Amazon.com
There is a passage early in Augusten Burroughs's harrowing and highly entertaining memoir, Running with Scissors, that speaks volumes about the author. While going to the garbage dump with his father, young Augusten spots a chipped, glass-top coffee table that he longs to bring home. "I knew I could hide the chip by fanning a display of magazines on the surface, like in a doctor's office," he writes, "And it certainly wouldn't be dirty after I polished it with Windex for three hours." There were certainly numerous chips in the childhood Burroughs describes: an alcoholic father, an unstable mother who gives him up for adoption to her therapist, and an adolescence spent as part of the therapist's eccentric extended family, gobbling prescription meds and fooling around with both an old electroshock machine and a pedophile who lives in a shed out back. But just as he dreamed of doing with that old table, Burroughs employs a vigorous program of decoration and fervent polishing to a life that many would have simply thrown in a landfill. Despite her abandonment, he never gives up on his increasingly unbalanced mother. And rather than despair about his lot, he glamorizes it: planning a "beauty empire" and performing an a capella version of "You Light Up My Life" at a local mental ward. Burroughs's perspective achieves a crucial balance for a memoir: emotional but not self-involved, observant but not clinical, funny but not deliberately comic. And it's ultimately a feel-good story: as he steers through a challenging childhood, there's always a sense that Burroughs's survivor mentality will guide him through and that the coffee table will be salvaged after all. --John Moe
Book Description
Running with Scissors is the true story of a boy whose mother (a poet with delusions of Anne Sexton) gave him away to be raised by her unorthodox psychiatrist who bore a striking resemblance to Santa Claus. At the age of twelve, Burroughs found himself amidst Victorian squalor living with the doctors bizarre family, and befriending a pedophile who resided in the backyard shed. The story of an outlaw childhood where rules were unheard of, and the Christmas tree stayed up all year round, where Valium was consumed like candy and if things got dull an electroshock-therapy machine could provide entertainment. The funny, harrowing, and bestselling account of an ordinary boys survival under the most extraordinary circumstances.
Customer Reviews:
appreciate differences.......2007-10-05
A sad, funny, wildly entertaining story of growing up sane in spite of some awful insane surroundings.
This was a Book Club Pick; it met mixed reviews.
Warning: Do Not See Movie.
Those who saw movie overwhelmly stated it was in bad taste--a waste of time. Movie focused on a few selacious events of the book--not good. Movie watchers refused to read book.
I admit I did not want to read this after a few in my book club reviewed the movie. But, I gave it a shot by getting the AUDIO BOOK at local library.
The Audio was fantastic--read by the author, himself. Burroughs added the inflections and humor/sadness/shock where they belonged. Every time the story started to get too graphic and yes, uncomfortable for me--thankfully, Burroughs closed the chapter and started on with another snapshot of his life.
Yes, this was a non-fiction account of one boy growing up in the midst of an extremely disfunctional group of adults/families/wanderers/outcasts, and how they functioned in a liberal college area in a tumultous time (60s-70s). (names changed to protect those still alive. I think Burroughs had to pay the real "Dr. Finch's family" some $$$ for getting too close for comfort.)
I say LISTEN to the book--it may make more sense. I truly LIKED it. Well written--excellent.
Filed it in my circular file.......2007-09-30
This book was advertised as darkly humorous. I found it dark but not humorous. It was the only book I can remember throwing away because I just couldn't see any redeeming value in it. The author fills us in on whats happening but not really how this affects him emotionally. I must admit I kept wondering where the neighbors were through all the weird goings on at the "old victorian house on a nice street". Also, the scenes between Neil and the author were just a little to graphic. I'm not asking for sugar coating, I know these things happen, but just a little less detail would have been better. I was disappointed with this book and wish I had taken the time to read the reviews before I bought it. Don't waste your time or your money.
doesn't live up to the hype.......2007-09-23
I gave it a solid 50 pages before putting it down. AB just goes on and on about his outrageous teen years and probably embellished events without discernable humor. This is another one that makes me ask how did it ever end up on the best-seller's list. I suppose its popularity is due to its being compared to Sedaris but it is not near as good. Though I'm not a huge fan of Sedaris either at least there are occasional points of humor that are completely lacking with Burroughs who just plays up his disfunctional family and sickening events of his childhood..yada..yada..yawn. Sick/crazy/unique childhood doesn't alone doesn't make entertaining writing.
Comical, Compelling, Farcical, Fierce.......2007-09-18
This was one of the most intriguing books I've ever listened to, not only the writing and the content, but he narration by the author. There is something about Augusten Burroughs' ability to talk to you as if you've known each other forever that is rare even among actors who normally narrate the best books. No matter how absurd the situation the main character finds himself in, his take on it is always that combination of wry amusement and naive expectation common to intelligent children.
I love Burroughs because although he is never childish, he is always childlike. Can't wait for more of his audiobooks!!!
Not His Best Work.......2007-09-17
I would like to start by saying that I LOVE Augusten Burroughs, his perspective, and his sharp wit. Unlike many people, "Running With Scissors" was not the first of Burrough's books that I read. While I found the book to be enjoyable enough, well written in a way that did not try to elicit pity where pity was clearly deserved, and an easy read, I have preferred every one of his other books to this one.
It's something I can't quite place my finger on that seemed to be absent from this book and not from his others. It's worth a read, if only to gain perspective and insight into the person he becomes and discusses in the rest of his books.
Book Description
Meredith Hall's moving but unsentimental memoir begins in 1965, when she becomes pregnant at sixteen. Shunned by her insular New Hampshire community, she is then kicked out of the house by her mother. Her father and stepmother reluctantly take her in, hiding her before they finally banish her altogether. After giving her baby up for adoption, Hall wanders recklessly through the Middle East, where she survives by selling her possessions and finally her blood. She returns to New England and stitches together a life that encircles her silenced and invisible grief. When he is twenty-one, her lost son finds her. Hall learns that he grew up in gritty poverty with an abusive fatherâin her own father's hometown. Their reunion is tender, turbulent, and ultimately redemptive. Hall's parents never ask for her forgiveness, yet as they age, she offers them her love. What sets Without a Map apart is the way in which loss and betrayal evolve into compassion, and compassion into wisdom.
"Meredith Hall boldly charts one of the bravest of stories, the journey from disrupted youth up through that most tricky and forbidding territory, the family circle. Bone-honest and strong in its every line, this work of memory is a remarkably deep retrieval of its times and souls, thereby reflecting our own."
âIvan Doig, author of Heart Earth
"This is an unusually elegant memoir that feels as though its been carved straight out of Meredith Hall's capacious heart. The story is riveting, the words perfect. It is rare to read a work that manages to be at once artful and compelling, which for me best describes Meredith Hall's debut work. She is an author who deserves to be widely read. Few people write like this. Fewer still have the courage to live like this Рwithout the comfort of any clich̩."
âLauren Slater, author of Opening Skinner's Box, Prozac Diary, and Welcome to My Country
"Meredith Hall's long journey from an inexcusably betrayed girlhood to the bittersweet mercies of womanhood is a triple triumphâof survival; of narration; and of forgiveness. Her portrait of her own empty bravado collapsing into total psychological and geographical dislocation is one of the most harrowing passages I've ever read. The subsequent turn toward memory and honesty is agonized, profound, and salvific. Without a Map is a masterpiece."
âDavid James Duncan, author of The Brothers K and God Laughs and Plays
"Meredith Hall is like a geiger counter ticking along the radium edge of these recent decades. She gives us self as expert-witnessâWithout a Map is smart, sharp, and redemptively honest. "
âSven Birkerts, author of The Gutenberg Elegies and My Sky Blue Trades
"Meredith Hall's story of loss, shame, and betrayal is also a story of joy, reconnection, and survival; each memory takes us deep to the marrow of sorrow and celebration. A work of extraordinary beauty and grace."
