Tag Archives: Reviews

A Year in Books/Day 97: The Dictionary of Disagreeable English

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  • Title: The Dictionary of Disagreeable English A Curmudgeon’s Compendium of Excruciatingly Correct Grammar
  • Author: Robert Hartwell Fiske
  • Year Published: 2005 (Writer’s Digest Books)
  • Year Purchased: 2005
  • Source: Writer’s Digest Book Club
  • About: I love this book. I know what you are thinking! “I know how to spell. I do not confuse or misuse words.” Neither do I. Even if your English is already agreeable, it is a great reference tool. It reminds you that linguistic sloppiness is never okay. It’s also an interesting study in how language is casually and unknowingly degraded on a daily basis.
  • Motivation: We’ve covered this one before: I think reference books are sexy.
  • Times Read: 3 or 4 or 70. I don’t know!
  • Random Excerpt/Page 342: “20. guesstimate. Use estimate, for crying out loud! It’s the same word!”
  • Happiness Scale: 8

A Year in Books/Day 96: Marilyn Mon Amour

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  • Title: Marilyn Mon Amour The Private Album of Andre de Dienes, her preferred photographer
  • Author: Andre de Dienes
  • Year Published: 1985 (St. Martin’s Press)
  • Year Purchased: 1991
  • Source: I bought this book in high school. I remember the mall (City Center) and who I was with (my mom and her best friend Debbie) but I cannot recall the name of the book store!
  • About: However slight the connection, men just love to claim that they had an affair with Marilyn. Usually in book form. Fancy that. It’s almost a sub-category of the cottage industry that is the Marilyn biography. And they were never simply lusty flings or misbegotten one-night-stands. They were all, pretty much to a man, life-altering, planet-shifting Love Affairs. According to the gents in question, that is. The reality must be very different. Out of all of these claimants, Transylvania-born photographer de Dienes stands out as one of the most believable. The hundreds of photographs he shot of Marilyn between the years 1945-1953 testify to the fact that they had a viable working relationship; there’s obviously a sense of trust and friendship between photographer and subject. Since I don’t want to turn this from a review into a treatise, we’ll leave the veracity of his story for another day and another form. Instead, we’ll hone in on the real focus of his book: the photographs. What photographs they are! The majority date from the earliest days of her modeling career; they are undoubtedly the best pre-stardom images ever taken of her. They’re lovely. That’s right. Lovely. No big, loftily descriptive words are necessary, not when one word is so wholly perfect and concise. Her wardrobe of all-American basics (she was broke and had to supply her own clothes for the road-trip shoot of 1945) remain fresh and alluring; they set off her glowing, innocent beauty without detraction. This is the definitive Marilyn Monroe book.
  • Motivation: I was a teenage girl, studying acting. This play world was extremely compelling to me at that time.
  • Times Read: Countless
  • Random Excerpt: “I was impatient to train the camera on her, to choose the right light to set off her skin and her hair, to capture her expression, to make her move, run, stand still, arch her back, stretch. I wanted to catch hold of whatever it was I sensed lay behind that candid smile, those blonde curls and the pink sweater. In one fell swoop I was intrigued, moved and attracted by her.”
  • Happiness Scale: 10+++

A Year in Books/Day 95: John Sloan Painter and Rebel

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  • Title: John Sloan Painter and Rebel
  • Author: John Loughery
  • Year Published: 1995 (Henry Holt and Company, Inc.)
  • Year Purchased: 2001-2003
  • Source: Barnes & Noble clearance rack
  • About: Even though I’ve worked in galleries on and off for years, I had never heard of John Sloan before I bought this book; he’s now one of my favourite twentieth century painters AND iconoclasts. Although he is considered a founder and leading light of the “Ash Can” school of painting, it is a term and categorization that he disliked. Loughery’s biography is almost a twin study-that of its avowed subject and the New York City that he called home for decades. This now-vanished world was peopled by an inspiring cast of real-life eccentrics (Robert Henri, John Butler Yeats, Sloan’s wife Dolly). The result? It almost reads like a novel.
  • Motivation: I’m such a sucker for a good biography, even (especially?) someone I have never heard of or know little about.
  • Times Read: 2
  • Random Excerpt/Page 273: “He wanted no budding academic painters in his class, but neither was he sparing of those students who didn’t worry about technique because of some natural facility. Facility struck him as dangerous. Anything that mattered should come hard, should require thought and labor. To one student whose drawings seemed effortless, Sloan suggested that he use his left hand or, failing that, his feet. Resist anything that comes too easily, he warned. Resist an empty show.”
  • Happiness Scale: 9
    Yeats at Petitpas (1910) by John French Sloan ...

