Monthly Archives: February 2012

A Year in Books/Day 53: The Illustrated History of the 19th Century

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  • Title: The Illustrated History of the 19th Century Month by Month Year by Year
  • Year Published: 2000 (Hackberry Press)
  • Year Purchased: 2002/2003
  • Source: Unknown
  • About: This is a thick encyclopedia devoted to the century that gave us Victoria and Dickens, Edison and Bernhardt, Lincoln and Eliot. It maintains a nice balance between text and illustrations.
  • Motivation: I love history, reference books and arcane data.
  • Times Read: Cover-to-cover:2/As reference tool: countless
  • Random Excerpt/Page 118: “A food scare is caused by an English chemistry professor, Frederick Accum, who publishes ‘Adulteration of Foods and Culinary Poisons’, showing that food on sale in Britain is usually adulterated, some with poisons, and has to flee to Berlin to avoid prosecution.”
  • Happiness Scale: 8 1/2
    Sarah Bernhardt, 1877

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A Year in Books/Day 52: Hollywood Babylon

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  • Title: Hollywood Babylon
  • Author: Kenneth Anger
  • Year Published: 1975/This Edition: 1981 (Dell Books)
  • Year Purchased: 2011
  • Source: This was a Christmas gift from my best friend.
  • About: I first read Kenneth Anger’s trash classic as a sophomore in high school. My English teacher loaned me her copy because she knew that I was a budding film buff. This collection of movie colony scandals is sordid and full of minor inaccuracies, neither of which lessens the fun one bit! Just don’t take it too seriously.
  • Motivation: My best friend knows how much I love classic movies and their stars. It was a great gift and, since I hadn’t read it since high school, it was pretty much like reading it for the first time.
  • Times Read: 2
  • Random Excerpt/Page 108: “If Wally Reid’s robin’s egg blue McFarlan was no longer seen cruising down Sunset, there was enough gaudy horsepower to take its place: Clara Bow in her red Kissel convertible with Chow dogs to match; Valentino’s custom-built Voisin tourer with its coiled-cobra radiator cap; Mae Murray’s canary yellow Pierce-Arrow or more formal white Rolls-Royce with liveried chauffeur and ever-present Borzoi; Olga Petrova’s purple Packard touring sedan; Gloria Swanson’s leopard-upholstered Lancia.”
  • Happiness Scale: 8
    English: Mae Murray

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A Year in Books/Day 51: Gainsborough

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  • Title: Gainsborough
  • Author: Nicola Kalinsky
  • Year Published: 1995 (Phaidon Press Limited)
  • Year Purchased: 2010
  • Source: My lovely Momma.
  • About: What starts as a dynamic and fully fleshed biographical monograph becomes a detailed analysis of his entire oeuvre, painting by painting. If you’ve ever wanted to explore deeper than ‘The Blue Boy’, this volume is a wonderful jumping off point.
  • Motivation: I’m my Mother’s daughter, which means that there are just some things I was born to love; literature, art and tea being the most important and enduring. She knew that I would appreciate this book. She was right!
  • Random Excerpt/Pages 14 and 15: “Gainsborough took a professional pride in his business and his pictures were well-made objects which have generally survived in a good state of preservation. His apprenticeship in London, to whoever it was, clearly served him well in the craft of painting. Comments in his letters attest to his care in selecting materials; he chose his pigments with a view to both beauty and permanence, unlike Reynolds, who was notorious for using fugitive colours. He was unusual in his insistence on normally painting all parts of a portrait himself, rather than employing a drapery painter; his nephew, Gainsborough Dupont, was his only recorded assistant and pupil.”
  • Happiness Scale: 10
    English: English painter Thomas Gainsborough (...

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A Year in Books/Day 50: Free Love

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  • Title: Free Love
  • Author: Annette Meyers
  • Year Published: 1999 (Mysterious Press)
  • Year Purchased: 2002-2004
  • Source: Edward R. Hamilton Bookseller Company
  • About: This period murder mystery (the best kind, in my opinion) features an Edna St. Vincent Millay-esque heroine. She composes poetry, acts for the (Provincetown) Playhouse, is shockingly frank and solves a crime. Sounds familiar, except for that last bit. After reading this book, I could pretty well be convinced that the flesh-and-blood inspiration was a bad-ass detective, too.
  • Motivation: Although I’m rather picky when it comes to mystery novels (I don’t like them except when I love them), the blurb on this one sucked me in: The era. The main character. The atmosphere. Sold, sold and sold.
  • Times Read: 1
  • Random Excerpt/Page 2: “It was a mistake; the water was cold and sloshy. Still, there was no way I was going to impart this and have him say “I told you so,” so I took my time sloshing through it. Oh, prig or not, he probably wouldn’t have gloated because he’s a better person than I am.”
  • Happiness Scale: 8

