A Year in Books/Day 57: Inside Oscar

Posted on February 26, 2012 by maedez

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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

Posted on February 26, 2012 by maedez

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

Posted on February 26, 2012 by maedez

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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