    Yeats at Petitpas (1910) by John French Sloan oil on canvas, Corcoran Gallery of Art (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

     

A Year in Books/Day 94: 1900

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  • Title: 1900
  • Author: Rebecca West
  • Year Published: 1982 (Crescent Books)
  • Year Purchased: 2000-20002
  • Source: Unknown
  • About: I just realized that this is the second book with the title ‘1900’ that I have profiled this year. They both set out to chronicle the massive changes that brought the Victorian Era gasping and screaming into the modern world. While the goal is essentially the same, the methodology is jarringly different. The clear victor in the battle, if a battle it be, is the sublime Rebecca West. She, of course, had the same advantage as the writers compiled in the later volume-that  of living through the time and world that she wrote about (although she waited eight decades to do so). As an eight year old, she may not have understood things on an intellectual level but she had a child’s intuitive emotions; she experienced the excitement and unease that comes with the changing of the centuries. Her edge is the result of two things: of living long enough to have perspective and, as the sole writer of her book, a cohesion of intent and style. The 90-year-old Rebecca covers a wide swath of historical territory-arts, literature, science, psychology, music and politics-while maintaining clear-eyed yet evocative prose. The photographs spread throughout are stunning and add considerably to the book’s appeal.
  • Motivation: Repeat after me, “Rebecca West.” The turn of the twentieth century is also one of my favourite periods for literature, fashion, activism, plays and music.
  • Times Read: 1
  • Random Excerpt/Page 129: “My father guessed that the designer had probably been a man no longer young, impressed in his childhood by the sort of lectures which were given in mid-Victorian days at working men’s clubs such as the Mechanics’ Institutes. It was possible. The chiton and the amphora and the tag from Epictetus exemplified a curious tendency manifested by many of the new proletariat, which felt herself ill done and wanted a larger share of the best. They craved to be accepted in all the institutions which served the upper classes, though they did not think much of the upper classes.”
  • Happiness Scale: 10 1/2

A Year in Books/Day 93: Retro Happy Hour

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  • Title: Retro Happy Hour Drinks and Eats with a ’50s Beat
  • Author: Linda Everett
  • Year Published: 2003 (Collectors Press, Inc.)
  • Year Purchased: n/a
  • Source: This was a gift from a close friend.
  • About: This is one gaudy book. From the bright, hilarious vintage photographs and illustrations that decorate every page to the cheesy, mysteriously appetizing recipes, it’s a step back into the best of the colorfully bland, chipper Eisenhower Era. If the photos of my grandparents’ home, circa 1955, could be colorized and re-animated, I’m pretty sure this is what it would look like. The menus can, with very few exceptions, be made with on-hand ingredients. Go ahead and plant your tongue firmly in your cheek; now just try to resist deliciously middle-brow dishes with zany names like Elfin Mushrooms, Southern Belle Hot Pecans, Front Porch Nibblin’ Corn, Flip-Flop Fizzee, Red Dawn and Swindler’s Bay Punch. You can’t, it’s impossible! Every time I flip through this not-quite-a-cookbook, I have the throbbing urge to dress up like Amy Sedaris and throw a retro-tastic shindig.
  • Motivation: I borrowed this book from a friend on behalf of my mom, who was throwing some kind of small bites and booze party for her lady friends. When I tried to return it to its owner, she insisted that I keep it. Aww, I have fabulous friends!
  • Times Read: ?
  • Random Excerpt/Page 15: “That’s What I Call Entertainment!: If your budget can handle it, consider hiring professional entertainment other than a band: a magician, juggler, fortune-teller, comedian, clown, or Santa. Be creative!” (I think that I am going to throw a party in December just so that I can hire a Santa. Who does that? Me, I do!)
  • Happiness Scale: 10

