#Art History Paul Guillaume

by Sylphide de Daranyi (no photo)

Finish: 07.12.2023
Title: Paul Guillaume
Genre: non-fiction (285 pg)
Language: French
Rating: F+

Good news: I learned so much about several painters (1880s-1920s) and the art movements they were associated with: fauve, cubisme, “les Nabis”, intimism, rayonism etc.

Bad news: I did not learn it from this book! I think it would have been easier to make a list of painters
and just read Wikipedia. Extra: on Wiki you have some beautiful images of the paintings.

Personal: After a few pages about P. Guillaume and his rise as one of the most important art dealers on Paris in late 19th C and early 20th C…the book was full on pages about art showings, galleries, who is selling what. The book collapsed like a cold soufflé after page 100.

I kept up my interest thanks to Wikipedia. But the most irriatating part was Ms. Daranyi’s insistance on mentioning the prices paid for paintings by Gauillume’s clients.
Who cares?

In the conclusion we discover the diabolical machinations of Mrs. Juliette Guillaume. She was a ruthless social climber, wrapped poor Paul around her little finger leaving 2 dead bodies in her wake! Now that is the making of a great book.

Last thought:  This book was shortlisted for the André Malraux Prize 2023…but  IMO had no chance of  winning. The research is a mile wide and an inch deep…loaded with (at times) superfluous information that makes it weary reading.

#Art History Picasso/Cocteau

• Author: Claude Arnaud
  
• Title: Picasso tout contre Cocteau  (240 pg)  2023
• Genre: non-fiction
  
• Language: French
• Rating: D-

by Claude Arnaud (no photo)

Bad news: Although it’s extremely well-researched,
I find reading about some of the minutiae of the sulphurous friendship between Picasso and Cocteau a grind after 100 pages.
It’s a pity.

Good news: I did learn more about the many of the prominent French literature/artistic heavyweights: Blaise Cendrars, Max Jacob, Marcel Duchamp, Apollinaire, Eric Satie, Radiguet via Wikipedia and…unfortunately not much in this book. Arnaud writes in snippets of original thought and fills the rest of the pages with citations by Cocteau.

Personal: Reading this book was like eating bran flakes:
You know it’s good for you, and to some degree you enjoy the wholesomeness of it,
but it’s not always particularly exciting.

Did this book deserve the #Prix André Malraux 2023?

I don’t think so.
Je m’ennuie vite (…bored tears)
Je termine le livre mollement. ( half-heartedly)
But a French book is never a waste of reading time
…it always increases my vocabulary.

#Snow, books and morning coffee!

1. Winter started early here in The Netherlands!!
2. Snow, ice and of our national pasttime, ice skating!
3. No morning bike rides b/c I don’t want to hit an icy patch
4. …and break something!
5. Winter wonderland morning here…blanketed by
6. a early cover of snow…and it didn’t melt away.
7. With global warming the neighborhood kids should feel lucky
8. they could build a snowman last evening!

I coudn’t wait until Xmas!!

Last but not least….book pile!

#French Reading Challenge Humus

by Gaspard Kœnig (no photo)

Finish: 30.11.2023
Title: Humus
Genre: novel (380 pg)
Language: French
Rating: B+
Review:

Winner Prix Interallié and Prix Jean Giono 2023
Finalist Prix Goncourt and Prix Renaudot 2023

Quick scan: Two young agronomy students, Kevin and Arthur, are deeply concerned by the ecological crisis.
Kevin, from a family of farm workers, founded a start-up specializing in vermicomposting, skilfully navigating the world of green capitalism.
Arthur, born into a bourgeois family, tries to revitalize the family field, devastated by the intensive use of pesticides, but encounters unexpected difficulties in rural life.

Personal: I wanted to read a new book…that I ‘ve seen on many literary prize lists.
It took me 10 days to finish it. (380 pg) I was confronted with a completely new vocabulary about farms, worms, ecology, waste, manure, farming tools, compost, trees, animals etc. After 50% of the book my reading speed increased. That said…I still needed a good dosis of disciplined slow reading to start and finsh the book. BTW…I was surprised by the ending!