 

A Year in Books/Day 49: Hollywood Dressed & Undressed

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  • Title: Hollywood Dressed & Undressed A Century of Cinema Style
  • Author: Sandy Schreier
  • Year Published: 1998 (Rizzoli International Publications, Inc.)
  • Year Purchased: 2002-2004
  • Source: Unknown
  • About: With the attention to detail of an insider and the adoration of the most giddy fan, designer Schreier takes us on a 100 year tour of film-land’s most famous and enduring costumes.
  • Motivation: I’m an ex-actress (stage) and write extensively about early cinema. I’m just one ridiculous movie nerd. I also love fashion in all of its iterations, from the silly to the avant-garde to the iconic.
  • Times Read: Countless
  • Random Excerpt/Page 2: “Costume designer Edith Head, Hollywood’s most prolific designer, reflected on the Golden Age of costuming: ‘Then the designer was as important as the star-when you said Garbo, you thought Adrian; when you said Dietrich, you thought Banton. Their magic was part of selling a picture.'”
  • Happiness Scale: 10

    Garbo with Ricardo Cortez in Torrent (1926)

    Image via Wikipedia: 10

Wanted: One Resourceful Book Lover

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  • Wanted: One resourceful book lover
  • Your Mission: To invent an easily removable price sticker that does not require any of the following: a razor, solvent or 20 minutes spent digging with a fingernail.
  • Requirements: Patience and excellent sales ability, as you will need every book shop in the world to use your product.
  • Your Reward: Eternal glory and the genuine thanks of millions of readers everywhere. Oh, and lots of cash, as you will doubtless become filthy rich in the
    Paradise Ruined by Another Cheap Label

    Paradise Ruined by Another Cheap Label

    process.

  • Signed: Maedez

A Year in Books/Day 48: Seeing Europe with Famous Authors

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  • Title: Seeing Europe with Famous Authors Vol. II Great Britain and Ireland Part Two
  • Editor: Francis W. Halsey
  • Year Published: 1914 (Funk & Wagnalls Company)
  • Year Purchased: September, 2010
  • Source: Springfield (OH) Antique Show & Flea Market
  • About: This tiny book was one of a ten-volume compilation series culled from previously published travel essays by famous authors. On hand are pieces by Nathaniel Hawthorne, James Boswell, William Makepeace Thackeray, Sir Walter Scott, Robert Louis Stevenson and others. Even in 1914, some of the essays were decades old. Now, they all read like history as well as travel-they remain fascinating word-gems of a time long ago surpassed by the frantic rhythms of our modern world.
  • Motivation: I bought this perfectly preserved first-edition copy while shopping for vintage lovelies for my December 2010 nuptials. It was too adorable and cheap ($3.00) to pass up. History and literature is a heady mix for this girl.
  • Times Read: 1
  • Random Excerpt/Page 54: “It is doubtful whether the name of any lighthouse is so familiar throughout the English-speaking world as the “Eddystone.” Certainly no other “pillar of fire by night, of cloud by day,” can offer so romantic a story of dogged engineering perseverance, of heartrending disappointments, disaster, blasted hopes, and brilliant success.”
  • Happiness Scale: 7 1/2
    English: photograph of Robert Louis Stevenson

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A Year in Books/Day 47: The Girl from the Fiction Department

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  • Title: The Girl from the Fiction Department A Portrait of Sonia Orwell
  • Author: Hilary Spurling
  • Year Published: 2002/This Edition: 2003 (Counterpoint)
  • Year Purchased: 2010
  • Source: My Mom
  • About: A thoughtful, even-handed biography of George Orwell’s controversial second wife (and widow). Although it was written by a later-in-life friend of Sonia’s with the stated goal of setting the record straight, it’s the real deal: well-researched, compassionate and honest.
  • Motivation: My Mother knows me well! Biography + complex woman + literary theme= winner!
  • Times Read: 1
  • Random Excerpt/Page 87: “This was the Sonia who bewitched others all her life, and whose abrupt disappearance invariably came as a shock. Maurice didn’t care for the second self who replaced the first, the wary, reticent Sonia whose uncertainty made her overbearing, the Sonia who could never trust herself or anyone else, especially not someone who seemed in retrospect to have surprised her into an intimacy she feared and could not sustain.”
  • Happiness Scale: 8