Tag Archives: Reviews

A Year in Books/Day 175: Memo from David O. Selznick

Posted on July 18, 2012 by maedez

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• Title: Memo from David O. Selznick
• Selected and Edited by: Rudy Behlmer (With an Introduction by S.N. Behrman)
• Year Published: 1972 (The Viking Press)
• Year Purchased: 1990s
• Source: Antique Barn, Ohio State Fair
• About: Over the years, and quite by accident, I have amassed a nice sub-section to my Cinema Library, what I call The Lives and Times of Ruthless Moguls. This book started it all. The memos, covering the years 1926-1962, provide us with intimate access to the professional dealings and private concerns of one of the most powerful men in Hollywood during the greatest years of the studio system. Continue reading →

A Year in Books/Day 174: Blumenfeld Photographs

Posted on July 18, 2012 by maedez

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• Title: Blumenfeld Photographs A Passion for Beauty
• Author: William A. Ewing
• Year Published: 1996 (Harry N. Abrams, Inc., Publishers)
• Year Purchased: 2010
• Source: My lovely Momma
• About: Before reading this book, I could recognize some of the more iconic images of Berlin-born photographer Erwin Blumenfeld as his, but I knew nothing of his life. Although I place value on my own emotional responses to art, music and literature, and as a parallel it could certainly be argued that the end product is all the biography we need, I love back stories, perspective; I’m obsessively curious about context, facts, and individual versions of the creative process. Artistic pathways fascinate me. The 235 illustrations in this thick coffee table volume are, of course, extraordinary. From erotica to fashion to adverts, it is all here; the experimental nature of his work is stunningly apparent. All are sumptuous, provocative, memorable. The biggest revelation for me-and it really was a revelation, make no mistake-is the extensive text, which, in forming a serious and detailed biography, echoes back to my love of concrete information. This two-sided approach gives us a bigger picture (ha!) than either traditional biographies or coffee table retrospectives usually offer. The result is aesthetically pleasing and deeply satisfying.
• Motivation: I love coffee table books and vintage photography.
• Times Read: Once
• Random Excerpt/Page 32: “It is more than likely that Blumenfeld’s mind had not been entirely focused on his work. Ever since his arrival in the Netherlands-indeed, since he had fallen in love with Lena just prior to the war-he had been making art, partly to communicate this passion, partly as a release from the mundane pressures of daily life, and partly as a means of expressing his outrage over the war and the bankrupt values which, in his view, had brought it about.”
• Happiness Scale: 8 1/2

A Year in Books/Day 173: John Stanislaus Joyce

Posted on July 16, 2012 by maedez

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• Title: The Voluminous Life and Genius of James Joyce’s Father John Stanislaus Joyce
• Authors: John Wyse Jackson and Peter Costello
• Year Published: 1997 (St. Martin’s Press)
• Year Purchased: 2002/2003
• Source: Barnes & Noble clearance rack
• About: Even though they leave us more evidence of their existence than nearly any other (loosely aligned) group of people, opportunities to gain genuine insight into the lives and larger motivations of writers is exceedingly rare, and often unreliable. In according the elder Joyce a thorough and rigorous biographical treatment, the authors have given us a double-wonder: a fresh and informative look at the tender years of the singular writer of Ulysses and an introduction to his amazing father, whose remarkable storytelling ability influenced and shaped his son. Even if, like me, you come to this book because of James, you will leave with a keen appreciation and respect for the complex, colourful John Stanislaus.
• Motivation: See above. I bought it because of what James Joyce means to me. I’m glad I did, because JSJ is second to only John Butler Yeats as my favourite famous father.
• Times Read: 1
• Random Excerpt/Page 97: “Mr. and Mrs. John Stanislaus Joyce decided on a honeymoon abroad. It was another beacon to the world of John’s confident social expectations. As if to spite his mother for dragging him back from there when he was a boy, he took his bride to the capital of the Empire, London, where William Gladstone was currently busy, at the age of seventy-one, forming the Liberal government of 1880. An opportunity to meet Irish members was not to be neglected-to remind some of them the debt owed to John Stanislaus.”
  

  James Joyce in 1888 at age six. Possibly in Bray, a seaside resort south of Dublin. The Joyces lived there from 1887 to 1892. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

• Happiness Scale: 10+++

A Year in Books/Day 172: Who the Hell is Pansy O’Hara?

