Tag Archives: Books

A Year in Books/Day 126: Ancient Rome

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  • Title: Ancient Rome
  • Author: Robert Payne
  • Year Published: 1966/This Edition: 2001 (Horizon/ibooks, inc.)
  • Year Purchased: 2001/2002
  • Source: History Book Club
  • About: While there’s nothing new or groundbreaking about the text or historical standpoint, this is a wonderful primer on ancient Rome. It’s a solid read, entertaining and enlightening without being flashy or over-blown. The real treat is in the beautifully rendered concept photographs, which give us an idea-however slight-of how Rome looked to its citizens.
  • Motivation: I’m a sucker for ancient history. Cannot. Get. Enough.
  • Times Read: 1
  • Random Excerpt/Page 41: “These tough-minded hill people had come far. They had built a workable civilization, absorbed the arts of the Etruscans, shown themselves to be possessed of a ferocious spirit of independence, and could look forward to increasing their influence. Then quite suddenly in a single day they lost the gains of centuries.”
  • Happiness Scale: 8 1/2

A Year in Books/Day 125: The Way You Wear Your Hat

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  • Title: The Way You Wear Your Hat Frank Sinatra and the Lost Art of Livin’
  • Author: Bill Zehme
  • Year Published: 1997 (HarperCollinsPublishers)
  • Year Purchased: 2001/2002
  • Source: Barnes & Noble clearance rack
  • About: In an industry  known for its larger-than-life characters, Sinatra towered over them all. Love him or hate him, his talent, personality and legend cannot be ignored or discounted. Fourteen years after his death, many men still consider him the epitome of style, class and swagger. The Way You Wear Your Hat plays into that assumption. Born from an in-depth 1996 Esquire profile, the book is essentially a how-to guide for gents looking to tap into some of that ol’ Sinatra magic. The fact that Zehme had such privileged access to the source gives it an almost autobiographical quality, and supplies the book a wider appeal. It is obviously meant as a tribute, where even the distasteful habits and the dirty deeds are just another totally worship-worthy facet to this greatest of all men’s men. In print-as it must not have in the glowing presence of the flesh-and-blood person-it wears thin after awhile. Even then, you know that you are in the presence of someone formidable. That’s just it, really: he’s not always likable but he’s always unforgettable.
  • Motivation: I know, I know! I already have all the swagger I can handle. Seriously, although I run hot and cold on Sinatra the man (Sinatra the singer and actor, I’ve no complaints with) I thought this looked like an interesting read, even though I am not its target audience. It was, and not always in the ways I expected.
  • Times Read: 2
  • Random Excerpt/Page 6: “Woe to those missing. More woe to those who greeted dawns by his side. It is there that scores of men slumped, trapped, for he insisted nobody leave. They could not hit the hay before he did, and they had to drink apace with him until the finish. It is a sore, but proud, subject among them all.”
  • Happiness Scale: 8
    Frank Sinatra at Girl's Town Ball in Florida, ...

    Frank Sinatra at Girl's Town Ball in Florida, March 12, 1960 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

     

A Year in Books/Day 124: By Permission of Heaven

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  • Title: By Permission of Heaven The True Story of the Great Fire of London
  • Author: Adrian Tinniswood
  • Year Published: 2003 (Riverhead Books/Penguin Group)
  • Year Purchased: 2005
  • Source: The Book Loft, Columbus, Ohio
  • About: London was devastated by a fire on 2 September, 1666. By Permission of Heaven chronicles the confusion, terror and panic that befell the city’s inhabitants during the fire and its aftermath. He continues the story through the re-building that set the stage for the modern London that we know today. It’s riveting, nail-biting, human history at its best. I’ve written several times about the challenge of making history seem alive, present and tactile for readers. Fear not, because Tinniswood is a master. Challenge achieved.
  • Motivation: I’m an Anglophile and I particularly love the history of London. I’m weird that way.
  • Times Read: 1
  • Random Excerpt/Page 43: “At some point Hanna was badly burned. But she managed to scramble to safety along the eaves with her father. They were followed by the manservant. Only the maid was left in the house, too frightened of heights, or too confused by the noise and the smoke to escape. As the easterly gales whipped across the rooftops, she died there–the first victim of the Great Fire of London. No one even knows her name.”
  • Happiness Scale: 9

