My favourite New Year’s Day tradition doesn’t involve parades or football games or overindulging in sweets. For this girl, it is all about books. Shocking, no?
A pile ‘o books and calendars.
This pile ‘o goodies is the result of my annual New Year’s Day Book and Calendar Hunt. As you can see, the 2013 edition was quite successful. I decided to by-pass literature in favour of selections from the genres of art, biography, and silent film. Here are a few of the highlights:
Egon Schiele by Sandra Forty
REASON: Egon Schiele is my favourite artist (in a three-way tie with Modigliani and Pissarro).
Frontier Madam The Life of Dell Burke, Lady of Lusk by June Willson Read
REASON: Who could pass up a book with a title like this?
The Complete Films of Buster Keaton by Jim Kline
REASON: I write about silent cinema, plus I have mad love for Buster Keaton. Mad love.
Other purchases (not shown):
- Amedeo Modigliani Nudes and Portraits by Anette Kruszynski
- Angela Lansbury A Life on Stage and Screen by Rob Edelman and Audrey E. Kupferberg
- Bing Crosby A Pocketful of Dreams The Early Years 1903-1940 by Gary Giddins
- Moving Pictures American Art and Early Film 1880-1910 by Nancy Mowll Mathews With Charles Musser
What are you reading this month?
A Small Press Life: Books. Art. Writing. Life. Tea. 
Egon is one of my favs too! Nice stash. 🙂
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Thanks! I should have looked for a Pissarro book, too, since my other 2 fave artists are accounted for here. 🙂
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Well, look at it this way – you just didn’t get finished as one day is not enough. Schiele is a wonderful artist and all your books were good picks. What an eye!
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It is an ongoing process, to be sure. It helps to have an extremely eclectic taste in books; that is as important as having a good eye!
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I am keen to read your review of “Frontier Madam”. (What a terrific find!) Also, I completely understand your mad love for Buster Keaton.
I am still reading “Bring on the Empty Horses” by the delightful David Niven, and have just picked up “Half Blood Blues” from the library (our next book club selection).
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Ooh, you will have to let me know what you think of Half-Blood Blues. It looks fantastic. As for Frontier Madam, which I am halfway through already, don’t get your hopes up. Really, it is not as good as it could be. She is fascinating, to be sure, but the writing is problematic.
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Drat. I hate it when that happens.
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Yeah, I bought it on a whim because it looked really good. There is a lot of padding because, even after 100 interviews of family, friends, and townspeople, the author could not really penetrate her subject’s private life or even trace anything but her basic movements for the first 30 years of her life. That is not a problem, in and of itself; I have read many excellent books where the biographer was similarly hamstrung. It is the nature of the padding, coupled with some truly dull writing, that makes the book something of a letdown.
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