Posted on July 15, 2012 by maedez

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• Title: Who the Hell is Pansy O’Hara? The Fascinating Stories Behind 50 of the World’s Best-Loved Books
• Authors: Jenny Bond & Chris Sheedy
• Year Published: 2008 (Penguin Books)
• Year Purchased: 2008
• Source: Unknown (I think it was a gift from my Mom)
• About: Think of this volume as a book version of one of those biographical dictionaries of famous people and you’ll know what you are in for. Continue reading →

A Year in Books/Day 171: Walking with Garbo

Posted on July 15, 2012 by maedez

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• Title: Walking with Garbo Conversations and Recollections
• Author: Raymond Daum
• Editor and Annotator: Vance Muse
• Year Published: 1991 (HarperCollinsPublishers)
• Year Purchased: 1993
• Source: Unknown
• About: Greta Garbo. The Swedish Sphinx. She of eternal mystery. One half of the most famous screen (and real-life, but that’s another story) couple of the 1920s. The great actress may have valued her privacy, both before and after retirement, but she was no shut-in. Continue reading →

A Year in Books/Day 170: Sophia Style

Posted on July 11, 2012 by maedez

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• Title: Sophia Style
• Author: Deirdre Donohue
• Year Published: 2001 (Barnes & Noble Books)
• Year Purchased: 2004
• Source: Barnes & Noble clearance rack
• About: In the physical sphere, Sophia Loren is everything I am not: tall, leggy, busty. Sure, we have a tiny waist in common but, on her, because of her height, it is more of a thing. Her style, on camera but especially in life, matches her features: striking, angular, and beautiful. Of course, even if she wore a potato sack (like Marilyn in that famous early cheese-cake photo) she would out-shine us all. Sophia Style examines and connects her characters’ wardrobes with her personal clothing choices, resulting in a book that is a melange of fashion, film, and personal history: it is really more interesting than it probably sounds.  Whether you love film or fashion, or are just looking to shade your brain from the reality of an ugly word for a couple of hours, it is a quick and fun read. It’s full of gorgeous photos from her first five decades in the spotlight.
• Motivation: Sometimes I just like to look at pretty people in pretty clothes. It’s a nice break from thinking too much, which is how I usually spend approximately 95% of my waking hours.
• Times Read: 2
• Random Excerpt/Page 81: “(Marc) Bohan’s white slip gown in A Countess from Hong Kong is a unique creation, having an exceptional relationship to both Loren’s body and the character she portrays. This quality was requested by the director, Charlie Chaplin, as well as by Loren. Chaplin was very earnest and exacting about the countess’s look, and Loren, awed by this iconic film figure, uncharacteristically deferred wholly to his authority.”
• Happiness Scale: 10+++
  

  Cropped screenshot of Sophia Loren from the film Five Miles to Midnight (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

   

A Year in Books/Day 169: Almost There The Onward Journey of a Dublin Woman

Posted on July 4, 2012 by maedez

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• Title: Almost There The Onward Journey of a Dublin Woman
• Author: Nuala O’Faolain
• Year Published: 2003 (Riverhead Books)
• Year Purchased: 2005/2006
• Source: Barnes & Noble clearance rack
• About: I love O’Faolain’s straightforward and elegant prose style, proof that readability does not have to equal simplicity. Almost There is a follow-up to Are You Somebody, her searing and evocative first memoir. I loved it so much that I was truly giddy when I found this volume in the middle of a stack of clearance books. She is one of those naturalist prose-poets of the everyday, recounting the events of her turbulent life with warmth, grace and a total absence of pity or dramatics. Her candor is believable. True or not, it is a remarkable feat for a memoirist to achieve-and not once, but twice. To feel the full import of her story, and the rare beauty of her spare writing, I suggest reading the books back to back.
• Motivation: Are You Somebody is one of my favourite contemporary memoirs.
• Times Read: 1
• Random Excerpt/Page 55: “I had waited to go on in a small dressing room, almost paralyzed with fear, because I knew my reputation and my family’s and Nell’s was going to be changed by the interview, and my standing with colleagues and bosses and former lovers and the nuns who’d taught me-anyone I could think of. But there really is such a thing as grace. It’s the word I want to use, anyway, for a rightness of behavior that kicks in out of nowhere.”
• Happiness Scale: 8

