janepriceestrada’s reading 2012

So I’ve fallen off the wagon a bit with both reading and logging my reading. I have a bunch of outstanding reviews and hopelessly behind on threads. I thought maybe I could get caught up with all of that and then start back up my log for this year, but I think (and was advised, thanks Lois) that it’s best just to jump back in and see where it takes me.

Part of what has tripped me up so much is I’ve been studying for some professional exams which will continue for the foreseeable future so I may be posting sporadically and/or not having any interesting reading to report.

My 2011 Reading
My 2010 reading
My 2009 reading

Currently Reading:
Porius by John Cowper Powys
The Geometry of Pasta by Caz Hildebrand and Jacob Kenedy
The Awakening by Kate Chopin
Beer, Food, and Flavor by Schuyler Schultz


Dipping Into:
The City in History by Lewis Mumford
The Norton Book of Science Fiction
Selected Writings by Ruben Dario
Mastering the Art of French Cooking by Julia Child
Larousse Gastronomique: The World's Greatest Culinary Encyclopedia by Joël Robuchon
The New York City Audubon Society Guide to Finding Birds in the Metropolitan Area by Marcia T. Fowle
National Green Building Standard and National Green Building Standard Commentary
McSweeney's Issue 37
The Southern Review- Autumn 2011 Vol. 47, #4


Books Completed:

23. Meat Eater by Steven Rinella *
22. Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather *
21. "Light of My Life": Love, Time, and Memory in Nabokov's Lolita *
20. Yes, Chef by Marcus Samuelsson *
19. The Glass Room by Simon Mawer *
18. Shadowheart by Tad Williams *
17. O Pioneers! by Willa Cather *
16. The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov *
15. Music: A Very Short Introduction by Nicholas Cook *
14. The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson *
13. Firebirds Rising edited by Sharyn November
12. Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino
11. The Shape of Desire by Sharon Shinn
10. The Southern Review- Winter 2011 Vol. 47, #1
9. Angels of Darkness by Nalini Singh, Ilona Andrews, Sharon Shinn, and Meljean Brook
8. Wallpaper City Guide: Chicago
7. The Revisionists by Thomas Mullen
6. Interior Design Reference Manual: A Guide to the NCIDQ Exam by David Kent Ballast
5. Unpacking My Library: Architects and Their Books by Jo Steffens
4. Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann
3. Touch: A Novel by Alexi Zentner
2. The Other Lands by David Anthony Durham
1. The Darkness That Comes Before by R. Scott Bakker


Short Stories / Novellas

Story in Harlem Slang by Zora Neale Hurston
As You've Planned It by Line-Maria Lang
Welcome, Lost Dogs by Vanessa Blakeslee
Like (Love!) in Mississippi by Elizabeth Kaiser
The Sickness, the Dinosaurs, Baby Dan, and the Swollen Hand by Mike Powell
Groundscratchers by Gabriel Welsch
Angel’s Wolf by Nalini Singh
The Best Party Ever: But What’s Wrong with Mama? by Cary Holladay
Last Summer by John Brandon
Action Figure by Adam Prince
Alphas: Origins by Ilona Andrews
We Are Taking Only What We Need by Stephanie Powell Watts
Nocturne by Sharon Shinn
Ascension by Meljean Brook
Section 8 by Jaquira Diaz
After the Winter by Kate Chopin
Huntress by Tamora Pierce
The Doll by Charles W. Chesnutt
Unwrapping by Nina Kiriki Hoffman
The Real Thing by Alison Goodman
Little (Grrl) Lost by Charles de Lint
I’ll Give You My Word by Diana Wynne Jones


Articles of Interest:

The Moviegoer, Fifty Years Later by Robert Lacy; The Southern Review- Winter 2011 Vol. 47, #1
Paintings by Ed Smith; The Southern Review- Winter 2011 Vol. 47, #1
Rant with Collards by John T. Edge; Oxford American, No. 73
The Rapture of the Deep by Bronwen Dickey; Oxford American, No. 73
Ridin’ Dirty Face by Wes Enzinna and Mike Brodie’s photographs; Oxford American, No. 73
Ode to An Outlandish Gumbo by Sara Roahen; Oxford American, No. 73
Ode to the Blood Bank Cats by Megan Mayhew Bergman; Oxford American, No. 73
The Afterlife of Drawings; Architectural Record, April 2012
Record Houses 2012; Architectural Record, April 2012
Mirror House; Architectural Record, April 2012
The New Frontier in Education; Architectural Record, March 2012
Does “Doing Good” Pay the Bills?; Architectural Record, March 2012
Activist Exhibitions Overcome Display Difficulties; Architectural Record, March 2012
Building for Social Change; Architectural Record, March 2012
Reasons to Love New York 2011; New York Magazine, December 19-26, 2011
Just Kids; New York Magazine, October 17, 2011
Design: City As Lab; New York Magazine, October 17, 2011
Smoking Rules; Columbia Magazine, Winter 2011-2012
The Commuting Type; Columbia Magazine, Winter 2011-2012
The Farting Bedpost; The Believer, July/August 2011
Mashup City; The Believer, July/August 2011
Brian Eno in Conversation with David Mitchell; The Believer, July/August 2011
Martha Wainwright; The Believer, July/August 2011
Julianna Barwick; The Believer, July/August 2011
Memento Mori; The Believer, May 2011
The Immortal Horizon; The Believer, May 2011
Terms of Art: New Language from Contemporary Architecture; The Believer, May 2011
Red Eden; The Believer, May 2011
Interview with Victor LaValle; The Believer, May 2011
New Crop City; Columbia Magazine, Fall 2011
The Looming Towers; Columbia Magazine, Fall 2011
Big Scary Ugly Dirty Rats; New York Magazine, November 7, 2011
The Art of the Feast; New York Magazine, November 14, 2011
Geotagging the Tourists; New York Magazine, December 5, 2011
A Monster Among the ‘Frum’; New York Magazine, December 12, 2011
The Platt 101; New York Magazine, January 2-9, 2012
What does a Conductor Do?; New York Magazine, January 2-9, 2012
Litmus Taste Test; New York Magazine, October 10, 2011
In Search Of Lost Time; New York Magazine, October 10, 2011
American Mustache Institute ranking of America’s Most Mustache-Friendly Cities; New York Magazine, October 10, 2011
The Kids Are Actually Sort of Alright; New York Magazine, October 24, 2011
The Romney Economy; New York Magazine, October 31, 2011
The Low Line; New York Magazine, September 26, 2011
Six Books Per Square Foot; New York Magazine, September 26, 2011
The Devil on the Door; New York Magazine, September 26, 2011
The Encyclopedia of 9/11; New York Magazine, September 5-12, 2011
The Last Closet; New York Magazine, September 19, 2011
Global Inflation; New York Magazine, September 19, 2011
Photos of the Artists as Young Men; New York Magazine, September 19, 2011
Bycatch 22; New York Magazine, July 18-25, 2011
The Endangered Ordinary; New York Magazine, August 1, 2011
Don’t Step on My Red-Soled Shoes; New York Magazine, August 22, 2011
Swamp Dreams; New York Magazine, August 29, 2011
The Placenta Cookbook; New York Magazine, August 29, 2011
Piercing a Troubled Past; Architectural Record, January 2012
Medina Haram Piazza; Architectural Record, January 2012
Steilneset Memorial to the Victims of the Witch Trials; Architectural Record, August 2011
New York City: Rebuilds; Architectural Record, September 2011
The Graduates Gripe; Architectural Record, November 2011
Occupied Spaces; Architectural Record, December 2011
Seems Like Old Times; Architectural Record, July 2011
Knut Hamsun Center; Architectural Record, July 2011
Archaeology Museum of Álava; Architectural Record, July 2011
Dreaming American; Columbia Magazine, Spring 2012
To Capture a King: A Short Story; Columbia Magazine, Spring 2012
Mess, mess, mess…art; Columbia Magazine, Spring 2012
How low can we go?; Columbia Magazine, Spring 2012
”I Want to be Like Jesus”; New York Magazine, May 14, 2012
What Do You Subscribe To?; New York Magazine, May 21, 2012
A Life Worth Ending; New York Magazine, May 28, 2012
Go Ahead, Have Another; New York Magazine, May 28, 2012
Why I Drive; New York Magazine, June 4, 2012
49 Minutes with Danny Bowien; New York Magazine, June 11, 2012
It’s Going to Be Huge; New York Magazine, June 11, 2012
New York Plans a Bike Lane Solution to Crosstown Traffic; New York Magazine, June 11, 2012
Born on the Bayou; New York Magazine, June 25, 2012
Roll Deep; New York Magazine, June 25, 2012
Here Piggy Piggy Piggy; New York Magazine, June 25, 2012
Platt Judges New York’s First-Ever Ultimate Picnic Challenge; New York Magazine, June 25, 2012
Eat Cheap 2012; New York Magazine, July 16, 2012
Why Women Still Can’t Have It All; The Atlantic
Brrrrrrrr!; New York Magazine, July 9, 2012
The Money-Empathy Gap; New York Magazine, July 9, 2012
A House on an Island; New York Magazine, July 9, 2012
Justin Davidson on the Redesigned Governors Island; New York Magazine, July 9, 2012
Movie Review: Weighting the Ambitious Beasts of the Southern Wild; New York Magazine, July 9, 2012
Thr Urbanist’s Guide to Seattle; New York Magazine, July 30, 2012
First Look at Murray’s Cheese Bar; New York Magazine, July 30, 2012
The Biggest Picture; New York Magazine, July 30, 2012
Designing Women; Architectural Record, May 2012
A Monumental Debate; Architectural Record, May 2012
Starbucks Global Store Development; Architectural Record, May 2012
Probing the Depths; Architectural Record, May 2012
Capital Improvement; Architectural Record, May 2012
Forest Chapel; Architectural Record, May 2012
Material man; Architectural Record, June 2012
Dune House; Suffolk, England; Architectural Record, June 2012
London Now!; Architectural Record, June 2012
Cabins in the Sky; Architectural Record, June 2012
Battered by the Recession, Architects Pursue New Careers; Architectural Record, July 2012
Au Naturel; Architectural Record, July 2012
Medieval Armor for Modern Art; Architectural Record, July 2012
Light Craft; Architectural Record, July 2012
Site Specific; Architectural Record, July 2012
Cloud City; Architectural Record, July 2012
The Gas Menagerie; Columbia Magazine, Summer 2012
Thought for Food; Columbia Magazine, Summer 2012
The dot Matrix; Columbia Magazine, Summer 2012
Wheel in the Sky; Columbia Magazine, Summer 2012
It’s Easy if You Try; Columbia Magazine, Summer 2012
The World of Online Interiors; Architectural Record, October 2011
House of the Month; Architectural Record, October 2011
Lotte Magic Garden; Architectural Record, October 2011
Fast Food Culture; Architectural Record, October 2011
House of the Month; Architectural Record, August 2012
National September 11 Memorial; Architectural Record, August 2012
Broken Light; Architectural Record, August 2012
Snapshot: Serpentine Gallery Pavilion; Architectural Record, August 2012
Walk This Way; Dwell, November 2011
Top Shelf; Dwell, November 2011
All We Need; Dwell, November 2011
Tunnel Vision; Dwell, November 2011
From Torrent to Current; Dwell, November 2011
An Introduction to Renting; Dwell, November 2011
He & He & He; New York Magazine, August 6-13, 2012
Making History; New York Magazine, August 6-13, 2012
See Mitt Read; New York Magazine, August 20, 2012
Dead Books Club; New York Magazine, August 20, 2012
Is Football Wrong?; New York Magazine, August 20, 2012
Lulu & Po; New York Magazine, August 20, 2012
Exchange Alley; New York Magazine, August 20, 2012
Why Your Pint Is Being Downsized; New York Magazine, August 20, 2012
Game Time; New York Magazine, August 27 – September 3, 2012
David Byrne and St. Vincent Break the Brass Ceiling; New York Magazine, August 27 – September 3, 2012
Junot Diaz's Counterlife; New York Magazine, August 27 – September 3, 2012
Richard Artschwager Does More with Less; New York Magazine, August 27 – September 3, 2012
The Carpenters' Greatest Hits; New York Magazine, August 27 – September 3, 2012
The Death Match; New York Magazine, September 10, 2012
1/100th of an Acre of Heaven; New York Magazine, September 10, 2012
Hysterical Formalism; New York Magazine, September 10, 2012
Dumpster Hive; New York Magazine, September 10, 2012
The Land That Time and Money Forgot; New York Magazine, September 17, 2012
Brooklyn is Eating Manhattan's Lunch; New York Magazine, September 17, 2012
The South is Rising; New York Magazine, September 17, 2012
Cheating Upwards; New York Magazine, September 24, 2012
Hope in Brokeland; New York Magazine, September 24, 2012
All You Can Eat; New York Magazine, September 24, 2012
Haunts; New York Magazine, October 1, 2012
The Golden Touch; New York Magazine, October 1, 2012
The Art of Lunch; New York Magazine, October 1, 2012
Rusted in Place; New York Magazine, October 1, 2012
What a New Adult Wants; New York Magazine, October 8, 2012
Extreme Oatmeal; New York Magazine, October 8, 2012
Clinging to the Wreckage; New York Magazine, October 8, 2012
The Geek in the Gown; New York Magazine, October 15, 2012
Global Urban Design 2012; New York Magazine, October 15, 2012
Roberta's for Gourmands; New York Magazine, October 15, 2012
Triaesthete; New York Magazine, October 15, 2012
Brownstone in a Box; New York Magazine, October 15, 2012
P.S. I Hate You; New York Magazine, October 15, 2012
The Everything Guide to Urban Home Schooling; New York Magazine, October 22, 2012
Darren's Ark; New York Magazine, October 22, 2012