Last thoughts: I can see why Humus did not win the Goncourt Prize, France’s most prestigious literary award.
The book deals with a very “trendy” topic (ecology, ecocide)…but lacked the gravitas of great piece of literature. The French like their…gravitas.

#NonFicNov week 5 Non-fiction TBR

Meet your hosts! – Thank you all for hosting!

1. Liz – Adventures in reading, running and working from home
2. Frances – Volatile Rune
3. Heather –  Based on a True Story
4. Rebekah –  She Seeks Nonfiction
5. Lisa – Hopewell’s Public Library of Life

Week 5 (11/27-12/1) New To My TBR:  Which books  have made it onto your TBR? Be sure to link back to the original blogger who posted about that book! (Lisa – Hopewell’s Public Library of Life)

New to Non-ficton TBR

1. I’ve found so many new non-ficton books this year…. 23!!
2. Winner 2023:
3. BEST NON FICTION 2023    The Drowned and the Saved – Primo Levi – REVIEW

1. Plan December:  Make lists for my reading plans (challenges) 2024.
2. Thanks to all the bloggers who participated in #NonFicNov 2023

1. The Intrepid Angeleno
2. Letters To Monica – P. Larkin
3. A Life Long Passion – S. Mironenko
4. Based on a True Story
5. How Not To Die – M. Greger
6. ReaderBuzz
7. Down and Out in Paris and London – G. Orwell
8. Born a Crime – Trevor Noah
9. Volatile Rune
10. The Story of Art – K. Hessel
11. All the Beauty in the World – P. Bringley – READING
12. Typings
13. The Iliad – Emily Wilson
14. Homer and His Iliad – Robin Lane Fox
15. Schoenberg: Why He Matters – Harvey Sachs – 2023 (272 pg)
16. This Reading Life
17. Wifedom: Mrs. Orwell’s Invisible Life – A. Fnder
18. Anz LitLovers Blog
19. Aprodite’s Breath – S. Johnson
20. I Had a Fater om Karratha – A. Trevitt
21. BooksPlease
22. Ultra-Processed People –  Chris van Tulleken
23. Maphead’s Books Blog
24. The Good Assassin – W. Talth
25. Goodbye Easern Europe – J. Mikanowski
26. In Other Words – J. Lahiri
27. Savage Continent – Keith Lowe
28. Bibliographic  Manifestations
29. Cuba: An American History – Ana Ferrer
30. Market Garder Reader
31. Three Funerals For My Father – Jolie Phuong Hoang
32. Wicked Witch’s Blog 
33. Spring Cannot Be Cancelled – D. Hockney
34. The Border – Erika Fatland
35. Making It So: A Memoir – Patrick Stewart
    

#NonFicNov Bill Gammage

• Author: Bill Gammage
  
• Title: The Biggest Estate On Earth  (323 pg)  2011
• Genre: Non-fiction

Introduction:

1. Broadly speaking, “the bush” refers to all rural areas 
2. …and encompasses the arid “outback” at the continent’s heart.
3. This book is considered one of the TOP TEN  best books
4. …that  best summon the spirit of the bush
5. …and the mindset of those who live there.

Conclusion:

1. Not until the 1960s did researchers begin
   
2. …to sense system and purpose in Aboriginal burning.
3. Aboriginals may have, quite literally,
4. ….made the country what it is today by their use of fire.
5. Unfortunately  now with climate change…fire is destroying Australia.
6. No chance of  Nature..no careless hand…no random fire
7. …could make so rich a paradise as was Australia in 1788.
8. The clever Aboriginals were using  fire as a TOOL …as a scalpel.
9. It was planned, precise and predicted.
10. I was so impressed with the explanation of “cool-fires”.
11. It  sounds like a paradox!
12. Fuel rationing (dried grass and undergrowth)  and timing kept most fires cool.
13. Cool fires could burn one sepcies without much harming another,
14. …speed regrowth and stop random fires.

