A year and a half ago I read The Forger's Spell by Edward Dolnick. I'd just visited Atlanta's High Museum of Art's Dutch painters exhibit. I
loved the exhibit, and the highlight was seeing the real "Girl with a
Pearl Earring" as the last painting in the exhibit. I had built the book up and was so excited to read it, but was disappointed.
The Forger's Spell was a let down. Only a few parts interested me as a person who enjoys art but can only draw stick figures (my recent visit to a BYOB and paint-your-own-canvas thing produced a piece I'm not sure is worth hanging in my house).
Fast forward to this summer. I borrowed The Art Forger by B. A. Shapiro from a friend, and this book has made up for the other in a sense. The book begins 25 years after the robbery of the Isabella Stewart Gardener Museum in Boston (right about now). A talented painter named Claire has been trying to make it as an artist and win back a good reputation after accusations of a forging a painting a few years before. To earn money to supplement her own original works, Claire is paid to paint copies of famous paintings sold as fakes online by a large retailer. When she's approached by a trusted friend from the art world with a secret project with a large paycheck, Claire struggles to make a decision that's ethical and true to herself.
While I'd still be interested to read an interesting nonfiction book about the underground world of forging the works of famous artists, and the theft at the Gardner Museum, I enjoyed this book. The Art Forger was fun fiction, and was just the right amount of art for a person like me with good pacing and a character I could understand.
It's an interesting time to be reading a book like The Art Forger, as the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum and the U.S. Department of Justice have just released new information on the heist this month. The two men who stole some of the world's most valuable paintings are now confirmed dead, though their names haven't been released. Now the investigation to locate those paintings continues.
Here's hoping they catch the thief and someone writes a good book about how they got away with it.
Showing posts with label recent read. Show all posts
Showing posts with label recent read. Show all posts
Monday, August 24, 2015
Friday, July 24, 2015
Book Review: Go Set a Watchman by Harper Lee
So many people have asked me for my take on Harper Lee's Go Set a Watchman: A Novel
that I figured I'd just write about it.
The short version: I really, really enjoyed it. I started it almost as soon as it arrived Tuesday a week ago and finished it about 48 hours later.
The long version: To Kill a Mockingbird
is my favorite book. Ever. When that is where the bar is set, everything else falls short of it. GSW is not TKM. But, it's a story that helped me feel satisfied, for the most part, about how characters turned out (GSW is set about 20 years after TKM in the 1950s). The best part about getting to revisit some of American literature's most memorable characters is that we get to see what tomboyish, precocious Scout is like as an adult. The best parts about her haven't changed. She's still sassy and she's still thinking for herself.
Scout's heart is still the same, but when she returns home for a long visit to Maycomb, Alabama, from New York City, she's aghast that it's not the same place she remembers from growing up there (Thomas Wolfe, anyone?). That's something I can relate to. After almost three decades in one county in North Carolina, I relocated to suburban Atlanta. My visits back were often at first, but since the first couple of years, the time between visits has increased. Now I go back once or twice a year. Something amazes me each time. Downtown Raleigh has become a place with great restaurants and other places to go after work and on the weekends instead of the ghost town it was after 5:00 15 years ago. The nearby town where I went to elementary, middle and high school has changed dramatically. Young families actually move there from Raleigh because it's a great place that's tripled in population size since I was in high school. I could go on.
What some readers and critics have focused on is the difference we see in Atticus, who is, in GSW an elderly man who has passed the torch on to another, younger lawyer but still shows up to his law firm most days. He's still a pillar in the community. Just as Scout sneaked up to the courthouse balcony to watch her father defend Tom Robinson, she finds her same spot one afternoon to see where all the men in town have gone. As it turns out, it's a meeting that has a pro-segregation bent to it.
Don't many of us have an idealized notion of who are parents are and what they stand for when we're kids? At some point, for most of us, that changes. Suddenly, we find out that our parents are real people. And most of the time, real people are complicated. Discovering who are parents actually are as people is a big part of what it means to grow up.
Seeing Scout as a grown up is my favorite thing about GSW.
that I figured I'd just write about it.The short version: I really, really enjoyed it. I started it almost as soon as it arrived Tuesday a week ago and finished it about 48 hours later.
