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writerly-ramblings · 6 years

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10 Books I Want to Read in 2019

Tagged by @classical-vanity - thank you! 💕

While I have heaps of books on my academic reading lists, I’m going to completely ignore those, like I do in real life, but let’s not talk about that (I’m kidding - mostly). Also forgoing rereads, because, let’s face it, that would be a list all its own.

1. A Tale of Two Cities - Charles Dickens (cheating a little here, because I’ve already started it, but that’s how it goes).

2. The Shadow of Night and The Book of Life - Deborah Harkness (don’t ask, it’s a long story).

3. Penelope Fitzgerald: A Life - Hermione Lee (bought this last year, have been meaning to read it ever since, and think I can finally tackle it in the foreseeable future).

4. Possession - A.S. Byatt (I’ve enjoyed four of Byatt’s other books, so it’s definitely time to sit seriously down with her most lauded).

5. Down and Out in Paris and London - George Orwell (this has been on my to-be-read list for years, and since 2019 will see me in both Paris and London, I think now would be a good time).

6. Poems - Elizabeth Bishop (all right, scratch what I said above about assigned reading. I bought a complete collection of her poems for school and didn’t finish it, so I’d like to do that, and then hopefully have a look at her fiction).

7. Elmet - Fiona Mozley (cheating a little again, because I’ve actually read the first quarter of this on-and-off over the past two years, but I’d really like to finish it).

8. Grand Union - Zadie Smith (I have it on good authority that her short fiction is incredible, so).

9. The Age of Light - Whitney Scharer (I have a connection to this book that we don’t need to go into, but basically, I can’t wait to get my hands on a copy).

10. Rebecca - Daphne du Maurier (another that’s been on the towering bedside pile for ages but hasn’t been attended to yet).

Tagging @isfjmel-phleg @soldier-poet-king @spring-haze and @pemberlaey (but no pressure)

#tag game #bookworm #my literary life #my answers #let’s see if i read all of these this year shall we?#charles dickens #deborah harkness #george orwell #zadie smith #daphne du maurier #a.s. byatt #fiona mozley #hermione lee #elizabeth bishop #whitney scharer

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bigtickhk · 6 years

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The Age of Light by Whitney Scharer https://amzn.to/2taDnhd

#the age of light: a novel (book)#The Age of Light #Whitney Scharer #Man Ray #Lee Miller #books #book review

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thenovelincubator · 6 years

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An Interview with Whitney Scharer, Author of The Age of Light

Whitney Scharer, a veteran Grubbie extraordinaire, is just out with her debut The Age of Light (Little Brown, 2019) and already it is flying off the shelves. Set in 1930s Paris, the book is about the love story between Voguemodel turned photographer Lee Miller and the artist Man Ray. Critics are hailing the novel as bold, intimate and unforgettable–and I get it. Lee Miller sucked me in, too.…

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#Grub Street #historical fiction #Lee Miller #Male gaze #Man Ray #The Age of Light #Whitney Scharer #WWII historical fiction

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greenlivvie · 3 years

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groupchat people in bad art friend

link to main page about bad art friend

This is not really a take, but more of a list of everyone involved that I believe behaved in a despicable way, either in public or private. The people I name here might be published authors or people that work at Grub Street. For authors that have written books, I will try to attach their bibliography. This is an ongoing list, I will keep updating it as I add more names.

why i’m making this list

I know everyone has a different standard of what they consider acceptable communication in private messages. I have said a lot of things in private that I would never say in public. That being said, some private messages and emails revealed in the court documents have crossed a line for me, and I can never imagine saying them, even in the most private setting. I can’t tell you what to do, but I will never read a book by any of these people. Artists earn through public support, and some people don’t deserve mine. If you have the same moral standard as I do, you might find this list helpful.

the list

Celeste Ng is by far the biggest name involved in this. She sent messages to Larson, which include “FUCK DAWN AND HER ONE KIDNEY” and “DAWN CAN GO FUCK HER ONE KIDNEY”. She also states that Larson has not committed plagiarism, a claim we know to be wrong (she might just have been lied to by Larson, but she should still know better as a writer). She also advised Larson on how to talk to a reporter to make plagiarism look less like plagiarism.