* Still needs review.

Welcome back, Jane!

Yes welcome back Jane and how courageous of you to be reading Porius

Nice to see you back Jane.

Good to see you here. I agree that it's better to just have a fresh start.

I'll be interested to read what you think of The Revisionists.

Hey Jane, delightful to see you again.

Good to see you back, Jane!

Thanks ya'll! Thanks for the welcome back. I'm trying to catch up with everyone's threads, but it's quite daunting.

4 - I started Porius with Le Salon, but was a little late to the game and feel drastically behind. I didn't finish before one of my tests and so had to set it aside for a while but intend to finish it shortly.

6 - From your review it sounds like you liked it. I'm only two chapters in so not much to go on yet. Im also woefully behind on ER reviews.

I think I'll post some short impressions from things I read last year and never got around to talking about. Most of my reviews for some time will probably be short, but I will continue to try to keep up with interesting magazine reading and recipes, etc.

We took a great trip to Yellowstone and Tetons for our anniversary last August and took this along with us.

The Rough Guide to Yellowstone and Grand Teton

Good basic information – what times visitor centers are open, where to find showers/gas/etc – but nothing spectacular. I tend to like the organization of the Rough Guides. The breakdowns of the varying hikes were very helpful for us, for instance. I wouldn’t say that it made me any more knowledgeable about the parks’ features, history, etc.

We picked up these two guidebooks while there.

Wildlife of Grand Teton National Park: Common Mammals, Birds, and Fish by Charles Craighead - One of the official park guides, these volumes were slim, quite lovely little books. I particularly liked having checklists at the back for all the different animals and a section for notes.

Watching Yellowstone And Grand Teton Wildlife: The Best Places to Look From Roads and Trails by Todd Wilkinson was not quite as nice as the Tetons’ guidebook, but did have a good map that pointed out good places for viewing and times of the year/day when different species were most active.

The first in what I hope will be many wonderful things I get out of the fact that my best friend now works for Oxford University Press. This I got for my birthday last year.*

New Atlantis: Musicians Battle for the Survival of New Orleans by John Swenson

Less cohesive a narrative than the title makes it seem, New Atlantis is more a collection of stories about different musicians, organizations, recording studios, festivals, etc., and their activities after Katrina. Totally worth it for a long catalog of great musicians that if you have any interest in Louisiana music, you should check out. The best bits deal with some of the groups that have gotten together for charity and awareness.

In light of the subject matter, I’d like to pump one of the best talents to come out of New Orleans in recent years, John Boutte. My personal favorite being At the Foot of Canal Street. (Ok, maybe we need A Change Is Going to Come too.)