The long version: To Kill a Mockingbird
is my favorite book. Ever. When that is where the bar is set, everything else falls short of it. GSW is not TKM. But, it's a story that helped me feel satisfied, for the most part, about how characters turned out (GSW is set about 20 years after TKM in the 1950s). The best part about getting to revisit some of American literature's most memorable characters is that we get to see what tomboyish, precocious Scout is like as an adult. The best parts about her haven't changed. She's still sassy and she's still thinking for herself.Scout's heart is still the same, but when she returns home for a long visit to Maycomb, Alabama, from New York City, she's aghast that it's not the same place she remembers from growing up there (Thomas Wolfe, anyone?). That's something I can relate to. After almost three decades in one county in North Carolina, I relocated to suburban Atlanta. My visits back were often at first, but since the first couple of years, the time between visits has increased. Now I go back once or twice a year. Something amazes me each time. Downtown Raleigh has become a place with great restaurants and other places to go after work and on the weekends instead of the ghost town it was after 5:00 15 years ago. The nearby town where I went to elementary, middle and high school has changed dramatically. Young families actually move there from Raleigh because it's a great place that's tripled in population size since I was in high school. I could go on.
What some readers and critics have focused on is the difference we see in Atticus, who is, in GSW an elderly man who has passed the torch on to another, younger lawyer but still shows up to his law firm most days. He's still a pillar in the community. Just as Scout sneaked up to the courthouse balcony to watch her father defend Tom Robinson, she finds her same spot one afternoon to see where all the men in town have gone. As it turns out, it's a meeting that has a pro-segregation bent to it.
Don't many of us have an idealized notion of who are parents are and what they stand for when we're kids? At some point, for most of us, that changes. Suddenly, we find out that our parents are real people. And most of the time, real people are complicated. Discovering who are parents actually are as people is a big part of what it means to grow up.
Seeing Scout as a grown up is my favorite thing about GSW.
Friday, October 31, 2014
Book Review: Rebel Souls: Walt Whitman and America's First Bohemians by Justin Martin
Rebel Souls: Walt Whitman and America's First Bohemians by Justin Martin
My Review:
Pfaff's Saloon in Manhattan was for years where an eclectic but now well-known group of artists and writers gathered to share their ideas with each other. At the center of this group was young poet Walt Whitman. Those who drifted in an out of this group over the next years are others who were making names for themselves: actors Edwin Booth and his brother John Wilkes Booth, comedian Artemus Ward, drug experimenter Fitz Hugh Ludlow and a scandalous actress named Adah Menken. The group was widely traveled but kept Pfaff's Saloon as a home base, gathering nearly every evening at the same table in the bar.
I read this book shortly before teaching Whitman's poetry to my American literature* class and found Martin's book to be meticulously researched and absolutely fascinating. This book featuring this quirky cast of characters with Whitman at the center really brings the bohemian group of American romantic artists to life. As the book progresses, Martin reveals, layer by layer, the connections this group formed with other notable people of the time. In particular, Martin tells of the very short degree of separation between Whitman and the assassination of the man he admired perhaps more than anyone else: President Abraham Lincoln (and, this connection isn't through John Wilkes Booth but someone else).
Martin's book is no stuffy biography but a book that reads more like a novel and painting a picture in my head of the smoky basement bar and all the debauchery that must have ensued night after night.
It's a fascinating look into a world I knew next to nothing about before reading Rebel Souls, and I'm glad I did.
Published by: Da Capo Press
Published on: September 2, 2014
Page Count: 368
Genre: Biography
My Reading Format: ARC provided by the publisher via NetGalley
Available Formats: Hardcover, Kindle, Audible
My Review:
Pfaff's Saloon in Manhattan was for years where an eclectic but now well-known group of artists and writers gathered to share their ideas with each other. At the center of this group was young poet Walt Whitman. Those who drifted in an out of this group over the next years are others who were making names for themselves: actors Edwin Booth and his brother John Wilkes Booth, comedian Artemus Ward, drug experimenter Fitz Hugh Ludlow and a scandalous actress named Adah Menken. The group was widely traveled but kept Pfaff's Saloon as a home base, gathering nearly every evening at the same table in the bar.