Ng’s bibliography can be found here.

Whitney Scharer also pops up a couple of times. Her chats include her mocking Dorland for using hashtags in a post and calling them a “cry for attention” (that is quite literally what they are for), and making fun of Dorland for being honored at a sport game (fun fact: Dorland’s appearance literally inspired someone to donate a kidney).

Scharer’s bibliography can be found here (it looks like she has written only one book so far).

Christopher Castellani wrote a truly asshole-ish email about what he wanted to say to Dawn. I will not quote the email because it is genuinely disgusting - at one point he states he wants to taunt Dorland because she might have a hard time getting out of bed. I genuinely don’t understand what Dorland did to inspire this level of hatred. He also insults postal workers in this email, somehow making it worse. He also appears to be involved in the mishandling of Dorland’s HR complaint (here is my post explaining that).

Castellani’s bibliography can be found here.

#bad art friend #kidney story #badartfriend #some people should go fuck themselves #dawn dorland #sonya larson

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bribumblebee · 2 years

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I was tagged by @interstellarbeams and @nixnbob Thank you both!

Favorite Color: Blue! But I’ve been loving greens and pinks lately

Currently Reading: I’m in between books, but I just finished The Age of Light by Whitney Scharer

Last Song: Probably I Ain’t Worried by One Republic. I’ve been obsessed with this song

Last Series: I am rewatching The Good Place!

Last Movie: Top Gun: Maverick (shocker)

Sweet/Spicy/Savory: Sweet all the way. Absolutely. I cannot handle spice and sweets are my life

Currently Working On: Nothing! I’m not a writer

I tag: @jjskiaras @polikszena @coyotesamachado @blurrwar

#me #answered asks

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sastrugie · 4 years

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my christmas break starts this friday as well! what’s up with your coworker? have her test results come back? is she doing okay?

alright, so my fav topics include:

- the russian revolution, as already stated :D

- the cold war (mostly from the east european point of view)

- the tudors

- victorian era england

i also really love peaky blinders (the show) and i occasionally enjoy reading about how different gangs operated back in those days but i don’t know much lmao

also, monarchy is just such a terrible system but i completely get your interest in the people! for example, i also adore reading and learning about the tudors and the romanovs but only as a part of history and not because i’m such a big fan of the monarchy? lmao if that makes sense.

and like, i lowkey get why the bolsheviks thought they needed to assassinate the whole family but it’s also really sketchy, dude ://

i think i like britain’s history just because it’s so rich and influential, but like we simply can’t ignore the fucked up shit they’ve done through the centuries. so again, i enjoy it but mostly because i love judging them for their actions lmao

and to answer your question, i don’t really know if i have many historical favs? i feel like i enjoy way too many problematic people lmao. nevertheless, the ones i’m most interested in atm are: lenin (shockers), anne boleyn, anne bonny, malcolm x - this list shifts constantly depending on my mood though.

oh shush you, i’m sure your style is bombing based on everything i just read :)

lmao i actually do that sometimes, but mostly in my mother tongue! but i also just love shakespearean insults in english, those are impeccable

and merci beaucoup! good luck with russian; maybe you’ll be able teach me a few phrases in the future :D

ooh what are you studying atm? if you don’t mind sharing, that is.

and me, i’d like to become a psychologist some day, so that’s pretty far from history as well haha but i never want the enthusiasm to die ever and i’m really loving how the two of us can just scream to each other about history in every single ask/answer :D

thank you so much for these beautiful recommendations, i’ll definitely check them out!!

here are some of mine:

books:

- maria stuart by stefan zweig (german author, so it shouldn’t be too hard for you to find it!!)

