Book Description
Primary authority on what was proper, beautiful, efficient in all aspects of mid-19th-century interior design. Originally published in 1868. Over 100 illustrations.
Customer Reviews:
Beginner's Guide to Victorian Restoration.......2007-04-04
Restore your old Victorian era home to what it could have been like when it was first built.
Need Univeral HInts that are centuries old. .......2007-03-22
Purchased the book because of its influence of this author on William Morris and the later Arts and Craft Movement. The author spoke as an architect who emphasized purchasing well crafted items and goods for the home, and design the entire home with one simple theme throughout the entry hall to the bedrooms. It had an influence on the Arts and Craft designers who started to incorporate textiles, pottery, furniture, and metal works for all of the customer's needs.
Beyond the historic references, the book was revealing to the modern designer and family seeking household purchases. All of us inherit lousy furniture and then buy one item at a time, and wonder why the house does not fit together. The author clearly states that we must know and seek out specific items that fit and go together to create a livable
A Helpful Overview.......2007-01-04
We'd bought an Eastlake Victorian which had been restored inside and out. As we desired to furnish appropriate to period (1890), this book was a fine beginner's/general guide to style lines, detail, and what to avoid. Also helpful in choosing furniture pieces, draperies, and objets d'art. No color pictures except the cover, so one might want to purchase another similar book with pictures of restored rooms in similar homes for color guidance, trims, room set-up, etc.
Well-Written but Few Illustrations.......2006-07-26
Well-written and informative, but did not fill the need I had. I was looking for something with illustrations and the few line drawings included did not help. Still, I rate it four stars, because it was well-written.
Authentic Victorian Decorating as easy as 1-2-3.......2000-07-25
Moving from a country primitive home to a 1890's Victorian home that needed restoration in every single room, this book was my bible! Charles Eastlake (credited with wonderful Eastlake style)explains how, why and where to do every room from the screens to the windows to the walls to the floors. His simple diagrams and easy to read explanations made restoring much easier. With still a few rooms to finish, the book never leaves my bedside table (which, of course, is Eastlake style!)
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Reading, Publishing And the Formation of Literary Taste in England 1880ÃÂ1914 (Nineteenth Century) (Nineteenth Century)
Mary Hammond
Manufacturer: Ashgate Publishing
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ASIN: 0754656683 |
Book Description
This book is about the culture of American Christianity and what it does to our understanding of God, self, and community as reflected in the way Christians worship.
Customer Reviews:
good idea, poor execution.......2007-07-30
I was looking forward to reading a vigorous discussion of the irreverent, irritating songs heard in American Catholic churches for the past thirty years, but this book was a disappointment in several ways, starting with the title. A book purporting to explain the lack of musical participation in Masses would have been better titled "Why Catholics DON'T Sing"; "CAN'T Sing" implies that the problem is caused entirely by Catholics being tone-deaf compared to their Protestant counterparts.
Beyond the title, the book was a difficult read, being written in a pedantic, eggheaded style with a narrative which flitted moth-like among disparate topics with no effort to support an underlying theme. If you are on the fence about purchasing this, I may be able to save you some money by summarizing Day's most salient points:
Day postulates three reasons for the ubiquity in US churches of the limp-wristed, fag-pleasing tripe of the "St. Louis Jesuits"(chapter 5 does provide an excellent review of the narcissism and idolatry in this stuff):
1. Because the Irish regarded Anglican hymnody as a symbol of English political and religious persecution, the Irish-American control of most parishes and dioceses resulted in a near-total absence of liturgical music before Vatican II. When V-II supposedly mandated lay-sung hymns, the resultant musical vacuum was filled by the pushiest - meaning the fans of Dufford, Haugen, Schutte, et al.
2. Because the Oregon Catholic Press was able to badger dioceses into believing that "active" Catholics "demanded" modern songs, the dioceses were intimidated into purchasing OCP's expensive, all-modern, all-copyright Glory and Praise songbook instead of less expensive hymnals which included traditional hymns from the public domain.
3. Loudmouth dykes like Frances Kissling and Jeannine Gramick declared that all liturgical compositions written before Vatican II were symbols of women's oppression and threatened to label any bishop who did not conform to their thinking on the topic as a male chauvinist pig. These strident proclamations actually found some sympathetic ears on the likes of Joseph Bernardin, Roger Mahony and Rembert Weakland.
