Monthly Archives: February 2012

A Year in Books/Day 60: The First Elizabeth

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  • Title: The First Elizabeth
  • Author: Carolly Erickson
  • Year Published: 1983 (St. Martin’s Griffin)
  • Year Purchased: 1990’s
  • Source: Antique Barn at The Ohio State Fair, Columbus, Ohio
  • About: My favourite historical personage and all around kick-ass woman receives an above-average biographical treatment here.
  • Motivation: See above. Also, I love my fellow redheads.
  • Times Read: 2
  • Random Excerpt/Page 187: “There were more festivities in the coming days. The queen went to Woolwich to launch a fine new ship for her navy, christened the ‘Elizabeth’, and returned to Greenwich to watch more military games-among them a “great casting of fire, and shooting of guns, till twelve at night.” The recent peace, these exercises proclaimed, had not dimmed England’s warlike spirit; let other nation’s take warning.”
  • Happiness Scale: 10
    English: The "Darnley Portrait" of E...

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A Year in Books/Day 59: Jailbird

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  • Title: Jailbird
  • Author: Kurt Vonnegut
  • Year Published: 1979 (Delacorte Press/Seymour Lawrence)
  • Year Found: 2009
  • Source: It was on the giveaway table in our apartment building.
  • About: It’s Vonnegut, and it’s awesome. Walter F. Starbuck is a classic character and this novel makes for a wonderful albeit quick (as is the Vonnegut way) read. Of course, it is always better to read Vonnegut than to try to explain his work. So, you should go do that now.
  • Motivation: I love Vonnegut-the-writer and adore Vonnegut-the-person. He made it look easy and it is never easy. The book was also free. The back cover photo of the writer, taken by his wife Jill Krementz, is one of my favorites.
  • Times Read: 2
  • Random Excerpt/Page 127: “About the young man and his radio. I decided that he had bought the thing as a prosthetic device, as an artificial enthusiasm for the planet. He paid as little attention to it as I paid to my false front tooth. I have since seen several young men like that in groups-with their radios tuned to different stations, with their radios engaged in a spirited conversation. The young men themselves, perhaps having been told nothing but “shut up” all their lives, had nothing to say.”
  • Happiness Scale: 9

A Year in Books/Day 58: Angela’s Ashes

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  • Title: Angela’s Ashes
  • Author: Frank McCourt
  • Year Published: 1996 (Scribner)
  • Year Purchased: 1997
  • Source: Unknown
  • About: This is one of the most famous memoirs of all-time-I certainly don’t need to illustrate its contents or expound on its merits. I’ll just say that it is harrowing, lovely and every bit as good as all of the press it received back in the 1990s insisted it was. McCourt deserved the towering heap of praise-and the Pulitzer-that he was given.
  • Motivation: I was alive when it came out. Seriously, this is one of the few books that almost everyone I know has read; this includes the few hard-core non-readers in my wide orbit. It also came highly recommended by a friend, who read it as soon as it hit the shelves of the bookstore she managed.
  • Times Read: 2
  • Random Excerpt/Page 59: “The room had a fireplace where we could boil water for our tea or an egg in case we ever came into money. We had a table and three chairs and a bed, which Mam said was the biggest she had ever seen. We were glad of the bed that night, worn out after nights on floors in Dublin and Grandma’s. It didn’t matter that there were six of us in the bed, we were together, away from grandmothers and guards, Malachy could say ye ye ye and we could laugh as much as we liked.”
  • Happiness Scale: 9

A Year in Books/Day 57: Inside Oscar

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English: Actors Natalie Wood and Tab Hunter ar...

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  • Title: Inside Oscar The Unofficial History of the Academy Awards 10th Anniversary Edition
  • Authors: Mason Wiley and Damien Bona
  • Year Published: 1986/This Edition: 1996 (Ballantine Books)
  • Year Purchased: 1996/1997
  • Source: Birthday gift
  • About: Everything that you could ever want to know about Hollywood’s most important event in one ridiculously long volume (nearly 1200 pages). It includes data up to 1994. It’s a reminder that the Oscar telecast is a gaudy, self-congratulatory but mostly entertaining display of vanity gone wild.
  • Motivation: You’re going to get sick of me telling you that I am a film buff and write about old movies. However, I am and I do! This is just one of many handy reference books in my library.
  • Times Read: Cover-to-cover: 1/As reference tool: Countless
  • Random Excerpt/Page 50: “Louella Parsons was upset at what she considered Hepburn’s indifference to the honor. “Katy was not very gracious,” Louella wrote in her column. “She didn’t send a telegram of appreciation when unable to attend. Someone at RKO realized this and sent one.” There was mail waiting for Best Director loser Frank Capra when he returned home-his relatives from Sicily had sent letters of congratulation, mistaking his nomination for a victory.”
  • Happiness Scale: 10

