Artyczar
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I've been slowly reading This Never Happened by Jenny Lawson.
What are you Reading?
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stlukesguild
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I'm reading Verlaine's Fêtes galantes... again. The symbolists/aesthetes of the late 19th/early 20th century (Gautier, Baudelaire, Verlaine, Rimbaud, Mallarme, Comte de Lautréamont, J.K. Huysmans, Paul Valéry, Oscar Wilde, Walter Pater, W.B. Yeats, Marcel Proust, Rainer Maria Rilke, Boris Pasternak, etc...) rank among my favorite writers/poets and have had a major impact upon my own aesthetic theories.
Artyczar
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That reminds me of the Paul Klee book I'm still trying to get through. I pick it up every now and again:
The Diaries of Paul Klee
The Diaries of Paul Klee
stlukesguild
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I quite enjoyed Klee's diaries. I first read them as part of a course in college on artist's journals, diaries, and other writings. In some ways, Klee seems to link the visual arts... painting... with books and writing... But his work may have even more ties to music. In the book, Painting Music, they explore Klee's love of musical form and structure and how he strove to employ the abstract form of music in the visual arts.
musket
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I am re-reading IT, Stephen King's sprawling mess of a doorstop. Filled with bloopers, continuity mistakes and excess verbiage, but still the best evocation of growing up ostracized in the Eisenhower years I've ever read (and I oughta know).
I never fail to be amazed by King's ability, when he's on his game (which he hasn't been for a long time), to turn cardboard stereotypes into gold-- the fattest kid in school, the stutterer, the four-eyes wiseass, the Jewish kid, the girl from the wrong side of the tracks, the only black kid in town, the hypochondriac, the big bully and his cohorts, all completely convincing. His greatest book.
The TV adaptation at least tries to stay true to the story; the two-part movie is an abomination, the worst adaptation of a King novel I've ever seen (I didn't even bother with part two).
I never fail to be amazed by King's ability, when he's on his game (which he hasn't been for a long time), to turn cardboard stereotypes into gold-- the fattest kid in school, the stutterer, the four-eyes wiseass, the Jewish kid, the girl from the wrong side of the tracks, the only black kid in town, the hypochondriac, the big bully and his cohorts, all completely convincing. His greatest book.
The TV adaptation at least tries to stay true to the story; the two-part movie is an abomination, the worst adaptation of a King novel I've ever seen (I didn't even bother with part two).
Claude J Greengrass
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OliveOyl
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My (photo) course ended and I think I’ll take more later but in the meantime, I’m back to reading. I had already started a book of short stories by Flannery O’Connor but I just can’t get over that southern-speak and using the n-word in every story. I don’t want to be all snowflakey about this, but I just don’t/can’t want to read her in this particular moment. And so, and because my town library is still closed, I pulled these 4 from my shelves and will reread...IN THIS ORDER. (Why that's important...don't know...)
(ooooo! Look how fancy...we can put stuff side by side!!!
)
(ooooo! Look how fancy...we can put stuff side by side!!!
)
stlukesguild
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No one reading since June? And here many of us have all this time at home thanks to the pandemic.
stlukesguild
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I rarely need a library or a book store as I virtually live in a small library of my own making.
Artyczar
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I've read a lot of heavy psychology books lately. The titles are pretty intense: Mothers Who Can't Love. Ha ha. (Susan Forward, Ph.D), When your Mother has Borderline Personality Disorder: a Guide for Adult Children, Daniel Lobel, Ph.D, and Secret Survivors, E. Sue Blume. Before that I was reading a few memoirs: Patty Schemel, Sheila E, Debbie Harry, and some survivors' memoirs (abuse, holocaust, and cults).
musket
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No room for that in our tiny house. The library is only six miles away and I like to patronize it. I have a large ornithology collection as you might expect but it's in storage. Many book on various crafts. But of fiction, history and biography I have little. Art books generally don't interest me, though I have quite a few on netsuke.
stlukesguild
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No room for that in our tiny house.
I have way too many art books. They are way too heavy!!!
Tell me about it. I built shelves to line all the walls in the den/office which is really a library:
I have to house not only books but also CDs. As the sheer number of books increased over time, I built shelving units that jutted out from the walls like the sort you find in the library:
I had moved a bit less than half of my art books to the studio where I could browse them while taking a break from painting... but had to bring these all back home. The ones I use most I placed in the studio in stacks... the ones I look at less... including a crapload of Art News and Art in America... I kept stored in big white file folder boxes. Yes... some of these can weigh a ton! Its that glossy paper used for color reproductions:
I have way too many art books. They are way too heavy!!!
Tell me about it. I built shelves to line all the walls in the den/office which is really a library:
I have to house not only books but also CDs. As the sheer number of books increased over time, I built shelving units that jutted out from the walls like the sort you find in the library:
I had moved a bit less than half of my art books to the studio where I could browse them while taking a break from painting... but had to bring these all back home. The ones I use most I placed in the studio in stacks... the ones I look at less... including a crapload of Art News and Art in America... I kept stored in big white file folder boxes. Yes... some of these can weigh a ton! Its that glossy paper used for color reproductions:
Katie
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I've read a few on this subject but the best for me was 'The emotionally Absent Mother' by Jasmin Lee. I should mention that it is a difficult read because she talks about stuff that you may find you have long buried away and so the book evokes realizations and gut-wrenching flashbacks. I started off marking every page that resonated with me and then quickly realized that I resonated with everything!!! It is a painful read but I was grateful to find it.
Artyczar
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Katie, thanks for the recommendation. I am half way finished with the first book I mentioned and will be moving on to something else, so I'll get that one. Secret Survivors was probably the most intense read and I had to take breaks!
SLG, we used to have a room just like yours, but over the last 20 years, we've honed everything down to three book cases and read most things on Kindle. We keep first editions of special books, things that are signed, etc. While we still have all our CDs in plastic bins in storage, everything is now on a HAP hard drive now. It took almost a year to put the whole library on there.
SLG, we used to have a room just like yours, but over the last 20 years, we've honed everything down to three book cases and read most things on Kindle. We keep first editions of special books, things that are signed, etc. While we still have all our CDs in plastic bins in storage, everything is now on a HAP hard drive now. It took almost a year to put the whole library on there.
stlukesguild
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Currently, I'm reading Daniel Defoe's Journal of the Plague Year:
The book is an account... part direct observation and journalistic reportage, part well-researched history, part fiction telling of the outbreak of the bubonic plague in London from 1665. It comes as no surprise how many similarities it shares with our own current plague of COVID-19. The wealthy and powerful flee the populous cities. Foreigners are blamed for the outbreak. Politicians initially try to ignore the increasing deaths and fudge the numbers of actual dead and infected before locking things down.
The book is an account... part direct observation and journalistic reportage, part well-researched history, part fiction telling of the outbreak of the bubonic plague in London from 1665. It comes as no surprise how many similarities it shares with our own current plague of COVID-19. The wealthy and powerful flee the populous cities. Foreigners are blamed for the outbreak. Politicians initially try to ignore the increasing deaths and fudge the numbers of actual dead and infected before locking things down.
Katie
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The last book I read was The case against Perfume by Kate Grenville. If your puzzled at the rising number of people with autoimmune disorders, or the increase in Parkinson's then read this book and you will never feel the same way about your aftershave/perfume again.. It is pretty shocking what goes into these scents...chemicals..that often haven't been tested for safety but nobody wants to talk about it because it's a multi million dollar industry.