I read this book shortly before teaching Whitman's poetry to my American literature* class and found Martin's book to be meticulously researched and absolutely fascinating. This book featuring this quirky cast of characters with Whitman at the center really brings the bohemian group of American romantic artists to life. As the book progresses, Martin reveals, layer by layer, the connections this group formed with other notable people of the time. In particular, Martin tells of the very short degree of separation between Whitman and the assassination of the man he admired perhaps more than anyone else: President Abraham Lincoln (and, this connection isn't through John Wilkes Booth but someone else).
Martin's book is no stuffy biography but a book that reads more like a novel and painting a picture in my head of the smoky basement bar and all the debauchery that must have ensued night after night.
It's a fascinating look into a world I knew next to nothing about before reading Rebel Souls, and I'm glad I did.
Four out of five stars
If you liked this book, you’ll like Mrs. Poe by Lynn Cullen, Mrs. Lincoln: A Life by Catherine Clinton, John Wilkes Booth: Beyond the Grave by W. C. Jameson, and any of Walt Whitman's poetry.
**Here's what else I included in my syllabus for American literature.
John Wilkes Booth: Beyond the Grave by W. C. Jameson
- See more at: http://betsyrm.blogspot.com/2013/07/book-review-john-wilkes-booth-beyond.html#sthash.N9bf4MMV.dpuf
John Wilkes Booth: Beyond the Grave by W. C. Jameson
- See more at: http://betsyrm.blogspot.com/2013/07/book-review-john-wilkes-booth-beyond.html#sthash.N9bf4MMV.dpuf
Thursday, July 3, 2014
Recent Reads: Half the Sky and A Call to Action
I recently listened to Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide by Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn. It was tough, a
very difficult book to listen to. Even though I knew I should stick
with it, I almost had to stop it was so upsetting. Somehow, hearing about the dangerous, exploited lives of women around the world was harder to hear for me than if I'd read a physical copy of the book. On into the book there are some success stories that are
really powerful, and that's what helped me get through it. I had reached more than my fill of frustratingly sad stories of women so limited by their circumstances and so abused and manipulated by men (both strangers and family members), stories that had no easy solutions. I
even had to stop listening about one-third of the way in. I asked a
friend I knew had read the book previously if she, knowing me well,
thought I should continue the book. She encouraged me to, and I'm glad I
finished
it. It was perhaps THE most difficult book I've ever read.
I followed that up shortly thereafter with Jimmy Carter's latest book, A Call to Action: Women, Religion, Violence, and Power. In part, the same idea from Half the Sky is here, but with a little bit different spin. For one, Carter covers the injustices to women done both in the United States and other parts of the world, which made the book feel more personal to me. And, Carter gave more solutions and success stories, which kept me from getting that completely hopeless feeling I got from Half the Sky.
(Disclaimer: I do realize to affect change people have to be made uncomfortable.)
Have you read either of these books? What did you think?
**A few years back I traveled to Plains, Georgia, to attend Jimmy Carter's Sunday school class, a great experience.
I followed that up shortly thereafter with Jimmy Carter's latest book, A Call to Action: Women, Religion, Violence, and Power. In part, the same idea from Half the Sky is here, but with a little bit different spin. For one, Carter covers the injustices to women done both in the United States and other parts of the world, which made the book feel more personal to me. And, Carter gave more solutions and success stories, which kept me from getting that completely hopeless feeling I got from Half the Sky.
(Disclaimer: I do realize to affect change people have to be made uncomfortable.)
Have you read either of these books? What did you think?
**A few years back I traveled to Plains, Georgia, to attend Jimmy Carter's Sunday school class, a great experience.
Wednesday, July 2, 2014
Recent Read: The All-Girl Filling Station's Last Reunion by Fannie Flagg
Have you ever decided what you think will happen in a book based on the title, front cover or the first few chapters, then left confused when that doesn't happen? I recently listened to The All-Girl Filling Station's Last Reunion by Fannie Flagg (Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe). While I enjoyed the book overall, the title just simply doesn't measure up to the storyline of the book.
