Category Archives: Project 366

A Year in Books/Day 70: Vamp The Rise and Fall of Theda Bara

Posted on March 14, 2012 by maedez

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• Title: Vamp The Rise and Fall of Theda Bara
• Author: Eve Golden
• Year Published: 1996 (Emprise Publishing, Inc.)
• Year Published: 1996/1997
• Source: A book club (I cannot remember which one)
• About: Written forty years after Bara’s death, ‘Vamp’ was the first biography of film’s original bad girl superstar (who, incidentally, played her fair share of classic and/or good girl roles). It’s a well-balanced account of how publicity turned the comfortably middle class Ohioan into a seething, exotic sexpot. The manufactured stories about Goodman are truly a hoot! It also gives substance to the fact that Theda was actually a talented actress, something that has largely been lost to time and under the weight of her outlandish get-ups and the often naive or contrived plots of her films. Although her career proper lasted barely five years, it is rather melodramatic to call the natural slowing down of her fame a ‘fall’; considering the truly tragic fates that ensnared many of her contemporaries, her slide into prosperous and happy anonymity comes off as a blessing.
• Motivation: I’m a silent movie junkie, as you well know by now. I’ve always had a fondness for the big-eyed Buckeye Vamp (psst, here’s a little secret: if we have a daughter, we plan on naming her Theda). Like Theda, I’m an Ohioan (albeit one from two hours North). I bought this book a full ten years before moving South to her hometown. Oddly enough, I live just a few minutes from the neighborhood she called home for her first twenty years!
• Times Read: 2
• Random Excerpt/Page 47: “At least her ‘Kreutzer Sonata’ reviews provided some good news: it was a big hit, mostly due to curiosity about Theda. “Startling and remarkable,” according to one reviewer; another said of Theda and O’Neil, “their acting is splendidly realistic and emotionally powerful.” Being favorably compared to a stage diva like Nance O’Neil must have given Theda strength to continue filming.”
• Happiness Scale: 10
  

  Ohio's Theda Bara-Image via Wikipedia

   

A Year in Books/Day 69: On the Road

Posted on March 11, 2012 by maedez

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• Title: On the Road
• Author: Jack Kerouac
• Year Published: 1957 (The Viking Press)
• Year Purchased: Unknown
• Source: Unknown
• About: Do I really have to go into this? Sal, Dean, Marylou. You know the drill, right? In case you don’t, I’ll dedicate a few disjointed sentences to your enlightenment: Although not his best book, ‘On the Road’ is certainly Kerouac’s main claim to notoriety and immortality. It is a great gateway to his other work. Hell, even poor Kerouac is better than most and this is very, very far from being his worst. You’ll meet some of his Beat Generation friends on the pages. Since it captures a state-of-mind that most young Americans experience to one degree or another, it is a must read: exhilarating, chaotic, life affirming. If you haven’t read it yet, and want to, do so before the film is released. Please.
• Motivation: I think most teenagers go through a Beat phase. This novel is usually the first thing they read. I was a little different-I devoured a few random biographies before taking the ritual plunge with ‘On the Road’. However, I didn’t truly appreciate any of it until a second go-round with the whole gang in my late twenties.
• Times Read: 2-3
• Random Excerpt/Page 180: “At dusk I walked. I felt like a speck on the surface of the sad red earth. I passed the Windsor Hotel, where Dean Moriarty had lived with his father in the depression thirties, and as of yore I looked everywhere for the sad and fabled tinsmith of my mind. Either you find someone who looks like your father in places like Montana or you look for a friend’s father where he is no more.”
• Happiness Scale: 8
  

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A Year in Books/Day 68: Are You Somebody

Posted on March 11, 2012 by maedez

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• Title: Are You Somebody The Accidental Memoir of a Dublin Woman
• Author: Nuala O’Faolain
• Year Published: 1996 (Henry Holt and Company, Inc.)
• Year Purchased: 2000
• Source: Barnes & Noble clearance rack
• About: Nuala O’Faolain could write. That seems like a simplistic assertion but it’s true: she could write, and she did so beautifully and well in five books. This was her first. She was 56 at publication, and everything she had learned in nearly 6 decades of  living was poured, eloquently and firmly, into this exquisite volume. This is what I would term a “quiet” memoir, not because of the contents but because of her unflinching yet lyrical voice: the battles and iniquities and joys of her life are recounted without hyperbole, bombast or dramatics. It’s lovely, moving, humorous, without pity: it’s straight-up what a memoir should be.
• Motivation: The title and the jacket blurbs were a huge lure (unusual for me). The cover photo is alluring, the concept compelling.
• Times Read: 2
• Random Excerpt/Page 36: “I’m not ashamed of our fervours. But I am ashamed that twice I stole the gifts I gave to my heroine. I took Tweed talc or round soaps in tissue paper from other girls’ cubicles. I had to. I had no money. I didn’t take them for myself, just to give to her. I think that she may have known-and that the nuns knew and never came out with it. They knew I told lies. They knew I read under the blanket. They knew (this was nearly the end of me) that I smoked, perched in the window embrasure of a lavatory high up in the attics, listening at the cold glass to the noises of the town, like the great roars from the rallies for the IRA men-one of them was a local-who were killed on the Borders in 1956.”
• Happiness Scale: 10