A Year in Books/Day 123: Within Tuscany

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  • Title: Within Tuscany Reflections on a Time and Place
  • Author: Matthew Spender
  • Year Published: 1992/This Edition: 1993 (Viking Press/Penguin Books)
  • Year Purchased: 2004/2005
  • Source: A bookstore in Upstate New York
  • About: This book got off to an agonizingly slow start. Whatever a snail’s pace is in reading lingo, that’s what it was. S-l-o-o-o-o-w-w. I plodded away a few pages at a time, absolutely determined to keep at it until I hit the sweet spot where my interest was finally piqued. That eventually happened about half-way through. It took a long few months for that day to arrive. I read at least three dozen other books during the wait. Was it worth my stubborn insistence? Eh. Yes and no. The over-all feel of the book is marvelous; the individual stories and anecdotes of English transplant Matthew Spender and his wife raising their two daughters deep in the heart of Tuscany are hit-and-miss. If that seems like a contradictory feat, it is: yet, as a whole, it works. Don’t expect it to be an edge-of-your-seat or limitlessly engaging read, and you’ll likely enjoy find it enjoyable.
  • Motivation: It was cheap and looked interesting.
  • Times Read: 1
  • Random Excerpt/Page 91: “I was unused to the etiquette of sitting up with the dead. There are rules to this social ritual, the principal one being that neither the body nor the family should ever be left alone. You arrive: whoever is there leaves, and you remain until someone else appears who can take over from you.”
  • Happiness Scale: 7

A Year in Books/Day 122: Swingin’ Chicks of the ’60s

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  • Title: Swingin’ Chicks of the ’60s A Tribute to 101 of the Decade’s defining women
  • Author: Chris Strodder/Foreword by Angie Dickinson
  • Year Published: 2000 (Cedco Publishing Company)
  • Year Purchased: 2001/2002
  • Source: Barnes & Noble clearance rack
  • About: I owned the calender before the book. It was so cheery and bright-and full of fun facts-that I was sold on this volume as soon as I saw it at Barnes & Noble. It profiles 101 ‘It Girls’ of the ’60s: from Annette Funicello to Ursula Andress, Capucine to Hayley Mills, Nico to Diahann Carroll, every major show business medium is represented by a bevy of talented ladies. Each entry includes a short biography, relevant dates, trivia and, of course, deliciously swingin’ photos.
  • Motivation: The title says it all. How could you not want to read this eye candy, pop culture gem?
  • Times Read: 3
  • Random Excerpt/Page 12: “In the late ’60s, every American soldier knew Chris Noel. More accurately, they knew her voice. It’s still the first thing one notices about her, that marvelously husky, tomboyish voice that cracks then soothes with the warmth of a summer afternoon. To hear her is to remember a picnic on a sunny California hillside, or a swimmin’ hole on a Midwest river, or white sand on a hot Florida beach.”
  • Happiness Scale: A very cheesy, wholesome 9++
    Screenshot of Capucine from the trailer for th...

    Screenshot of Capucine from the trailer for the film The Pink Panther (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

     

A Year in Books/Day 121: The Artist’s Way

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  • Title: The Artist’s Way A Spiritual Path to Creativity
  • Author: Julia Cameron
  • Year Published: 1992 (G.P Putnam’s Sons)
  • Year Purchased: 1998
  • Source: Unknown
  • About: If you’re an artist, writer or other creative type you’ve likely heard of this book; it’s a classic of its kind. I have a confession: I’ve read it at least four times (maybe five) but have never done the exercises for more than a week. I know, I know. Reading it (the easy part) but not following through by actually putting in the work (the tough part) entirely defeats the purpose. I don’t know why I always stop at around the same point in the program: the whole thing makes sense, it is inspiring, my brain knows that it would probably be helpful. Maybe it’s because I’m not very good at following directions (I’m a control freak) and don’t like to be locked into anything with such an open-ended outcome. Given that it’s only a twelve-week program, maybe I will give it another whirl. On the plus side-for me, anyway-is the relative structure involved. I can get behind free writing every morning; that’s a sound discipline to have. I also love the quotes in the margins of nearly every page. The program seems to encourage artistic empowerment and creative openness, both good things. Whether it skews , in actual practice, to the side of personal revelation or empty promise remains to be seen.
  • Motivation: It is an attractive concept and was all the rage for the whole of the 1990s and into this century, when I was a very young aspiring writer.
  • Times Read: 4 or 5
  • Random Excerpt/Page 123: “Jealousy is a map. Each of our jealousy maps differs. Each of us will probably be surprised by some of the things we discover on our own. I, for example, have never been eaten alive with resentment over the success of women novelists. But I took an unhealthy interest in the fortunes and misfortunes of women playwrights. I was their harshest critic, until I wrote my first play.”
  • Happiness Scale: My jury of one is still out.