âKim Barnes, author of In the Wilderness: Coming of Age in Unknown Country
"Without A Map tells an important and perceptive story about loss, about aloneness and isolation in a time of great need, about a life slowly coming back into focus and the calm that finally emerges. Meredith Hall is a brave new writer who earns our attention."
âAnnie Dillard, author of Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
"Think for a moment of Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale, of banishment, reconciliation, redemption, and you'll get the scope of Without a Map, the new memoir by Meredith Hall . . . An extraordinary tale, made all the more moving by Hall's unsentimental prose and ample heart."
âgettrio.com
"a compelling, painful, hopeful story." âmore.com
"Meredith Hall's magnificent book held me in its thrall from the moment I began reading the opening pages. WITHOUT A MAP is a fluid, beautifully-written, hard-won piece of work that belongs on the shelf next to the best modern memoirs, and yet is in a category all its own. It is a moving example of a difficult life redeemed first through examination, then reflection, then finallyâlike a rough stone polished until it gleamsâinto a genuine work of art."
âDani Shapiro, author of Family History
"Hall, a brave and graceful writer who teaches at UNH, examines her life with wide open eyes and an equally open heart. Even as she wrestles with the grief of many lossesâher child, her parents' love and respect, her standing in her community, her identityâshe demonstrates the writer's gift of separating from her own experiences, establishing an objectivity that allows her to make meaning for herself and readers."
âRebecca Rule, Nashua Telegraph
"Open adoptions and connections between birth mothers and their children were not the way of life for a young girl who got pregnant in the '60s. Meredith Hall, in her beautifully written, poignant memoir, tells us what life was like for a naive girl who found herself pregnant and abandoned by her mother and father. This is a tale of loss, of endless traveling in search of an intangible something, and, ultimately, of forgiveness."
âGayle Shanks, Changing Hands Bookstore, Tempe, AZ
"Hall's sensitive, honest account of her personal odyssey shows one remarkable woman transcending this trauma to become a better, stronger person."
âWendy Smith, AARP The Magazine
"Hall's life, as depicted in this memoir, was nothing if not two thingsâdifficult and fascinating. With no family, friends or other support system, she took her life into her own hands at an early, tender age, and she fell quite far before finally rising up. The reader gets the benefit of her trials, a gritty view of the world from America to Europe to the Middle East."
âINtake Weekly
"Without a Map tells a stunning story of exile and ostracization. Meredith grew up on the seacoast of New Hampshire and became pregnant at age 16, in 1965. Her memoir is a rare and clear glimpse into the social mores of the mid 60's, and reveals the state of shame many families faced when an unmarried daughter became pregnant."
âLiz Bulkley, Host of "The Front Porch," NH Public Radio
"Appalling and infuriating, yet uplifting and inspiring, Without A Map pulls you into Hall's personal experience of sudden rejection and expulsion from her only sources of sustenance and connection. As an adoptive parent I cried and cheered for her through her exile and return to a very different home. Meredith Hall is a hero of awesome courage and eloquence."
âFrank Kramer, Harvard Book Store, Cambridge, MA
"[Without a Map] is a searing memoir about loss, betrayal, love and, in some measure, reconciliation. It has already brought Hall a celebrity that surprises her: stories in People, Oprah and Elle, an interview on National Public Radio, brisk sales in a crowded marketplace. It is on the extended New York Times bestseller list. What is arresting about this memoir is the world it reveals."
âMike Pride, Concord Monitor
"Without a Map, is so well written that it was hard for me to accept that the book had to end."
âTina Ristau, The Des Moines Register
"Painfully honest and beautifully writtenâ¦Meredith Hall has managed to distill courage from raw pain, and then somehow write this gem of a book about the experienceâ¦A stunning bookâ¦You must read it."
âLola Furber, Maine Women's Journal
"Fans of Jeannette Walls' The Glass Castle should take note of Meredith Hall's memoir, heartbreaking and ultimately heartwarming..."
âMary Cotton, owner of Newtonville Books, Newton TAB
Customer Reviews:
One girl's story...........2007-09-24
Meredith Hall's memoir is one girl's story of unplanned pregnancy (and its aftermath), told and retold over the generations. A cautionary tale here for young women--one brief lapse in judgement can ripple through the rest of one's life, the awful price paid over and over and over again. I appreciated Ms. Hall's willingness to share her painful story, although much was left out that would have helped frame things more clearly for the reader, i.e. how her placement of a child for adoption affected her marriage (was there one?), did it affect her second and third pregnancies, etc. For further reading about the adoption process pre-1970's, check out the excellent "The Girls Who Went Away."
Awareness.......2007-09-23
What I enjoyed the most about this book was the awareness that it brings. America has painted a fairy-tale image of adoption, and this book reveals the fact that not all children are given a "better life" with another family. Meredy's son was one of those people. Forced to give him up at the age of 17, Meredy, like many birth mothers of this time, wasn't given much detail about where her baby ended up. It was portrayed to her that he was given to a good home in Virginia. Instead, the truth (that would come out over 20 years later) was that he was given to an abusive family just a mile away from her father's home.
Hall is an excellent writer. The way this story is written makes you feel as though you are living in the times and culture that the author faced. It is unfortunate that her parents' lack of guidance contributed to the situation that she faced. Instead of facing the responsibility they in turn rejected her just as harshly as her child was taken from her.
It is a sad, emotional story marked by an ending of peace and reconcile and forgiveness for the family that did not provide a better childhood for her son.
WOW.......2007-09-19
I thought the beginning was good. But then the book just got better and better. It was much more than expected, unfortunately for Ms. Hall. All I can say, is WOW!
Moving and touched close to home.......2007-09-19
This book changed her life forever. With no choice on whether to relinquish her baby for adoption, she was left with an indescribable emptiness that could not be filled. It was a heartfelt book written with painful honesty and love. It is a book that was hard to put down.
OH, THOSE TERRIBLE 50S-60S!!.......2007-09-19
When I was reading this book about Meredith Hall growing up in the 50s and 60s, and suddenly faced with pregnancy at age 16, her pain and confusion and utter despair were palpable to me! I had to stop several times to cry..... In places, it was almost unbearably sad. She was so naive, and her parents were so wrapped up in their own lives as to be uninterested in her or any growing-up, adolescent problems she might have. I know, because I grew up at the same time, in the same circumstances. I knew girls who got pregnant at a very young age, and whether they kept their babies or gave them up for adoption (abortion was not an option then), their lives were never the same, and they carried a painful, heavy burden. Some still do.
In this book, however, something happens in the writing that causes it to lose veracity. Maybe because it was not written as a book, but rather chapters were written for other publications and then everything was put together to form this book. For whatever reason, it began to feel like a lot of short pieces strung together. There are lots of unanswered questions at the end of the book. Such as, who is the father of the two sons that she was able to keep? Whatever became of the father of her first baby? It appears she currently lives on a farm of sorts, yet teaches writing in a university, none of which is ever touched upon. Why has she become so self-indulgent after a lifetime of never, ever being able to speak up for herself? Something doesn't ring ture with the last third of the book.
Be that as it may, it does stand as a testament to the girls who became pregnant in those days. All choices were terrible! And I never knew, or heard about, any parent or any adult having any understanding or empathy for these girls, let alone trying to help them through the pregnancy or help them get on with their lives after the pregnancy. Never! And that is a very sad testament to the kinds of parents who were raising children in the 50s and 60s. Very sad.
I am glad that the author's life has worked out so well. I am sorry that she felt she had to include the chapter on killing the chickens, because I think that's where she lost me. She and her young sons had named them. Then she killed them with her bare hands. And then she laid them out for her sons to see. Terrible! It took a while for me to get that picture out of my mind..... during which time I had to put the book down and go on to something else. And when I got back to this book, it was hard to care as much. And I had just finished reading the delightful LITTLE HEATHENS by Mildred Kalish and she writes a lot about killing chickens and such goings on on her farm in the 30s and 40s, but never as tasteless and crass as the description in this book.
