What are you Reading?

Well... I'll likely have some time for reading tomorrow. It is Parent-Teacher Conference Day and the Art, Music, and Gym teachers usually get a visit from 2 or 3 parents at most... in spite of having every student in the building. To make matters worse, we have an incoming Winter Storm that will probably cut down even more on the total number of parents visiting the building. I think I'll take a couple of books in order to try to stay awake and do some reading after I get my lessons done for Thursday and Friday. I could do some drawing as well... perhaps faces/portraits as opposed to nudes.
 
Someone gave me Billy Connolly, Windswept & interesting, my autobiography. A Scottish Comedian and actor. Boy did he have a hard childhood.
 
Someone gave me Billy Connolly, Windswept & interesting, my autobiography. A Scottish Comedian and actor. Boy did he have a hard childhood.
He's a brilliant comedian imo. I should find this biography, sounds interesting!
 
It's written in a sort of stream of consciousness way with a lot of segways, but returning to the chronological. A bit like his stand up really.
 
Some people think it's hokum, but I like a lot of the old New Thought books. Right now I'm reading my beat up copy of Thoughts Are Things by Prentice Mulford. There's a chapter called Who Are Our Relations? After reading the chapter it made perfect sense why I always felt out of step with my entire family! :D
 
I love reading about art scandals .

I recently picked up used copies of ,

* Provenance : how a con man & a forger rewrote the history of modern art

&

* Breaking Van Gogh : saint-remy , forgery & the $95 million fake at the met 👀
 
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Currently, I'm reading Daniel Defoe's Journal of the Plague Year:

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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.
Sounds like an interesting read & something I could dig 👍
I'm going to have to pick up a copy somewhere
 
I'm working through The Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy. I read it in high school, and I couldn't make any sense out of it. So I'm giving it another go and so far I'm following the plot. I'm actually enjoying it.
 
The Arts by Hendrik Willem Van Loon, 1937. From Altamira and Lascaux cave paintings to western modernists. Painting, sculpture, architecture and music through the ages. Van Loon is very knowledgeable, readable and entertaining, and weaves together how art has been affected by religion, politics, war and famine. Published in 1937, a lot of his insights sound familiar today. About 700 pages with his own simple watercolor and pen illustrations. My favorite bedtime book. (oops, forgot this was supposed to be "not art")
 
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I'm packing up my mom's house so she can transition to assisted living. Currently all my books are boxed up and in storage. I was clearing out one of her bookcases with the express intention of making donations...but, well, I ended up putting a few aside. ;)

So right now, I have a fabulous old copy of My Cousin Rachel by Daphne du Mauier. My mother wrote my father's and her names, address and year on the title page (1952!). I'm going to read it. I loved Rebecca.

Also drawn to other titles from books that were once popular: Not as a Stranger, Green Mansions...and what appear to be her former textbooks from 1940s-era poetry or literature classes: 2 volumes entitled Ideas and Forms in English and American Literature.

There will likely be more. I can't keep my hands off books!
 
I found a cool old copy of Paul Tillich's A History of Christian Thought at my local library; it's a great read. It's much broader historically than the title might suggest. He burrows down into the Greco-Roman philosophical zeitgeist at the time of the development of the early Christian church, for instance, and he also discusses the art of different periods as the history unfolds. It's really very interesting.

Also, Reliquary, the second book of the crazy monster story that's so popular. By Preston and Childs.
 
Before I start reading Masha Gessen’s “Surviving Autocracy” (ahem), I’m futzing around with some little books on NM ghost towns. Seems there’s always been plenty of strangeness around in “these here parts.”

Such as…

Elizabethtown sits at the base of Mount Baldy. (<I liked writing that.) It was once a thriving mining town and a man named Charles Kennedy ran a rest stop here, along with his young wife and 9yo son. You know, just a normal, respectable family man, right? But no, not so fast because…he killed 14 of his guests in their sleep, robbed them, and burned or buried them in the backyard. His little operation was running along just perfectly fine until one of the guests asked if there were any natives in the area, and his young son piped up, “Can’t you smell the one Papa put under the floor?”

