February 2009 – Page 3

Library Loot

Published on February 13, 2009May 20, 2018 by Margaret7 Comments

I went to the library yesterday to pick up a reservation, The Private Lives of the Impressionists by Sue Roe. I’d written about the short course on the Impressionists I’m doing and Litlove recommended this book. It has a lovely front cover showing part of Eugene Manet on the Isle of Wight by Berthe Morisot. I’d love to see the original which is in the Musee Marmottan in Paris.

The course I’m doing is focussing on the sites the painters used and not much about their lives and as I know very little (nothing really) about them this book promises to enlighten me. It covers Manet, Monet (I get those two mixed up in my head), Pisarro, Cezanne, Renoir, Degas, Sisley, Berthe Morisot and Mary Cassatt, going into their homes, their studios, describing their love affairs and arguments, as well as their canvases and theories. It has some illustrations.

library-loot-impressroe

Whilst I was in the library I looked for other books on the Impressionists focussing on their actual works. There was plenty of choice and I came home with two large heavy books:

library-loot-impress

The Impressionists by Robert Katz and Celestine Dars. This is full of colour illustrations in two sections, one on the history of Impressionism and one on the life and works of the artists in Sue Roe’s book plus Frederic Bazille.
The Impressionists by Themselves, edited by Michael Howard. This is a massively heavy book containing a selection of their paintings, drawings and sketches with extracts from their writing. It’s arranged chronologically covering the years 1856 – 1924

I don’t think the three week loan period will be long enough for me to absorb these books but at least I’ll find out if I want to buy any of them for future reference.

Authors Talking – a Booking Through Thursday Post

Published on February 12, 2009 by Margaret1 Comment

Suggested by Barbara H.:

A comment on someone else’s BTT question this week inspired this question:

Do you read any author’s blogs? If so, are you looking for information on their next project? On the author personally? Something else?

The authors’ blogs I read are listed in my Blogroll. They are Angela Young’s blog Writing, Life and the Universe and Martin Edward’s blog, Do You Write Under Your Own Name. Angela isn’t writing hers right now as she’s busy on her second book. I can’t remember how I came across her blog but it was before I read her first book, Speaking of Love. I found Martin’s blog after I read one of his Lake District Mystery books, The Arsenic Labyrinth because I was interested in the location of the book and wondering if the arsenic labyrinth actually did exist. I used to read Susan Hill’s blog, but she stopped writing it a few months ago, which is a shame. I really can’t remember how I found out about her blog, but I did enjoy reading it.

I read these blogs for the same reason I read other blogs – they interest me as they are about books and writing.

White Noise by Don DeLillo

Published on February 11, 2009 by Margaret5 Comments

White Noise, which won the National Book Award in 1985 for Fiction, fits into the Book Awards Reading Challenge II. It’s about Jack Gladney’s family following a year in their lives from his point of view. It’s in three parts – not a lot happens in part one “Waves and Radiation”, which mainly introduces the characters, Jack the head of Hitler Studies at the College-on-the-Hill, his wife Babette, the different children from their various marriages and Murray his colleague. TV programmes seem to be on constantly in the background and Jack and Babette are obsessed by the fear of death, both wanting to die first, as though they have a choice. There is more action in part two, “The Airborne Toxic Event” when Jack and his family evacuate their house following a chemical spill, plunging Jack into pondering the nature of death. Part three focuses yet again on death, the fear of death and the afterlife, mixed up with Jack’s search for “Mr Gray”, the man who supplied Babette with Dylar, the drug that supposedly removes the fear of death.

I alternated in reading between thinking I didn’t want to finish this book and wanting to finish it. After tedious passages when my mind wandered on to what what we were going to have for dinner, and other more interesting topics, it grabbed my attention and I found myself reading to the end, but it’s too long and too rambling for my liking.

I didn’t make many notes whilst reading but those I did jot down related to the seemingly trivial nature of much of the family’s preoccupations, their trips to the supermarket, their reaction to various crises, the insecurity and precarious nature of life, the search for cures, and above all the fear of death.