I wanted to love this book all the way through, but sadly I couldn't. However, I am giving it 4 stars because the first part of the book is so powerful.
Amazon.com
Who hasn't dreamed, on a mundane Monday or frowzy Friday, of chucking it all in and packing off to the south of France? Provençal cookbooks and guidebooks entice with provocatively fresh salads and azure skies, but is it really all Côtes-du-Rhône and fleur-de-lis? Author Peter Mayle answers that question with wit, warmth, and wicked candor in A Year in Provence, the chronicle of his own foray into Provençal domesticity.
Beginning, appropriately enough, on New Year's Day with a divine luncheon in a quaint restaurant, Mayle sets the scene and pits his British sensibilities against it. "We had talked about it during the long gray winters and the damp green summers," he writes, "looked with an addict's longing at photographs of village markets and vineyards, dreamed of being woken up by the sun slanting through the bedroom window." He describes in loving detail the charming, 200-year-old farmhouse at the base of the Lubéron Mountains, its thick stone walls and well-tended vines, its wine cave and wells, its shade trees and swimming pool--its lack of central heating. Indeed, not 10 pages into the book, reality comes crashing into conflict with the idyll when the Mistral, that frigid wind that ravages the Rhône valley in winter, cracks the pipes, rips tiles from the roof, and tears a window from its hinges. And that's just January.
In prose that skips along lightly, Mayle records the highlights of each month, from the aberration of snow in February and the algae-filled swimming pool of March through the tourist invasions and unpredictable renovations of the summer months to a quiet Christmas alone. Throughout the book, he paints colorful portraits of his neighbors, the Provençaux grocers and butchers and farmers who amuse, confuse, and befuddle him at every turn. A Year in Provence is part memoir, part homeowner's manual, part travelogue, and all charming fun. --L.A. Smith
Book Description
In this witty and warm-hearted account, Peter Mayle tells what it is like to realize a long-cherished dream and actually move into a 200-year-old stone farmhouse in the remote country of the Lubéron with his wife and two large dogs. He endures January's frosty mistral as it comes howling down the Rhône Valley, discovers the secrets of goat racing through the middle of town, and delights in the glorious regional cuisine. A Year in Provence transports us into all the earthy pleasures of Provençal life and lets us live vicariously at a tempo governed by seasons, not by days.
Customer Reviews:
A Year in Provence - a delight.......2007-10-01
Over a decade has passed since A Year in Provence was published but time has not dulled the images, humor or humanity of Peter Mayle's wonderful story of an English couple's misadventures as they seek the good life in Rural France. The people, the food, and the land all come alive as the Mayle family struggles to rebuild an old farmhouse and blend in with the locals. This is the book that re-ignited interest in one one of France's most beautiful and gracious regions.
GOING TO THE DOGS IN THE LAND OF THE FROGS.......2007-09-03
Peter Mayle's delightful expose of his first year as "foreigners" in Provence proves highly entertaining reading--for serious or armchair travelers. This month-by-month account proves a painfully honest narrative: how a perfectly respectable English couple "goes native" in just twelve months in Southern France. Clearly a cautionary tale this book catalogues the clandestine allures faced by naive Anglo-Saxons who have clearly absorbed too much semi-tropical heat to retain their Northern European rationality.
Read and be warned of the psychological horrors of gradulaly
slipping from productive, English sobriety and a lifestyle of moderation, into the fathomless pit of culinary worship with its acolytes: bread, wine, garlic, truffles, olive oil, cheese and game birds.
So this charming, apparently normal couple emigrates to southern France, where they are baffled by Provencal accents, attitudes and the
natives' flexible view of Time. The Mayles are thrown in without adequate warning to deal with sly peasants, avid promoters, local civic pride, excitable construction workers, rude drop-in guests and the seasonal invasion of European tourists: German campers and snobby Parisians who consider the entire globe beneath their notice.
The Mayles' first year concludes with the renovation (well, almost completed) of an old stone house, during which time they have earned the grudging respect of their colorful neighbors. Unfortunately, the standards of the once safe and sane British Empire have definitely disintegrated into shameless dedication/degradation to the gods of food and drink. The plotline can be briefly summed up: Going to the dogs--as some might say, (despite the fact that the couple actually brought their own dogs from home) in the land of the Frogs. If you read this book you'll never need to visit Provence in person, and yourfunny bone will be well fed, but your tummy/waist line will surely miss out.
Held Me From The First Page ~ A Classic!.......2007-08-30
Love this book! It truly is a classic! From the first page it's fun, well-written, very entertaining, and made me feel I was there. All huge plusses with any book. I don't want to give too much away in hopes you'll buy it yourself and enjoy it slowly like a deliciously seductive meal in France. Very giftable, too! I'm thinking stocking stuffers? A little "just because" gift for a friend who needs a pick-me-up package in the mail? Or a housewarming gift with a bottle of French wine?
A Year in Provence.......2007-08-23
I read this book several years ago, and loved it so much I wanted to move to Provence.
I bought to give as a gift.
British liege lord, French slaves.......2007-08-22
The long-running international success of this book is amazing. Almost enough to promote head-scratching. Doubt. Confusion. Fear of the Apocalypse. Because, if you really look at it, the book ain't all that great.
A YEAR IN PROVENCE tells the true story of a snobbish, know-it-all Englishman (a certain Peter Mayle) who retires after a successful career in the publishing industry in England and then buys an ancient farmhouse in Provence. He and his wife move in, eat fancy meals, re-do the house with all manner of expensive and modern luxuries, and cruise around the area looking for cute country restaurants, stores, and open-air markets, and even cuter anecdotes. That's the whole story: part culinary celebration by an English foodie, part travelogue of a newly retired control freak, part tourism poster for the French national administrative district of Provence/Cote d'Azure, A YEAR IN PROVENCE is the story of one wealthy, non-working Brit's gaze on a bunch of French people who do have jobs. Call it a giant chocolate box of witty, self-affirming anecdotes, some nutty, some sweet, most all scrumptious if ultimately empty.
In a move of sophistication that reminds me of Albert Einstein's most intellectually fertile period, Mr. Mayle names each chapter after a month. For example, Chapter 1 is actually called "January." Then Chapter 2 is called "February." It's "a year in Provence"!
But seriously, folks: Mr. Mayle gets a big shout-out for his descriptions of the cuisine served in Provence. It really is a foodie's delight to hear him tell of meal after succulent meal, wine after sweet wine. Also, kudos to the big Mr. M for his loving portraiture of the Provençal countryside. Here, too, the author excels. I, too, have lived in Provence, and his panoramas of the villages and countryscapes are spot-on.
But then we have to touch on the overall "me lord, you slave" nature of the text. As mentioned above, Mr. Mayle is retired. And he spends the whole book condesending to and commenting upon the hard-working residents who live in Provence and are just trying to get by. They exist, A YEAR IN PROVENCE tells us, so that a wealthy, superior, judgmental Brit can hover around them and fawn over them the way a slave owner must have grinned out appreciatively from the plantation's steps onto the poor folk working his fields.
So--in short--if you like your Provence filled with two-dimensional, grinning, child-like adults who shimmy and charm like Bojangles to make a smug, well-fed foreigner feel happy and superior, then Peter Mayle has written a book for you.
Average customer rating:
- --Interesting glimpse of old Hollywood--
- Mr. Dunne, I adore you!
