Category Archives: Project 366

A Year in Books/Day 60: The First Elizabeth

Posted on February 29, 2012 by maedez

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• Title: The First Elizabeth
• Author: Carolly Erickson
• Year Published: 1983 (St. Martin’s Griffin)
• Year Purchased: 1990’s
• Source: Antique Barn at The Ohio State Fair, Columbus, Ohio
• About: My favourite historical personage and all around kick-ass woman receives an above-average biographical treatment here.
• Motivation: See above. Also, I love my fellow redheads.
• Times Read: 2
• Random Excerpt/Page 187: “There were more festivities in the coming days. The queen went to Woolwich to launch a fine new ship for her navy, christened the ‘Elizabeth’, and returned to Greenwich to watch more military games-among them a “great casting of fire, and shooting of guns, till twelve at night.” The recent peace, these exercises proclaimed, had not dimmed England’s warlike spirit; let other nation’s take warning.”
• Happiness Scale: 10
  

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A Year in Books/Day 59: Jailbird

Posted on February 29, 2012 by maedez

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• Title: Jailbird
• Author: Kurt Vonnegut
• Year Published: 1979 (Delacorte Press/Seymour Lawrence)
• Year Found: 2009
• Source: It was on the giveaway table in our apartment building.
• About: It’s Vonnegut, and it’s awesome. Walter F. Starbuck is a classic character and this novel makes for a wonderful albeit quick (as is the Vonnegut way) read. Of course, it is always better to read Vonnegut than to try to explain his work. So, you should go do that now.
• Motivation: I love Vonnegut-the-writer and adore Vonnegut-the-person. He made it look easy and it is never easy. The book was also free. The back cover photo of the writer, taken by his wife Jill Krementz, is one of my favorites.
• Times Read: 2
• Random Excerpt/Page 127: “About the young man and his radio. I decided that he had bought the thing as a prosthetic device, as an artificial enthusiasm for the planet. He paid as little attention to it as I paid to my false front tooth. I have since seen several young men like that in groups-with their radios tuned to different stations, with their radios engaged in a spirited conversation. The young men themselves, perhaps having been told nothing but “shut up” all their lives, had nothing to say.”
• Happiness Scale: 9

A Year in Books/Day 58: Angela’s Ashes

Posted on February 27, 2012 by maedez

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• Title: Angela’s Ashes
• Author: Frank McCourt
• Year Published: 1996 (Scribner)
• Year Purchased: 1997
• Source: Unknown
• About: This is one of the most famous memoirs of all-time-I certainly don’t need to illustrate its contents or expound on its merits. I’ll just say that it is harrowing, lovely and every bit as good as all of the press it received back in the 1990s insisted it was. McCourt deserved the towering heap of praise-and the Pulitzer-that he was given.
• Motivation: I was alive when it came out. Seriously, this is one of the few books that almost everyone I know has read; this includes the few hard-core non-readers in my wide orbit. It also came highly recommended by a friend, who read it as soon as it hit the shelves of the bookstore she managed.
• Times Read: 2
• Random Excerpt/Page 59: “The room had a fireplace where we could boil water for our tea or an egg in case we ever came into money. We had a table and three chairs and a bed, which Mam said was the biggest she had ever seen. We were glad of the bed that night, worn out after nights on floors in Dublin and Grandma’s. It didn’t matter that there were six of us in the bed, we were together, away from grandmothers and guards, Malachy could say ye ye ye and we could laugh as much as we liked.”
• Happiness Scale: 9

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

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• 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

A Year in Books/Day 55: Girl in Hyacinth Blue

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

 

A Year in Books/Day 54: The Prospect Before Her

Posted on February 25, 2012 by maedez

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• Title: The Prospect Before Her A History of Women in Western Europe Volume One 1500-1800
• Author: Olwen Hufton
• Year Published: 1995 (Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.)
• Year Purchased: 2002-2004
• Source: Edward R. Hamilton Bookseller Company
• About: A lengthy, serious study of what girls could expect from their lives, from the cradle to the grave, between the years 1500-1800 in Western Europe. This isn’t the most well-made volume, and is falling apart at the binding, but the scholarship and writing are first-class.
• Motivation: I’m a feminist. I dig history and women’s studies.
• Times Read: 1
• Random Excerpt/Page 91: “The women involved were drawn not from the city of Lyons, unless they were the master’s daughters, but from the mountainous villages of the Forez, Besse and Bugey and parts of the Dauphine. They were known as silk-maker’s servants because they lived in (often sleeping under the looms) and like domestic servants they were paid on an annual basis or when they left the employment of the master. Like servants they started in their early teens and expected to work for about fifteen years before having saved enough to embark on matrimony.”
• Happiness Scale: 9

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

Posted on February 25, 2012 by maedez

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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
  

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A Year in Books/Day 52: Hollywood Babylon

Posted on February 25, 2012 by maedez

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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
  

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A Year in Books/Day 51: Gainsborough

Posted on February 23, 2012 by maedez

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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
  

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