While this was a letdown, the book did whet my appetite for more on this subject; I invite the reviewers who follow me to recommend additional books or articles.
Some interesting ideas, but a bit vitriolic at times........2007-03-29
Thomas Day seems to take pride in offending people. I agree with most of his ideas and find myself laughing at the ridiculous stories he tells, yet I know he probably skews the stories toward his own goals.
One particular metaphor that really didn't make sense to me was the magazine rack representing different cultures in the United States. Yes, magazines do represent different interest groups in America, but Day's comparison doesn't really work.
I still recommend this book for all interested in this subject matter.
Offer it up!.......2007-02-24
Yes, the music is bad and the situation is very serious. I have known people who have left the church for other denominations or for nothing at all because of bad music and desacralized liturgy. I have known other people who have tried to become Catholic but find the music so awful that it's a form of torture that they decide not to endure after all. So, yes, it's important; souls are at stake!
As for me, I try to sing what I know, even the schmatlzy stuff, but sometimes when those melodies just jump around so illogically (and I can sight read music!) I just shut my yap, pray, and offer it up. Our suffering can be consecrated to the Lord for the upbuilding of the Body of Christ!
I get my good church music outside of church. I buy it on CD and put it on my iPod. I have no objection to modern music per se: I absolutely adore Dana Scallon's We Are One Body from World Youth Day. It is so eucharistic and communal and theologically solid, yet easy to sing! I like the old Latin stuff and I like contemporary praise music that is vertical and reverent and heartfelt.
Amazingly, my parish of mostly converts sings plainchant Latin vigorously and well. They like it.
I am praying for a wave of good liturgical musicians to break forth and liberate us from this oppression! St. Cecelia, pray for us!
True and funny.......2007-01-17
As a convert from Anglo-Catholicism one of my biggest challenges was abandoning the asthetic of the Sarum Rite and the Church's traditional music executed well for the saftey of The Rock. Why Catholics Can't Sing: The Culture of Catholicism and the Triumph of Bad Taste is an excellent indictment of the "happy clappy" liturgical lowest common ddenominator culture shoved down the throats of Catholics today by the swinging 60s Parish Council worship committee rats. Funny in the sad horrible way we all suffer under weekly for clinging to the Ark of Truth.
It doesn't have to be this way.
But sadly, it is.
Thank you Thomas Day.
Intriguing Hypothesis About Catholics Not Singing.......2006-12-22
While this is certainly written from Roman Catholic perspective, its assumptions and conclusions affect the rest of Christianity as well.
Starting from premise of American RC worship heavily influenced by Irish immigrants resulting in Mass void of chanting and music which more characterizes most of European RC churches, Day weaves tale of the smooth, folk Irish song getting hold of American RC worship in reaction to Irish plight in their country being dominated by British Anglican power. Interesting historical observation.
From this, he traces the violent reaction to reintroduction of good liturgical worship. This results in curvature of RC worship to conform to what has become increasingly American Christian desire to interject common, folk, popular ideals into worship space: Mr.Caruso song leader/praise band dominance competing with priest, which causes priest to have to rely upon his personality interjections and the precious term which Day uses of "liturgical klunk." This is what sinfilled individuals love, the Ego Led service of what they consumers want, removing any trace of historic Transcendant/Immanent God being among them.
Day is wonderful in this point of view thus far. It jives all too well unfortunately with other confessional bodies infection by this American consumerism.
However, towards the end, from chapter six on it begins to drag. He seems to have lost his heretofore tight style and begins to move about with analogy to analogy to book illustration etc. This reviewer felt he definitely lost steam in the last chapters.
However, not to discourage anyone who wants to have their musical/liturgical tastes sharpened by this one who has certainly been exposed to much which is pertinent to entire universal church of all times. Clever and insightful, this is salient reading for layperson, clergy and church musician as well. One of his final comments should resonate with us: "Good musical advice is one thing; implementing it in the Catholic church today is a little like trying to plant a simple but healthy crop in the middle of a hurricane."
