Category Archives: Project 366

A Year in Books/Day 189: Virginia Woolf

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  • Title: Virginia Woolf
  • Author: Mary Ann Caws
  • Year Published: 2001 (The Overlook Press)
  • Year Purchased: 2002
  • Source: Barnes & Noble clearance rack
  • About: The beauty of this volume is not in famed academic Caws’ disappointingly standard-issue prose but in the abundance of photographs decorating the pages. It’s a wee book you can read in an hour. The eclectic images of Woolf and her circle will make you pick it up again and again; most of the photos do not suffer from being over-published. They are fresh and compelling. My favourite is the back of a stripe-shirted (Dora) Carrington.
  • Motivation: Virginia Woolf! There’s nothing more to it than that.
  • Times Read: 2 or 3
  • Random Excerpt/Page 36: “Monk’s House was a perfect place for living and for visitors, for Leonard’s gardening and their writing. Endless discussions took place there, some of which are recounted in Virginia’s letters. Work went on constantly wherever Virginia and Leonard were, whether in Hogarth House or Monk’s House.”
  • Happiness Scale: 9 (for the photographs)
     

     

     

     

     

     

     

A Year in Books/Day 188: Hollywood Royalty

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HearstAbout1910

William Randolph Hearst, circa 1910. He threw all of the best parties, thanks to his sweetheart Marion Davies. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

  • Title: Hollywood Royalty
  • Author: Gregory Speck
  • Year Published: 1992 (Birch Lane Press Book/Carol Publishing Group)
  • Year Purchased: 1990s
  • Source: Library sale
  • About: San Simeon, William Randolph Hearst’s estate, was the setting of countless celebrity-gilded parties. An invitation for a weekend stay was not only a passport to bask in temporary opulence so extreme it made members of the movie colony seem like paupers in comparison, it meant that you had truly arrived on the Hollywood scene. Close your eyes. Conjure up a dinner party of seven courses, attended by some of the most fabulous classic movie stars. Your curiosity probably takes the form of many questions, with the big one being: What would they talk about? The setting of Hollywood Royalty is real, the occasion is imaginary and the conversation is composed of snippets from published interviews. Fact and fiction cross borders, on an evening removed from time, to mingle as seductively as the stars in Hearst’s dining room.
  • Motivation: I like when lines are blurred. I love classic film.
  • Times Read: 1 or 2
  • Random Excerpt/Page 160: “I (Olivia de Havilland) learned a lot from Jimmy Cagney, and he was always so sweet to me. On A Midsummer Night’s Dream he was very nice to me, and I was so flattered. He would come into my little canvas dressing room, and we would just talk about everything. I couldn’t believe it, for he was already a great star, and it was my first film, way back in 1935.”
  • Happiness Scale: 10

A Year in Books/Day 187: Grammatically Correct

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  • Title: Grammatically Correct The WRITER’S ESSENTIAL GUIDE to punctuation, spelling, style, usage and grammar
  • Author: Anne Stilman
  • Year Published: 1997 (Writer’s Digest Books)
  • Year Purchased: 2002/2003
  • Source: Writer’s Digest Book Club
  • About: This volume is essential. It’s like taking a refresher course in grammar without having to socialize with anyone. I enjoy that. I’m guilty of knowingly flouting some of the rules in the book but at least I am aware of my transgressions. You should be, too.
  • Motivation: A writer needs reference books. Many, many reference books.
  • Times Read: Cover-to-cover: a few/As reference tool: countless
  • Random Excerpt/Page vi: “For one thing, I’ve sought to liven up what can be a somewhat dusty subject by excerpting passages from very quotable literary works, both classic and modern. Academic explanations of how to use a certain punctuation mark or stylistic technique are all very well, but a “real-life” illustration can be a lot more convincing-and entertaining. My thanks here to all those authors whose work I have cited.”
  • Happiness Scale: 10

A Year in Books/Day 186: Votes for Women

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  • Title: Votes for Women The Struggle for Suffrage Revisited
  • Editor: Jean H. Baker
  • Year Published: 2002 (Oxford University Press, Inc.)
  • Year Purchased: 2003/2004
  • Source: Unknown
  • About: Twelve of the fourteen contributors are professors, so this book has a decidedly academic quality. If that’s not your usual cup of tea, don’t be scared: the voices, although straightforward, are distinct and the chapters highly readable. Continue reading →

A Year in Books/Day 185: The Mistinguett Legend

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  • Title: The Mistinguett Legend
  • Author: David Bret
  • Year Published: 1990 (St. Martin’s Press)
  • Year Purchased: 1990s
  • Source: My mother
  • About: Mistinguett was a widely, and wildly, famous French chanteuse. I’m not sure how well her appeal translates from French to American culture, but she was a first-class oddity. Continue reading →

A Year in Books/Day 184: QB VII (or, A Book in My Collection I Do Not Like)

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  • Title: QB VII
  • Author: Leon Uris
  • Year Published: 1970 (Doubleday & Company, Inc.)
  • Year Purchased: 1990s
  • Source: Book Harbor, Westerville, Ohio
  • About: QB VII is proof that I do not love (or even like) everything in my collection. There are a few odd volumes I’ve kept on after discovering I really do not like their contents. This is one of those rarities. I don’t object to the flashbacks, legal proceedings or courtroom setting; if I did, I never would have selected this for my initiation into the writings of Leon Uris. That bitch known as hindsight thinks I should probably have started with Exodus or Topaz, but it is far too late now. Continue reading →

A Year in Books/Day 183: Tinisima

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  • Title: Tinisima A Novel
  • Author: Elena Poniatowska
  • Year Published: 1992/This Edition: 1998 (Penguin Books)
  • Year Purchased: 2004
  • Source: Barnes & Noble clearance rack
  • About: Although she is now one of my favourite photographers, the image that introduced me to Tina Modotti was not by, but rather of, this magnetic and enigmatic woman. It was, of course, an Edward Weston.
    Tina Modotti with her arms raised by Edward Weston (Source: Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain)

    Tina Modotti with her arms raised by Edward Weston (Source: Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain)

    I enjoy his work, but feel a resolute kinship with the art of the woman whose talent he encouraged. Tinisima, in translation from the original Spanish, is a fictionalized account of her turbulent, sacrificial, frustrating, many-faceted life. In a way, it is a more fitting tribute to its mysterious subject than any well-researched biography.