*I’m considering starting to include a little blurb about how I acquired or heard about my books, mostly for my own curiosity about my reading.

Nice to see you are back:-)

Had wondered about you, Jane, and look forward to your posts.

Received through LT Early Reviewers.

Alaska Adventure Guide by Melissa DeVaughn

I have this fantasy that one day my husband and I will be able to recreate this amazing trip to Alaska my parents took where they bought a used florist van, rigged two fold down beds in back, and drove to Alaska (from Louisiana) sleeping on the side of the road, and then camped and fished for two months. That was the primary motivation for requesting this from ER. Everywhere should have a guide like this. In addition to sections devoted to regions, they breakdown chapters by activity. I loved that. I hate having to wade through things in which I have no interest in traditional guidebooks.

Hi Jane - good luck with your studies! Looking forward to hearing about your reading.

With all of the TBR reduction going round this year, I figured I would join in as well. I'm trying to cut out book buying primarily for financial reasons, but after checking, I also have 179 books on my TBR pile in my apartment right now. There are another 120 at my parents’ house. So perhaps I should try to blow through some of these.

The TBR list:

James Agee: Let Us Know Praise Famous Men; A Death in the Family; Shorter Fiction – James Agee
Ines of My Soul – Isabel Allende
Xanth: The Quest for Magic - Piers Anthony
Cowl – Neal Asher
Oryx and Crake – Margaret Atwood
Pride and Prejudice and Northanger Abbey – Jane Austen
Design of Cities – Edmund Bacon
The Warrior Prophet and The Thousandfold Thought – R. Scott Bakker
Deleuze & Guattari for Architects – Andrew Ballantyne
The Atheist’s Mass – Honore de Balzac
Darwin, Marx, Wagner: Critique of a Heritage – Jacques Barzun
Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude: A Casebook – Gene H. Bell-Villada
The Beggar’s Cup – Eric Blau
Long Time Leaving: Dispatches from Up South – Roy Blount, Jr.
Bound by Honor: A Mafioso’s Story – Bill Bonanno
The Women – T.C. Boyle
Coming Back Stronger – Drew Brees
The Great Deluge and The Wilderness Warrior – Douglas Brinkley
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall – Anne Bronte
Shirley – Charlotte Bronte
Writings on Wright – H. Allen Brooks
The Master and Margarita – Mikhail Bulgakov
Angels & Insects – A.S. Byatt
The First Man – Albert Camus
In Cold Blood – Truman Capote
New York: Authentic Recipes Celebrating the Foods of the World – Carolynn Carreno
Constantine’s Sword – James Carroll
Etiquette for Renaissance Gentlemen – Baldesar Castiglione
O Pioneers!, Death Comes for the Archbishop, and Sapphira and the Slave Girl – Willa Cather
The Jealous Exremaduran – Cervantes
The Awakening and Selected Stories – Kate Chopin
Nature Photography – Nathaniel Coalson
Elizabeth Costello – J.M. Coetzee
The House the Rockefellers Built – Robert F. Dalzell
Book of Peoples of the World – Wade Davis
Field Guide to the Natural World of New York City – Leslie Day
Robinson Crusoe – Daniel Defoe
David Copperfield – Charles Dickens
Morningside Heights – Andrew S. Dolkart
Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoevsky
The First House: Myth, Paradigm, and the Task of Architecture – R.D. Dripps
Place/Culture/Representation – James S. Duncan
Justine – Lawrence Durrell
Bright-Sided – Barbara Ehrenreich
The Sacred and The Profance – Mircea Eliade
King’s Dragon – Kate Elliott
Passion on the Vine – Sergio Esposito
Middlesex – Jeffrey Eugenides
Brunelleschi’s Cupola – Giovanni Fanelli
The Reivers and Requiem for a Nun – William Faulkner
Josef Sudek – Anna Farova
The Rise of the Creative Class – Richard Florida
The Pillars of the Earth – Ken Follett
The Classical World – Robin Lane Fox
Sea of Poppies – Amitav Ghosh
Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons
Radical Women in Latin America – Victoria Gonzalez
Team of Rivals - Doris Kearns Goodwin
A Reliable Wife – Robert Goolrick
An Inconvenient Truth – Al Gore
The Magicians – Lev Grossman
“Light of My Life”: Love, Time and Memory in Nabokov’s Lolita – James D. Hardy
Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy
The End of Faith – Sam Harris
The House of the Seven Gables and The Scarlet Letter – Nathaniel Hawthorne
Stranger in a Strange Land – Robert A. Heinlein
For Whom the Bell Tolls – Ernest Hemingway
Siddhartha – Hermann Hesse
In the Nature of Materials – Henry Russell Hitchcock
Loving Frank – Nancy Horan
Breach of Faith – Jed Horne
Whiskey: The Definitive World Guide by Michael Jackson
The Death and Life of Great American Cities – Jane Jacobs
An American Procession – Alfred Kazin
Simplexity – Jeffrey Kluger
Into the Wild – Jon Krakauer
The Devil in the White City – Erik Larson
The Phantom of the Opera – Gaston Leroux
The Vatican and Saint Peter’s Basilica of Rome – Letarouilly
Love in the Time of Cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
City, Pyramid, Castle, Cathedral, and Mill – David Macaulay
Life of Pi – Yann Martel
The Glass Room – Simon Mawer
Carson McCullers: Complete Novels – Carson McCullers
Atonement – Ian McEwan
Clarence John Laughlin – A.J. Meek
Moby Dick – Herman Melville
The Bourgeois Gentleman – Moliere
Sula – Toni Morrison
The Genius in the Design – Jake Morrissey
Kafka on the Shore – Haruki Murakami
The Tale of Genji – Shikibu Murasaki
Pale Fire – Vladimir Nabokov
Suite Francaise – Irene Nemirovsky
The Time Traveler’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger
Tomcat in Love – Tim O’Brien
Flannery O’Conner: Collected Works – Flannery O’Conner
Dreams from My Father – Barack Obama
The English Patient – Michael Ondaatje
Parker’s Wine Bargains – Robert M. Parker
Gods Behaving Badly – Marie Phillips
Gorgias – Plato
Julie and Julia – Julie Powell
Accordion Crimes – Annie E. Proulx
The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged – Ayn Rand
Irigaray for Architects – Peg Rawes
Stiff – Mary Roach
Swamplandia! – Karen Russell
The Stone Raft and All the Names – Jose Saramago
The Reader – Bernhard Schlink
Fast Food Nation – Eric Schlosser
Great Monasteries of Europe – Bernhard Schutz
Snow Flower and the Secret Fan – Lisa See
The Thirteenth Tale – Diane Setterfield
Complete Works of William Shakespeare – William Shakespeare
Heidegger for Architects – Adam Sharr
Beyond Public Architecture – Hamid Shirvani
The Jungle – Upton Sinclair
American Wife – Curtis Sittenfeld
White Teeth – Zadie Smith
The Faerie Queene – Edmund Spenser
Alfred Stieglitz: New York – Alfred Stieglitz
The Idea of Louis Sullivan – John Szarkowski
Nero and the Burning of Rome – Cornelius Tacitus
Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray
Eats, Shoots & Leaves – Lynne Truss
Angelology – Danielle Trussoni
Learning from Las Vegas and Complexity and Contradiction – Robert Venturi
Inventing a Nation – Gore Vidal
The Ten Books on Architecture – Vitruvius
Candide – Voltaire
Forgotten New York – Kevin Walsh
Fingersmith – Sarah Waters
The Modern Mind – Peter Watson
Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood – Rebecca Wells
Race Matters – Cornel West
Stories in Stone – David B. Williams
Augustus – John A. Williams
The Dragonbone Chair, Stone of Farewell, and To Green Angel Tower – Tad Williams
Building the Empire State – Carol Willis
The Map That Changed the World – Simon Winchester
The Moral Animal – Robert Wright
The Story of Edgar Sawtelle – David Wroblewski
A People’s History of the United States – Howard Zinn
Anthology of Japanese Literature
The Ends of the Earth: An Anthology of the Finest Writing on the Arctic and the Antarctic
The Epic of Gilgamesh
Firebirds Rising
INDEX Architecture
The Intellectual Devotional
Journals of Lewis and Clark
Louisiana Sojourns
McSweeny’s #37, 38, 39
My Columbia
The Southern Review Volumes 47.1, 47.2, 47.3, 48.1
Writing New York