Last thoughts:

1. This was a fascinating book.
2. I must warn readers some chapters need “skimming’.
3. Ch 4 – Dreamlines and totems….I had to skim this section.
4. Ch 5: Less interesting.  Summation: Country was heart, mind and soul….not property.
5. Ch 7: Just descriptions of the landscape in 19th C…learned nothing.
6. Ch 9: Series of land surveyor reports for possible locations for major cities.
7. It is easy to cherry-pick the information you are most interested in.
8. I was left with a feeling of heartbreak when I finished the book.
9. The Aboriginals had done EVERYTHING  right to make the land sustainable
10. …through precision fire and habitat mosaic templates.
11. Now…the Aborignals have been dispossessed
12. ….lost the land they created!
13. Shameful.

Arthur Streeton – Australian Impressionism, Golden Summer, Eagleton 

#NonFicNov Black Lives, White Law

• Author: Russell Marks
  
• Title: Black Lives, White Law (368 pg)  2022
  
• Genre: Non-fiction

Conclusion:

1. The book can be divided into 3 parts:
2. Powerful introduction...Mr Marks does NOT hold back!
3. Case studies  and the people who want to advocate change of the criminal system.
4. Conclusion: Australia must change.
5. For 230 years the Australian criminal law has been
6. …a tool of colonisation.

1. Mr Marks makes a very strong arugument (ch 2)  that
2. despite all the bourhaha, uproar and  hubbub about
3. that Captian Cook was authorised to take possession of Australian
4. eastern coast with consent of the King of Britain this is
5. …an illuison, a product of the imagination!
6. Captian cook bunny-hopped up the coast sticking
7. a flag pole here and there then left for good!
8. It was all a blatant “land-grab.”

Last thoughts:

1. The legal case studies at times were difficult to read
2. …so much injustice
3. …and nothing changes.
4. I must admit I had to skim some chapters
5. because it was a firehose of information.
6. I could not process it all.
7. Good news:  Mr Marks has drawn on his
8. legal expertise to bring together in one
9. book a impressive  view of what the British brought to Australia:
10. …their guns, chains, shackles and lashes.
11. And they brought their own law
12. …that to this day is ruining  First Nation people’s lives.
13. Just last month the Indigenous voice to parliament
14. …referendum suffered an resounding defeat.
15. Will  Black Lives, White Law win  Australian Political Book 2023?
16. I don’t think so.
17. This book is definitely geared to readers with an interest
18. in this dilemma that Australia sees itself in.
19. It is  definitely a wake-up call for Australia.

#NovNov23 Patrick Modiano

• Author: Patrick Modiano (1945)
• Title: (176 pg)  1986
• Genre: novella
• Hosted by   746 Books  and Bookish Beck
• #NovNov23

Good news: So mysterious!
I could not put the book down.
Jean, a man who stumbles upon an old acquaintance in Nice.
Plot: three persons: Jean, Sylvia and Villecourt caught in a love triangle
…the theft of a very valuable diamond…

…and the beginning of the flight of the two lovers.
Who? What? When? Why?…all questions that swirl around in my head.

Good news: The French is so easy to read….do not hesitate to
put this novella (176 pg) on your “I want to read something in French” book list!
The vocabulary is NOT complicated and is a first person narrative. Piece of cake!

Good news: If you love a detective genre filled with memories, flashbacks
and complications that you slowly discover…this is the book for you.

The book starts where it ended…and ends where it started!
It felt like I was putting pieces of a puzzle together…and finally at the end
I saw the complete picture.

Personal: Patrick Modiano won the Nobel Prize 2014.
Highly recommend reading his books   (perfect for #ParisInJuly challenge)
…they  are translated into Engish and are nice short novellas!
#CoupDeCoeur

#Finalist Prix Renaudot Sorj Chalandon

• Author: Sorj Chalandon (1952)
  
• Title: L’Énragé  (416 pg)  2023
• Genre: Historical fiction
  
• Finalist: Prix Renaudot 2023
  

Bad news:

1. The “hook” is terrible
2. … having read the book in French, second language.
   
3. I had no idea what was going on!
4. The author is not the problem
5. …it’s my lack of  “reform school” vocabulary.
6. The first 2 chapters are so difficult to get through.
7. Setting: boys penal institution on the French island Belle-Ile-en-Mer
8. ..beatings, fights, and a street gang members.
   