The book takes place in two different times and places that come together later in the book. Sookie is a 60-year-old woman living in Alabama who discovers that she was adopted, a fact that her nonagenarian mother (still living) never revealed to her. Fritzi is a young woman in Pulaski, Wisconsin, working with her family at a filling station when the United States enters World War II. As Sookie begins researching her past, she puts previously unknown pieces of her history together, which fits in with the Jurdabralinski sisters.
I had in my head early in the book that with "Reunion" in the title, Sookie would discover not that she had been adopted, but that her mother had worked at at all-girl filling station during World War II when some women were placed in men's roles while they were overseas. I had in mind that Sookie's mother Lenore would be invited to a reunion of all the women who worked at this filling station. Sookie, whose relationship with her mother wasn't an easy one, would have traveled with her mother to this reunion. All this extra time together would have helped them talk through some things from their past, and come away from the trip with a greater understanding of each other and a stronger mother-daughter relationship. I had also imagined that Sookie would have really enjoyed meeting all the women who knew her mother decades before and hearing those women tell stories about her mother that she'd never heard.
As the book went on and my first ideas didn't line up with the plot, I formulated a new plan: as Sookie learned of her birth family and their business, she would become interested in meeting her mother and aunts who had run the filling station during the war. "Reunion" would mean that Sookie would travel to Wisconsin to meet them all, and this would be her first meeting of her birth family.
Neither one of these theories panned out, and I won't go into detail in case it spoils the book for the rest of you. I will say, though, that while I enjoyed a fun story with some historical base, the book needs a better, truer title. The title just doesn't measure up with what the book is really about.
The book takes place in two different times and places that come together later in the book. Sookie is a 60-year-old woman living in Alabama who discovers that she was adopted, a fact that her nonagenarian mother (still living) never revealed to her. Fritzi is a young woman in Pulaski, Wisconsin, working with her family at a filling station when the United States enters World War II. As Sookie begins researching her past, she puts previously unknown pieces of her history together, which fits in with the Jurdabralinski sisters.
I had in my head early in the book that with "Reunion" in the title, Sookie would discover not that she had been adopted, but that her mother had worked at at all-girl filling station during World War II when some women were placed in men's roles while they were overseas. I had in mind that Sookie's mother Lenore would be invited to a reunion of all the women who worked at this filling station. Sookie, whose relationship with her mother wasn't an easy one, would have traveled with her mother to this reunion. All this extra time together would have helped them talk through some things from their past, and come away from the trip with a greater understanding of each other and a stronger mother-daughter relationship. I had also imagined that Sookie would have really enjoyed meeting all the women who knew her mother decades before and hearing those women tell stories about her mother that she'd never heard.
As the book went on and my first ideas didn't line up with the plot, I formulated a new plan: as Sookie learned of her birth family and their business, she would become interested in meeting her mother and aunts who had run the filling station during the war. "Reunion" would mean that Sookie would travel to Wisconsin to meet them all, and this would be her first meeting of her birth family.
Neither one of these theories panned out, and I won't go into detail in case it spoils the book for the rest of you. I will say, though, that while I enjoyed a fun story with some historical base, the book needs a better, truer title. The title just doesn't measure up with what the book is really about.
Monday, June 9, 2014
Book Review: The Ice Cream Queen of Orchard Street by Susan Jane Gilman
The Ice Cream Queen of Orchard Street: A Novel by Susan Jane Gilman
Published by: Grand Central Publishing
Published on: June 10, 2014
Page Count: 512
Genre: Fiction
My Reading Format: Advanced reading e-book provided by NetGalley
Available Formats: Hardcover and Kindle e-book
My Review:
Malka is a young Jewish Russian immigrant with her family in Germany with plans to immigrate to South Africa to be near family. Instead, Malka's father, who seemed suspicious to me from the start, exchanges their tickets for passage on a ship to New York City instead without telling Malka's mother. Malka's father forces her to keep it a secret from her mother and her other three sisters. This is just the beginning for Malka of a life of getting let down by those around her who are supposed to love and care for her.