A Year in Books/Day 56: Masters of Bedlam

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  • Title: Masters of Bedlam The Transforming of the Mad-Doctoring Trade
  • Authors: Andrew Scull, Charlotte MacKenzie and Nicholas Hervey
  • Year Published: 1996 (Princeton University Press)
  • Year Purchased: 1997-1998
  • Source: A hand-me-down from a friend.
  • About: ‘Masters of Bedlam’ offers up biographies of pioneering British ‘mad-doctors’. It is an interesting combination of social and psychiatric history, and a harrowing journey into 19th century asylums. It’s bleak stuff but you come away with respect and appreciation for those who worked against the odds to change a horrible system.
  • Motivation: This is one of the odder, more compelling volumes in the British History section of my library. My friend knew that I would appreciate it more than she did.
  • Times Read: 1
  • Random Excerpt/Page 270: “Another segment of the profession, the proprietors and medical staff of private asylums, escaped the stigma that attached itself to salaried employees of poor law institutions, but only at the cost of incurring their own unwelcome set of disabilities. To be sure, this portion of the marketplace for the services of alienists tended to be far more lucrative-at least for those who possessed the large capital sums a suitable physical plant and staff required-but it was indelibly contaminated by its overtones of trade and the endemic suspicions among the well-to-do about the motives of those who ran such establishments.”
  • Happiness Scale: 9

A Year in Books/Day 55: Girl in Hyacinth Blue

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Johannes Vermeer, The Milkmaid (1658–1660)

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  • Title: Girl in Hyacinth Blue
  • Author: Susan Vreeland
  • Year Published: 1999 (Penguin Books)
  • Year Purchased: 2006
  • Source: A bookstore in Buffalo, New York
  • About: Another book revolving around the Dutch painter, Vermeer. This is a lovely, intimate novel with a surprisingly large, sweeping historical scope. It is, more than anything, the story of a single painting as seen through the eyes of its creator and subsequent owners. It jumps through time yet is seamless, never jarring.
  • Motivation: Jan Vermeer is one of my favourite painters. I was looking for a brief, well-written novel to read while on vacation.
  • Times Read: 1
  • Random Excerpt/Page 82: “Now, it’s not wise to be shocked. It makes one’s face blotchy and you don’t want that. I wouldn’t tell just anybody, because there are parts, there are parts-but since you asked for counsel in such matters, I will tell you. The truth, that I did not love the husband my father chose for me, I had concealed more carefully than a breast.”
  • Happiness Scale: 7 1/2

 

Book Spree

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As a writer, I naturally spend a lot of time writing. Shocking, I know! On my down-time, I can usually be found reading a book or four. I’m always cycling amongst a weird combination of disparate volumes. If I’m not engaged in those activities, there’s a very good chance that I am thinking about one or the other. Writing and reading are the fuels that fire my passion for life. Continue reading →

A Year in Books/Day 54: The Prospect Before Her

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  • Title: The Prospect Before Her A History of Women in Western Europe Volume One 1500-1800
  • Author: Olwen Hufton
  • Year Published: 1995 (Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.)
  • Year Purchased: 2002-2004
  • Source: Edward R. Hamilton Bookseller Company
  • About: A lengthy, serious study of what girls could expect from their lives, from the cradle to the grave, between the years 1500-1800 in Western Europe. This isn’t the most well-made volume, and is falling apart at the binding, but the scholarship and writing are first-class.
  • Motivation: I’m a feminist. I dig history and women’s studies.
  • Times Read: 1
  • Random Excerpt/Page 91: “The women involved were drawn not from the city of Lyons, unless they were the master’s daughters, but from the mountainous villages of the Forez, Besse and Bugey and parts of the Dauphine. They were known as silk-maker’s servants because they lived in (often sleeping under the looms) and like domestic servants they were paid on an annual basis or when they left the employment of the master. Like servants they started in their early teens and expected to work for about fifteen years before having saved enough to embark on matrimony.”
  • Happiness Scale: 9