Books acquired in 2012:

Straphanger by Taras Grescoe (LTER)
Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino (LT recommendation)
The Geometry of Pasta by Caz Hildebrand (gift for my husband)
Wallpaper City Guide: Chicago (for a trip)
The Shape of Desire by Sharon Shinn
Shadowheart by Tad Williams
Angels of Darkness
The Southern Review- Spring 2012 Vol. 48, #2
Yes, Chef by Marcus Samuelsson (LTER)
Music: A Very Short Introduction by Nicholas Cook (gift)
Meat Eater by Steven Rinella (LTER)

I'm with you, Jane. I've got enough unread books in my house to keep me busy for a couple of years, at least. So I too have not bought anything new yet this year. My New Year's Resolution number four was to try not to buy any books during the first three months. So far so good, but I am keeping a list of the daily temptations emanating from here in Club Read and elsewhere!

Jane, that is a tremendous amount of reading that you have got in front of you. You might never need to buy another book.........but I bet you do.

Wow, that is quite a list, Jane. Some books I'm very fond of (The Master and Margarita, Cold Comfort Farm, Gods Behaving Badly, among them), some I didn't like (for example, A Reliable Wife, The Story of Edgar Sawtelle), many that have intrigued me, and many I haven't heard of.

I wouldn't dare to post my "hope to read soon" list, which is only part of the books I haven't read that are on my shelves, as it is already 371 books long . . . and growing!

By the way, I too loved Let the Great World Spin.

Yes, there are several on that list that I have no desire to touch any time soon, but I like having it there for my reference. We'll see if it actually helps me get through them though. :)

Received as a birthday gift from my sister (who always gets me great books, so nice to be in a family of readers).

Unpacking My Library: Architects and Their Books edited by Jo Steffens
Includes the essay Unpacking My Library by Walter Benjamin

“Architecture will no longer be the social, the collective, the dominant art. The great poem, the great building, the great work of mankind will no longer be built, it will be printed.” - Victor Hugo

Yeah, there was pretty much no way I wasn’t going to love this book. First, a couple of quotes from the excellent Walter Benjamin essay that begins the book and everyone here should go track down.

“How many cities have revealed themselves to me in the marches I undertook in the pursuit of books!”

“On the other hand, one of the finest memories of a collector is the moment when he rescued a book to which he might never have given a thought, much less a wishful look, because he found it lonely and abandoned on the market place and bought it to give it its freedom…To a book collector, you see, the true freedom of all books is somewhere on his shelves.”