A Year in Books/Day 92: Herself Defined H.D. and Her World

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  • Title: Herself Defined H.D. and Her World
  • Author: Barbara Guest
  • Year Published: 1984/This Edition: 2003 (Schaffner Press, Inc.)
  • Year Purchased: 2008
  • Source: Daedalus Books
  • About: ‘Herself Defined’ follows Hilda Doolittle from Pennsylvania to Europe, where she became the eccentric, world-famous Imagist poet H.D. She was engaged to Ezra Pound before her transformation; they remained close for the rest of their lives. The life story of H.D. reads like particularly imaginative fiction, with the woman poised at the center of it all a robust and singularly odd specimen. In some ways she reminds me of Ottoline Morrell: striking, commanding, polarizing but always interesting. This book is also a damn fine reminder of how thoroughly distasteful I have always found Pound (and his poetry).
  • Motivation: I’m always excited to expand the Eccentric Literary Ladies section of my personal library (yes, that’s a real thing).
  • Times Read: 1
  • Random Excerpt/Page 25: “Although Hilda was only at Patchin Place a short time, she detested it and this was an unhappy period. The bitterly cold city was unfamiliar. How could she anticipate that Patchin Place would become a famous address because of its occupants, Djuna Barnes and E.E. Cummings, writers with whom H.D. later would be associated. What mainly preoccupied her in 1910 was Pound’s neglect.
  • Happiness Scale: 8

A Year in Books/Day 91: An American Childhood

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  • Title: An American Childhood
  • Author: Annie Dillard
  • Year Published: 1987 (Harper & Row, Publishers)
  • Year Purchased: 1987
  • Source: My Mom.
  • About: Dillard’s impressionistic memoirs of growing up in Pittsburgh between the years 1950-1962.
  • Motivation: This is one of the definitive books of my girlhood. I nicked it from my Mom’s shelf in late autumn or early winter of 1987; I never gave it back. Why I honed in on this particular volume on that long-ago day is somewhat foggy, although I’ll venture to say that it was due to a combination of the title and boredom. I was in the midst of my own, although very different, American Childhood. What remains in my mind, as brilliant and clear as ice, is curling up on the floor next to my bed and reading it straight through in a couple of hours. Already a budding writer, with scores of stories, poems and plays to my name, I desperately wanted to be able to write like that: simply, divinely, forcefully. It’s twenty-five years later and my writing voice, developed long ago yet still tightening, transitioning, is nothing like Dillard’s; it contains no trace of my pubescent infatuation with her wordplay. What remains is a sense of gratefulness to one of my many literary heroines, one that I needed at an age when so many dreams scatter and fade away. Her book is a fine thread in the narrative of my formative years.
  • Times Read: 3 or 4 (all back in 1987/1988)
  • Random Excerpt/Page 51: “By the time I knew him, our grandfather was a vice-president of Pittsburgh’s Fidelity Trust Bank. He looked very like a cartoonist’s version of “vested interests.” In fact, he almost always wore a vest, and a gold watch on a chain; he was short and heavy; he had a small white mustache; he smoked cigars. At home, his thin legs crossed under his belly, he read the financial section of the paper, tolerant of children who might have been driven, in the long course of waiting for dinner, to beating their fingertips on his scalp.”
  • Happiness Scale: In importance and satisfaction to my young self,  is incalculable.