Jack discusses these subjects with everyone – his wife and children, Murray and Winnie, the eccentric research neurochemist at the College. Winnie thinks

… it’s a mistake to lose one’s sense of death, even one’s fear of death. Isn’t death the boundary we need? Doesn’t it give a precious texture to life, a sense of definition? You have to ask yourself whether anything you do in this life would have beauty and meaning without the knowledge you carry of a final line, a border or a limit.

I thought the third part of the book changed the tone again, with Jack’s descent into a kind of madness as he plans to kill “Mr Gray”. For me this was almost a dreamlike, or rather a nightmarish, scene and seemed too contrived. Jack’s evasion of reality and truth runs throughout the book and his conversation with the nun in the final section about belief and the afterlife highlights this – the nuns’ “dedication is a pretense”, because “someone must appear to believe” or the “world would collapse”.

All in all, I was not too engaged with White Noise, although it does contain some interesting ideas and I’m not sure I would read any other books by DeLillo. Maybe postmodern books are just not my cup of tea.

Tuesday Teaser

Published on February 10, 2009 by Margaret13 Comments

teaser-tuesday Miz B hosts this weekly event. The idea is to pick two sentences between lines 7 and 12 from a random page in the book you’re currently reading without giving away ‘spoilers’.

This week my teaser sentences are from page 169 of White Noise by Don DeLillo:

I thought of telling them about the computer tally, the time-factored death I carried in my chromosomes and blood. Self-pity oozed through my soul.

Bookmarks

Published on February 9, 2009December 25, 2018 by Margaret13 Comments

Today’s MUSING MONDAYS post is about bookmarks€¦
What do you use to mark your place while reading? Do you have a definite preference? Do you use bookmarks, paper, or (gasp) turn down the pages? If you use bookmarks, do you have a favourite one?

I love bookmarks. I never, ever turn down the corners of the pages.

Here are just a few of my favourites:

Chinese bookmarks

These Chinese bookmarks are made of sliver-thin wood and belonged to my sister. She bought them when she visited China a few years ago.

Misc bookmarks

more-bookmarks

Sunday Salon

Published on February 8, 2009 by Margaret6 Comments

Today finds me in the middle of a few books, but I want to start more. This is one of the signs of a true bookaholic I think – that compulsion to read more. I’ve decided to take my “Currently Reading” section off the sidebar as it wasn’t accurate at all and only reminded me of books I’ve yet to finish. It’s not that I don’t like the books I’ve started it’s just that I keep coming across more books that interest me and so it goes on.

white-noise Today, I’ve been reading a bit more of White Noise by Don DeLillo. This is rather a strange book. LibraryThing reckons I “will probably like this book” and so far I’ve both liked and not liked it. The story seems straight forward. It’s about Jack Gladney and his wife Babette and their fear of death – who will die first? Their family life is complicated with children from their various previous marriages.

It’s funny in parts, not laugh out loud funny but amusing, particularly in the rambling, roundabout conversations between Jack and his son, Heinrich who is fourteen and concerned about his receding hairline. Jack is a college professor (Hitler Studies) and Babette reads to old people, gives talks on posture and is invited to teach another course on Eating and Drinking: Basic Parameters – to explain to adults the current thinking on the right way to eat etc – the mind boggles!

And then it’s boring in parts, rambling on and on about trivia, maybe that’s the point but it is tedious. The real problem is that these boring bits start off well and then go on too long. The episode of the “airborne toxic event” was fine to start off with as Jack and family evacuated the house but got bogged down in too many details intermingled with Jack’s stream of conscience thoughts. Then in the next chapter my interest revived with the story of the drug that Babette has been taking in secret. And that is where I left off reading for the time being.

My plans for the coming week are to finish White Noise and also Le Grand Meaulnes by Henri Alain- Fournier in time for Cornflower’s discussion next Saturday. LibraryThing prediction is that I “will love” this book – so far so good.

But now I’m thinking I want to read something different – maybe Agatha Christie’s By the Pricking of My Thumbs, or The Shoe Queen by Anna Davis, about a woman obssessed with shoes. She has over 500 pairs and wants more – a bit like me with my books. Just imagine you could wear a different pair of shoes every day for about 16 months and where would you keep that many shoes!