- Dominick Dunne is fascinating
- Beautiful collection of photos
- THE WAY WE LIVED THEN
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The Way We Lived Then : Recollections of a Well-Known Name Dropper
Dominick Dunne
Manufacturer: Crown
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ASIN: 0609603884
Release Date: 1999-09-28 |
Amazon.com
In a previous incarnation, writer Dominick Dunne was the toast of Hollywood--entertaining movie stars and socialites and invited by moguls to clambakes and black-tie dances. Long before he started churning out his romans à clef set in the private recesses of Hollywood and penthouses of New York City and his dispatches from notorious murder trials, he spent his days on movie sets, producing films like Ash Wednesday and working as an executive at various studios. In the off-hours, he and his wife Lenny ate dinner with Vincente Minnelli, Jack Benny, Rock Hudson, and Elizabeth Montgomery. They went to beach parties hosted by Jane Fonda and Roddy McDowall--and threw not a few bashes of their own, attended by, well, everyone and often photographed for Vogue magazine. Dunne seemed to carry his camera with him everywhere and "was always sticking [it] into someone's face." Kirk Douglas biting into an oversized hotdog, a scantily clad Paul Newman perusing a picnic table, Princess Margaret smoking, Mia Farrow dancing, and Natalie Wood hamming. Each weekend he carefully arranged his snapshots along with the week's invitations, telegrams, and news-clippings into a set of scrapbooks.
The Way We Lived Then closely resembles those scrapbooks, filled as it is with images culled from them. Dunne sews the scraps together with a loose memoir that moves from the mundane (how the house was decorated for a certain party, how the subjects of a given photo were feeling about one another at the time) to the grand (meditations on his marriage and his children). All of these famous friends, glittery parties, and cozy evenings did add up to a picture-perfect life for a time. But by the mid '60s, Dunne was drinking hard, insulting acquaintances in public, and being a perfectly terrible husband to the lovely Lenny. He was soon arrested carrying drugs into the country from Mexico, divorced, nearly poverty-stricken, and living in a cabin in Oregon. But he lived to tell about it, and though his story is something of a cautionary tale about the dangers of success and excess, punctuated as it is by his dreamy photos, one can't help but wonder if he'd happily go back to the way he lived then. --Jordana Moskowitz
Book Description
Mesmerizing, revelatory text combines with more than two hundred photographs -- most of them taken by the author -- in a startling illustrated memoir that will both astonish and move you.
When Dominick Dunne lived and worked in Hollywood, he had it all: a beautiful family, a glamorous career, and the friendship of the talented and powerful. He also had a camera and loved to take pictures. These photographs, which Dunne carefully preserved in more than a dozen leatherbound scrapbooks -- along with invitations, telegrams, personal notes, and other memorabilia -- record the parties, the glittering receptions, the society weddings, and scenes from the everyday lives of the Dunnes and those they knew, including Jane Fonda, Frank Sinatra, Paul Newman, Roddy McDowall, Elizabeth Taylor, Natalie Wood, Brooke Hayward, Jennifer Jones, and David Selznick. You'll meet them all in this fascinating book -- captured in snapshots as these celebrities relax at poolside barbecues, gossip at cozy get-togethers and dance at the Dunnes' dazzling black-and-white ball. And you will meet Dominick Dunne's beautiful wife, Lenny, and his children, Griffin, Alex, and Dominique, as they celebrate Christmases, birthdays, and graduations. But, most of all, you will meet Dominick Dunne and learn about the peaks and valleys of his years in Hollywood, the disastrous turn his life took, and the long road back that led to his triumphant career as a writer. With its engaging photographs and candid text,
The Way We Lived Then is a riveting and unvarnished account of a life among the stars and a life almost lost.
Customer Reviews:
--Interesting glimpse of old Hollywood--.......2005-08-18
THE WAY WE LIVED THEN is a look at the lives and personalities of some of the most famous entertainers in the world.
I've been aware of the author, Dominick Dunne for a long time, but until reading this book, I had no idea what kind of background he had or what made him so knowledgeable about so many celebrities. Dunne was a director and producer of various TV shows and apparently was good at his job. People enjoyed working with him and he and his wife gave wonderful parties and were invited everywhere.
The book is as much about Dunne and his family as it is about the people that he socialized with. His story is rather sad because he ended up losing his wife because he became addicted to drugs and the fast Hollywood lifestyle. There are more than a few moving stories in the book. One pitiful entry has Dunne and Peter Lawford sharing drugs at a party. Years before, they had been friends and neighbors, but at this low point in their lives, they were both broke and seemingly without friends.
You can also read about Elizabeth Montgomery, Gig Young, Natalie Wood, George Hamilton, Frank Sinatra, Elizabeth Taylor, Jane Fonda and dozens of other Hollywood "big" names. Dunne took a lot of photographs and I think that I enjoyed the snapshots as much as I did the text of the book.
Mr. Dunne, I adore you!.......2004-02-03
I think I was probably one of the very first people who purchased this book...and I loved every page and every minute of it! Some of the earlier reviewers I read below simply don't seem to "get" this book. It is not meant to be great literature. It is meant to be a great read with one-of-a-kind photos, and it delivers both in spades! Also, I believe it is meant to be somewhat of a love letter, both to the parts of Mr. Dunne's ealier life that were happy and held great promise, AND perhaps to the fans of his books...giving all of us glimpses into what was an incredibly fascinating "Hollywood existence" and giving us a peek at the REAL people that he has thinly veiled, completely disguised, or combined to create the fascinating characters that populate his terrific books. Mr. Dunne, if you read these reviews (I know that I probably would!!), please know that I eagerly await everything you publish, including your monthly "Diarist" articles in Vanity Fair. Your writings are so incredibly enjoyable, fascinating, and provide a much-needed escape for me. You must feel very blessed to have finally found your calling - so many never do.
Dominick Dunne is fascinating.......2002-11-05
It is easy to see why celebrities, criminals and perfect strangers have told Mr. Dunne their secrets. He is so interesting in a gossipy, name-dropping but sweet way. His Hollywood life makes an engrossing tale, much more entertaining than fiction.
Beautiful collection of photos.......2001-10-06
This book is filled with beautiful photographs of almost every star imaginable with personal anecdotes from Mr. Dunne to go with them. There are beautiful photos of Natalie Wood and a young (brunette) Elizabeth Montgomery. Mr. Dunne's life has certainly had its ups and downs, but this is NOT another celebrity pity party...he writes of the bad times he has faced, as well as the good, in a very matter of fact style, which is (thankfully) not at all whiny. But, again, the real treasure here are all the beautiful photographs of beautiful people in beautiful places. Thanks, Mr. Dunne, for sharing them with us.
THE WAY WE LIVED THEN.......2001-06-27
Mr. Dunne can work the room no matter where he is, no matter what social strata. I would have had an anxiety attack had I been face-to-face with Betsy Bloomingdale. Yet, this why I love Mr. Dunne. Reading about Betsy, she retained the warm, kind, classy image that I imagined her to have from various books and magazines. I loved being a fly-on-the-wall when Mr. Dunne was in Washington since I knew so little about politics. It was fun the way he scribed it in the pages. I feel safe reading Dominick's stories - although I feel like I am there, I don't have the real fear!
Average customer rating:
- Hatred of adjectives
- Frustration and confusion over contradictions
- Hemingway's Last Best Work
- One of the best!
- A good present for someone going to Paris
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A Moveable Feast
Ernest Hemingway
Manufacturer: Scribner
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In the preface to A Moveable Feast, Hemingway remarks casually that "if the reader prefers, this book may be regarded as fiction"--and, indeed, fact or fiction, it doesn't matter, for his slim memoir of Paris in the 1920s is as enchanting as anything made up and has become the stuff of legend. Paris in the '20s! Hemingway and his first wife, Hadley, lived happily on $5 a day and still had money for drinks at the Closerie des Lilas, skiing in the Alps, and fishing trips to Spain. On every corner and at every café table, there were the most extraordinary people living wonderful lives and telling fantastic stories. Gertrude Stein invited Hemingway to come every afternoon and sip "fragrant, colorless alcohols" and chat admid her great pictures. He taught Ezra Pound how to box, gossiped with James Joyce, caroused with the fatally insecure Scott Fitzgerald (the acid portraits of him and his wife, Zelda, are notorious). Meanwhile, Hemingway invented a new way of writing based on this simple premise: "All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence you know."