- red crosses by sasha filipenko (fiction about the stalinist regime)

- the age of light by whitney scharer (historical fiction again lmao; tells the story of photographers lee miller and man ray’s romance in the 30s with little snippets into wwii through lee’s pov; the writing was stunning)

- sapiens by yuval noah harari (basically the history of mankind; so informative and enjoyable, i adored it)

- the real peaky blinders by carl chinn (what the title says, really; the actual gangs of birmingham and their not so shiny careers)

these are the best ones i read in 2020 but i’ll let you know if i remember any of my other reads!!

i also haven’t read any actual books about the 1917 revolution because i haven’t really had the chance to go to the library yet and i’ve been busy doing my research on the internet haha (it’s a fairly new hyperfixation of mine, to be frank). however, i’ll hit you up if i find anything worthwhile <3

documentaries:

- the russian revolution (the title speaks for itself lmao)

- genius of the modern world (3-part docuseries about marx, nietzsche and freud)

- world war ii in colour (lmao just a classic, innit)

- secrets of great british castles

- the last tzars (tho i’m pretty sure you’re quite familiar with this one haha)

- forbidden history

- secrets of the six wives

- anything by lucy worsley, tbh

these are all off the top of my head but again, i’ll let you know if i remember any more!!

oml i apologise for the long message and i hope your week is going well :D

dont apologize for long messages! <3 im always happy to talk to you

sadly her test was positive UGH which means i have to get myself tested too (today) and if the worst case happens: i´ll have to spend christmas alone in my student flat bc then i obviously cant go home to my family (my grandparents live there..) so yeah, today 14:20 o clock... i have the test :( cross your fingers for me pls huhuhu

thats cool that we have the russian revolution and vicxtorian era as common interest ^^ i read a book recently its called “the ordeal” and its a triology written by alexej tolstoi during the times of the revolution. its a story about two sister and their love interests during the war times and its really good!!!

oh i barely know anything about the tudors! pls hmu

ah yes.. the cold war... i have to admit im rather interested in the music and sociology of the cold war times but the political stuff is super interesting too! esp as you said from an east european view, so we can talk about that too!

yep. monarchy sucks! i understanbd from like a logical point of view why they shot them all, but the human side of me thinks its just cruel.. i mean yeah tsar nicholas wasnt a good politician but he wasnt a bad person either. but yeah, a difficult topic.. tbh he´s the only romanov im really interested in (i really dislike his wife alexandra tho lmao) hbu?

leninnn :D i kinda excpected that! i havent really read much about him but he seems to be an interesting person! and who is anne boyd? malcom X yes! im really interested into the civil rights movement as well. I really like martin luther king jr.

englands history really fascinates me, and i honestly cant tell you why... but it is what is is hahhaa! nand duuudeeee omg they fucked so many shit up.. the british are a funny nation. but honestly none is unproblematic and every nation screwed up big time once:D judging is really important when youre intereste din history! like im interested in king george and queen mary but not solely for political reasons, more actually for their personal lives and victorian times and how they were as a couple, but i know... they did bad stuff too!

omg teach me some shakespearean insults pls! i only know a few victorian ones! and a bit of sixties slang :D

im gonna reblog this and add some russian phrases bc my russian keyboard in on my phone :) but i use duolingo so the sentences are ... really weird lmao

im studying physical geography in Erlangen right now and am in my 7th semester.) im actually writing my bachelor thesis rn UGHHHHHHH

ohhhhh psychology is cool!! im really intersted in it, sadly i cant ever be one bc i suffer from poor mental health too much myself, in fact i have an appointment my therapist in a few minutes haha BUT i think youre super trustworthy and nice and easy to talk to so these are really good qualities for a therapist <3<3<3<3

AHHHHHHHHHHH THANKS!!

i already read sapiens! its so good! and i know maria stuart by schiller haha but oml i love stefan zweig so imma add it on my list

ok and i will watch ALL of these (except the last tsars bc yeah i already saw it! and liked it ... kinda .. i didnt like the actor they chose for nicky, he didnt remind me of him at all)

i have alot of historical fiction books to recomment too:

if you like ww2 “a time to live and a time to die”

ww1: “all quiet on the western front”

russian revolution and war time “the ordeal”