A Year in Books/Day 67: Literary Feuds

Posted on March 11, 2012 by maedez

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• Title: Literary Feuds A Century of Celebrated Quarrels from Mark Twain to Tom Wolfe
• Author: Anthony Arthur
• Year Published: 2002 (MJF Books)
• Year Purchased: 2005-2007
• Source: Unknown
• About: There are writers who spend their lives and careers building a literary community: where everyone is helpful and supportive of one another, where advice and camaraderie abound, where failures and successes are shared. Unfortunately, reality decrees that some people aren’t meant to get along. This same reality also dictates that some people are just jerks. I’ll leave you to decide how to categorize the titans covered in this book. At least wordsmiths lace their rancorous verbal wars with plenty of wit; unlike feuds involving reality “stars” or athletes, you’ll walk away from these encounters with all of your brain cells intact.
  

  Sinclair Lewis-Image via Wikipedia

• Motivation: Writers. History. Obscure facts. Intellectuals fussin’ and fightin’. Bring it on.
• Times Read:1
• Random Excerpt/Page 75: “Fortunately, a revised picture of Lewis is now available from Dreiser’s biographer, Richard Lingeman. Written with sympathetic insight instead of disdain, Lingeman’s ‘Sinclair Lewis: Rebel from Main Street’ was published early in 2002; although it adds nothing to our understanding of the quarrel between the two writers beyond what Lingeman had already described in his earlier works about Dreiser, it should help Lewis toward the literary resurrection he deserves. At the least, Lewis should be placed side by side as a literary giant with Theodore Dreiser, the difficult man he admired so much, and from whom he got so little in return.”
• Happiness Scale: 10

A Year in Books/Day 66: Marcel Proust

Posted on March 11, 2012 by maedez

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• Title: Marcel Proust A Life
• Author: Jean-Yves Tadie (Translation by Euan Cameron)
• Year Published: 1996/Translation Copyright: 2000 (Penguin Books)
• Year Purchased: 2005
• Source: Barnes & Noble clearance rack
• About: This is one of the most complex, obsessively detailed and clear-eyed biographies I have ever read. Don’t let the hefty 779 pages deter you; it’s a smooth read and well worth your time.
• Motivation: Proust fascinates me like few others. I first came across his name as a teenager, when I discovered that I share a birthday with the great writer. That was all it took for me to decide to find out more about the Frenchman (yes, I’m that kind of self-absorbed). Fortunately, I never looked back; my life is infinitely richer for that decision. He is one of my favourite authors. I ended up reading this biography in 2006 whilst on a cruise. This is definitely my idea of vacation reading!
• Times Read: 1
• Random Excerpt/Page 577: “This explains why, shortly after 24 December, Proust asked Louis de Robert if he would take his book to Ollendorff, pointing out that he would offer to have it published at his own expense; the choice of this publisher, whose list consisted mainly of books on nature study, was scarcely a fortunate one; his response was to become famous.”
• Happiness Scale: 9
  

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A Year in Books/Day 65: Alone! Alone!

Posted on March 8, 2012 by maedez

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• Title: Alone! Alone! Lives of Some Outsider Women
• Author: Rosemary Dinnage
• Year Published: 2004 (The New York Review of Books)
• Year Purchased: 2005
• Source: Unknown
• About: A study of women-some famous, others obscure-who fought against the expectations of mainstream society to forge spaces of their own, however tenuous or unappreciated.
• Motivation: I’ve always had an adversarial (if amiable) relationship with institutionalized normalcy; it’s something I’ve never worried about emulating. I love kooky and strong and talented women. Those profiled in this book just happen to be some of the most amazing creative and intellectual ladies to ever come along.
• Times Read: 2
• Random Excerpt/Page 269: “Katherine Mansfield’s diaries cannot be considered the equal of Virginia Woolf’s-she died too young for that, for one thing-but there was a strong bond between them. They were in search of the same kind of writing, the same kind of honesty, in spite of a difference in age and experience; and-notwithstanding ambivalences-they recognized it.”
  