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Moral Taste: Aesthetics, Subjectivity, and Social Power in the Nineteenth-Century Novel
Marjorie Garson
Manufacturer: University of Toronto Press
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Binding: Hardcover
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ASIN: 0802091385 |
Book Description
One of the particular concerns of the Victorians was the notion of `taste' and the idea that good taste in any field - clothing, décor, landscape, music, art, even food - meant good taste in all, and that tastefulness was a reliable sign of moral sensitivity, indeed of national, even racial, quality. Moral Taste is a study of the ideological work done by the equation of good taste and moral refinement in a selection of nineteenth-century writings.
Drawing on the theories of Pierre Bourdieu, Marjorie Garson discusses a number of Victorian texts that treat aesthetic refinement as an essential mark of proper middle-class subjectivity. She situates each text in its historical moment and considers it in the light of contemporary anxieties, providing insights into why certain ways of representing and endorsing tastefulness remained serviceable for many decades. In addition, this study demonstrates how the discourse of taste engenders a wider discourse about middle-class subjectivity and entitlement, national character, and racial identity in the period.
Customer Reviews:
Heavy.......2006-11-21
I found the book heavy-going. Points are hammered home and I could not help wishing the book were much shorter. I do not think I as a reader would have lost much if there had been less detail.
Informative, but has some problems.......1998-05-30
A Feeling for Books is an interesting collection of thoughts on the history of the Book of the Month Club and on Radway's personal evolution as a reader and scholar. But... it needed editing. Must she document every circuitous and irrelevant observation that occurs to her? This is probably a fine practice in academic writing, but in the personal narrative portions of the book she was unfocused. The book suffers from a somewhat schizo-feeling due to Radway's dual purposes of historical account and personal observation, but she is well aware of this (the reader is warned at the outset). It is not that these two areas of focus don't complement each other in some ways and lead to a rather unorthodox narrative, but the format did lead me wonder if I should even apply questions of enjoyability to the book. Academic reading is not meant to be pleasurable (or so Radway says), and this book is certainly full of scholarly language, but Radway has such sympathy and fellow-feeling for the pleasure-reader that I think she was trying to elicit a pleasurable reading experience. How did the academic community receive this book? ...For me, the most interesting observations arose through the author's interactions with the BOMC editors circa late 1980s. Their enthusiastic readings and quirky classifications of books (self-referential, inwardly-focused fiction is deemed "autistic") are well worth reading about. One last observation: the book could have used appendices with complete lists of the BOMC main and alternate selections from founding to the present, and perhaps a list of all past judges/editors.
Brilliant and revealing, but neither tight no rigorous.......1998-03-15
An erudite yet bold and powerfully immediate report on the BOMC's origin and development over six decades, A Feeling for Books is also an intimate document, poignantly tracing the author's relationship to the Club from her adolescence to her maturity. Because Radway is a fine researcher, a skillful reader, and a seasoned introspective, each aspect of her project succeeds on its own terms. But juxtaposed or, more problematically, superimposed, the yields of her various ends, ideas, and methods are neither commensurable nor mutually supportive. Recurrent "lumping" and intermittent incoherencies threaten to defeat Radway's purposes, inviting at least partial scepticism about her hard-won evidence and beautifully teased-out arguments. The reader and the author would have been better served by a division of this work into two books, one a disciplined cultural inquiry into the essence of persistent, unresolved conflicts in the publishing industry, the other a memoir devoted to the discovery and synthesis of the author's own values in a world of flux.
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No QB copy
Book Description
What does eating have to do with aesthetic taste? While most accounts of aesthetic history avoid the gustatory aspects of taste, this book rewrites standard history to uncover the constitutive and dramatic tension between appetite and aesthetics at the heart of British literary tradition. From Milton through the Romantics, the metaphor of taste serves to mediate aesthetic judgment and consumerism, gusto and snobbery, gastronomes and gluttons, vampires and vegetarians, as well as the philosophy and physiology of food.
The author advances a theory of taste based on Milton’s model of the human as consumer (and digester) of food, words, and other commodities—a consumer whose tasteful, subliminal self remains haunted by its own corporeality. Radically rereading Wordsworth’s feeding mind, Lamb’s gastronomical essays, Byron’s cannibals and other deviant diners, and Kantian nausea, Taste resituates Romanticism as a period that naturally saw the rise of the restaurant and the pleasures of the table as a cultural field for the practice of aesthetics.