The story, which opens early in the 20th century, shows the dismal life of poor immigrants living in crowded tenement houses in the city, and those who rise above those conditions to move themselves out of them, and those who don't. Very early on, Malka is told by her mother that to be able to eat she must bring home money. Malka and her sister put together a singing and dancing act, earning them a few pennies per day, and which helps them stay in their mother's good graces. Malka has to draw upon that experience of putting herself out there to survive day after day for the rest of her life, even after she has made it as a successful businesswoman. In Chapter 2, Malka learns to "Be shameless. Be different. And appeal to the emotions -- never the head."
After an accident Malka is abandoned by her family and taken in by an Italian Catholic family, the Dinellos. Malka's name is changed to Lillian. The Dinellos are trying to make it in the ice cream business, and Lillian learns all she can from them before she marries and is ousted from the Dinello family. Abandoned but determined to take what she learned and create a successful business herself, Lillian and new husband Bert Dunkle slowly but surely build an ice cream empire together that lasts through the book's ending in the last quarter of the 20th century.
Besides just being a good story, Gilman's writing style is fun to read. Ice Cream Queen is filled with fantastic description: "Fumes of queasy-sweet gasoline billowed from new cars rattling noisily up the avenues. And since none of the tenements had bathtubs, these odors, in turn, mixed with the gamy smell of thousands of strains of human perspiration. Yeasty, fungal skin. Rose water. Decaying teeth. Dirty diapers. Sharp, vinegary hair tonic" (Chapter 2).
As I read, I anticipated the moment that this girl with gumption would become the business-savvy woman. But there wasn't one moment, just a progression. That ability to be this kind of a go-getter was part of Malka's personality all along.
I think what I liked most about this book though is the way that Gilman doesn't just give us a rags-to-riches feel-good story. Lillian is flawed. She does the best she can but she makes plenty of mistakes. Lillian knows how to learn from those mistakes and she's thick-skinned enough to keep moving forward and ignore what people around her are saying about her. Her career ebbs and flows, as do her marriage and her relationship with her son, who come second to that career. She faces addiction. Gilman has painted her as human rather than perfect. We all have our faults. Life isn't as sweet as the cover of The Ice Cream Queen indicates.
Four out of five stars
If you liked The Ice Cream Queen of Orchard Street, you'll like Angela's Ashes by Frank McCourt, Kisses on a Postcard by Terence Frisby, Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell and Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser.
Tuesday, June 3, 2014
Recent Reread: Love in the Time of Cholera
Love in the Time of Cholera is hands down one of the best books ever written. Everything about the story and the writing evokes beauty. I just reread it over the weekend in light of Gabriel Garcia Marquez's recent passing. I read a lot of it while at the neighborhood pool. Who needs a romance novel when you can read something like this, right?
I had taught all day the day that happened, and strangely enough, I had a conversation with a student about him. She's from Colombia and loves his writing just like I do. Then, later that evening I got a news blast that he'd died in his home in Mexico City.
A few days afterward, I got word that a celebration of Marquez's life was planned in Decatur near Atlanta: 100 people would read aloud his 100 Years of Solitude in an event called, appropriately, 100 Readers of Solitude (clever!). I thought about going. Then my husband broke his collarbone and I honestly forgot all about it. I'm sure it was a great even though, and I hope I'll be able to go to another read-along event again.
USA Today published a story that Garcia Marquez has an unfinished manuscript that may be published. Here's hoping!
I had taught all day the day that happened, and strangely enough, I had a conversation with a student about him. She's from Colombia and loves his writing just like I do. Then, later that evening I got a news blast that he'd died in his home in Mexico City.
A few days afterward, I got word that a celebration of Marquez's life was planned in Decatur near Atlanta: 100 people would read aloud his 100 Years of Solitude in an event called, appropriately, 100 Readers of Solitude (clever!). I thought about going. Then my husband broke his collarbone and I honestly forgot all about it. I'm sure it was a great even though, and I hope I'll be able to go to another read-along event again.
USA Today published a story that Garcia Marquez has an unfinished manuscript that may be published. Here's hoping!