Whoopsie. Kennedy was so enraged, that he smashed the kid’s head into the stone fireplace and killed him. The visitor was shot to death. The hysterical wife was locked in the cellar. And Kennedy drank himself into a stupor. The wife managed to escape through the chimney and walked 15 miles to find help. When they heard the story, the “townsfolk” were outraged. Charred remains and skeletons were all over the yard. He was arrested. He had a corrupt lawyer. But then there are different accounts of “the end.”

SOME SAY the two gunslingers in charge (Clay Allison and Davy Crockett, who was the grand nephew of the famous DC), put a rope around Charles’ head, attached him to a horse, and was dragged through the town until his head fell off. OTHERS SAY Allison chopped the head off with his bowie knife and stuck it on a pole in front of the St. James Inn. In either case, Kennedy’s body was buried without a head. Apparently, he had killed more than 100 men including 2 of his own children and was one of the state’s first serial murderers. I guess there’ll be plenty more to learn about!

By the way, Allison was somewhat notorious himself. He fought for the Confederacy in the Civil War, had a reputation for violence including knife fights and gun fights, jail break-ins, lynchings, and a couple of killings. THEY SAY (who are all these old timey people saying things?) that once he got so drunk he rode his horse through town naked - wearing only his gun belt. He also accidentally shot himself in the foot. And he died at 45yo, when a sack of grain fell off his wagon and as he tried to catch it, he fell too and the wagon wheel rolled over him, breaking his neck. Geesh.

There are so many things I could say about this story…ahhh the good old days…when men were men…a nation born of violence…bad vs. evil…and on and on. But I’ll leave others “to say” what needs to be said because I said enough!

Sweet Dreams, kiddos.

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Charles Kennedy, the Serial Murder (left) and Clay Allison, the Notorious Gunslinger (right)
 
I attempted to read The courage to be a couple of times. Ha.
Yeah, I think I know exactly what you mean, but the book I'm reading is a history, so it's less convoluted. It is my intention to attempt, as you put it, The Courage to Be next.
 
Wow Olive, that is some crazy history. Extremely interesting stuff! I really like historical stories about specific regions. That is some juicy shit. I like old deadwood, lawless towns with gunslinging outlaws doing lord knows what. It's mindboggling how people survived in America in general during those times.

As most usual, I'm reading psychology. One called Waking the Tiger by Peter Levine and another called No Bad Parts by Richard Schwartz. Both are pretty much about trauma healing and are interesting, and have been helpful.
 
Dune by Frank Herbert.
I'm about 2/5s the way through. What do I think of it? Well good enough to keep going for this 1st book, but so far I can't see what the fuss was about. Perhaps it's like the film Citizen Kane in that it created many new ways of doing things (or in this case, world building) that have now been absorbed and taken for granted. Great world building as mentioned, but there's a lot of tell and not enough show. Good story telling should mostly be the other way around. Maybe it's too early to judge. "Bah, this Great Gatsby is rubbish!" ;)
 
Dune is one of my favorite books. I’ve read it three times. And I own the audiobook too. In fact, I enjoyed the first three books. Book number four lost my completely.

Not being a literary critic it’s hard for me to explain why I enjoyed this book so much. The story seemed to be firing on all cylinders. All the main characters played an important part in pushing a narrative forward.

I hope the story gets better for you. Sometimes its not good to get into a novel or film with high expectations.

The bottom line: if you don’t enjoy it then it’s a waste of time.

It’s funny that you mentioned The Great Gatsby. I read it a few years ago and I thought it was a fine book too!
 
I read Dune when I was younger and did not enjoy it the way many, many people have. I have been reading a couple of psychology books lately. One by Chip and Dan Heath about Decision making and the other about Trauma by Peter Levine.
 
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