Tag Archives: Books

A Year in Books/Day 84: Picture This Debbie Harry and Blondie

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  • Title: Picture This Debbie Harry and Blondie
  • Author: Mick Rock
  • Year Published: 2004 (Sanctuary Publishing Limited)
  • Year Purchased: 2004
  • Source: Via mail, exact source unknown.
  • About: This is famed photographer Mick Rock’s obsessively lovely visual tribute to Debbie Harry and, casually, by way of association, her bandmates in Blondie. It’s a reminder-for those in actual need of one-of how truly stunning, original and photogenic the singer has always been. He also throws in anecdotes about other  rock and rollers who have been covered by his lens.
  • Motivation: Going into this one, I had to repeat the phrase “Must not natter on about my love for Debbie Harry, must not natter on about my love for Debbie Harry…” The Blondie frontwoman is who I wanted to grow up to be: confident, talented, singular and beautiful. I still feel that way.  I’m equipped with so many thoughts about DH that it is only with real effort that I pack them away for another day. I’ll move on to the next category before this becomes a 3,000 word essay or I stray into suspiciously flowery, fangirl territory.

    Debbie Harry performing with Blondie at the Zw...

    Debbie Harry performing with Blondie at the Zwarte Cross festival on Friday July 15th 2011 in Lichtenvoorde the Netherlands (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

  • Times Read: cover-to-cover: 3/picture gawking: countless
  • Random Excerpt/Page 103: “Not that her allure was any less potent, for her appeal did not (and does not) reside solely in her blondness. It’s an innate quality. There has always been a softness,a non-narcissistic casualness about the way she deals with her physical appeal.”
  • Happiness Scale: 10++++++

A Year in Books/Day 83: Savage Beauty

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  • Title: Savage Beauty The Life of Edna St. Vincent Millay
  • Author: Nancy Milford
  • Year Published: 2001 (Random House)
  • Year Purchased: 2002-2004
  • Source: Barnes & Noble
  • About: This distinguished biography of the Maine-born poet is one hell of an intense, engaging read. It’s well-researched and superbly written, pulling you with ease and throbbing immediacy into the bohemian haunts of the Greenwich Village and Paris of the early twentieth century. Thanks to Milford’s contact with the poet’s younger sister, Norma, she was able to access Millay’s personal archives. It is at once nuanced and immense, revelatory and re-affirmative; the result is one of my favourite literary biographies.
  • Motivation: Edna. St. Vincent. Millay. Seriously, her talent, intellect and life were breathtaking and bewitching. I also may or may not bear a striking physical resemblance to the red-haired poet. Really, I should write a one-woman show based on her life and cast myself in the role. Hmmm. Maybe I should start practicing that Down East accent.
  • Times Read: Countless
  • Random Excerpt/Page 78: “That was a remarkable note of affection, and it would not be the last time Edna St. Vincent Millay would win to her side an older woman who was in a position to help her. They were taken with Edna Millay. They wanted to assist her in any way they could, perhaps because in the careful structure of their lives they felt diminished. Her life would be grand, sweeping, urgent. Incapable of this themselves, they would help her.”
  • Happiness Scale: 10
    Photograph of Edna St. Vincent Millay

    Photograph of Edna St. Vincent Millay (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

     

A Year in Books/Day 82: The Glimmer Train Guide to Writing Fiction

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  • Title: The Glimmer Train Guide to Writing Fiction Inspiration and Discipline
  • Editors: Susan Burmeister-Brown and Linda B. Swanson-Davies
  • Year Published: 2007 (Glimmer Train Press)
  • Year Purchased: 2007/2008
  • Source: Writer’s Digest Book Club
  • About: This thick little volume offers some of the best writing advice I’ve ever read. Presented in the form of interviews, it captures disparate writers’ unique yet universal passion for the craft; mixed with sound, structured and common-sense, been-there-done-that advice, it completely lives up to its cover promise. It is one of the few inspirational resources that I have ever repeatedly consulted. Worth every penny, and then some.
  • Motivation: I think that I was sent this when I was too distracted  to mail in the monthly card and too lazy to return the book. I’m glad I didn’t, as I probably would never have chosen it otherwise. The writing gods fortuitously intervened.
  • Times Read: Cover-to-cover/1; as reference: countless.
  • Random Excerpt/Page 43: “When I was in college, I began to read Faulkner and Hemingway, two writers that changed my life. I hadn’t read anything so shockingly wonderful as those two writers, and what they could do on the page stunned me. I’ve never gotten over that shock, and don’t want to.”-Kent Haruf
  • Happiness Scale: 10+++