Sunday, January 5, 2014
Downton Abbey: Pre-reading for Season Four
I love Downton Abbey. I've always been a sucker for most anything on PBS but Downton just takes it to a whole new level. Even my parents have gotten in on the fun. While I was home for Christmas I joined them in rewatching several season three episodes so everyone's up to snuff for the big premiere tonight of season four.
Luckily, a friend loaned me just the right book to read this week leading up to the new season: While We Were Watching Downton Abbey by Wendy Wax. The book takes place in an apartment building in Midtown Atlanta and follows three female neighbors, all from different walks of life, who come together over Sunday night episodes of Downton arranged by their building's concierge. Besides just Downton, the women share each other's joys and secrets, struggles and plenty of wine.
It's chick lit and it's good. The unnecessary stuff is kept to a minimum so readers can focus on getting to know Samantha, Claire and Brooke, their concierge Edward, and all the other characters that make for a good story. I like that it's primarily about friendship rather than romantic pursuits or career aspirations (though both factor in in places). Really, it's just a fun read, and made more fun because I read it this week.
Luckily, a friend loaned me just the right book to read this week leading up to the new season: While We Were Watching Downton Abbey by Wendy Wax. The book takes place in an apartment building in Midtown Atlanta and follows three female neighbors, all from different walks of life, who come together over Sunday night episodes of Downton arranged by their building's concierge. Besides just Downton, the women share each other's joys and secrets, struggles and plenty of wine.
It's chick lit and it's good. The unnecessary stuff is kept to a minimum so readers can focus on getting to know Samantha, Claire and Brooke, their concierge Edward, and all the other characters that make for a good story. I like that it's primarily about friendship rather than romantic pursuits or career aspirations (though both factor in in places). Really, it's just a fun read, and made more fun because I read it this week.
Thursday, January 2, 2014
Recent Read: The Forger's Spell by Edward Dolnick
Have you ever had really high hopes for a book and are so disappointed when that book doesn't meet your expectations? It happens.
This summer I went to Atlanta's High Museum's exhibit, "Girl with a Pearl Earring: Dutch Paintings from the Mauritshaus." It featured 35 paintings by Dutch artists of centuries past including Vermeer and Rembrandt. I enjoyed it. I loved the beautiful colors and the simple lives portrayed in many of the works. Then, the last painting of the exhibit was "Girl with a Pearl Earring," and seeing it in person was fantastic.
Years ago I read Girl with a Pearl Earring by Tracy Chevalier and saw the movie. It's the kind of historical fiction I just love.
Then shortly before I visited the High this summer I read the New York Times story, "Report of Nazi-Looted Trove Puts Art World in an Uproar" and was fascinated. This summer in Austria and Germany my family and I learned about the treasures Adolf Hitler and his cronies stored up during the Third Reich.
After that news story I was ready to read The Forger's Spell: A True Story of Vermeer, Nazis, and the Greatest Art Hoax of the Twentieth Century by Edward Dolnick, a book I'd bought at the exhibit this summer. I was excited about reading it on my Thanksgiving break. I didn't finish it until the day after Christmas (yes, it's completely unheard of for it to take me a month to read a book). Part of the reason is because I had a busy work life wrapping up 2013. The other reason it because I just plodded through it. It didn't hold my interest and was really a disappointment considering how I'd worked it up beforehand.
The book focused nearly entirely on the forger, Han van Meegeren, a Dutch painter who found he could make more money forging the work of the famous Dutch painters of the previous centuries than selling his own original works. Long story short, the book focused way too much, for my taste, on the specifics of how van Meegeren pulled one over on the art world and not nearly enough time talking about the Nazi party officials and their desire to get their hands on the artistic and cultural works of the countries they occupied, and how he was finally found out. Admittedly, I don't have much of a background in art but I do enjoy it. I also enjoy a good story that's told well. If it's historical nonfiction it needs to keep my interest and unfortunately this just didn't measure up.
This summer I went to Atlanta's High Museum's exhibit, "Girl with a Pearl Earring: Dutch Paintings from the Mauritshaus." It featured 35 paintings by Dutch artists of centuries past including Vermeer and Rembrandt. I enjoyed it. I loved the beautiful colors and the simple lives portrayed in many of the works. Then, the last painting of the exhibit was "Girl with a Pearl Earring," and seeing it in person was fantastic.