This small book covers the libraries of 10 architects, detailing the size and construction of their bookshelves, size and location of their libraries, up close photos of 8 shelves, and each architects top 10 books.

Architects represented:

Stan Allen
Henry N. Cobb
Liz Diller and Ric Scofidio
Peter Eisenman
Michael Graves
Steven Holl
Toshiko Mori
Michael Sorkin
Bernard Tschumi
Tod Williams and Billie Tsien

Top 10 lists, book listed more than once:

Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture by Robert Venturi (5)
Gravity’s Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon (3)
Vers une architecture (Towards and Architecture) by Le Corbusier (2)
I quattro libri dell’architecttura (The Four Books of Architecture) by Andrea Palladio (2)
Finnegans Wake by James Joyce (2)
Light in August by William Faulkner (2)
Moby-Dick by Herman Melville (2)

Top 10 lists, author listed more than once:

Systems of Survival: A Dialogue on the Moral Foundations of Commerce and Politics and The Death and Life of Great American Cities by Jane Jacobs
Vers une architecture (Towards and Architecture), Une petite maison, L’atelier de la recherché patiente (Creation Is a Patient Search)*, and Oeuvre complète: Volume 1, 1910-1929 (Complete Works) by Le Corbusier
Das Kunstwerk im Zeitalter seiner technischen Reproduzierbarkeit (The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction) and Illuminationen (Illuminations) by Walter Benjamin
Les motes et les choses: Une archéologie des sciences humaines (The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences) and Surveiller et punir: Naissance de la prison (Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison) by Michel Foucault
Diderot Encyclopedia: The Complete Illustrations, 1762-1777 and A Diderot Pictorial Encyclopedia of Trades and Industry by Denis Diderot
Soundings and Victims by John Hejduk

* Has to be one of the best book titles ever.

Fascinating subject Jane. It makes one think what you might find on other Professions bookshelves and libraries.

22 - Indeed. There is another volume Unpacking My Library: Writers and Their Books which I'm sure would entice many here. :)

I have seen and lusted after those books at the bookstore!

What a great idea for books!

Saw a great show last night - Heatless Bastards at Webester Hall. Really rocking, deep voice female singer. Ton of fun. Here's a sample.

Yeah she has a great voice.

Catching up here with some of my periodicals.

Architectural Record
July 2011

Seems Like Old Times - Commentary on postmodern architecture. I find it interesting that architecture seems to be one of the few fields where postmodern theories manifested themselves in such repulsive ways. At the same time, as theorists and writers, these were some of the most important and insightful architects. I’m still unclear why the disconnect is so big.

Knut Hamsun Center - I’m pretty hot and cold on Steven Holl’s work, but this stark black tower museum dedicated to the Norwegian author is stunning.



Archaeology Museum of Álava - Beautiful museum of archaeology in Vitoria, Spain which plays on the idea of things hidden / things uncovered. Also has some of the hottest light wells I’ve ever seen.

 

August 2011

Steilneset Memorial to the Victims of the Witch Trials - Strange memorial in what appears to be a fairly isolated area of Norway, based on the fish drying racks seen throughout the country. Zumpthor, the architect, does really interesting work.





September 2011

This issues was a full NYC issue to commemorate the 10th anniversary of September 11th.

New York City: Rebuilds - Profiles and commentary on the various new buildings at the WTC site. Highlight being Michael Sorkin’s commentary on the site Smoke and Mirrors.

The rest of the issue features other new(ish) architectural developments and trends throughout the city.



November 2011

The Graduates Gripe - Questioning whether architecture school is worth it in the current economic climate. I don’t have an answer to that question, but the crux of the article – that it is a low paying profession and some graduates end up not practicing – is not particularly convincing either.



December 2011

Occupied Spaces - Interesting feature on the appropriation of public (sort of in some cases) spaces for political platforms.

January 2012

Piercing a Troubled Past - Daniel Libeskind takes on the difficult task of expanding Dresden’s military museum. His work always makes for dramatic and beautiful photographs; however, in the one building of his I’ve been to the angularity hampers the functionality. Although, given the institutions he is usually working for, perhaps discomfort is part of the point.

 

Medina Haram Piazza - Just a stunning project of giant sequentially opening umbrellas to shade the plaza in front of one of the most important mosques in the world. Seriously go check out the slideshow.

Really interesting Jane - particularly as this is an area I wouldn't really come across often.

I really like the Hamsun building - a fitting structure for such an off centre author.

Interesting pictures. Thanks for posting them.

That plaza mosque is incredible!

31 - Sounds like it was quite controversial, both because of Hamsun's political history and the decision to build it in his small hometown.

33 - Isn't it! It's lowered the plaza's daytime temperature by 14 degrees.

New York Magazine
July 18-25, 2011

Bycatch 22 - A profile of commercial bycatch (fish caught out of season that must be thrown back). Allowing them to keep everything they catch is obviously unsustainable but some other method needs to be worked out.


August 1, 2011

The Endangered Ordinary - Discussing the imminent (now complete) demolition of one of the Upper West Sides historically typical, now rare small storefront blocks. We’ve watched this change happen since we moved here 6+ years ago – a lot of good little places have been lost.


August 22, 2011

Don’t Step on My Red-Soled Shoes - Breakdown of the lawsuit of Christian Louboutin against Yves Saint Laurent over Laurent’s use of red-soled heels, trademarked by Louboutin.


