and Dreams by Alvin Yudkoff
- Lonelyhearts The Screwball World of Nathanael West and Eileen McKenney by Marion Meade
Silent Movies
I’ve wanted this book since it first hit shelves 5 years ago. Continue reading
A Year in Books/Day 225: Egon Schiele
- Title: Egon Schiele
- Author: Sandra Forty
- Year Published: 2012 (TAJ Books International)
- Year Purchased: New Year’s Day 2013
- Source: Half Price Books
- About: Another day, another review of a small book with generous appeal. Sandra Forty’s seven pages of text get the party started. With such limited space, she tells the Austrian painter’s story well and with much-needed concision. There’s no room for depth, but she does what needs to be done and does it admirably. The star of the book is, of course, Schiele’s art. There are eighty-two chronologically arranged plates, each one contributing to the riveting aesthetic harmony of one of the most astonishing artistic outputs of the 20th century. The reproductions may be tiny, but they are stunning.
- Motivation: Egon Schiele is one of my favourite artists. I find inspiration from hundreds of sources: kooky, disparate, and not all word related. Art, photography, silent cinema, and fashion history all serve me well when, throwing off the shadows from my mind, I head out into the wider world in search of creative focus.
- Times Read: 1
- Random Excerpt/Page 4: “Furthermore, he subverted the usual approach to portraiture and instead explored unusual angles, asking his models to twist and turn into unconventional attitudes and stare back at the observer with baleful, unblinking eyes.”
- Happiness Scale: 10+++
Egon Schiele, Self-portrait, 1912 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
A Year in Books/Day 222: Queen of the Wits A Life of Laetitia Pilkington
- Title: Queen of the Wits A Life of Laetitia Pilkington
- Author: Norma Clarke
- Year Published: 2008 (Faber and Faber Limited)
- Year Purchased: September, 2012
- Source: My mom bought it for me in Ireland.
- About: If emotions could flash across time, whether born of sympathy or distaste, then Laetitia Pilkington would be knocked over by waves of righteous indignation sent her way from 21st century readers of Norma Clarke’s compelling biography. It would be all too easy to write off what happened to the 18th century writer and wit as just another example of the appalling, often violent double standard facing women of the time. It’s not that simple. She was a pet favourite of Jonathan Swift, a precocious young writer, budding intellectual, wife, mother, and beloved daughter. Whether she had an affair or not (and it is hard to tell if her explanation was pure cheek or plain truth) doesn’t matter within the context of her place and time; the fact that her ill-tempered husband, a curate with literary ambitions, was allowed to carry on dalliances without punishment or even censure, whilst she was publicly castigated as a whore, is the central theme of what became an extended nightmare for his wife. Continue reading
A Year in Books/Day 220: The Secret (No, Not That One)
- Title: The Secret The Strange Marriage of Annabella Milbanke and Lord Byron
- Author: Ashley Hay
- Year Published: 2000/This Edition: 2001 (Aurum Press Ltd)
- Year Purchased: 2002/2003
- Source: Barnes & Noble clearance rack
- About: This is way more interesting than the “self-help” book by Rhonda Byrne. It’s also real. We all know that Lord Byron (and his buddies) had some hellacious and salacious adventures. Carousing, hell-catting, what-have-you. They were a lot of things, but boring wasn’t one of them. With all of that knowledge in the back of our heads, you’d think that any biography focusing on his personal life couldn’t offer up an intriguing perspective. You’d be wrong, and thank goodness for that. History has certainly seen its share of romantic mismatches and marital disasters. The union between Lord Byron and Annabella Milbanke deserves a fairly high position on any informal ranking. Lest you worry that The Secret is trashy tabloid-esque fodder with a historical spin, fear not! Hay has written a fine exploration, taken from the couple’s journals and correspondence, that gives her subjects a respectful, though not heavy, seriousness.
- Motivation: We always hear of Byron and his conquests, yet few words are devoted to the women he loved; and most of those are given over to his sister, not his wife. An entire book dedicated to the odd, brief relationship he had with the out-flanked Miss Milbanke? Oh, yes please.
- Times Read: 1
- Random Excerpt/Page 38: “At the same time, she became convinced that Byron was about to announce his engagement to someone else-to the young lady, in fact, whom he had told he wanted to see no more of Annabella’s poems. All the light, all the spark, went out of her and out of her effervescent summer: she told her aunt of this imminent announcement so definitely that Lady Melbourne took the idea to Byron as a fact, not a rumour, and he was at a loss to explain its origins or its vehemence.”
