Tag Archives: Reviews

A Year in Books/Day 165: Tragic Muse Rachel of the Comedie-Francaise

Posted on June 27, 2012 by maedez

Reply

• Title: Tragic Muse Rachel of the Comedie-Francaise
• Author: Rachel M. Brownstein
• Year Published: 1993/This edition: 1995 (Duke University Press)
• Year Purchased: 1999/2000
• Source: Barnes & Noble clearance rack
• About: Tragic Muse is more than a biography. As the title suggests, its subject met a sad end. An actress rising to stardom before burning out whilst still young? You don’t say. Sounds like familiar (and familiar and familiar) stuff. Trite. Fate as formulaic plot twist. Not quite. Continue reading →

A Year in Books/Day 164: The Rolling Stone Book of the Beats

Posted on June 26, 2012 by maedez

10

• Title: The Rolling Stone Book of the Beats The Beat Generation and American Culture
• Editor: Holly George Warren
• Year Published: 1999 (Hyperion)
• Year Purchased: 2000/2001
• Source: Barnes & Noble clearance rack
• About: Whether the Rolling Stone moniker entices or repels you, this is a fine compilation of essays, musings, reviews and treatises on The Beat Generation and its various, and fantastically varied, players. Although many of the entries were written expressly for this book, others are from Rolling Stone’s archives or from outside sources. Lydia Lunch, Hunter S. Thompson, Graham Parker, Johnny Depp, Patti Smith, Richard Hell, and Lester Bangs number among the crazy quilt of contributors. The insiders’ perspective is voiced by Michael McClure, Joyce Johnson, Hettie Jones, Carolyn Cassady and William S Burroughs. The cacophony of opinions, insights and viewpoints is bold and often contradictory, which should be the intent of any decent compilation. The entirety of the beat experience is presented in vivid, emotive, intelligent terms. Each entry is a micro world of its own, quite unlike any of the others. The photos are notable, and many are rare. If you have any interest in the subject-which really encompasses many subjects loosely gathered under a too-small banner-make this part of your to-read list.
• Motivation: I have a long, deep shelf dedicated to the writers and miscellaneous participants of The Beat Generation. This was one of the earliest non-fiction additions to my collection.
• Times Read: 3
• Random Excerpt/Page 85: “Bob Kaufman and John Wieners are the greatest of the nonsense Beat poets, whatever that means-the social second unit?-people who didn’t spend scads of time with the frontrunners. They’re also two supreme sufferers, and Kaufman, in particular, swallowed more broken glass than all the others combined.”
• Happiness Scale: 9

A Year in Books/Day 163: The Secret Wife of Louis XIV

Posted on June 23, 2012 by maedez

2

• Title: The Secret Wife of Louis XIV Francoise d’Aubigne, Madame de Maintenon
• Author: Veronica Buckley
• Year Published: 2008 (Farrar, Straus and Giroux))
• Year Purchased: December 2011
• Source: This was a Christmas gift from my husband.
• About: Francoise was Louis XIV’s second wife, the relationship entered into when they were both middle-aged. The union lasted more than thirty years, until his death in 1715. The marriage was morganatic, and was never officially announced. The incredible circumstances of her long life prove the soundness of the old saying that truth is stranger than fiction. Her uncommon path from destitution (as the daughter of a disastrously poor, imprisoned minor nobleman) to affluence (as the uncrowned wife of the Sun King) was a long one, and takes up three-quarters of the book; yet her relationship with Louis is the lodestar which we, as readers, are always chasing. Although controversial in her time, she was far too subtle, intelligent and charming to engage in cheap escapades. A reluctant mistress, she made an even more reticent royal bride (for reasons other than lack of love for the monarch). Surrounded by dozens of supporting players-the least of which is one of history’s most fascinating royals-Francoise’s story inextricably rises and declines with the fortunes of the great empire into which she was born and died.
• Motivation: This historical biography officially stripped my husband of his right to complain that I own too many books: after six years together, he finally buckled and bought one for me. That’s it, game over: that action put him on my side, like it or not.
• Times Read: 1 (I just finished it yesterday afternoon)
• Random Excerpt/Page 62: “This and another 125 similarly worthy verses were set for the three to learn by heart, a dozen or so daily, a stodgy dessert after their lunch of bread and cheese. They digested both in the same place every day, a natural grotto overlooking the governor’s meadows, before shepherding the turkey cocks back home.”
• Happiness Scale: A very solid 9
  