August 29, 2011

Swamp Dreams - The (completely insane) new ‘mall’ to be built in the Meadowlands of NJ with 1.7 million sf of shops, movie theatres, ski slope, water park, skating rink, sports center, etc. Monstrosity and financial boondoggle that the state is now partially financing.

The Placenta Cookbook - WARNING: very graphic. I was simultaneously repulsed and fascinated by the phenomenon of new mothers saving their placenta for preparation either in dishes or dried capsules. Not for the weak of stomach.

September 5-12, 2011

The Encyclopedia of 9/11 - An alphabetical retrospective. My favorite entry is the Collected Works: How artists, writers, musicians, filmmakers, video-game designers, and quilters responded to the attacks – a selection.


September 19, 2011

The Last Closet - When will a professional athlete (currently playing) come out?

Global Inflation - Really neat installation by David Byrne under the High Line



Photos of the Artists as Young Men - review of Robert Rauschenberg: Photographs 1949-1962 book and retrospective show containing photos of his famous circle of artist friends. My favorite, Jasper Johns:

September 26, 2011

The Low Line - Plans for an underground park.



Six Books Per Square Foot - A minimalist architect and obsessive book collector client use a long bookcase to divide living and sleeping space – how lovely!



The Devil on the Door - Debate over whether a painting on a drug dealers door could be one of Jane-Michel Basquiat’s last works.

Thanks very much for the links and the pictures - some lovely stuff here!

Always enjoy your aesthetic. Wonderful!

I have been waiting in the other group for you to continue your post on architecture... by happenstance, I ran across your post here. It is now starred.

By the way, a project I am working on has me reading a bunch of urban planning &c. stuff -

Thanks guys!

40 - Thanks, I've been meaning to get back to it, but it takes a good bit of prep work, and I'm bogged down with study materials at the moment. What kind of urban stuff are you reading?

New York Magazine
October 10, 2011

Litmus Taste Test - Humorous short bit on whether NYers can support Herman Cain politically based on Godfather’s Pizza.

In Search Of Lost Time - Fascinating article about recreating the hotel room in which MLK spent his last night for the play The Mountaintop. The set designer was given unprecedented access to the actual preserved room in Memphis and attempted to detail it exactingly.

American Mustache Institute ranking of America’s Most Mustache-Friendly Cities - This ranking was a sidebar in the magazine but deserves special mention as it’s one of the funniest things I’ve read all year. #1 – Chicago.


October 24, 2011

The Kids Are Actually Sort of Alright - A profile of the ‘Occupy’ generation (25-34 year olds). I had some mixed reactions to this one. I think there is something to the idea that we’re too self obsessed, particularly in a tangible success-based way that may stem from the ‘you can achieve anything you put your mind to’ culture of parenting. But, like with the Occupy movement, I find myself feeling distant from it. Part of that is it seems like a much younger persons struggle to me (even though I’m smack in the middle of the age bracket). And partly because it’s so problem based, leaving no real outlet for solutions. I can agree with the basic assumptions of both of these things but can’t seem to see how it helps me to move forward in my life or to do anything affecting of the world other than complain. /end rant


October 31, 2011

The Romney Economy - Really disturbing article about Mitt Romney’s rise up the corporate ladder and the invention of the multi-million dollar corporate bonus.

November 7, 2011

Big Scary Ugly Dirty Rats - A history of rats and rat culture in NY.


November 14, 2011

The Art of the Feast - Two chefs prepare a twist on the traditional Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners. How amazing are these images – both the beautiful food and stunning photography? Most delicious sounding recipes: Cauliflower with Pears, Sage, and Hazelnut and Salad Greens with Roasted Butternut Squash, Pomegranate Seeds, and Parmesan






December 5, 2011

Geotagging the Tourists - Fascinating map of pictures taken in NY and which were by tourists vs. residents.


December 12, 2011

A Monster Among the ‘Frum’ - Really not too pleased that I read this article on the murder of 8 year old Leiby Kletzky in his Hassidic neighborhood by a member of the community – much more disturbing than the already disgusting brief news items I already knew.


January 2-9, 2012

The Platt 101 - The food editor’s 101 best restaurants in the city. I’ve been to 13, not too bad.

What does a Conductor Do? - Exactly what the title suggests, fascinating.

The Believer
May 2011

Memento Mori - Investigation of the death notices posted in public spaces (telephone poles, storefronts, etc) in Bulgaria.

The Immortal Horizon - Narrative of the Barkley Marathons – an insane all terrain run, obstacle course, scavenger hunt.

Terms of Art: New Language from Contemporary Architecture - Couple of notes on architects and language: we’re bad at it, use it incorrectly in both grammar and meaning, and make stuff up.

Red Eden - Mars real estate.

Interview with Victor LaValle - I’ve wishlisted some of LaValle’s work based on his interview – interesting and informative. Big Machine is his most recent novel.

Columbia Magazine

New Crop City - A discussion of the technical aspects, feasibility, etc of urban farming.

The Looming Towers - Photographs of Camilo Jose Vergara collected over the years, typically featuring urban decay, these focusing on the glimpses he found of the WTC towers.

So glad you're back with a thread! I thought only books piled up on wishlists but I've packed a long list of your links into the "To Read" folder in my Internet favorites. Of course I read about the placentas first, graphic isn't a problem ... and still I had to bail. But fascinating, I’ll get back to it.

I gave up my New York magazine subscription years ago, so it's nice to get little tastes of what I'm missing!