- Happiness Scale: 8 1/2
Portrait of Annabella Byron (nee Anne Isabella Milbanke) (1792-1860) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
A Year in Books/Day 218: Max Factor’s Hollywood Glamour
- Title: Max Factor’s Hollywood Glamour
- Author: Fred E. Basten (with Robert Salvatore & Paul A. Kaufman)
- Year Published: 1995 (W. Quay Hays)
- Year Purchased: 2003/2004
- Source: Barnes & Noble clearance rack
- About: Max Factor isn’t just a name on wands of mascara and tubes of lipstick found in the beauty aisle at your local grocery store. The Max Factor cosmetics line wasn’t invented and branded by impersonal, slick-suited admen in a glossy boardroom. He was a pioneer who not only shaped and defined the aesthetics of classic cinema (from glamour girls to tough guys and everything in between) but he brought make-up to the masses in a way that was, and is, distinctly modern. His genius for invention and marketing, as well as his humble beginnings in Central Europe, make his story a neat parallel to those of the movie moguls who were his contemporaries. Continue reading
A Reading List a Mile Long: Daedalus Books Fall Shorts 2012
Let’s get straight to the good stuff, no filler or fluff.
- Beginning with My Streets: Essays and Recollections by Czeslaw Milosz
- Convertible Houses by Amanda Lam & Amy Thomas
- EYEWITNESS American Originals from the National Archives Gripping Eyewitness Accounts of Moments in U.S. History by Stacey Bredhoff
- Brilliant Women 18th Century Bluestockings by Elizabeth Eger & Lucy Peltz
- Matthew Boulton Selling What the World Desires by Shena Mason
- The Last Explorer Hubert Wilkins: Hero of the Great Age of Polar Exploration by Simon Nasht Continue reading
A Year in Books/Day 216: Wild Irish Women
- Title: Wild Irish Women Extraordinary Lives from History
- Author: Marian Broderick
- Year Published: 2001/This Edition: 2002 (The O’Brien Press)
- Year Purchased: September 2012
- Source: My momma.
- About: Besides hailing from the fair island of Ireland (or, in some cases, having Irish parentage), all of the women profiled in this book have one thing in common: they are all dead. Just my cup of tea! I love historical ladies, whatever their professional or social province or claim to immortality, however slight. The more eccentric, the better. The 75 women included in this volume, for good or ill, do our complicated place in history justice. The stories of their often oppressive lives are stimulating, maddening, thought-provoking, and inspiring. They were artists, writers, intellectuals, wives, mothers, sisters, daughters, lovers, republicans, actresses, scientists, and activists. One thing they never were, was boring. Since my curiosity about the women who smoothed my path is unapologetically insatiable, I couldn’t flip the pages fast enough. It’s a wonderful tease into the fascinating subject of forgotten women. Distilling-or gutting-the essence of a life, human and flawed and fertile, into a few pages comprised of paper and ink could be, and often is, problematic. Lives aren’t edited, but history is; what is left out is as important as what remains. Take this book as a nice starting point, then go forth and learn more.
- Motivation: My love of feisty, original, gutsy women is well-known. Naturally, this book reminded my mom of me.
- Times Read: 1
- Random Excerpt/Page 49: “However, there was something that lifted the spirits of Peig (Sayers) and the other islanders on the long, dark winter nights: storytelling. This important form of entertainment was part of the old Irish oral tradition. A dail, or assembly, would meet at night in a house, and a comedy, mystery or tragedy would slowly unfold. Peig, with her pure Irish and her beautiful embellishments and turns of phrase, was an acknowledged master of the art. She kept hundreds of stories in her phenomenal memory, and she was able to memorize a story that would take a week in the telling after hearing it just once.”
- Happiness Scale: 9 1/2
A Year in Books/Day 212: The White Blackbird
- Title: The White Blackbird A Life of the Painter Margarett Sargent by Her Granddaughter
- Author: Honor Moore
- Year Published: 1996 (Penguin Books)
- Year Purchased: 2004/2005
- Source: A bookstore in Buffalo, New York
- About: I love stumbling across books about people whose names and faces don’t register. It is fair to say that I am obsessed with the obscure and the odd and the oddly obscure, especially when the subjects in question are creative and rebellious women. Anyone determined to live a life of artistry has to break some barriers. Deterrents come in many forms, but we all have expectations that we must push past in order to have the freedom to create. Continue reading
