Category Archives: Project 366

A Year in Books/Day 110: Ansel Adams An Autobiography

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  • Title: Ansel Adams An Autobiography
  • Author: Ansel Adams
  • Year Published: 1985/This Edition:1996 (Little, Brown and Company)
  • Year Purchased: 2000/2001
  • Source: Barnes & Noble clearance rack
  • About: Iconic is an over used word and idea. Very few people truly and permanently achieve that status. Ansel Adams, the Californian known for his crisp black and white nature photography, certainly deserves the label. His expansive, down-to-earth and gruff nature flies off the page, making 82 years of wide experience seem fresh, lively and interesting. For eight decades, he witnessed the extremes of a rapidly changing America; as a pioneering artist and activist, he was responsible for much of that transformation.

    A photo portrait of photographer Ansel Adams, ...

    A photo portrait of photographer Ansel Adams, which first appeared in the 1950 Yosemite Field School yearbook. Deutsch: Portrait des Fotografen Ansel Adams, erstmals 1950 im Jahrbuch der Yosemite Field School erschienen. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

  • Motivation: I love to learn what drives and shapes creative people and their processes.
  • Times Read: 1
  • Random Excerpt/Page 55: “The snapshot is not as simple a statement as some may believe. It represents something that each of us has seen-more as human beings than photographers-and wants to keep as a memento, a special thing encountered. The little icons that return from the photo-finisher provide recollections of events, people, places; they stir memories and create fantasies. Through the billions of snapshots made each year a visual history of our times is recorded in enormous detail.”
  • Happiness Scale: 9 1/2

A Year in Books/Day 109: Blue Highways

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  • Title: Blue Highways A Journey Into America
  • Author: William Least Heat Moon
  • Year Published: 1982/This Edition: 1985 (A Fawcett Crest Book Published by Ballantine Books)
  • Year Purchased: 1987
  • Source: Likely Waldenbooks.
  • About: In the late 1970s, teacher William Least Heat Moon lost his job and his love. Instead of wallowing, he set out on one of those Great Journeys of personal and cultural discovery that Americans are so famous for; this book is the result of that trip. It rightfully spent months atop the New York Times Best Seller List. Blue Highways had such a profound impact on my early adolescence that it begs for a separate entry; I promise to do that soon. Until then, consider this volume worth every penny. It’s a classic.
  • Motivation: Honestly, I have no idea. I think that I heard about this somewhere and decided to buy it (or, to be accurate, ask my Mom to buy it for me) to read on a summer road trip out West.
  • Times Read: A very profound 2
  • Random Excerpt/Page 59: “Maybe she was right that tourists want half-timbered facades and stained-plastic windows; maybe they want an Elizabethan town even when the real Manteo had been clapboard and shingles. Progress, retrogression-the Duchess knew best. But for me, I headed toward the town that hadn’t seen neon light.”
  • Happiness Scale: Off the charts.

A Year in Books/Day 108: On the Other Hand A Life Story

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  • Title: On the Other Hand A Life Story
  • Author: Fay Wray
  • Year Published: 1989 (St. Martin’s Press)
  • Year Purchased: ??
  • Source: Unknown
  • About: Fay Wray was much more than the beautiful blonde love interest of King Kong. She was multi-talented, whip-smart and determined; she made the tough transition from silent films to talkies while still in her early twenties; she fell in love with men of true intellect and ability (including the tragic Academy Award winning writer John Monk Saunders, her first husband). She was as ridiculously lovely at 90 as she was at 20, which I think speaks to certain rare inner qualities. She was working on a follow-up autobiography at the time of her death on August 8, 2004.
  • Motivation: If you’ve ever seen Fay Wray on film-or even a still photograph (see below)-you have the answer.
  • Times Read: 2
  • Random Excerpt/Page 56: “I rode a supposedly runaway horse and lay across the saddle, my head hanging down on one side of the horse, one foot tied to the stirrup on the far side. A crew member behind the camera shook his head, asking me silently not to do it.”
  • Happiness Scale: 9 1/2
    Publicity photo of Fay Wray for Argentinean Ma...