A Year in Books/Day 81: Mortification Writers’ Stories of Their Public Shame

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  • Title: Mortification Writers’ Stories of Their Public Shame
  • Editor: Robin Robertson
  • Year Published: 2003 (Harper Perennial)
  • Year Purchased: 2007/2008
  • Source: This was a gift from my Mom.
  • About: This volume offers up seventy first-hand, real-life stories of writers’ deeply humiliating encounters with the public. Names as luminous as Margaret Atwood, Edna O’Brien and Chuck Palahniuk grace the pages with their always-humorous tales of woe and embarrassment.
  • Motivation: My Momma loves to indulge the writer in me (which, to be real, comprises a good chunk of who I am). She knows how to make her girl happy!
  • Times Read: 1
  • Random Excerpt/Page xi: “While there are occasional undercurrents of seriousness in these stories-a desire for something between expiation and exorcism, perhaps-their main intention it to make us laugh, while feeling a strong sense of ‘there, but for the grace of God, go I’. It is greatly to the credit of all the contributors that they have embraced their mortification so warmly-returning to the scene of the crime and leading us, hot-faced, through their hell.”
  • Happiness Scale: 8

A Year in Books/Day 80: An Encyclopedia of British Women Writers

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  • Title: An Encyclopedia of British Women Writers Revised and Expanded Edition
  • Editors: Paul Schlueter and June Schlueter
  • Year Published: First Edition/1988; This Edition/1998 (Rutgers University Press)
  • Year Purchased: Early 2000s
  • Source: Unknown
  • About: From Eliza Acton to E.H. Young, every British woman writer of note, ever, is discussed here; comes complete with important life dates. It’s a rich source for many little-known wordsmiths.
  • Motivation: I write a lot about female writers. I’ve seriously dedicated tens of thousands of words to the ladies who came before me. They remain a huge source of personal inspiration. I bought this book to use as a reference tool.
  • Times Read: Cover-to-cover/1; As reference tool/countless.
  • Random Excerpt/Page 57: “B. (Hester Biddle) published nothing after 1662, although she was still an active speaker. Records show that in 1664 she was seized, punched, and imprisoned at Bridewell. And the following year she was sent to Newgate Prison for speaking in the street. She also had three sons between 1663 and 1668. Few details of her later life remain, although in 1694, only two years before her death, she visited France in order to meet King Louis XIV and plead for peace.”
  • Happiness Scale: 10

A Year in Books/Day 79: Royal Panoply

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  • Title: Royal Panoply Brief Lives of The English Monarchs
  • Author: Carolly Erickson
  • Year Published: 2003 (History Book Club)
  • Year Purchased: 2003-2005
  • Source: History Book Club
  • About: This handsome, heavily illustrated volume covers the English Monarchs from William I to Elizabeth II. Each ruler is given a short biography, usually consisting of a few pages. Although concise, the portraits are rich in detail and the historic context flows perfectly from one subject to the next.
  • Motivation: I actually know English history better than American (which I know pretty damn well, thank you very much). I’m just a gargantuan history nut in a teensy package. Plus, I love the intellectual order provided by such compilations.
  • Times Read: 1
  • Random Excerpt/Page 69: “When the nine-year-old King Henry III was crowned in October of 1216, hastily and with minimal ceremony, in a makeshift ritual at Gloucester Cathedral, the realm was in peril. The oppressive and divisive reign of Henry’s father, King John, had ended in disaster, the crown jewels were lost in the quicksands of the Ouse, and a foreign invader, the French dauphin Louis, had established himself in London.”
  • Happiness Scale: 10
    Henry III of England Česky: Jindřich III. Plan...

    Henry III of England Česky: Jindřich III. Plantagenet (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

     

A Year in Books/Day 78: Hollywood Glamor Portraits

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  • Title: Hollywood Glamor Portraits 145 Photos of Stars 1926-1949
  • Editor: John Kobal
  • Year Published: 1976 (Dover Publications, Inc., New York)
  • Year Purchased: 1990’s
  • Source: Unknown
  • About: The front cover boasts the timeless beauty of Louise Brooks; the back cover features the lovely, glamorous Carole Lombard. Everything in-between is equally stunning: two decades of Hollywood’s greatest stars as shot by movieland’s best photographers are sumptuously laid out, one per page. It has certainly lived up to the publisher’s promise: A DOVER EDITION DESIGNED FOR YEARS OF USE!
  • Motivation: I’m human-I enjoy looking at beautiful people wearing beautiful clothes whilst striking interesting poses. The work gracing the pages of modern-day ‘Vogue’ and ‘Harper’s BAZAAR’ usually bores me to tears. My solution is to step back in time! The re-touching done by photographers during Hollywood’s Golden Age, although ubiquitous, was much more subtle (if highly glossy and stylized) than the current mania for out-of-control Photoshopping that results in mangled limbs and plastic visages. Also, please see: John Gilbert! Ronald Colman! Buster Keaton! Frances Farmer! Myrna Loy! Rita Hayworth! Gloria Swanson! Clara Bow! Nancy freaking Carroll!
  • Times Read: Multiple
  • Random Excerpt/Page xi: “I was taking pictures at ten on my father’s ranch-from the saddle. In 1916, when I was sixteen, a company came to film ‘The Sunset Princess’ on the ranch and all I did was get in the cameraman’s hair from morning to night. The very next year, I was in Hollywood with Billy Beckay, learning.” -Bob Coburn (RKO; UA; COLUMBIA)
  • Happiness Scale: 10+++
    Publicity photo of Nancy Carroll from Stars of...