A Year in Books/Day 90: The Victorian Visitors

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  • Title: The Victorian Visitors Culture Shock in Nineteenth-Century Britain
  • Author: Rupert Christiansen
  • Year Published: 2000 (Atlantic Monthly Press)
  • Year Purchased: 2001-2002
  • Source: History Book Club (I think)
  • About: It is exactly what it says it is, with each chapter devoted to the experiences and impressions of a noted foreign tourist (from Emerson to Wagner). I especially love the parts dedicated to Australian cricketers and Yankee Spirit-Rappers!
  • Motivation: I’m quite the Victorian-era connoisseur. I also love the strange niche that is the Victorian travelogue. This is a wondrous combination of both of those things, with a dash each of literary and cultural history added to the mix. Plus, it’s well-written and funny, the latter being an especial quality in this type of book.
  • Times Read: 2
  • Random Excerpt/Page 158: “But (Daniel) Home had departed before the spirits had reached the villas of Holloway and he passed over to the other side with his glamour unsullied by low associations. Today, he remains secure in his reputation as the supreme exponent of his art: it is his bust which presides over the library of the Society of Psychical Research in Kensington, defying the ghost-hunters’ theories and explanations as bafflingly as he did a hundred and fifty years ago. Spiritualism’s history would look completely different without him. His visit-his visitation-was without doubt the most consequential of any in this book.”
  • Happiness Scale: 10+++

A Year in Books/Day 89: The Woman’s Book of Courage

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  • Title: The Woman’s Book of Courage Meditations for Empowerment & Peace of Mind
  • Author: Sue Patton Thoele
  • Year Published: 1991 (Conari Press)
  • Year Purchased: 1992
  • Source: According to the hand-written inscription, this was a Christmas gift from my Mom in 1992.
  • About: This pocket-size book contains one to two page ruminations on the emotional challenges faced by so many women, counterbalanced by practical wisdom and encouragement.
  • Motivation: I was a teenager with waffling self-esteem, in need of reassurance that I could handle the baffling transition to adulthood. Momma knows best!
  • Times Read: A few
  • Random Excerpt/Page 14: “Many times our automatic reaction when faced with an uncomfortable or confusing situation is to thrash around trying to change it immediately. We attempt to swallow the whole predicament at once and spit it out, solved. Very rarely does this approach ease our pain or alter the situation. In fact, thoughtless, quick action is often more frustrating than productive.”
  • Happiness Scale: 9 (at the time)

A Year in Books/Day 88: Veronica

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  • Title: Veronica The Autobiography of Veronica Lake
  • Authors: Veronica Lake with Donald Bain
  • Year Published: 1969/This Edition: 1972 (A Bantam Book)
  • Year Purchased: 1994?
  • Source: Antique Barn at the Ohio State Fair, Columbus, Ohio
  • About: Sultry movie star Veronica Lake’s autobiography attempts, as most memoirs do, to right a lifetime of perceived wrongs. The cover line tells us, in all-important CAPS, what we are in for: THE TRUE STORY OF THE STAR WHO WALKED OUT ON HOLLYWOOD. Whether or not you believe her version of events probably radically varies from person to person but one thing is for certain: by the time you close the back cover, you will have read your way through one hell of a wild and tragic story. Fun Fact: Her co-author (or ghostwriter, depending on your level of cynicism) Donald Bain  has ‘shared’ a by-line with Jessica Fletcher in the ‘Murder, She Wrote’ series of books since 1989.
  • Motivation: Oh, just some movies with titles you may have heard of: ‘Sullivan’s Travels’, ‘This Gun for Hire’, ‘I Married a Witch’, ‘The Blue Dahlia’. I really love Lake’s screw-you attitude to intrusive authority, which may or may not strike a strong cord with me. She’s also one of the few major stars in history as short as me, which made her a great example for this then-struggling young actress.
  • Times Read: 4 or 5
  • Random Excerpt/Page 214: “Merchant seamen look a certain way. Spencer Tracy? All the senior airline pilots in the world? All people cursed with premature wrinkling? Leathery skin? Romance through squinting eyes? I don’t know. But Andy was undoubtedly a seaman and so were his two friends. It wasn’t even debatable.”
  • Happiness Scale: 10 (whenever I am in the mood for a quick, vitriolic take-down of Hollywood’s superficiality by someone with a compellingly prickly persona)
    Studio portrait photo of Veronica Lake taken f...

    Studio portrait photo of Veronica Lake taken for promotional use. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)