    Publicity photo of Fay Wray for Argentinean Magazine. (Printed in USA) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

     

A Year in Books/Day 107: Redheads

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  • Title: Redheads
  • Author: Joel Meyerowitz
  • Year Published: 1991 (Rizzoli International Publications, Inc.)
  • Year Purchased: 2000?
  • Source: Edward R. Hamilton Bookseller Company
  • About: This photography book is a visual declaration of love to all redheads. The subjects are real people-male and female, of all ages. No models, no insane airbrushing. There are freckles, wrinkles, imperfections and wildly different personal styles. The images are easily dated to the period of publication but are otherwise lovely.
  • Motivation: Ahem. I’m a natural ginger.
  • Times Read: Several.
  • Random Excerpt/Page 17: “Photography quite often overturns preconceptions. In this burst of curiosity about what a portrait is and how to go about making it, I discovered that, out of a hundred or so portraits I had made during an intensive month’s work some summers ago, thirty-five were of redheads. How had that happened?”
  • Happiness Scale: 7

A Year in Books/Day 106: Observatory Mansions

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  • Title: Observatory Mansions A Novel
  • Author: Edward Carey
  • Year Published: 2000 (Crown Publishers)
  • Year Purchased: 2001/2002
  • Source: Edward R. Hamilton Bookseller Company
  • About: Eccentric, engaging fiction at its best! The bizarre world at the center of the novel is oddly, disturbingly irresistible. What happens when a thirty-something street performer who has never left the nest mixes with his lonely neighbors, when not amassing stolen pieces for his ‘museum of significant objects’?
  • Motivation: I’m picky when it comes to fiction, especially contemporary fiction. I don’t like most of it, for a variety of convoluted reasons. I happily make exceptions for works of great imagination or originality guided by strong, firm voices. I could tell from a one paragraph blurb that I would love, love, love this book.
  • Times Read: 1
  • Random Excerpt/Page 32: “The new resident would be encouraged to leave the next day. Everything would be as it was. No one was going to touch my glove diary.”
  • Happiness Scale: 9

 

A Year in Books/Day 105: Truly Wilde

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  • Title: Truly Wilde The Unsettling Story of Dolly Wilde, Oscar’s Unusual Niece
  • Author: Joan Schenkar
  • Year Published: 2000 (Basic Books)
  • Year Purchased: 2002/2003
  • Source: Edward R. Hamilton Bookseller Company
  • About: Only five when her famous uncle died, as an adult she blossomed into the spitting, female image of Oscar. She was an It Girl of epic proportions, with a life and end even more complicated than his. If she never approached his creative genius, it’s largely due to the wanton neglect of her talent (which those who knew her insisted she had an excess of) in favour of fast, impulsive living. She was a scintillating, thorny, frank and witty woman: she would have made an ideal Wilde heroine. Instead, hers was a real-life tragedy.
  • Motivation: The Wildean pedigree + a decidedly strange, strong woman in her own right=a heady combination.
  • Times Read: 1
  • Random Excerpt/Page 51: “A single photograph of Dolly’s mother, Lily Wilde, with her infant daughter has survived the dissolution of the Wilde family. It is notable both for the attractiveness of its two subjects and for the fact that Dolly’s father, Willie Wilde, though ‘out of the picture’, signed it, dated it, labelled its contents, and dedicated it, inscribing himself for posterity on what is the only image of the ‘second’ Wilde family.”
  • Happiness Scale: 10

A Year in Books/Day 104: London The Biography

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  • Title: London The Biography
  • Author: Peter Ackroyd
  • Year Published: 2000 (Nan A. Talese/Doubleday)
  • Year Purchased: 2001-2003
  • Source: History Book Club
  • About: A city is a living, breathing, changing thing; it makes sturdy sense to give the biographical treatment to one of the world’s leading capitals. At nearly 800 pages, this account of London from pre-history to the late twentieth century is exhaustively comprehensive. Ackroyd manages to keep the pace quick without sacrificing detail or context. This is as good as anything he’s ever written, which is large praise indeed.
  • Motivation: Anglophile in the house here. I’m also a life-long history nerd.
  • Times Read: 2
  • Random Excerpt/Page 51: “On either side of the southern entrance to that bridge, there now rear two griffins daubed in red and silver. They are the totems of the city, raised at all its entrances and thresholds, and are singularly appropriate. The griffin was the monster which protected gold mines and buried treasure; it has now flown out of classical mythology in order to guard the city of London. The presiding deity of this place has always been money.”
  • Happiness Scale: 9 1/2
    The Great Fire of London destroyed 80% of the ...

