Category Archives: Project 366

A Year in Books/Day 40: The World’s Most Notorious Women

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  • Title: The World’s Most Notorious Women Secrets, lies, murders, and scandals….The Notorious Acts of Women
  • Author: None listed. I cannot say that I blame them (see below).
  • Year Published: 2001/This Edition 2002 (ALVA PRESS)
  • Year Purchased: 2003/2004
  • Source: Via mail/unknown source
  • About: When I bought this book for a dollar or two, my hopes were admittedly pretty low. I thought it would be an easy, quick, silly beach-type read. Little did I know then how wrong I was. This is, without any doubt, the shoddiest book I have ever seen or read. If writing 2,000 words enumerating exactly how awful it is, in every damn way, was not wildly out of proportion to its inherent insignificance, I would probably do so. Continue reading →

A Year in Books/Day 39: Elizabethan Cross Stitch

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  • Title: Elizabethan Cross Stitch
  • Author: Barbara Hammet
  • Year Published: 2004 (A David & Charles Book)
  • Year Purchased: 2005
  • Source: Likely a book club of some sort
  • About: Yes, this is a craft book. It contains 25 cross stitch patterns based on Elizabethan designs. Scintillating, I know.
  • Motivation: The Elizabethan is one of my favorite eras. I was piqued by the ever-so-slight historical bent. As an adult I can barely sew on a button. As a child, I was a very intermittent but quite excellent cross stitcher. Also, deep down, I know that there is a craft-beast waiting to be unleashed. If only I had the time. Apparently, I don’t. I completed a stunning pin cushion for my Grandma circa 2007. My second project ( a pillow based on a garden) has been in the planning stages since then. Sigh.
  • Times Read: 1 (or, as much as you can actually read a book containing cross stitch patterns)
  • Random Excerpt/Page 5: “The embroidery of the Elizabethan period is characterized by great richness and originality. The works are often more complex than modern ones, often on a finer scale and frequently allude to historical figures, but in them we recognize the beginning of all the embroidery we know today.”
  • Happiness Scale: 7

A Year in Books/Day 38: Bedside Book of Famous French Stories

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  • Title: Bedside Book of Famous French Stories
  • Edited By: Belle Decker and Robert N. Linscott
  • Year Published: 1945 (Random House)
  • Year Purchased: 1991
  • Source: Columbus Public Library, library sale
  • About: A compilation of French short stories by such heavyweights as Honore de Balzac, Prosper Merimee, George Sand, Anatole France, Emile Zola and Jean-Paul Sartre.
  • Motivation: Even as a teenager, I had an affinity for short stories. I think I knew that, as a writer, it would be my most natural (fiction) medium. This book was my introduction to the work of those listed above. Prior to that, they were just enticing but empty names. I also really love old books. I picked up an 80-year-old copy of Zola’s ‘Nana’ at the same sale. It was a good day.
  • Times Read: 1
  • Random Excerpt/Page 23: “The old lady meanwhile, passive as a child and almost dazed, sat down on her chair again. But the honest pastry-cook came back directly. A countenance red enough to begin with, and further flushed by the bake-house fire, was suddenly blanched; such terror perturbed him that he reeled as he walked, and stared about him like a drunken man.”
  • Happiness Scale: 7 1/2
    English: Emile Zola, French writer, at the beg...

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A Year in Books/Day 37: The Reel List

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  • Title: The Reel List An Irreverent Guide Arranged by Uncommon Categories, from Rock ‘n’ Roll to Revisionist Westerns
  • Author: Lynne Arany, Tom Dyja, and Gary Goldsmith
  • Year Published: 1995 (A Detal Book/Published by Dell Publishing)
  • Year Purchased: 1996/1997
  • Source: Little Professor Book Company
  • About: The subtitle gets to the point better than I could. I’ll add that some of the categories are a hoot, and let them ‘speak’ for themselves-The Butler Did It; Hot Rock Rip-Offs & Other Capers; The Aesthetics of Elvis; Adulteries to Remember.
  • Motivation: One of the points you will see me assert repeatedly is how much I love movies. I really, really do. Mostly old ones, but I digress. I also love lists. No, let me take that a step of 932 further: I need lists. They are a lifelong and basic requirement to my happiness and well-being, one of the tools I use to keep my untidy and wildly fertile mind in some semblance of order. This book is a winner on dual fronts.
  • Times Read: 2
  • Random Excerpt/Page 110: “The best thing about movie cats is that precious few of them belong to sensitive tykes with no friends. These cats have sex, work for the FBI, come from outer space, even rise from the dead, and the last thing they’d ever do is wander cross-country to find a beloved owner. Apparently these inert lumps of fur can be interesting when they want to be.

    A photograph promoting the film Jailhouse Rock...

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A Year in Books/Day 36: Shadows, Fire, Snow

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  • Title: Shadows, Fire, Snow The Life of Tina Modotti
  • Author: Patricia Albers
  • Year Published: 1999 (Clarkson Potter/Publishers)
  • Year Purchased: 2002
  • Source: Barnes & Noble clearance rack
  • About: Tina Modotti, though little recognized today, was a woman of many talents: she worked as an actress, artisan, photographer (which is her main claim to immortality) and communist revolutionary. Her fierce abilities, ideals and passions took her from her native Italy to the shores of America, Mexico and Russia.
  • Motivation: I love strong, artistic, intelligent women. Her photography is stunning, never-to-be-forgotten.
  • Times Read: 2
  • Random Excerpt/Page 32: “Meanwhile, the military debacle had cut off communications with the family in Italy, leaving Tina, Mercedes, and Giuseppe frantic with anxiety. Was Tina also experiencing guilt that she had been absorbed in playacting as her loved ones suffered? If so, it was not the last time she would anguish over the thought of art making in the face of human affliction.”
  • Happiness Scale: 10