Years ago I read Girl with a Pearl Earring by Tracy Chevalier and saw the movie. It's the kind of historical fiction I just love.
Then shortly before I visited the High this summer I read the New York Times story, "Report of Nazi-Looted Trove Puts Art World in an Uproar" and was fascinated. This summer in Austria and Germany my family and I learned about the treasures Adolf Hitler and his cronies stored up during the Third Reich.
After that news story I was ready to read The Forger's Spell: A True Story of Vermeer, Nazis, and the Greatest Art Hoax of the Twentieth Century by Edward Dolnick, a book I'd bought at the exhibit this summer. I was excited about reading it on my Thanksgiving break. I didn't finish it until the day after Christmas (yes, it's completely unheard of for it to take me a month to read a book). Part of the reason is because I had a busy work life wrapping up 2013. The other reason it because I just plodded through it. It didn't hold my interest and was really a disappointment considering how I'd worked it up beforehand.
The book focused nearly entirely on the forger, Han van Meegeren, a Dutch painter who found he could make more money forging the work of the famous Dutch painters of the previous centuries than selling his own original works. Long story short, the book focused way too much, for my taste, on the specifics of how van Meegeren pulled one over on the art world and not nearly enough time talking about the Nazi party officials and their desire to get their hands on the artistic and cultural works of the countries they occupied, and how he was finally found out. Admittedly, I don't have much of a background in art but I do enjoy it. I also enjoy a good story that's told well. If it's historical nonfiction it needs to keep my interest and unfortunately this just didn't measure up.
Monday, September 23, 2013
Recent Read: Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott
I finally read something I knew I'd been needing to read for a long time: Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life by Anne Lamott. As a writer and editor, I've always known I need to read and reread a few of the classics: On Writing Well, Strunk and White's The Elements of Style and a new favorite: Grammar Girl Presents the Ultimate Writing Guide for Students by Mignon Fogarty. Now as someone teaching writing to middle and high school students, this seems even more important. Though I'm not sure if I could get away from having my classes read this (too many references to "shitty first drafts?"), the information in this book is helping me think about writing and revising in a different way. Plus, for such a short book with so much instructional value, Lamott's writing is hysterically funny. More than once while I was reading it, my family must have been wondering about the cause of my amusement. Here are the things that struck me the most that I'll try to implement with my students:
And speaking of school lunches, I visited a school recently during lunchtime and got all nostalgic about what I got to eat (yes, that's a corndog back behind the salad).
Perhaps I should write about it.
- telling the truth in your own voice
- focusing your writing (at least at first) on your childhood
- seeing your book as a long series of short writing assignments
- bad first drafts translate to good second drafts and great third drafts (three is my magic number for writing too)
- don't listen to the voices in your head when you sit down to write; just listen to your voice
- "perfectionism will ruin your writing" (p. 28 of my 1994 paperback version)
- the great equalizer of writing topics: school lunches
- being comfortable with not knowing how the piece you're writing will finish up when you're just starting to write it
- take the time to get to know your characters, and then your plot will fall into place
- read your dialogue out loud to determine if it's realistic
- the importance of being observant
And speaking of school lunches, I visited a school recently during lunchtime and got all nostalgic about what I got to eat (yes, that's a corndog back behind the salad).
Perhaps I should write about it.
Monday, September 2, 2013
Recent Read: I am the Messenger by Markus Zusak
In my excitement about the movie version of The Book Thief to be released this fall I borrowed one of Markus Zusak's other books (on audio) to listen to in the car: I am the Messenger. I have to confess that before the first of seven CDs had ended I seriously considered not listening to the rest of it and returning it to the library. But I'm glad I didn't do that.
Ed Kennedy is a 19 year-old cab driver in Australia. His family life is a little crazy, but he has a solid group of friends and the four of them enjoy playing cards together. After Ed happens to be inside a bank during a robbery, playing cards with nearby addresses written on them begin showing up in his mail. Though he doesn't know who is sending them, he knows he's charged with visiting each address and helping the people there in some way. The first address he visits is what nearly made me turn in the audiobook early, but beyond that, I really started to like Ed quite a lot, and I admired his desire to do good things to help people at any cost.