    The Great Fire of London destroyed 80% of the city in 1666. The Guildhall was damaged in this and other great fires. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

     

A Year in Books/Day 103: Art Nouveau

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  • Title: Art Nouveau A Fascinating Guide to One of the Most Notable Periods of Decorative Art
  • Year Published: 2002 (A Quantum Book/Published in the United States by TODTRI Book Publishers)
  • Year Purchased: 2004
  • Source: Barnes & Noble clearance rack
  • About: The average level of craftsmanship involved in Art Nouveau creations-from jewelry to illustration, textiles to furniture-is exquisite. This mini coffee table book is one part history, one part design eye candy and one hundred percent stunning. I know that I am tossing out superlatives like they are going out of business but we’re discussing Art Nouveau here. Nothing less than poetic turns of phrase will do! No matter how many times I see the still modern looking periodical illustrations or the sensuous, undulating lines of a Rene Lalique brooch or Georges Fouquet hair comb, I’m gobsmacked. Don’t even get me started on the architecture, where the tiniest detail is impeccable. It’s all covered here.
  • Motivation: It’s Art Nouveau, hello!
  • Times Read: 1
  • Random Excerpt/Page 14: “Nature was to be the ultimate source book of the Art Nouveau artist, particularly the plant world, for many artists had a scientist’s depth of knowledge of botany. Flowers, stems, and leaves were chosen for their curving silhouettes. Naturally, lilies, irises, and orchids were favored, although any and every form, from palm fronds to seaweed, offered potential for development into an animated pattern.”
  • Happiness Scale: 7 1/2

    La Plume, 15 January 1898. Cover composition by Mucha.

    La Plume, 15 January 1898. Cover composition by Mucha.

A Year in Books/Day 102: LIFE Goes to the Movies

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  • Title: LIFE Goes to the Movies
  • Editor: David E. Scherman
  • Year Published: 1975/This Edition: 1986 (Time-Life Books, Inc./Pocket Books)
  • Year Purchased: 1990s
  • Source: On clearance at a forgotten store (likely Waldenbooks).
  • About: The binding of this book is falling apart; if you pick it up carelessly, random pages tumble to your feet. I’ve retrieved the disordered middle third of the book from the floor more than once. It’s that kind of volume-delightful, informative, unique and just damn good to ogle. It’s light on text but big on informatively captioned photographs. The staff of this quintessentially American periodical had a degree of privileged access to film studios and stars that today would be unthinkable. The best of forty years of their coverage is stuffed into 304 kaleidoscopic pages.
  • Motivation: LIFE magazine employed top-notch photographers; many of the images they published are instantly recognizable classics. I knew that I would never tire of looking through it, which I haven’t (apparently to the point of nearly destroying it from the inside out).
  • Times Read: Countless
  • Random Excerpt/Page 86: “In the Hollywood of the ’30s and ’40s, stars were not born; they were mass produced. The machinery that swallowed up legions of girls with pretty midwestern faces and that ground out sultry vamps and sexy hoydens gave each young hopeful a buildup that can only be described as relentless.”
  • Happiness Scale: 9

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A Year in Books/Day 101: A Treasury of Peter Rabbit and Other Stories

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  • Title: A Treasury of Peter Rabbit and Other Stories
  • Author: Beatrix Potter
  • Year Published: No copyright date noted.
  • Year Purchased: The year I turned five.
  • Source: According to the inscription, this was a gift from my Aunt Lauree.
  • About: Every classic Beatrix Potter story is in this volume, including ‘The Tale of Two Bad Mice’*. Maybe it was just me, but I did not like Tom Thumb and his wife, Hunca Munca. I thought they were creepy, but I loved, loved, loved the rest of the book. I loved it so much I even wrote in it (very unlike me). I’ve managed to keep it in my possession for three decades (very like me). Her illustrations are enchantingly timeless.
  • Motivation: I was a girl. I loved animals and, at five, I had already been reading for two years.
  • Times Read: Hundreds during kindergarten alone. I was an obsessive reader even then.
  • Random Excerpt: “The water was all slippy-sloppy in the larder and in the back passage. But Mr. Jeremy liked getting his feet wet; nobody ever scolded him, and he never caught a cold.”
  • Happiness Scale: 10
  • * Having just spent a minute re-reading this story, I stand firmly by my initial assessment: it is scary and horrible and undeniably sad.

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