Hemingway beautifully captures the fragile magic of a special time and place, and he manages to be nostalgic without hitting any false notes of sentimentality. "This is how Paris was in the early days when we were very poor and very happy," he concludes. Originally published in 1964, three years after his suicide, A Moveable Feast was the first of his posthumous books and remains the best. --David Laskin
Book Description
Published posthumously in 1964, A Moveable Feast remains one of Ernest Hemingway's most beloved works. It is his classic memoir of Paris in the 1920s, filled with irreverent portraits of other expatriate luminaries such as F. Scott Fitzgerald and Gertrude Stein; tender memories of his first wife, Hadley; and insightful recollections of his own early experiments with his craft. It is a literary feast, brilliantly evoking the exuberant mood of Paris after World War I and the youthful spirit, unbridled creativity, and unquenchable enthusiasm that Hemingway himself epitomized.
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"You belong to me and all Paris belongs to me and I belong to this notebook and this pencil." Begun in the autumn of 1957 and published posthumously in 1964, Ernest Hemingway's A Moveable Feast captures what it meant to be young and poor and writing in Paris during the 1920s. A correspondent for the Toronto Star, Hemingway arrived in Paris in 1921, three years after the trauma of the Great War and at the beginning of the transformation of Europe's cultural landscape: Braque and Picasso were experimenting with cubist forms; James Joyce, long living in self-imposed exile from his native Dublin, had just completed Ulysses; Gertude Stein held court at 27 rue de Fleurus, and deemed young Ernest a member of rue génération perdue; and T. S. Eliot was a bank clerk in London. It was during these years that the as-of-yet unpublished young writer gathered the material for his first novel, The Sun Also Rises, and the subsequent masterpieces that followed. Among these small, reflective sketches are unforgettable encounters with the members of Hemingway's slightly rag-tag circle of artists and writers, some also fated to achieve fame and glory, others to fall into obscurity. Here, too, is an evocation of the Paris that Hemingway knew as a young man - a map drawn in his distinct prose of the streets and cafés and bookshops that comprised the city in which he, as a young writer, sometimes struggling against the cold and hunger of near poverty, honed the skills of his craft. A Moveable Feast is at once an elegy to the remarkable group of expatriates that gathered in Paris during the twenties and a testament to the risks and rewards of the writerly life.
Customer Reviews:
Hatred of adjectives.......2007-08-08
What a poisonous, vituperatve, jealous, mean-spirtied man he must have been. Also self-righteous and condescending.
Does anybody read his tripe anymore?
Frustration and confusion over contradictions.......2007-08-07
That's all I felt as I picked up this book to read. Is it fact or fiction? To me, and others that I have spoken to, it makes a world of difference as to how I approach a book, it's characters, location, and events that take place. This book is supposed to be Hemingway's memoirs. I have no idea who is on the cover.
There is a disclaimer by the publishing company that this is a work of fiction.
Not to mention Hemingway's own explanation that does not make a bit of sense. "If the reader prefers, this book may be regarded as fiction. But there is always the chance that such a book of fiction may throw some light on what was written as fact."
Following that, there is a note written by M.H. that states that this book covers the years 1921-1926 in Paris.
Lastly, there are nine black and white photographs of people and places that supposedly do not even exist.
I became so frustrated with all of these contradictions that I did not even bother to read the book.
Hemingway's Last Best Work.......2007-06-11
Published posthumously, this memoir is a series of sketches recounting episodes from Hemingway's life in Paris in the early 1920s. It is probably the best thing Hemingway wrote in his late years. This is the period when Hemingway perfected his laconic style and produced several of the short stories that form his most durable work. Many of the sketches display the economy of style and eye for telling detail found in Hemingway's best short stories. Much of the book is devoted to describing his life as a young writer trying to perfect his style. It contains interesting, though not necessarily objective, portraits of Hemingway's friends Gertrude Stein and F. Scott Fitzgerald. The presiding spirit of this book is Hemingway's first wife, Hadley Richardson Hemingway.
This book has a more than wistful quality because of the circumstances under which it was written. Hemingway produced it in the late 1950s when he was struggling with his alcoholism, bouts of depression, and not very successful attempts to produce major novels. The contrast with the vigor, productivity, and happiness of this Parisian period must have been painful for Hemingway though only at the very end of book does a note of self-pity creep in.
One of the best!.......2007-06-01
So many good things have been said of this book and I can add nothing more. Anybody wanting to understand Hemingway and disciplined writing should read or reread this book.
A good present for someone going to Paris.......2007-03-08
This book by Hem was published after his death. You can of see this, Hem would never have published some of these stories if he was alive and kicking - at least he would have edited them heavily. Still it is an amazing book filled with beautiful memories of a fantastic city when it was both good and affordable. Today Paris is still a good city, but it's hardly affordable. Anyway, if you intend to travel to Paris by yourself or if some of your close friends will visit Paris, they will be most happy to get this as a present. Afterwards they will keep thanking you every time you meet them - yes, it's just that good...
Book Description
Sarah Vowell exposes the glorious conundrums of American history and culture with wit, probity, and an irreverent sense of humor. With Assassination Vacation, she takes us on a road trip like no other -- a journey to the pit stops of American political murder and through the myriad ways they have been used for fun and profit, for political and cultural advantage.
From Buffalo to Alaska, Washington to the Dry Tortugas, Vowell visits locations immortalized and influenced by the spilling of politically important blood, reporting as she goes with her trademark blend of wisecracking humor, remarkable honesty, and thought-provoking criticism. We learn about the jinx that was Robert Todd Lincoln (present at the assassinations of Presidents Lincoln, Garfield, and McKinley) and witness the politicking that went into the making of the Lincoln Memorial. The resulting narrative is much more than an entertaining and informative travelogue -- it is the disturbing and fascinating story of how American death has been manipulated by popular culture, including literature, architecture, sculpture, and -- the author's favorite -- historical tourism. Though the themes of loss and violence are explored and we make detours to see how the Republican Party became the Republican Party, there are all kinds of lighter diversions along the way into the lives of the three presidents and their assassins, including mummies, show tunes, mean-spirited totem poles, and a nineteenth-century biblical sex cult.
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"Sarah Vowell exposes the glorious conundrums of American history and culture with wit, probity, and an irreverent sense of humor. With Assassination Vacation, she takes us on a road trip like no other -- a journey to the pit stops of American political murder and through the myriad ways they have been used for fun and profit, for political and cultural advantage. From Buffalo to Alaska, Washington to the Dry Tortugas, Vowell visits locations immortalized and influenced by the spilling of politically important blood, reporting as she goes with her trademark blend of wisecracking humor, remarkable honesty, and thought-provoking criticism. We learn about the jinx that was Robert Todd Lincoln (present at the assassinations of Presidents Lincoln, Garfield, and McKinley) and witness the politicking that went into the making of the Lincoln Memorial. The resulting narrative is much more than an entertaining and informative travelogue -- it is the disturbing and fascinating story of how American death has been manipulated by popular culture, including literature, architecture, sculpture, and -- the author's favorite -- historical tourism. Though the themes of loss and violence are explored and we make detours to see how the Republican Party became the Republican Party, there are all kinds of lighter diversions along the way into the lives of the three presidents and their assassins, including mummies, show tunes, mean-spirited totem poles, and a nineteenth-century biblical sex cult. "
Customer Reviews:
My first summer reading title.......2007-07-29
So, I started this book while working at a youth arts camp for bratty children and fell into it very quickly, having it act as a getaway more than anything, at first.
Vowell has a very great tone in her writing that, apparently, not everyone finds as endearing as I do. Having visited many of the sites she's writing about (hooray, family road trips!), it's refreshing to read her accounts of the places.