“intrige” by robert harris is also good (france 1896)

oh and documentary wise:

they shall not grow old is a coloured ww1 docu!

thank you so much for everything again i love talking to you :) have a nice day <3 (sorry for typos i was in a hurry)

#r #anon #secret santa #nice ppl

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batomarbo · 4 years

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Why We Hunger for Novels About Food

While putting imaginary meals on the page, I have thought a great deal about the central role that food plays in our lives. Food is love. Food is conviviality. Food is politics. Food is religion. Food is history. Food is consolation. Food is fuel. Food identifies us and who we are. It can even help us make sense of our world. We live in a culture where food porn is one of the hottest hashtags and seeking out the best new ramen or avocado toast trend is a more popular hobby than collecting stamps. And the “culinary enthusiasts” among us can’t get our fill of books about food.

But what about authors of food fiction? What compels them to write about what—and how—we eat?

Louise Miller, author of The Late Bloomer’s Club “Food is the great equalizer—everyone eats—and what we eat and how we eat it can be so emotional and can carry deep meaning. Food can also be so revealing. I remember an old New Yorker cartoon that pictured a mother and her young daughter sitting in a restaurant looking at a menu. The mother responds to her daughter’s question: ‘Chocolate pudding? I think you would like it. It’s a lot like chocolate mousse.’ That one line tells us so much!”

Phillip Kazan, author of Appetite “Food for me is very tied up with memories of my Greek grandmother, whose tiny kitchen in London was a treasure-house of tastes and smells in the grey, flavorless world of ‘60s and ‘70s England, where olive oil was something you had to buy from a pharmacist as a cure for earache. Presumably the pharmacist in our village thought our family had appalling ear problems, because my mother bought hundreds of his tiny bottles of oil for her cooking. I remember cookbooks as this wonderful escape route to exotic, warm, generous places: Greece, from where relatives would visit with huge tins of olives and bags of sugared almonds; or India, where my father was born. Writing, in a way, is an extension of my cooking, and vice versa. Cooking taught me how to create, that I needed to create.”

Randy Susan Myer, author of Waisted “I grew up in a family where food was the comforting evil (or the evil comfort). My mother—for whom dress size was the holy grail—watched every bite I took. When in a restaurant, first she’d not order what she wanted and then she’d steal bites from my plate. If I protested, she’d say, ‘If you love me, you’ll share your food.’ Often, we barely had food in the house and meals were haphazard at best. My sister snacked on raw Kraft Macaroni & Cheese. I ate uncooked matzo meal. We lived on cold cereal—which to this day is my top comfort food. My mother hid cookies and cake inside our giant pressure cooker and then put the pot on the very top of our already high cabinets. My sister and I were under ten, but a pressure cooker was no match for us. I’m surprised we didn’t become mountain climbers for how often we scampered up the peaks leading to buried sweets.”

Ramin Ganeshram, author of The General’s Cook “I’m from an immigrant family. My parents were from two countries that, at the time, had little representation here in the U.S.—even in New York City where I was born and raised. My dad was from Trinidad and Tobago and my mother was from Iran. I was also brought up in a time where people still really tried to assimilate so they downplayed their native culture with their kids. The one thing that remained a solid connection was the food we ate. I realized from a young age that I could get my parents to talk about their homes when we were eating the foods they had prepared from their respective cultures. My father, particularly, was a born storyteller and if you could talk with him while he was cooking you would get the best stories.”

Whitney Scharer, author of The Age of Light “The main character in my novel is based on Lee Miller, a woman who reinvented herself multiple times in her life—first as a model, then a photographer, and finally as a gourmet chef who wrote for Vogue and other women’s magazines of the day. In all my research about her, there was never any mention of her love of food prior to her becoming a chef. This makes no sense to me. Of course, she must have loved food—and she moved to Paris in 1929, where she would have enjoyed meals quite different—and presumably more delicious—than what she ate growing up in Poughkeepsie. I wanted her love of food to be palpable throughout the novel, both to foreshadow her shift to cooking later in life, but also because I think enjoying food—enjoying the pleasures of the body—is integral to who she is as a character. I see Lee Miller as a woman of voracious appetites: she was hugely ambitious and adventurous, and very sexual. Food seemed like another way to understand her overall hungers.”