A Year in Books/Day 168: An Unfinished Woman

Posted on July 2, 2012 by maedez

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• Title: An Unfinished Woman
• Author: Lillian Hellman
• Year Published: 1969/This Edition: 1999 (Little, Brown and Company)
• Year Purchased: 2003/2004
• Source: Unknown
• About: The Children’s Hour. The Little Foxes. Another Part of the Forest. Watch on the Rhine. The lady knew how to craft plays strong enough to withstand not only their first march across the footlights, but so brilliant as to be timeless decades later. In An Unfinished Woman-the first of three memoirs written in her twilight years-she breaks off pieces of her jaded public persona until something of the real Lillian shows through. Exactly what is anybody’s guess, but the feeling of rightness is there. Her writing is so forceful and engaging, and seemingly forthright, that it is easy to forget that any writer’s autobiography is by nature (if to varying degrees) a study in fiction. Writers are their own best characters, after all. She weaves such a fine story that the ratio of unadulterated fact to pure fiction to soaring imagination is basically immaterial. Her tale, her viewpoint, is riveting. Facts may be found elsewhere; this book is where the entertainment is located. It won the National Book Award. The foreword to this edition is by the incredible Wendy Wasserstein.
• Motivation: I love plays. Love love them. As in, I want to go steady with them kind of love. Got it? They are my second favourite written medium. I also love weird, strong, talented, crazy-ass smart, contrary women.
• Times Read: 1
• Random Excerpt/Page 43: “I would like to say these many years later that I remember his questions. But I don’t, and for a good reason: he had already decided on whatever he meant to write and the questions were fitted to his decisions. So most of the time we didn’t know what he was talking about.”
• Happiness Scale: 9

A Year in Books/Day 167: The Complete Works of William Shakespeare Volume 1 and Volume 2

Posted on July 2, 2012 by maedez

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• Title: The Complete Works of William Shakespeare Volume 1 and Volume 2
• Editors: W.G. Clark and W. Aldis Wright
• Year Published: Unknown (Nelson Doubleday, Inc.)
• Year Purchased: Unknown
• Source: I swiped these from my grandparents when I was a kid.
• About: I’ve had this set since I was in fifth grade. I remember picking through it, delicately at first, before gaining steam (and confidence) and plowing through every word. Everything. What I didn’t understand (the majority, to be sure) I loved any way. The words were so alive, magical. I could picture things, even if those images were often fuzzy or incomplete. These books are loved like few others in my collection. A decade later and I was studying Shakespearean Theatre. I no longer act (except in my head), but I still read the plays aloud. How can you not? The Bard of Avon is ever enchanting.
• Motivation: I had already read my way through most of my elders’ books, including two sets of encyclopedias and various dictionaries and almanacs. I was 10. Shakespeare seemed like the logical next step.
• Times Read: Unknown
• Random Excerpt/Page 56: “Thus, with its apparent lightness, there is a serious spirit underlying the play; but the surface is all jest, and stir, and sparkle. It is a comedy of dialogue rather than of incident.”
• Happiness Scale: 10++++
  

  Title page of the First Folio, 1623. Copper engraving of Shakespeare by Martin Droeshout. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

   

A Year in Books/Day 166: The Writer’s Book of Matches 1,001 Prompts to Ignite Your Fiction

Posted on June 27, 2012 by maedez

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• Title: The Writer’s Book of Matches 1,001 Prompts to Ignite Your Fiction
• Authors: The staff of fresh boiled peanuts, a literary journal
• Year Published: 2005 (Writer’s Digest Books)
• Year Purchased: 2005/2006
• Source: Writer’s Digest Book Club
• About: It took buying a book of prompts for me to realize that it is not for me. Not just this book, but in general: I’m not a prompts type of person. My mind doesn’t work that way. I don’t spark off of random sentences that are thrust in my face as something that will drive my creativity or discipline. I already have too many ideas, phrases, plots and sentences of my own to get bogged down with these. I also get bored, instantly bored. Not a few exercises in, but pronto. Basically, before I even open the book. I’ve tried several times to learn something from this perfectly sound tool, something useful. Something to propel my fiction forward to the place (or places) I know it can go. I am ready to admit-finally, after six or seven years-that the only lesson I have learned is that I really don’t like this kind of thing. At all. But maybe you do, which is lovely and brilliant and just as it should be for you. This book is portable, comes with 1,001 nicely varied prompts, has nifty photos and illustrations. It’s funny, too. I’m actually ready to part with this one. I think I’m going to give it away in a future post, pass it on to a writer who appreciates the idea. Stay tuned.
• Motivation: I had never used a book of prompts before, or any prompts period. Not in school, not on my own. Now I know why.
• Times Read: Casually, a sentence here and a sentence there
• Random Excerpt/Page 80: ” A young woman must run errands while wearing an embarrassing and inappropriate outfit.” (This sounds like that feature in Glamour magazine. Or is it Cosmo?)
• Happiness Scale: 3 (but only because it is not my thing)