  Françoise d’Aubigné (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

A Year in Books/Day 162: The Associated Press Stylebook

Posted on June 19, 2012 by maedez

16

• Title: The Associated Press Stylebook Fully Revised and Updated
• Year Published: 2004 (The Associated Press)
• Year Purchased: 2004
• Source: Writer’s Digest Book Club
• About: I am not a journalist. When I write non-fiction (which is most of the time), it is always of the creative variety. I still appreciate good form, however. I believe every writer should have a fat arsenal of reference books, including one style guide. This is mine. I use it more than I anticipated, much like fractions. The part of my brain that appreciates orderliness considers this book a necessity, and well worth every penny. The creative part doesn’t give two figs. Fortunately, on most days they enjoy a mutually productive collaboration. Yay for cooperation-and the AP Stylebook.
• Motivation: I love reference books. I regularly sing their praises here; you’re probably already sick of my fan-girl like devotion to the genre.
• Times Read: Used only as a reference book.
• Random Excerpt/Page vii: “Today, the 21st-century Associated Press has become the essential global news network. And the AP Stylebook has become the essential tool for anyone who cares about good writing.”
• Happiness Scale: 7

A Year in Books/Day 161: Hollywood and the Great Fan Magazines

Posted on June 18, 2012 by maedez

6

• Title: Hollywood and the Great Fan Magazines
• Editor: Martin Levin
• Year Published: 1970/This Edition: 1991
• Year Purchased: 1990s
• Source: Unknown, but likely B. Dalton Bookseller
• About: This book is a collection of articles from the heyday of film fan magazines-the 1930s. Equal parts pop culture and history (and 100% fun), it is a fascinating look at the Hollywood publicity machine in full swing at top strength. Don’t let the mostly light-hearted topics fool you: this was a serious business that helped fuel an incredibly powerful industry. The frivolity is underpinned by ruthlessness and a lot of money. It is this carefully placed juxtaposition that intrigues me. You’ll find the following articles and then some: What’s Wrong With Hollywood Love; What I Will Tell My Baby; Charlie Chaplin’s Kids; Four Rules of Married Love; Career Comes First With Loretta; I’m No Gigolo! Says George Raft; I Want to Talk About My Baby!; The Price They Pay For Fame; Mystery Tales of the Stars; The Story Jean Harlow Never Told; Tarzan Seeks a Divorce; Ronald Colman Gives the Lowdown on Himself; Watch Your Step, Ann Dvorak!; Ginger Rogers Asks, “Did I Get What I Wanted Out of Life?”; Can Hollywood Hold Errol Flynn?; and Hollywood’s Unmarried Husbands and Wives. The photos are splendid and rare.
• Motivation: I collect movie magazines from the 1910s-1950s. As a teenager in the early 1990s, that hobby was still in my future. This book was the next best thing.
• Times Read: A few
• Random Excerpt/Page 42: “PRIZE CONTEST! Can You Describe Errol Flynn In ONE SENTENCE Using Just 20 Words? How proficient are you in the use of adjectives? In order to describe Errol Flynn most effectively at least three descriptive adjectives should be used. For instance, here’s a sample sentence of 20 words containing three adjectives which we think fit his type and personality: One of the most debonair and adventurous Hollywood actors is attractive Errol Flynn whose hobby is traveling in strange places.” (Ed. Note: I want to travel back in time and take this person’s job.)
  