If you’ve actually read the book AND completed the program, I’d love to hear from you. Did it help in any practical way? What did you get from the program?

A Year in Books/Day 120: Cannes

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  • Title: Cannes Fifty Years of Sun, Sex & Celluloid
  • By: The Editors of Variety
  • Year Published: 1997 (Variety, Inc./Miramax Books/Hyperion)
  • Year Purchased: 2000?
  • Source: Barnes & Noble clearance rack
  • About: The Cannes Film Festival is as much about the shenanigans of the beautiful movie stars as it is about the actual films vying for the prizes. Or, at least it was. In recent years (decades?) the whole enterprise seems stale and tepid. You have to go back to the 1950s and 1960s  to find the truly interesting stories and dazzlingly cheesy stunts. This thin volume, covering the first five decades of the festival, gives readers a light-hearted, conspiratorial look behind the scenes. The photos are exceptional.
  • Motivation: Film buff and writer in the house.
  • Times Read: 2
  • Random Excerpt/Page 19: “Ironically, Cannes was not created for the film buff at all, but to lure attention away from Venice, the granddaddy of all film festivals, as well as to increase tourism, image and the sheer gloire of the host country, ever a fervent combatant for culture. (Not coincidentally, the Cannes festival jury was all-French until 1952, when some carefully screened outsiders were admitted.)
  • Happiness Scale: 7 1/2

A Year in Books/Day 119: I Care About Your Happiness

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  • Title: I Care About Your Happiness Quotations from the Love Letters of Kahlil Gibran and Mary Haskell
  • Selected by: Susan Polis Schutz
  • Year Published: Seventh Printing-February 1979 (Blue Mountain Press)
  • Year Purchased: I have no idea. This is a hand-me-down book from my mom.
  • Source: My mom
  • About: Kahlil Gibran and Mary Haskell lived at a time when communication was more meaningful and deliberate. Their love letters are intense and a bit flowery (as was typical of that period) and beautifully unrestrained. The intervening century has not dimmed their effectiveness.
  • Motivation: I read everything I could get my hands on when I was growing up. This first made its way into my hands when I was 10 or 11. When I moved out as a young adult, it *accidentally* came with me. Ahem. It was well worth it, though, as one of Gibran’s poems was incorporated into my wedding vows in 2010.
  • Times Read: Countless
  • Random Excerpt/Page 30: “What difference does it make, whether you live in a big city or in a community of homes? The real life is within.”
  • Happiness Scale: An unabashed, soppy, sentimental 10

A Year in Books/Day 118: The Garden Party and Other Stories

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  • Title: The Garden Party and Other Stories
  • Author: Katherine Mansfield
  • Year Published: 1922/This Edition: 1997 (Constable & Co./Penguin Books)
  • Year Purchased: 2003/2004
  • Source: Unknown
  • About: It’s almost enough to state that “Katherine Mansfield wrote short stories. The end.” It’s fitting that the genre she helped make a singularly modern medium was, largely, her only medium. If you require action (fast-paced or otherwise) from your fiction, then her quiet, introspective, internal and often plotless stories aren’t for you. The book is just long enough to help pass a lonely afternoon; its perhaps best read with a cup of tea to hand and feet up, on a languorously rainy Saturday. You probably won’t walk away any happier, but you’ll be richer for the experience.
  • Motivation: I’m that rarest of creatures: a fiction writer with no real ambition to write the Great American Novel-or any novel. Short stories are my talent’s natural home. Katherine Mansfield should be respected by any writer of short fiction.
  • Times Read: 2
  • Random Excerpt/Page 114: “On her way home she usually bought a slice of honey-cake at the baker’s. It was her Sunday treat. Sometimes there was an almond in her slice, sometimes not. It made a great difference. If there was an almond it was like carrying home a tiny present-a surprise-something that might very well not have been there. She hurried on the almond Sundays and struck the match for the kettle in quite a dashing way.”
  • Happiness Scale: 9
    Alumna, Katherine Mansfield

    Katherine Mansfield (Photo credit: Wikipedia)