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

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Johannes Vermeer, The Milkmaid (1658–1660)

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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

 

Book Spree

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As a writer, I naturally spend a lot of time writing. Shocking, I know! On my down-time, I can usually be found reading a book or four. I’m always cycling amongst a weird combination of disparate volumes. If I’m not engaged in those activities, there’s a very good chance that I am thinking about one or the other. Writing and reading are the fuels that fire my passion for life. Continue reading →

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

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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

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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
    Sarah Bernhardt, 1877

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A Year in Books/Day 52: Hollywood Babylon

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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
    English: Mae Murray

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A Year in Books/Day 51: Gainsborough

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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
    English: English painter Thomas Gainsborough (...

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A Year in Books/Day 50: Free Love

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  • Title: Free Love
  • Author: Annette Meyers
  • Year Published: 1999 (Mysterious Press)
  • Year Purchased: 2002-2004
  • Source: Edward R. Hamilton Bookseller Company
  • About: This period murder mystery (the best kind, in my opinion) features an Edna St. Vincent Millay-esque heroine. She composes poetry, acts for the (Provincetown) Playhouse, is shockingly frank and solves a crime. Sounds familiar, except for that last bit. After reading this book, I could pretty well be convinced that the flesh-and-blood inspiration was a bad-ass detective, too.
  • Motivation: Although I’m rather picky when it comes to mystery novels (I don’t like them except when I love them), the blurb on this one sucked me in: The era. The main character. The atmosphere. Sold, sold and sold.
  • Times Read: 1
  • Random Excerpt/Page 2: “It was a mistake; the water was cold and sloshy. Still, there was no way I was going to impart this and have him say “I told you so,” so I took my time sloshing through it. Oh, prig or not, he probably wouldn’t have gloated because he’s a better person than I am.”
  • Happiness Scale: 8

 

A Year in Books/Day 49: Hollywood Dressed & Undressed

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  • Title: Hollywood Dressed & Undressed A Century of Cinema Style
  • Author: Sandy Schreier
  • Year Published: 1998 (Rizzoli International Publications, Inc.)
  • Year Purchased: 2002-2004
  • Source: Unknown
  • About: With the attention to detail of an insider and the adoration of the most giddy fan, designer Schreier takes us on a 100 year tour of film-land’s most famous and enduring costumes.
  • Motivation: I’m an ex-actress (stage) and write extensively about early cinema. I’m just one ridiculous movie nerd. I also love fashion in all of its iterations, from the silly to the avant-garde to the iconic.
  • Times Read: Countless
  • Random Excerpt/Page 2: “Costume designer Edith Head, Hollywood’s most prolific designer, reflected on the Golden Age of costuming: ‘Then the designer was as important as the star-when you said Garbo, you thought Adrian; when you said Dietrich, you thought Banton. Their magic was part of selling a picture.'”
  • Happiness Scale: 10

    Garbo with Ricardo Cortez in Torrent (1926)

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