    Publicity photo of Nancy Carroll from Stars of the Photoplay (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

     

A Year in Books/Day 77: Holidays on Ice

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  • Title: Holidays on Ice
  • Author: David Sedaris
  • Year Published: 1997/This Edition: 1998 (First Back Bay paperback edition)
  • Year Purchased: 2007-2008
  • Source: It was a gift from my Mom.
  • About: Only two words are necessary to draw you to this amazing little book: David Sedaris. If you don’t understand what that means, I assign you the following homework: Find one of his stories; even an excerpt will do (see below). Read it. Be converted. Come back here and thank me.
  • Motivation: Hello, it’s David Sedaris. Although I have a mad, fangirl’s love for his sister Amy, I’ll never turn down the chance to read his stories. Neither should you.
  • Times Read: 2
  • Random Excerpt/Page 50: “I recall mistaking her for a Trick-or-Treater! She wore, I remember, a skirt the size of a beer cozy, a short, furry jacket, and, on her face, enough rouge, eye shadow, and lipstick to paint our entire house, inside and out. She’s a very small person and I mistook her for a child. A child masquerading as a prostitute. I handed her a fistful of chocolate nougats, hoping that, like the other children, she would quickly move on to the next house.”
  • Happiness Scale: 9 1/2

A Year in Books/Day 75: Madame Tussaud A Life in Wax

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  • Title: Madame Tussaud A Life in Wax
  • Author: Kate Berridge
  • Year Published: 2006 (HarperCollins Publishers Ltd)
  • Year Purchased: 2010
  • Source: A gift from my lovely Momma.
  • About: Even though an autobiography exists under her name, there is so much about Madame Tussaud’s life that has been lost to time. A lot of the information that remains is untrustworthy or muddled. This only adds to the burden carried by any biographer. Kate Berridge’s account is better than expected yet still suffers in spots from lack of original source material. Fortunately, she almost makes up for that deficiency by her unusual approach of treating her subject as a historian, instead of merely as an artisan-impresario. By the end of the book, she succeeds in making Madame Tussaud at least as life-like as her statues-not a small feat given the circumstances.
  • Motivation: History + Biography + Unusual Female Subject= an irresistible trio for me. My Mother knows this!
  • Times Read: 1
  • Random Excerpt/Page 21: “The waxworks were the ideal forum to cater for a phenomenal human interest in public figures that was distinct from respect for their work. In fact cultural achievement was not necessary at all to appear there: the admission requirement was to have attained sufficient public interest to guarantee a crowd; notoriety was as compelling as admiration. From the recently executed criminal to society beauties, Curtius guaranteed a close-up view of the most talked-about people of the day. As each person had their time in the spotlight of public interest, they would take their turn in his pantheon.”
  • Happiness Scale: 7 1/2
    English: The wax statue of the creator of &quo...

     

A Year in Books/Day 74: ‘Tis Herself

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  • Title: ‘Tis Herself An Autobiography
  • Authors: Maureen O’Hara with John Nicoletti
  • Year Published: 2004 /This Edition: 2005 (Simon & Schuster Paperbacks)
  • Year Purchased: 2005
  • Source: Barnes & Noble
  • About: The autobiography of Hollywood’s most famous Irishwoman was a long time coming. She was 84 at publication. Tucked inside amongst the expected (but interesting) stories of living and working with lots of larger-than-life stars are some stellar, little-known accomplishments that help to flesh out her legacy, leaping from legend to true trailblazer between covers. It’s worth a read for that alone (and the stunning photographs).
  • Motivation: Maureen O’Hara is one of my favourite actresses (and co-redhead). Her talent and ridiculously unattainable beauty graced so many of the movies I loved as a kid (and still do). I obsessively watched them over and over whenever they were on television (and still do). She injected her characters with intelligence, strength, spirit and wit-making her one of the best role models a girl (or grown woman, ahem) could ask for. I loved her then (and still do). Now go watch ‘The Quiet Man’.
  • Times Read: 2
  • Random Excerpt/Page 83: “I went downstairs and asked Wilmon to go get Will. He found him in a drunken stupor right where the lady had said he would be, at a whorehouse in a seedy part of the city. He’d apparently been there for days, bragging and shooting his mouth off. We had been married less than sixty days.”

    Maureen O'Hara in a screenshot from the traile...

    Maureen O'Hara-Image via Wikipediawhorehouse in a seedy part of the city. He'd apparently been there for days, bragging and shooting his mouth off. We had been married less than sixty days."

  • Happiness Scale: 10