  • Motivation: Having read Patricia Albers’ excellent biography Shadows, Fire, Snow a couple of years earlier, I was interested to see how a fictional account of Modotti’s life would play out.
  • Times Read: 1
  • Random Excerpt/Page 171: “Eight picture in one day! She always mulled over each shot, even visited the scene and studied the light at different times of day before shooting; she waited for the exact moment, the click ringing out in the sacred silence. Now he is telling her to press the shutter without thinking about the results, like the unconscious blink of an eye. That is journalism.”
  • Happiness Scale: 8 1/2

A Year in Books/Day 182: Paddington Marches On

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  • Title: Paddington Marches On
  • Author: Michael Bond, with drawings by Peggy Fortnum
  • Year Published: 1964 (Houghton Mifflin)
  • Year Purchased: 1978
  • Source: According to the inscription in my mother’s hand, this entered my collection on Christmas Day (courtesy of Mommy + Daddy).
  • About: I’m sure you know all about Paddington Bear. If you don’t, I have no idea what is wrong with you. He is one of the most visible children’s fictional characters of the last 50+ years. I loved his fetching coat and hat ensemble, and related to his greedy love of marmalade sandwiches. My favourite part from this book was always Paddington and the Cold Snap. I read it so many times that I knew it by heart. (If pressed, I could probably recite a line or two even now.) I still think he’s a pretty charming fellow. I hope my hypothetical future kids do, too.
  • Motivation: Judging by the surviving books from my early childhood, I really loved bears. Or my family thought I did, which as a tiny tot amounted to the same thing. I still own volumes of Little Bear, Pooh Bear, and, of course, Paddington Bear.
  • Times Read: Likely hundreds of times in the first year alone. This was one of the first ‘real’ (i.e. chapter) books I was given, and I couldn’t get enough of the fact that it contains far more text than illustrations.
  • Random Excerpt/Page 9: “All the same, Paddington wasn’t the sort of bear to waste a good opportunity and a moment or so later he closed the door behind him and made his way down the side of the house as quickly as he could in order to investigate the matter. Apart from the prospect of playing snowballs he was particularly anxious to test his new Wellingtons which had been standing in his bedroom waiting for just such a moment ever since Mrs. Brown had given them to him at Christmas.”
  • Happiness Scale: 9

A Year in Books/Day 181: Legends of the Silent Screen

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  • Title: Legends of the Silent Screen A Collection of U.S. Postage Stamps
  • Authors: Charles Champlin and Linda Klinger (for the United States Postal Service)
  • Year Published: 1994 (U.S. Postal Service)
  • Year Purchased: 1994
  • Source: This was a gift from my mom, received after some pleading on my part.
  • About: In 1994, the U.S. Postal Service released a set of stamps commemorating ten of the silent screen’s greatest stars (which was, itself, part of a larger series dedicated to entertainers). This book was published as a companion piece, but is good enough to stand on its own merits. The detailed individual biographies are underpinned by amazing photographs and a time-line of the first 100 years of American film history. It’s a handsome volume, and the Al Hirschfeld caricatures commissioned for the stamps render the subjects instantly recognizable. The stars covered in this volume are: Rudolph Valentino; Clara Bow; Charlie Chaplin; Lon Chaney; John Gilbert; ZaSu Pitts; Theda Bara; the Keystone Cops; Harold Lloyd; and Buster Keaton.
  • Motivation: I was already totally captivated with silent films, even at a relatively young age.
  • Times Read: A few
  • Random Excerpt/Page 39: “Film historians note that (Theda) Bara’s producer actually cast her in quite a few sympathetic-not evil-roles, knowing that after her vamp image had been accepted, the public would continue to read treachery into all her characters, regardless of their motivations.”
  • Happiness Scale: 10

    Bara in the title role as Cleopatra (1917)

    Bara in the title role as Cleopatra (1917) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

A Year in Books/Day 180: Inside the Victorian Home

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  • Title: Inside the Victorian Home A Portrait of Domestic Life in Victorian England
  • Author: Judith Flanders
  • Year Published: 2003 (W.W. Norton & Company)
  • Year Purchased: 2004/2005
  • Source: History Book Club
  • About: I am lustfully curious about matters of domestic history. No, not marital details. I mean the inner workings of domesticity-cooking, shopping, consumerism, the running of households, servants, the cost of goods, wages. It may be a strange occupation, but then I have never claimed nor aspired to normalcy. Inside the Victorian Home is not the only book on the subject I own (although it was the first I bought). It breaks down and explicates on all of the above subjects (as well as social and political history), as filtered through rooms of a house: bedroom, drawing room, morning room, etc., before throwing us out on the street, as it were, in the last chapter. So many things can be learned-insights gained-from how we lived, perhaps even more than what we say or record for posterity. It is a gem of its kind, and one that I turn to for clarification on such matters.
  • Motivation: History + England + Domestic History= a book I could not resist.
  • Times Read: 2
  • Random Excerpt/Page 28: “If the family’s status was on display in the choice of the house, then it followed that location and public rooms were more important than comfort and convenience, and certainly more important than the private, family spaces.”
  • Happiness Scale: 9+