  Ann Dvorak watching her step (Photo credit: Screen shot from Three on a Match via Wikipedia)

• Happiness Scale: 9

A Year in Books/Day 160: My Blue Notebooks

Posted on June 17, 2012 by maedez

9

• Title: My Blue Notebooks The Intimate Journal of Paris’s Most Beautiful and Notorious Courtesan
• Author: Liane de Pougy
• Translation: Diana Athill
• Year Published: This Edition: 2002 (Jeremy P. Tarcher/Putnam)
• Year Purchased: 2003/2004
• Source: Barnes & Noble clearance rack
• About: Liane de Pougy ended her long life as a nun. A devout one, no doubt, whose circumstances bore little resemblance to the notorious escapades that made her name more than half a century earlier. She was a premiere good-time girl of the Belle Epoque . A Folies Bergere dancer who, in middle age, married a prince. She knew Proust, and was a vituperative frenemy of Colette. Her journals, which she kept between the ages of 50 and 72 (roughly the years corresponding to her marriage), are nearly as astounding as her life. Although journals are the most intimate of settings, there is always the temptation to gloss over the truth of personal shortcomings or weak moments with the mask of who you wish you were. The projection of a nobler, better self.  There can be no doubt that de Pougy was not entirely inclusive (who is?), yet the woman laid out in her journals is not always likable. She is haughty and self-important and a dozen other meaner things. As the heroine of her own life, she is indelibly grand-and unforgettable: passion, candour, wit, resilience, a genuine desire for self-improvement and intelligence are a few of her finer qualities. She is one of the most interesting women of the century.
• Motivation: I love weird and controversial women. Those who go against the grain. Oddities. Survivors.
• Times Read: 1
• Random Excerpt/Page 47: “I have to admit that I’m up to my neck in frivolity, buried in dresses to the point of ruin! Fifteen different garments! My wardrobe jam-packed! My girl, this is not the way for an old woman to behave-particularly since you never wear anything but black and white, or a little grey, so you always look as though you were in the same dress. Why fritter away your money so absurdly?”
• Happiness Scale: 8
  

  A postcard depicting Liane de Pougy. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

   

A Year in Books/Day 159: Emily Brontë

Posted on June 16, 2012 by maedez

4

• Title: The British Writers’ Lives Emily Brontë
• Author: Robert Barnard
• Year Published: 2000 (The British Library)
• Year Purchased: 2012
• Source: The Book Loft, Columbus, Ohio
• About: I’m no Brontë virgin. There are many biographies of the famous literary family. I’ve read a lot of them, cut from various cloths. This entry in The British Library Writers’ Lives series is different from any of the others I’ve read. Focusing on middle daughter Emily (she of Wuthering Heights), it completes the feat of being a wonderful introduction to first-timers while bringing something new to the party for veterans. It is steady and insightful without ever resorting to the wild-child mystic trope that has followed Emily’s ghost around for decades. This biography is packed with original photographs, drawings, manuscripts, artwork and letters, which lend it a vivid immediacy that longer works often lack. It is a quick, quick read that you will want to return to time and again.
• Motivation: I bought this volume to continue my love affair with dead writers and classic literature.
• Times Read: 1
• Random Excerpt/Page 38: “There is a touch of cracker-barrel philosopher about this, as if Emily is only happy dealing with strong personal emotion when she can don a Gondal mask as a partial cover for her feelings. Confessional poetry was never to be her forte.”
• Happiness Scale: 10

A Year in Books/Day 158: Bloomsbury Recalled

Posted on June 15, 2012 by maedez

2

• Title: Bloomsbury Recalled
• Author: Quentin Bell
• Year Published: 1995 (Columbia University Press)
• Year Purchased: 2002/2003
• Source: Unknown
• About: The author was the younger son of Vanessa and Clive Bell, two central figures in the Bloomsbury group (which was really just a loose network of friends, family and acquaintances). His aunt was, of course, novelist Virginia Woolf. Bloomsbury Recalled is his brief but excellently engaging memoir of the fascinating adults who formed his parents’ social and professional circles from WWI to the start of the next  great international conflict at the end of the 1930s. The little boy who grew up in a sticky web of conflicting personalities and crossed goals became an accomplished polymath with a distinctive, intelligent and highly amusing voice. His relaxed nature, probing wit and compelling birthright give this book a sparkle that the average Bloomsbury retrospective sorely lacks.
• Motivation: Bloomsbury? Check. A relatively unbiased insider’s view? Check. Writers, artists and theorists? Oh my! Seriously, this book covers one of my favourite literary periods. That is reason enough.
  