  Katherine Mansfield-Image via Wikipedia

• Happiness Scale: 9 1/2

A Year in Books/Day 64: 1900

Posted on March 7, 2012 by maedez

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• Title: 1900 A FIN-DE-SIECLE READER
• Edited by: Mike Jay and Michael Neve
• Year Published: 1999 (Penguin Books)
• Year Purchased: 2001/2002
• Source: Unknown
• About: A collection of late 19th century writings, on topics from God to sex, science to feminism, ‘1900’ offers an insightful, interesting, first-person look at the state of humanity at the advent of the modern era.
• Motivation: The turn of the (20th) century was one of the most exciting, uncertain and fertile times in history. Some of my favourite writers, activists and artists date from this period.
• Times Read: 2
• Random Excerpt/Page 1: “Using these biological frameworks, a range of views of humanity’s future evolution was also offered, but the most compelling prediction of Darwin’s natural selection was that the human race was separating into two distinct groups: the ‘fit’ and the ‘unfit’. This view forms one of the most striking literary motifs of the period, and is the central idea behind two of its most recognizable literary classics: The Time Machine and Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde.”
• Happiness Scale: 7 1/2

A Year in Books/Day 63: Quotable Women

Posted on March 4, 2012 by maedez

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• Title: Quotable Women A Celebration
• Editor: Molly Jay
• Year Published: 2004 (Running Press)
• Year Purchased: 2011
• Source: A Christmas gift from my baby brother.
• About: Quotes by legendary kick ass women are interspersed with vibrant artwork by female artists.
• Motivation: I’m also a legend-when it comes to collecting quotes. I have been keeping quote books since I was a teenager. I’m a bit obsessive that way, actually. I find inspiration in strong, creative, intelligent women. My brother knows me well, it seems.
• Times Read: 1
• Random Excerpt/Page 89: “I’ve dreamt in my life dreams that have stayed with me ever after, and changed my ideas; they’ve gone through and through me, like wine through water, and altered the color of my mind.”-Emily Bronte
• Happiness Scale: 10

A Year in Books/Day 62: A Treasury of Royal Scandals

Posted on March 3, 2012 by maedez

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• Title: A Treasury of Royal Scandals The Shocking True Stories of History’s Wickedest, Weirdest, Most Wanton Kings, Queens, Tsars, Popes, and Emperors
• Author: Michael Farquhar
• Year Published: 2001 (Penguin Books)
• Year Purchased: 2001
• Source: A gift from a friend.
• About: A light, humorous and historically accurate compilation of tasty, titillating royal scandals from around the world.
• Motivation: I’m a total history nerd. I usually read heavier fair but love to pepper the tougher stuff with easier non-fiction delights. This definitely fits that bill well.
• Times Read: 1
• Random Excerpt/Page 211: “Claudius, in fact, had a tough time commanding respect from anyone before he came to the throne. When he fell asleep after dinner, as was his tendency, the gathered guests would pelt him with dates and olive pits. He later tried to explain away his stupidity, saying it was merely an act that served him well during the reign of his vicious nephew. Few were convinced, however, including the author of a contemporary book called ‘A Fool’s Rise to Power’.”
• Happiness Scale: 9

A Year in Books/Day 61: English Romantic Poetry

Posted on March 1, 2012 by maedez

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• Title: English Romantic Poetry An Anthology
• Editor: Stanley Appelbaum
• Year Published: 1996 (Dover Thrift Editions)
• Year Purchased: 1999/2000
• Source: A gift from a friend.
• About: When you hear the term “English Romantic Poets”, who initially comes to mind? If you say anyone other than William Blake, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, William Wordsworth, Lord Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley or John Keats….then you are lying. This anthology contains scores of poems by the aforementioned wordsmiths.
• Motivation: My friend was cleaning out her shelves and I emerged precisely a dozen volumes richer. While this period of poetry is not my favourite, I do have a soft spot for Coleridge and find much to admire of everyone on the list.
• Times Read: A few
• Random Excerpt/Page x: “For many, Shelley remains the perfect Romantic: for his quest after truth and justice, for his unparalleled learning (Greco-Roman and otherwise) and breadth of scope (poems on love, politics, history and philosophy), for the dazzling variety and novelty of his meters and stanzas, for the exquisiteness of his diction and delicacy of his thought.”
• Happiness Scale: 7
  

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