9. I had too look up so many unsavory words.
10. I hope this book improves….soon!

Bad news:

1. I’m still reading pages and pages of fights, brawls, cursing at the guards
2. and days in solitary confinement.
3. There’s not much of a story here yet.
4. After 50% …I finally land onto chapters 11-12, more plot is unfolding
5. …French politics and the work of journalists
6. …in 1930s who want to  expose the abuse taking
7. …place in the boy’s penatentry. (historical fact)
8. At his point I think of all the books I’ve read
9. ..by Sorj Chalandon (5) this is the
10. the least likable.
11. Subject matter is brutal…depressing.

Good news:

1. Sorj Chandalon is a journalist  and his books are always interesting.
2. He places his work within historical backrounds.
3. He writes about The 1982 Lebanon War (The quatrième mur),
4. The Toubles in  No. Ireland (Retour à Killybegs)
5. a mining disaster in Liévin France 1974 (Le jour d’avant)
6. The post WW II trauma about his
7. father who fought for the Germans (Enfant du salaud) and
8. … how his father wanted his son Émile (Sorj Chalandon) help him
9. …carry out a plot to kill De Gaulle (Profession du père)

Last thoughts:

1. I struggled to get through this book.
2. There were so many words I had to look up
3. about fishing, boats, sardines 1930s French politics
4. …and of course the brutal
5. …life in a young boys reform school/penetentary.
6. 56 boys escape during a prison uprising in 1934 and escape.
7. All were recaptured except one: Jules Bonneau.
8. Chalandon grabs on to this fact…and runs away with it
9. …creating a believable character who evolves from street troublemaker
10. …to a young man with an ambition for good.
11. I can understand why this book did NOT win the Prix Renaudot
12. …it is an acquired taste.

#Challenge My own personal goal!

1. All right…it is time to get serious about my bookshelf!
2. This week I read a wonderful novella (short nonfiction) by Oscar Wilde (see review).
3.  The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde for decades.
4. The books is so old the price was 23 Guilders
5. …now we use Euros for decades!

These are the books I have found:

1. Thurber Writings and Drawings  (70 essays)
2. Essays of E.B. White (26 essays)
3. Seven Plays  Sam Shepard (5 plays)
4. Baldwin Collected Essays  (47 essays)
5. Collected Poems W.B. Yeats
6. John Updike The Early Stories 1953-1975  (100 short stories)
7. The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde –  (9 plays)
8. The Collected Plays of Edward Albee (7 plays)
9. Collected Auden
10. Then the War and Selected Poems by Carl Philips
11. Collected Poems by Donald Justice
12. Collected Poems by Anthony Hecht
13. Selection of Short Poems – Robinson Jeffers

UPDATES:  2024

#20BooksOfSummer

1. W.H.  Auden
   
2. READ: “The Letter” (1927)   (04.06.2024)

1.  Theme: cycle of life a represented through a failed love….very little emotion.
   
2. Scientific words: circuit (closed path capable of being followed by an electrical current) – shunting (low resistance connection (electricity) – arc (electric) strong current can “jump a gap” between two electordes. 
3. Pastoral words: bird – storm – swallow – spring’s green – Autumn – seasons.  
4. Choosing some words (…just paraphrasing):
5. Your letter comes…I was deceived.
6. I move with a different love. 
7. I do not question a nod, stony smile of this ‘country god’…that never was more reticient.
8. (ex-lover?) “…always afraid to say more than it meant.”

#20BooksOfSummer

1. John Updike The Early Stories 1953-1975  (100 short stories)
2. READ: “ The Persistence of Desire” (04.06.2024)

1. My first impression: lackluster, unexciting
2. …there’s no a hook!
3. First sentence is too long and the
4. first paragraph is filled with bleak vocabulary:
5. “briming void”, “disconsolate youth”.
6. Old lovers meet again in a Pennsylvania hometown doctor’s waiting room.
7. She has clearly moved on
8. ….but he is still a lustful juvenile only
9. …now with a wife and children in Massachusetts.
10. There is no epiphany, no big payoff
    
11. ..just an embarassing middle age man
12. …still groping women.
13. #Awful…waste of my reading time.

#20BooksOfSummer

1. Four plays by William Inge
   
2. READ:   Picnic (1953) by William Inge (03.06.2024)  – REVIEW