Charlie Holmberg, author of Magic Bitter, Magic Sweet “In writing, I think food is an excellent method of transportation. If I were to detail a table setting with food you’ve never heard of, but I describe a flaky crust, the way a gelatin gives underneath a knife, and the smell of burnt sugar, you are there. You smell and taste and see that meal. It gives a story, ancient magical tales included, a sense of realness.”

David Baker, author of Vintage “A dish is a story . . . it’s the story of the culture that created it, the person who made it, the story of the ingredients and where they’re from, the tale of the meal’s creation—successful or otherwise—and then of sharing it. The whole process is a form of narrative. The same goes for wine . . . it’s the story of millions of years of geology that created the region where the fines grow. It’s the story of the culture of the region and then a time capsule of what happened weather-wise the year in which the grapes ripened, and finally what the winemaker did during that year. There are so many layers of narrative in food and wine that it’s a rich field for exploration in writing.”

Amy Reichert, author of The Coincidence of Coconut Cake “I didn’t realize I was a food writer until after people responded to my novels, and I’ve embraced it. One of my favorite parts of writing has become sharing my regional cuisine with them—writing about Wisconsin culinary delights like a Door County fish boil or our classic brandy old-fashioneds. It’s one of the ways I share my love of Wisconsin.”

Marjan Kamali, author of The Stationery Shop “It happened quite organically—pardon the pun. But it’s impossible for me to write about Iran and Iranians without including a lot of food because the preparation of huge meals is an integral part of the culture, and sharing those meals at feast-like parties is common across the classes. Food takes on added significance for my characters because they are displaced from their original home. They are Iranians living in America. There is a longing for the familiar foods they know and a constant search for ingredients they love. Cooking Persian meals links my characters to their past and heritage. Sharing Persian food with Americans is a way for them to create and deepen new relationships.”

Jenna Blum, author of The Lost Family “While I was writing The Lost Family, I cooked a lot—to meditate on the day’s writing as well as to kitchen-test all the recipes I then featured on the book’s menu. Some of my favorite lines for the book would bubble up that way, as if from a Magic 8-Ball, and one of them was ‘vegetables have no language.’ I revised this slightly for the novel, but it means that food is universal. The produce and spices will vary from country to country and cuisine to cuisine, but if you love food, you have a vast family out there. We can all communicate about how our beloved dishes are different—and how they are the same.”

I myself have been smitten with books about food since a friend of mine recommended that I read M.F.K. Fisher decades ago. I devoured The Art of Eating and everything else she had written. In her books I found both the exotic and the comfortable. I had never been to France or eaten escargot, but I reveled in her descriptions of food, in her use of simple phrases to evoke such specific sensations: “The air tastes like mead in our throats,” she writes in The Art of Eating. I hope to stir the same feelings and create the same sensory pleasures in others with my novels about famous culinary figures in Italian history.

Now this is a book I can really sink my teeth into, I thought as I once read the opening paragraph of The Flounder by Nobel prizewinner Gunter Grass.

Ilsebill put on more salt. Before the impregnation there was shoulder of mutton with string beans and pears, the season being early October. Still at table, still with her mouth full, she asked, “Should we go to bed right away, or do you first want to tell me how when where our story began?”

The rest of the novel, which tells the story of an immortal fish who meets an immortal man who falls in love with cooks over and over through the centuries, is just as delicious and delightful in its descriptions of food. To this day, it’s one of my favorite novels.

In reading The Flounder and other sumptuous works of culinary fiction, I’m reminded of something dramatist George Bernard Shaw once said: “There is no love sincerer than the love of food.” It’s a statement to which I think we could all gladly raise a glass.

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