Sylvia Beach owned the legendary Paris bookshop Shakespeare and Company.
Voices from the Grave #41: Sylvia Beach Interview
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Tag Archives: History
Book Nerd Humour: George Bernard Shaw Bids Summer a Hearty Farewell
George Bernard Shaw
A Year in Books/Day 210: Great Lives Great Deeds
- Title: Reader’s Digest Great Lives Great Deeds
- Author: Various
- Year Published: 1964 (The Reader’s Digest Association, Inc.)
- Year Purchased: 1966, by my Grandma
- Source: Reader’s Digest
- About: When my mom was growing up in the 1950s and 1960s, a normal American family with kids owned a car, a television, a full set of encyclopedias, and at least a few Reader’s Digest books. Continue reading
A Year in Books/Day 209: Lives of the Poets
- Title: Lives of the Poets
- Author: Michael Schmidt
- Year Published: 1998 (A Phoenix Paperback)
- Year Purchased: 2004/2005
- Source: Barnes & Noble clearance rack
- About: Michael Schmidt takes approximately 1000 pages to cover more than 250 poets, briskly but rigorously dissecting their lives, influences, historical circumstances, and professional interconnections. Mapping out seven centuries of poetic genealogy is a gargantuan task, but Lives of the Poets is a surprisingly quick read, and as riveting as most of its subjects’ creations.
- Motivation: The title + poets + biographies=bliss. Surprised?
- Times Read: Cover-to-cover-1/Excerpts-Multiple
- Random Excerpt/Page 11: “Poems swim free of their age, but it’s hard to think of a single poem that swims entirely free of its medium, not just language but language used in the particular ways that are poetry. Even the most pathenogenetic-seeming poem has a pedigree. The poet may not know precisely a line’s or a stanza’s parents; indeed, may not be interested in finding out. Yet as readers of poetry we can come to know more about a poem than the poet does and know it more fully.”
- Happiness Scale: 8
[News] Putting a Face to the Poet: Is This Emily Dickinson?
According to experts, the answer is yes. It’s only the second known image of the poet, and the first showing her as an adult. ‘Tis a big deal, no? Still No New Pynchon Photo, but Here’s Emily Dickinson-The New York Times
Emily Dickinson gets a new look in recovered photograph-The Guardian
Writer Food From A To Z
Writer Food From A To Z, courtesy of THE AWL.
A Year in Books/Days 199 and 200: MGM Posters/MGM When the Lion Roars
DAY 199: MGM Posters The Golden Years
- Title: MGM Posters The Golden Years
- Text: Frank Miller
- Year Published: 1994 (Turner Publishing, Inc.)
- Year Purchased: 1990s
- Source: I have no idea!
- About: There’s nothing like an old movie poster. When art and commerce combine with history and nostalgia, the result is a visually stunning social commentary. In looking at the representative posters of five decades, changing attitudes and mores are as obvious as changing aesthetics. MGM was known for the luxuriousness of its productions, and the top talent of its employees. Although designed as throwaways, the posters that advertised its movies were no exception, and neither were their artists. My favourite era for this exciting medium is definitely the 1920s.The posters are stunning. At the risk of sounding like a crotchety hundred year old, it has been all downhill since then.
- Motivation: Old movies are my friends. We’re tight. I’m pretty close with art, too. Continue reading
A Year in Books/Day 198: The Roosevelts An American Saga
- Title: The Roosevelts An American Saga
- Author: Peter Collier with David Horowitz
- Year Published: 1994 (Simon & Schuster)
- Year Purchased: Late 1990s
- Source: An ex
- About: This book is exhaustive; comprehensive; and any other applicable word over-used by critics and reviewers. To horribly paraphrase Joni Mitchell, after reading An American Saga I can honestly say that I have looked at the Roosevelts from both sides now. (*groan*) It’s a biography of the entire family, radiating from Teddy and FDR, to be sure, but giving flesh and voice to all of the members. Neither man, after all, was created in a laboratory; nor are the two lines of the family treated as barely associated branches, but as richly interconnecting pieces of a large and complex puzzle. This is a classic.
- Motivation: I’ve been intrigued by FDR since that day in 6th grade history when I drew his name out of the assignment hat. My best friend, Jessy, was not so lucky: she was forced to research Ronald Reagan, the then-sitting head of state. At least neither of us had the task of padding out a report on William Henry Harrison, which was probably an F waiting to happen. Small mercies, people. Small mercies.
- Times Read: 1
- Random Excerpt/Page 37: He was curious about how things worked. He captured insects, rodents, and other specimens and took them apart on makeshift dissecting tables, almost as if by opening them up for examination he might better understand what was wrong with his own machinery. He drew, catalogued, and described what he saw. At the age of eight, when his mother threw out the corpses of two mice he had stored in the icebox for future autopsy, he accused her, in a tiny indignant voice, of “defeating the ends of science.”
English: William Henry Harrison: ninth President of the United States. (Photo credit: Wikipedia). Sorry, Will, but I’m glad I was assigned FDR as a book report subject back in the sixth grade. We’re still friends, right?
- Happiness Scale: 9 1/2
A Year in Books/Day 186: Votes for Women
- 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
Daily Diversion #30: My Immobile Friend
Doughboy
Our neighborhood doughboy has been in residence, across the street from our flat, since 1920. My husband and I salute him on our evening walks. In 2010, we posed for engagement photos standing on his base. He moves me to recite the poetry of his contemporaries, allies and enemies alike. He’s a wonderful audience of one. I haven’t been so smitten with a statue since Montreal, circa 2004. That’s another story, and one you shan’t be told.
A Small Press Life: Books. Art. Writing. Life. Tea. 