  English: Portrait of Clive Bell (Photo credit: Wikipedia). The author’s father.

• Times Read: 3
• Random Excerpt/Pages 11 & 12 : “I was not alarmed. I was convinced that I was not really consumptive; also, apart from the cough and high temperature, I did not feel at all ill. I enjoyed some fierce arguments with a clergyman, managed to do a little painting, and embarked upon historical research on the principality of Monaco for which I was totally unqualified.”
• Happiness Scale: 10

A Year in Books/Day 157: Selected Poems & Letters of Emily Dickinson

Posted on June 15, 2012 by maedez

2

• Title: Selected Poems & Letters of Emily Dickinson
• Editor: Robert N. Linscott
• Year Published: First edition:1959/This edition: ???? (An Anchor Book)
• Year Purchased: 2001/2002
• Source: This was a hand-me-down from a long-time friend.
• About: If Emily Dickinson was alive and writing today, she would probably blog her poetry under a pseudonym. Since she was born in 1830, she composed reams of golden verse and hoarded them away in dark bureau corners. After she confined herself to home-a situation that was gradual, and not a fierce, sudden statement-she kept up with the outside world via the epistolary arts. Letters make the best (auto)biographies. They are a time capsule, a locus for self-mythology and the only genuine source of a person’s thoughts, feelings and actual opinions. For these reasons, I have long loved volumes with the chutzpah and heart (not to mention access to original material) to combine professional output with personal words. This book is a winner all around.
• Motivation: Emily Dickinson is one of my preferred poets. Neruda is always and ever in the top spot, but she holds a place of honour in the court.
• Times Read: Cover-to-cover:2/Random poems: countless
• Random Excerpt/Page 288: “You wonder why I write so. Because I cannot help. I like to have you know some care-so when your life gets faint for its other life, you can lean on us. We won’t break, Mary. We look very small, but the reed can carry weight.”
• Happiness Scale: 10+++
  

  Ubiquitous Emily Dickinson photo (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

   

A Year in Books/Day 156: Merchant of Dreams

Posted on June 13, 2012 by maedez

Reply

• Title: Merchant of Dreams Louis B. Mayer, M.G.M., and the Secret Hollywood
• Author: Charles Higham
• Year Published: 1993 (A Laurel Book)
• Year Purchased: 2000?
• Source: Unknown
• About: This is not a nice, unicorns and rainbows biography; nor does it go to great lengths to throw dirt on its subject. Any dirt tossed about was thoroughly earned by the actions of Mayer. It relies heavily on interviews with people who worked with the M.G.M. head  who, although willing to engage in breathtakingly awful antics to further his studio, made an incomparable contribution to Hollywood history. He was one of the leading architects in making it a place of mind, and not just a spot on the map. The mythology that he helped put in place is still screwing with our minds a  century later. Merchant of Dreams also succeeds in humanizing Mayer. Even if he isn’t likable or particularly respectable, he is interesting, controversial  and successful-three qualities that would make him an ideal subject for a biopic of his own.
• Motivation: My passion for cinema history goes deeper than knowing films and their players; I love the machinations and inner workings of the entire system, down to every behind the scenes contributor–no matter how obscure or powerful. Mayer was definitely the latter.
• Times Read: 1
• Random Excerpt/Page 25: “Work, constant work was the Puritan solution for grief, and the young Louis B. Mayer worked desperately hard in the first months of 1914. He was determined to build himself up as a motion picture distributor, taking on all comers.”
• Happiness Scale: 9
  

  English: Louis B Mayer at the “Torch Song” movie premiere in Los Angeles, Calif., 1953 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)