Certainly, the section of the book concerning Lincoln is the best. I haven't done a lot of presidential reading, though I have caught the occasional special on PBS about various presidents, but I felt that the section of the book concerning Lincoln's assassination showed a side to everything that I'd never known about--i.e. Wilkes-Booth's thespian family roots, Robert Lincoln aka the Angel of Presidential death, etc.
The other two sections seemed, to me at least, rushed, although, as Vowell points out, it's hard to compare other presidents, even in death, to Lincoln.
All in all, I felt it was a great quick read that leaves you with some conversation fodder for your next shindig. Everyone enjoys some presidential trivia, right?
I LOVE this book!!.......2007-07-24
If you know Sarah Vowell from NPR, you'll hear her idiosyncratic voice on every page. And I guess if you don't know her from NPR, then it will just be a fantastic, funny, historic read in your own voice. Vowell is droll, sarcastic, and a Mistress of Irony. It's facinating to see how her mind works, making connection after connection that would probably never occur to mortal humans like the rest of us.
Just what I needed this summer..........2007-07-04
This was a library pick, as I wasn't entirely sure if it would be a keeper. While not exactly something I'd read over and over, it was definitely a good read, honestly, a perfect little book for your summer reading list, as it's light enough to be read in bits, but chock full of fun things that will prepare you to compete on Jeopardy.
The book is part history, part travelogue, part memoir, covering Vowell's various trips to locations around the United States that have links to three presidential assassinations. The book is witty, sarky, and full of dark humor. Honestly, I think she wanted an excuse to write about a trip to the Mütter Museum. In the book she covers the assassination of Lincoln, McKinley and Garfield. She does so by interspersing random bits of trivia (did you know that Robert Todd Lincoln was present or nearby all three assassinations?) She also manages to tie together such disparate things as a Victorian-era sex commune and America's newest national park.
She does it all in a quick-paced, rapid fire, seemingly random association of events. Sometimes they do click, sometimes they don't, but either way, you'll walk away from the particular topic going "Hrmm... I didn't know that."
This book should be particularly entertaining to people who live in DC or New York City, as a lot of her accounts involve locales in this area. I found the DC stuff particularly charming, as nearly everything she pointed out is familiar to me on some level. I half expected her to start blathering about the Roxy Owls, to be honest.
The low point for me, though, has to do with the fact that the book starts off with a sort of smug cosmopolitan egotism that really turned me off. The whole "I know what bubble tea is, and these backwater farmers I'm visiting don't." I was particularly annoyed with her commentary about Richmond, as she seemed to paint the entire place as full of racist hatemongers. She made this assumption based purely on the fact that the Confederacy based its capital here, and John Wilkes Booth spent a good deal of time here. Heck, she even goes so far as to conjecture that Booth and Poe are so messed up because they lived here at some point.
I'm kinda offended by this, as I live here, and Richmond, honestly isn't that bad, especially in the racist hatemonger side of things. Sure, we don't have a decent place to get bubble tea anymore, but Richmond is not really fitting of the whole aura she gives it.
But honestly, that was my only sore point with the book.
I will also add, as a bonus she is one of us. You know what I mean. She drops the secret handshakes all over the book. From her giddiness at visiting the Müter Museum, to her amusement when a docent patted her gently to warn her that it might be a little "scary," to her pride in the fact that her three year old nephew has the word "crypt" in his limited vocabulary. I can assure you, that you are reading a book written by someone who has listened to "Floodland" a few times.
Finally, if you consider yourself conservative, support the Iraq war, and think George Bush is the awesome (which is honestly what she should have picked on in regards to Richmond), then this book will annoy you. Avoid it. Otherwise, it's worth the few days to read it!
The funniest, breeziest tour of American history you'll probably ever read........2007-07-02
It's a darned good book. Everyone should go and read it. It's a great page-turner, and Vowell's fascination with American history is infectious. (If this were a book about the history of typhoid, that would be a joke, and it would be *money*.) She's a funny writer, has a number of ingenious turns of phrase, and draws connections between events in a way that would make James Burke (of Scientific American) proud. Highly recommended.
See, I told you History is fun.......2007-06-22
I want to hang out with Sarah Vowell. More to the point I want to take in some museums and historical landmarks with her and listen in on her conversations with curators, docents and misinformed teens (is there any other kind?). The great thing about Vowell is that in reading one of her books you feel as though you ARE hanging out with her and the assorted lucky friends and relatives who accompany her around America's historical sites. These sites include the arcane, the morbid and the iconic an whatever else is in between.
The pretext for this meandering is to gain insight into the first three assassinations of American presidents That fourth one has, and doubtless will continue to be, beaten quite to death by writers, journalists, researchers and curmudgeons like me resulting in way more questions than answers. The deaths of Lincoln, Garfield and McKinley are a lot tidier in a whodunit and why sense. The latter two especially have received scant attention from the general American public. (There was some president named Garfield McKinley killed by an anarchist office seeker in 1873, I think.)
Anyway Vowell and readers have a lot of fun tracing the events and participants of these assassinations. From Key West, Florida to Springfield, Illinois to New York, New york. From statues, museums, plaques and monuments soak in some American history and enjoy the unique and humorous voice of Sarah Vowell.
While I enjoyed most every page I particularly like the chapter on Garfield who's surprising rise to and brief time as president is so emblematic of an era and who's assassin was such a bizarre character so emblematic of a particular kind of psychosis.
Readers will also appreciate that Vowell is always true to her voice and never hides her biases and predilections but never betrays her true intent of telling a charming and insightful story.
A good time will be had by all.
Book Description
Even the most devoted readers of nineteenth-century American literature often assume that the men and women behind the masterpieces were as dull and staid as the era's static daguerreotypes. Susan Cheever's latest work, however, brings new life to the well-known literary personages who produced such cherished works as The Scarlet Letter, Moby-Dick, Walden, and Little Women. Rendering in full color the tumultuous, often scandalous lives of these volatile and vulnerable geniuses, Cheever's dynamic narrative reminds us that, while these literary heroes now seem secure of their spots in the canon, they were once considered avant-garde, bohemian types, at odds with the establishment.
These remarkable men and women were so improbably concentrated in placid Concord, Massachusetts, that Henry James referred to the town as the "biggest little place in America." Among the host of luminaries who floated in and out of Concord's "American Bloomsbury" as satellites of the venerable intellect and prodigious fortune of Ralph Waldo Emerson were Henry David Thoreau -- perpetual second to his mentor in both love and career; Louisa May Alcott -- dreamy girl and ambitious spinster; Nathaniel Hawthorne -- dilettante and cad; and Margaret Fuller -- glamorous editor and foreign correspondent.
Perhaps inevitably, given the smallness of the place and the idiosyncrasies of its residents, the members of the prestigious circle became both intellectually and romantically entangled: Thoreau serenaded an infatuated Louisa on his flute. Vying with Hawthorne for Fuller's attention, Emerson wrote the fiery feminist love letters while she resided (yards away from his wife) in his guest room. Herman Melville was, according to some, ultimately driven mad by his consuming and unrequited affection for Hawthorne.
Far from typically Victorian, this group of intellectuals, like their British Bloomsbury counterparts to whom the title refers, not only questioned established literary forms, but also resisted old moral and social strictures. Thoreau, of course, famously retreated to a plot of land on Walden Pond to escape capitalism, pick berries, and ponder nature. More shocking was the group's ambivalence toward the institution of marriage. Inclined to bend the rules of its bonds, many of its members spent time at the notorious commune, Brook Farm, and because liberal theories could not entirely guarantee against jealousy, the tension of real or imagined infidelities was always near the surface.
Susan Cheever reacquaints us with the sexy, subversive side of Concord's nineteenth-century intellectuals, restoring in three dimensions the literary personalities whose work is at the heart of our national history and cultural identity.