    English: The white Iris (tina modotti)

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A Year in Books/Day 35: Ford Madox Ford

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  • Title: Ford Madox Ford
  • Author: Alan Judd
  • Year Published: 1990 (Harvard University Press)
  • Year Purchased: 2004
  • Source: Unknown
  • About: A biography of the great, prolific and mostly forgotten English writer who was so closely associated with Joseph Conrad.
    Ford Madox Ford

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  • Motivation: Although I mostly concentrate on dead female writers, I am always eager to add to my collection of literary (auto)biographies. I especially love those obscured by time or circumstances; the more out of favor, the better! I actually bought this volume as a vacation read for a 3-week trip to Canada in the summer of 2004.
  • Times Read: 1
  • Random Excerpt/Page 168: “Goldring adds that he cannot vouch for the accuracy of the story ‘but if it didn’t happen it ought to have done. Events of this description occurred daily, almost hourly, during the twelve month’s of Ford’s editorship of ‘Review’. Looking back, it seems amazing to me, that so much could have happened in so short a time. It was only a year: but what a year!’ “
  • Happiness Scale: 9 1/2

A Year in Books/Day 34: A History of Ireland

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  • Title: A History of Ireland
  • Author: Mike Cronin
  • Year Published: 2001 (Palgrave)
  • Year Purchased: 2001/2002
  • Source: History Book Club
  • About: A compact, well-written account of the last 900 years of Irish history.
  • Motivation: I could read history tomes all day, every day. This volume is one of many I own on the Emerald Isle.
  • Times Read: 1
  • Random Excerpt/Page 15: “Following the favourable reaction from the Irish kings, Henry called an Irish synod together at Cashel. The synod brought the Irish Church
    Drawing by Albrecht Dürer of Irish soldiers.

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    back into line with the greater Church and enacted reforms which addressed Papal concerns. Through his actions, Henry brought a level of peace to Ireland which had been absent for years, reformed the Church and won the approval of the majority of the different native kings.”

  • Happiness Scale: 9

A Year in Books/Day 33: Webster’s Dictionary of American Writers

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  • Title: Webster’s Dictionary of American Writers
  • Year Published: 2004 (Barnes & Noble)
  • Year Purchased: 2005
  • Source: Barnes & Noble clearance rack
  • About: A dense, delightfully thorough history of every American writer of merit, popularity or notoriety since the 17th Century.
  • Motivation: I gobble up data like Wheaties or mac and cheese. I write about dead writers. I love history.
  • Times Read: Cover-to-cover-1/As reference tool-countless.
  • Random Excerpt/Page 65: “Grandson of the inventor of the adding machine, Burroughs was born into wealth and graduated from Harvard University in 1936. While living in New York, he met Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac and became one of the early core members of the group that would become known as the Beats. He became addicted to heroin around 1945 and would remain a junkie for almost 15 years. While living in Mexico in 1951, he killed his second wife in an attempt to shoot a glass off her head at a party. He fled Mexico and wandered through the Amazon region, continuing his experiments with drugs, experiences described in ‘The Yage Letters’ (1963), his 1953 correspondence with Allen Ginsberg.
  • Happiness Scale: 9
    Signature of Allen Ginsberg

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A Year in Books/Day 32: The Great American Bars and Saloons

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  • Title: The Great American Bars and Saloons
  • Author: Kathy Weiser
  • Year Published: 2006 (Chartwell Books, Inc.)
  • Year Purchased: December 2010
  • Source: A wedding gift from a dear friend.
  • About: Although hardly a sociological study, ‘The Great American Bars and Saloons’ IS deeper than the average coffee-table volume. With limited text, it is up to the period photographs to tell their history: they do so with gritty, unflinching, and fascinating detail. You can almost smell the mixture of whiskey, sweat and sawdust.
  • Motivation: We have weird friends who obviously appreciate our own weirdness.

    English: "Judge Roy Bean, the `Law West o...

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  • Times Read: 1
  • Random Excerpt/Page 10: “Because the saloon was usually one of the first and bigger buildings within many new settlements, it was common that it was also utilized as a public meeting place. Judge Roy Bean and his combination saloon and courtroom in Langtry, Texas was a prime example of this practice. Another saloon in Downieville, California, was not only the most popular saloon in town, but also held the office of the Justice of the Peace. In Hays City, Kansas, the first church services were held in Tommy Drum’s Saloon.”
  • Happiness Scale: 7

A Year in Books/Day 31: Ernest Hemingway A to Z

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  • Ernest Hemingway in Milan, 1918

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    Title: Ernest Hemingway A to Z

  • Author: Charles M. Oliver
  • Year Published: 1999 (Checkmark Books)
  • Year Purchased: 2004/2005
  • Source: Unknown book seller, Upstate New York
  • About: Every knowable fact about Hemingway, contained in one large volume. With photographs.
  • Motivation: I’m of 3 or 4 minds about Hemingway the writer, and many more about Hemingway the man. However, since I write about dead writers, I knew this would be a useful reference tool. I also love-love!-any kind of encyclopedia.
  • Times Read: Cover-to-cover-1/as reference-countless
  • Random Excerpt/Page 348: “In criticizing her husband’s writing, Catherine Bourne says, in ‘The Garden of Eden’ , that a wastebasket is “the most important thing for a writer”. She later burns his stories and the reviews of his second novel in a wastebasket.”
  • Happiness Scale: 8