[News] Growing Pains

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You may have noticed that we’ve recently been sticking to just the basics-Project 366, Voices from the Grave, etc. There’s nothing to fear, really! We are working on some snazzy, more comprehensive additions to the blog. You’ll start seeing new things as early as next week. We have grand plans for the month of March and the dawning of Spring. We cannot wait to share them with you. We know your time is precious; thank you for letting us share our small press passion with you.

 

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

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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

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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

    Samuel Taylor Coleridge in 1795, by Peter Vandyke

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A Year in Books/Day 60: The First Elizabeth

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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
    English: The "Darnley Portrait" of E...

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A Year in Books/Day 59: Jailbird

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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

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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

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English: Actors Natalie Wood and Tab Hunter ar...

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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

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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