Book Description
Dressing Rich means dressing with elegance, class, and taste. It is the understated, sophisticated, classic look that has been the signature of stylish women from Garbo to Jackie O. Fashion trends may change from season to season, but the concepts of elegance and classic chic defy time and will always be a winning constant.
In Dressing Rich: A Guide to Classic Chic for Women with More Taste than Money style guru Leah Feldon gives you all the strategies you need to put together a look that is polished, prosperous, elegant and chic—even on a shoestring. With the wit and insight that has propelled her to the top of her field, Feldon details the earmarks of a status look, as she offers practical advice on how to achieve them. She offers the bottom line on wardrobe basics, fabrics, color, design, handbags, and hairdos, and shows you that what you lack in capital you can make up for with savvy, imagination, resourcefulness, and a winning spirit.
Customer Reviews:
More of the same.......2007-01-10
I have read three of Leah's books now and the advice appears to be the same in each. Whilst on the one hand this means the author is consistent in her advice on what constitutes style and how to attain it affordably, on the other hand there is little new material to pick up from each new book.
Taught me a lot about how to dress.......2005-08-16
I bought this book as a young teenager and used it for many years as a reference guide for how to dress for occasions where I was unsure how to look. I came from a less-than-privileged background (we weren't poor, but my parents were teachers and there wasn't a lot of money) but many of my friends were from affluent families. My grandmothers and mother are very classy people and they did their best to teach me about how to dress, but they had no experience with, say, dressing for a golf tournament dinner or for a day on a sailboat.
Over the years, through college and my professional career, I would refer back to this book a lot. Yes, the drawings are dated; yes, some of the advice is dated. But there are some great tips in this book about how to buy basics for your wardrobe that will last for years, how to recognize quality fabrics and workmanship, how to combine high-end and low-end items for a complete polished look, what looks always work and what will always be questionable, etc. If you come from a working-class background, but because of your job or your spouse's social status you need to socialize with affluent people, it is great to have a guide telling you what works and what doesn't, and how not to make a fool out of yourself. That is what this book did for me. Over the years I have used the advice in the book over and over, to build a classic, conservative, professional wardrobe that helps me whether I am going to an important meeting at work or a black-tie charity function.
There are some sections of the book that you have to take with a grain of salt, especially since now this book is over 20 years old. But if you are totally at a loss about what to wear to a given social event, or you feel you're at a disadvantage because you socialize with people who can afford much better clothes than you can, this book is a great primer about what to wear. It's a classic, and the advice is still as relevant today as it was back when the book was written.
Get Your Hands on a Copy ASAP!.......2004-03-02
I have read all of Leah Feldon's books, and Dressing Rich is my all-time favourite. Yes, some of the information is dated, such as references to former First Ladies, etc, but the underlying principles still apply. If you put into practice the principles in this book, trust me, everyone will think you're loaded, even if you're far from it.
Very Dated.......2003-02-01
I really enoyed Leah Feldon's book, "Does This Make Me Look Fat" and wanted to read some more of her work. Based on the good reviews this book received and the interesting chapter titles, I ordered it sight unseen.
Be warned-this book is from 1982. Nancy Reagen is often held up as a rich dressing woman to emulate. (What?!)Most of the fashion drawings show very heavily padded shoulders and wide belt styles a la 1980s. But worst of all, the 1980 advice often contradicts Leah Feldon's 2000 advice. For example: 2000 advice: wear dark colors-author's wardrobe is mostly black & dark colors-looks richer.1980 advice:off white jackets and slacks are "fashion essentials." (Miami Vice?) Even the cover is a contradiction-in the book the author states that long hair never looks elegant hanging loose,yet the cover shows a woman with a mane of hot-rollered slightly frizzy long hair hanging loose.
Sure the book covers basic concepts like cashmere makes for a rich sweater, and the fashion "types" in the first chapter are interesting. Had I been able to see this book in person though, I would have immediately dismissed it as dated. Buy instead, her new book from this decade.
Still valuable after 14 years.......2002-12-11
I bought this book in 1988, just out of college, and I still keep it handy. It's very useful for special events, business situations, you name it. Also fun to read, and helpful in planning "investment" purchases. This book has saved me lots of money, and has helped me figure out how to use things I already have. Just a terrific book.
Book Description
Discover the mouthwatering and unique flavours of two distinctive yet complementary Asian cuisines, with a collection of 80 deliciously authentic recipes.
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