Customer Reviews:
Title Promises Too Much.......2007-09-06
Such a long title for such a slim work. Yes, back in the mid-nineteenth century, American Transcendentalism flourished in Concord, New Hampshire, primarily because of the ideas and pocketbook of Emerson. All of the titular writers lived in Concord (at least off and on), inspired each others' fiction and non-fiction, and intermingled in (for some) chastely passionate ways. I liked some of the information here, but felt the book was too sketchy and simply cannot claim to cover, except in a cursory way, `their work' in any complete sense. Hawthorne's passion for Fuller is definitely echoed in The Scarlet Letter, Thoreau's experiences on Walden Pond are an accurate reflection of his thoughts and his `simplified' personality and outlook in Walden, and Louisa May Alcott's family and circumstances are the basis for Little Women; however, Fuller and Emerson do not get the literary discussion the title seems to promise. Enjoyable, but not a complete work on Cheever's part.
Not a writer whose mind I enjoy.......2007-09-02
At first I was impressed with Susan Cheever's apt writing, and excited at the prospect of reading about some of my favorite writers. But reading this book is a little like listening to a friend who enjoys malicious gossip -- embarassing, distasteful, and finally just boring. I get the feeling that some parts are whomped up; she's trying to raise questions that the facts don't justify raising. But mostly there's an edge of bitter glee here -- as if she's enjoying anything negative she can dig up. This isn't the kind of writer with whom I enjoy spending time.
Wellll..........2007-07-05
Cheever defends calling John Brown a murderer because he was part of a posse that chopped a group of men to pieces in front of their families in a righteous fit (as a way to stand against slavery).
It is a curious turn that these few geniuses that singlehandedly created American literature (?) are characterized as having been hoodwinked by Brown (who Cheever supposes used their passion and innocence as a weapon against them) into defending violent resistance.
To me this is Black Panthers vs. MLK territory...though the "made the gallows holy" bit is way off my charts:
"Old John Brown's body lies a-mouldering in the grave,
While the bondmen all are weeping whom he ventured for to save;
But though he lost his life a-fighting for the slave,
His soul is marching on.
Glory, glory, Hallelujah!
Glory, glory, Hallelujah!
Glory, glory, Hallelujah!
His soul is marching on.
John Brown was a hero undaunted, true and brave,
And Kansas knew his valor when he fought her rights to save;
And now, though the grass grows green above his grave,
His soul is marching on.
He captured Harper's Ferry with his nineteen men so few,
And frightened Old Virginia till she trembled through and through;
They hung him for a traitor--themselves a traitor crew,
But his soul is marching on.
John Brown was John the Baptist of the Christ we are to see;
CHRIST, who of the bondmen shall the Liberator be;
And soon through all the South the slaves shall all be free,
For his soul goes marching on.
John Brown he was a soldier--a soldier of the LORD;
John Brown he was a martyr--a martyr to the WORD;
And he made the gallows holy when he perished by the cord,
For his soul goes marching on."
??????????????
Bizarre political parsing of the Concord group.......2007-05-24
American Bloomsbury is a popularization of the lives of the people involved in and related to the literary renaissance and transcendentalist movement centered in antebellum Concord, Massachusetts. Devoid of reference notes, one is left having to accept author Cheever's recreations of the personalities and relationships of the participants. The book has value to the degree she has fleshed this out accurately. It is certainly a more engaging read than an academic study and it is tempting to believe that she has channeled reality. Whether she has drawn too many conclusions or drawn conclusions accurately is something the lay reader will not know. But there is a much more serious problem with this book. It is the creation of a small-minded, conservative, 21st century copperhead. She sneers at the Brook Farm community; contemns the abolitionist movement for pushing the country into civil war by not giving politics and compromise a chance, in jaw-dropping ignorance of history; despises John Brown and condemns the Concord circle for supporting him and thus betraying their former nature-loving pacifism. Actually, it is of course much to their credit that in the refining fire of this second American revolution they were completely committed to the right side (by and large -- Hawthorne was a waffler), unlike the author who is apparently trying singlehandedly to bring back copperheadism after 145 years. Thoreau's greatest political work is not the essay that has come down to us as "Civil Disobedience", an immature scribbling author Cheever (and M.L. King and Mahatma Gandhi) is apparently fond of. The mature Thoreau was no pacifist. "In Defense of Captain John Brown" was nothing less than a call to arms. Cheever much prefers the naive youthful pacifist Thoreau.
On parsing the lives of the Concord transcendentalists and the authors that wrote in the wake of that movement, this book is engaging -- if one can accept a "popularizing" (read "dumbing down") style of writing. In its popularization though, it could seem to some that it might be appropriate for a youthful audience. But I wouldn't recommend it to them. Lacking historical knowledge and respecting authorial opinion, they'll come away from it wondering if fighting against slavery was a mistake.
A Pleasant Visit.......2007-04-27
If we could chose our Heaven, my version might be Concord, Massachusetts, when it was home to Emerson, Thoreau and company.
So, it was with delight I looked forward to reading Susan Cheever's "American Bloomsbury." While some have pointed out minor errors that might offend scholars, for the most part, I enjoyed this opportunity to rub shoulders (in my imagination, at least) once more with my heroes and heroines.
There's much in this book that's familiar, but that did not distract from my enjoyment. Cheever takes us back to the real Concord, allowing us to ignore the modern ugliness which has usurped its glory.
She reminds us how one man (Emerson) formed a community which resulted in the majority of the American literary masterpieces of the 19th century. Together these men and women--Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Louisa May Alcott, Margaret Fuller and others--spawned a revolution that glorified nature, the physical world and all that's best in the human heart.
True, they were not always nice and sometimes--as in the case of their support of John Brown--naïve. They were geniuses and eccentrics and human and, as such, capable of error like the rest of us. Cheever revels in their achievements but does not hesitate to point out when they display feet of clay.
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- Tasha Tudor's Garden - Beautiful book!
- Inspiration for Gardeners
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Tasha Tudor's Garden
Tovah Martin
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ASIN: 0395436095 |
Book Description
Tasha Tudor's poignant art has fascinated adults and children for decades. Her nineteenth-century New England lifestyle is legendary. Gardeners are especially intrigued by the profusion of antique flowers -- spectacular poppies, six-foot foxgloves, and intoxicating peonies -- in the cottage gardens surrounding her hand-hewn house. Until now we've only caught glimpses of Tasha Tudor's landscape. In this gorgeous book, two of her friends, the garden writer Tovah Martin and the photographer Richard Brown, take us into the magical garden and then behind the scenes. As we revel in the bedlam of Johnny-jump-ups and cinnamon pinks, the intricacy of the formal peony garden, and the volumptuousness of her heirloom roses, we also learn Tasha's gardening secrets. How does she coax forth her finicky camellia blossoms in the dead of a Vermont winter? How does she train that fantastic topiary to model for her artwork? How can she keep her crown imperials from tumbling in the winds? Tasha's garden reflects a wealth of family lore, perfected through the years and years of working the soil. We may be dazzled by the beauty of the garden, but we come away from this book with practical ideas about improving our own plots of land. "Paradise on earth" is how Tasha describes her garden, and along with the flowers and the vegetables that provide her food, her paradise is filled with an enchanting menagerie -- corgies, Nubian goats, cats, chickens, fantail doves, and forty or more exotic finches, cockatiels, canaries, nightingales, and parrots, which inhabit her collection of antique cages. Tasha's beautiful watercolors and her enchanting anecdotes color this sublimely beautiful book.
Customer Reviews:
Tasha Tudor's Garden - Beautiful book!.......2007-07-24
I received this book several years ago as a birthday gift. It has beautiful pictures of Tasha Tudor's garden and flowers. I bought it this year for my friends 60th birthday gift. She loves it!