About halfway through the book Ed begins helping a family having financial trouble and a lonely man who is trying to keep an old movie theater in business, and it all really started to tug at my heartstrings. Once Ed has finished all of his tasks of helping strangers, he was then faced with the task of helping himself and his friends and family, which all nearly did a number on me. By the end of the book I was sad to see Ed go and wished I could continue the journey with him.
Though this book is nothing at all like The Book Thief and I disagree with its categorization of being a young adult novel (the language and some of the situations in the book, to me, don't lend themselves to younger readers), I heartily endorse it. Bonus: if you get the audiobook version, the actor who reads is just perfect. To me, he really is Ed Kennedy.
Ed Kennedy is a 19 year-old cab driver in Australia. His family life is a little crazy, but he has a solid group of friends and the four of them enjoy playing cards together. After Ed happens to be inside a bank during a robbery, playing cards with nearby addresses written on them begin showing up in his mail. Though he doesn't know who is sending them, he knows he's charged with visiting each address and helping the people there in some way. The first address he visits is what nearly made me turn in the audiobook early, but beyond that, I really started to like Ed quite a lot, and I admired his desire to do good things to help people at any cost.
About halfway through the book Ed begins helping a family having financial trouble and a lonely man who is trying to keep an old movie theater in business, and it all really started to tug at my heartstrings. Once Ed has finished all of his tasks of helping strangers, he was then faced with the task of helping himself and his friends and family, which all nearly did a number on me. By the end of the book I was sad to see Ed go and wished I could continue the journey with him.
Though this book is nothing at all like The Book Thief and I disagree with its categorization of being a young adult novel (the language and some of the situations in the book, to me, don't lend themselves to younger readers), I heartily endorse it. Bonus: if you get the audiobook version, the actor who reads is just perfect. To me, he really is Ed Kennedy.
Sunday, September 1, 2013
Recent Read: A Nervous Splendor: Vienna 1888/1889 by Frederic Morton
At a friend's recommendation I borrowed A Nervous Splendor: Vienna 1888/1889 from the library to read after returning from vacation. It's not one I likely would have been very interested in were it not for the fact that I've just visited Vienna and seen some of the places mentioned in the book. While the author does a great job of showing what all was going on in Vienna during a short period of time and it was fascinating to note all the interesting and historically significant people all in this city all at the same time, the writing is a little dry in places and difficult to muddle through. There were places I just needed to skim to get through, which doesn't happen very often. I was very glad though to get some extra historical context to go along with what I heard and saw on the visit.
One day we took a bus tour of the nearby Vienna Woods, a rural area with protected land, some small towns and farms, kind of like the national parks we have in the States. We stopped briefly outside Mayerling, a small town with what today is an abbey but during the time frame in the book was the hunting lodge for Austria's Crown Prince Rudolf. The lodge was the location of Rudolf's suicide and his 17 year-old mistress' murder while Rudolf's wife was away. It was a scandalous, mysterious event.
I wanted to read the book to learn more about their relationship and the murder-suicide. Of the 30 chapters in the book, however, Morton really only dedicated about two chapters completely to Rudolf and Mary Vetsera's relationship and infatuation with each other, so that wasn't quite what I expected. The book did provide me with a few nuggets of good information and in parts was a good complement to the recent vacation.
The hunting lodge, Mayerling.
One day we took a bus tour of the nearby Vienna Woods, a rural area with protected land, some small towns and farms, kind of like the national parks we have in the States. We stopped briefly outside Mayerling, a small town with what today is an abbey but during the time frame in the book was the hunting lodge for Austria's Crown Prince Rudolf. The lodge was the location of Rudolf's suicide and his 17 year-old mistress' murder while Rudolf's wife was away. It was a scandalous, mysterious event.
I wanted to read the book to learn more about their relationship and the murder-suicide. Of the 30 chapters in the book, however, Morton really only dedicated about two chapters completely to Rudolf and Mary Vetsera's relationship and infatuation with each other, so that wasn't quite what I expected. The book did provide me with a few nuggets of good information and in parts was a good complement to the recent vacation.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)