Inspiration for Gardeners.......2007-01-04
This is a wonderful book featuring the garden of children's book author and illustrator Tasha Tudor. Not a gardening how-to book but rather a photographic tour of the garden. It does show that a garden can be at its most charming when not rigidly landscaped but grown in a more naturalistic way. A must for all Tasha Tudor fans bookshelves.
a beautiful woman.......2006-07-24
I have loved Tasha Tudor's illustrations in books like "The Tasha Tudor Book of Fairy Tales", "The Secret Garden" and "A Little Princess" since childhood. I didn't know anything about Tasha Tudor as a person, and then one Christmas my mother gave me this book. Wow! Mrs. Tudor has lived a remarkable life and she is an amazing person. She has chosen to create a home for herself that seems to exist in a century past. Her son built a rustic house for her, and she has surrounded it with extensive farm buildings, cottage gardens, fruits, berries, chickens, goats and dogs. She dresses in layers of vintage clothing and eats off of china that has been in her family for generations. I just love this woman, and her lifestyle. This is a beautiful book.
Surprise.......2005-02-08
I purchased this book years ago... at a bookstore and paid the full price. Had I known about Amazon.com....I could have saved money. Then I could have more books! I strongly recommend this book for all gardeners to add to their home library. Enjoy!
a journey to the past.......2003-01-19
Looking at Tasha Tudor's Garden is like taking a journey to another century, surrounded by beauty and peace. Tasha herself wears 19th century clothes, including petticoats, shawls, and head kerchiefs and lives in an antique-appearing house, going about her life with what seems to be a minimal of technology. The photographs that capture her seeing to the goats in the barn in winter, carrying a basket of hand-pulled weeds in summer, arranging lillies, tulips, peonies and old roses in her lovely old house, and seeing the cottage gardens in bloom are absolutely gorgeous. Sometimes gardeners just need inspiration, and this book is perfect for this. Enjoy.
Average customer rating:
- A home filled with curiosities and wonders.
- Amazing
- Inside Edward Gorey's house...
- Not MUST HAVE, but definitely NICE to have
- A specialty item for the true Gorey collector
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Elephant House: Or, The Home of Edward Gorey
Manufacturer: Pomegranate Communications
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
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Similar Items:
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Ascending Peculiarity: Edward Gorey on Edward Gorey
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Amphigorey Again
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Cautionary Tales for Children
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The Other Statue
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The Willowdale Handcar: or the Return of the Black Doll
ASIN: 0764924958 |
Book Description
An intimate photographic journey through Edward Gorey's home.
Customer Reviews:
A home filled with curiosities and wonders........2007-08-09
This is a beautiful book of photographs and text that allows the reader an intriguing view of the home in which Edward Gorey lived and the collections of curious objects, books, and cats he filled it with.
The photographs are large and beautiful - haunting even - and there are lots of them. There is just the right amount of text to cast some light on the man behind the house and his elusive character - anecdotes about his life, his work, his friends and the things that inspired him.
If you are fan of Edward Gorey, or of eclectic interior decorating and design, and displaying collections of antiques, this book will be a treasure in your library.
Amazing.......2007-04-10
That's really all I can say. I have been waiting for this book for a long time, and it was the most incredible thing. Amazing photos. Read up on Gorey first, though. The details are some much better when you get the little visual jokes Gorey set up in his day-to-day life.
Inside Edward Gorey's house..........2006-02-01
If you are an Ogdred Weary fan...this is a truly wonderful book. Photographs of the exterior (peeling paint and kind of saggy porch) and the interior rooms of the house on Cape Cod in Gorey lived and worked, along with his cats and figbashes, piles of thousands of books, assorted rocks and oddish things, and the expected miriad of curiosities. Alas, or delightfully...just the environment one would expect of the eccentric Edward. A cabinet of curiosities...a delight!
Not MUST HAVE, but definitely NICE to have.......2005-09-10
This book wouldn't mean much to anyone who isn't already a Gorey fan. I own (and love) the compilations 'Amphigorey', 'Amphigorey Too' & 'Amphogorey Also', so have a head start. I also have the auto(?) biography 'Ascending Peculiarity', which is almost a necessary co-requisite to this book - it helps explain the cats, and many other Gorey details. Now that the individual books are available again, I'm tempted to get them too, because they are such nice objects - but only if the kids promise to share with me!
A specialty item for the true Gorey collector.......2004-04-05
Even dedicated fans of Edward Gorey will probably know very little about his personal life: he was an enigmatic recluse and few were permitted past his front door. Photographer Kevin McDermott's Elephant House will delight students of architecture and photography, providing rich duotone works of Gorey's intriguing home and its contents. A specialty item for the true Gorey collector, Elephant House is an impressive photographic showcase and a welcome addition to both architectural studies and photographic studies reference collections.
Book Description
With the breathless anticipation that seduced her readers to fall in love with Venice and then Tuscany, Marlena de Blasi now takes us on a new journey as she moves with her husband, Fernando, to Orvieto, a large and ancient city in Italy's Umbria. Having neither an edge to a sea nor a face to a foreign land, it's a region less trampled by travelers and, in turn, less accepting of strangers. So de Blasi sets out to establish her niche in this new place and to win over her new neighbors by doing what she does best, cooking her way into their hearts. (Her recipes are included.)
Rich with history and a vivid sense of place, her memoir is by turns romantic and sensual, joyous and celebratory, as she searches for the right balance in this city on the hill, as well as the right home—which turns out to be the former ballroom of a dilapidated sixteenth-century palazzo.
De Blasi meets and makes friends with an array of colorful, memorable characters, including cooks and counts and shepherds and a lone violinist, and their stories, too, become a part of the tapestry of life that she weaves for herself in Orvieto. With a voice full of wonder, she brings to life these engagingly quirky people and the aloof, almost daunting society that exists in Umbria. Not since Peter Mayle's
A Year in Provence has a writer so happily succeeded in capturing the essence of a singular place and in creating a feast for readers of all stripes.
Customer Reviews:
IF YOU'RE GOING TO UMBRIA YOU MUST READ THIS BOOK.......2007-08-11
What a wonderful book. What a wonderful lady. I read this book the month before my trip to Umbria this Spring and I've recommended it to my entire family and to all of my friends. Everyone I know who has read it has fallen in love with Orvieto! Orvieto is a fabulous place..and Marlena De Blasi has described it in fabulous detail...her friends, the countryside, the food and the wines. Not to mention what it takes to find and renovate a flat! I didn't want this book to end...and I know that its a book I'll reread every few years! Enjoy!
Her best, leaves me hungry for more!.......2007-08-08
I agree with everyone who says this book is de Blasi's best yet. She seems to have settled into marriage with Fernando. In Venice and Tuscany everything seemed tinged with a lustful haze, but now they are working things out together, caring for each other - much more seemly behavior for a middle-aged couple!
I was totally captivated by Marlena's struggle to fit in with her new neighbors. Fernando seems to provide minimal assistance. Also thrilled that Barlozzo appears in this book - he is such an endearing character!
This book brought me to tears several times. Few books compel me to keep reading without a break until they are over. This was definitely one of those books. Days later I can close my eyes and picture scenes from the book, her writing is so vivid. My guess is that Marlena and Fernando will make another move before too long - they are both restless characters. Even if they stay put for a while, surely the story will be just as riveting. I eagerly look forward to the next chapter in their journey
Don't Judge a Book by Its Cover.......2007-07-08
You know what they say, never judge a book by its cover. Well in this case the photograph of the author on the inside of the cover led me to some judgemental thoughts.
It should be said that am drawn to books on Italy and I enjoyed my visit to Umbria several years ago. But I almost didn't buy this book because of the picture of Marlena De Blasi. Well I took a chance and I have to say I was wrong. There is no doubt that De Blasi is a free spirit, bohemian, and different. That is her charm and you can read about it on every page.
It is a wonderful story that she tells of her integration into to the conservative Italian life of Orvieto in Umbria. She mixes her quixotic lifestyle with the down-to-earth inhabitants of this city on a hill for delicious results. She is exuberant and her story is redolent with her passion for life and total disregard for the Italian class system. Despite this all turns out well in the end.
I highly recommend this tale of life in Italy. It is a completely different perspective
This author is really, really good.......2007-05-19
I read this 