Oh yes I understand.. considering a post in my 'cosmographie' on mapping as metaphor...

anyhow I posted about the urban stuff and copy it here:

The City Shaped (1/2 read)
A Pattern Language (not really something you read from front to back)
Maps of the Imagination (1/2 read)
Communitas; means of livelihood and ways of life (2/3 read)
You are Here" Personal Geographies and Other Maps of the Imagination(1/3 read)

Then there is the ' Planning and Cities' series - that is OOP and I have been slowly collecting copies of. I've read New towns: Antiquity to the Present and The modern city: planning in the 19th century

For the summer if not sooner, The New Nature of Maps and The Power of Maps and Lynch's The Image of the City.

45 - I keep a similar favorites tab that never seems to dwindle.

46 - I have a sort of love/hate relationship with it. There are interesting things but also a lot of stuff I'm not even interested to read. I also get overwhelmed by the sheer amount of things going on, but when I don't have the mag, I feel totally out of touch.

47 - Interesting stuff. Several of which are on my wishlist. A Pattern Language, I've probably read through the whole thing by this point, but always in pieces here and there. I found your thread in le salon and starred. I hope you'll post some thoughts on these.

Inspired by Poquette, these are the books I added to my wishlist in February only!! Granted that is when I did the bulk of my catch up and got through all of the CR2012 threads.

You are Here: Personal Geographies and Other Maps of the Imagination by Katharine Harmon – PeterKein in my thread
Morality Play by Barry Unsworth – Poquette’s review
One for the Road: Drunk Driving since 1900 by Barron Lerner – detailmuse’s thread
The Beginnings of Western Science by David Lindberg - baswood’s review
The Lettered City by Angel Rama – msjohns615’s review
Triumph of the City by Edward Glaeser – cwc790411’s 2011 thread (I think)
The Politics of Aesthetics by Jacques Ranciere - msjohns615’s review
The Ecstatic and Big Machine by Victor LaValle – The Believer magazine interview
The Unredeemed Captive by John Demos – labfs39’s review
Robert Rauschenberg: Photographs: 1949-1962 – NY Magazine review
Hark!: A Vagrant by Kate Beaton – avaland’s review
Shadowheart by Tad Williams – continuation of a series I’ve been reading
Murder City: Ciudad Juarez and the Global Economy’s New Killing Fields by Charles Bowden – rebeccanyc recommendation
A Taxonomy of Office Chairs by Jonathan Olivares – shortlisted for the Diagram Prize for oddest book title, also a Phaidon book – I covet them
Apollo’s Angels: A History of Ballet by Jennifer Homans – japaul22 and DieFledermaus’s reviews
The Road to Oxiana by Robert Byron – SassyLassy’s review
America’s Four Gods by Paul Froese, Heaven in the American Imagination by Gary Scott Smith, and Places of Faith: A Road Trip across America’s Religious Landscape by Christopher Scheitle – OUP newsletter
The Politics of Inequality by Michael Thompson – Columbia U Press newsletter
The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon – somehow did not have this on the wishlist yet
The Kingdom of this World by Alejo Carpentier - rebeccanyc’s review
Armies of Heaven by Jay Rubenstein – rebeccanyc’s review
Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman – rebeccanyc’s review
America and Americans by John Steinbeck – avidmom’s review
Illuminations by Walter Benjamin and Unpacking My Library: Writers and Their Books by Leah Price – from my read of Unpacking for Architects
Unclay by Theodore Francis Powys – dmsteyn’s review
Seven Types of Ambiguity by William Empson – dmsteyn’s review
Landscape and Memory by Simon Schama – SassyLassy’s mention in the questions thread
Mr. G by Alan Lightman – detailmuse’s review
Geek Wisdom – detailmuse, strech, bragan’s reviews
The Winter King by Bernard Cornwell – Cait86’s thread
The Skystone by Jack Whyte – Cait86’s thread
The Emperor of All Maladies by Siddhartha Mukherjee – arubabookwoman, detailmuse, and jillbone’s threads
The Royal Ghosts by Samrat Upadhyay – auntmarge64’s review
The $12 Million Stuffed Shark by Donald Thompson – torontoc’s review
The Clockwork Universe by Edward Dolnick – AnnieMod’s review
Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking by Susan Cain – stretch, detailmuse, and bragan’s reviews
Bedrock by Lauret Savoy – stretch’s thread
Alinea by Grant Achatz – detailmuse’s review
Chromophobia by David Batchelor – Robreads’s review
Maps of the Imagination by Peter Turchi – PeterKein in le salon
The City shaped by Spiro Kostof – PeterKein in le salon
Cartographia by Vincent Virga – PeterKein in le salon
Cartographies of Time by Anthony Grafton – varielle in Maps and Atlases group, slideshow here
The Kitchen as Laboratory by Cesar Vega – not sure where I read about this, but must have seen a review somewhere
Farm City: The Education of an Urban Farmer by Novella Carpenter – Gardens & Books group I think
Arthurian Romances by Chretien de Troyes – lots of people, tough I think I have most of it somewhere in my Medieval History readings from college
Empire of the Senseless by Kathy Acker – steven03tx’s 2011 review
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip Dick – steven03tx’s 2011 review
Inside the Third Reich by Albert Speer – one I’m not sure about. I think someone was reading something about Speer?
Triangle: The Fire That Changed America by Dave Von Drehle – brenzi in labfs39’s 2011 thread

Wow, that's quite a list! It's wonderful to see that I'm not the only one making a list. You have some intriguing titles there that bear further investigation and I see that many are on my list as well! Don't you just wish you could inhale them all?

Another wonderful and very long wishlist, Jane, with many unfamiliar titles to explore! It also reminds me that I own The Unredeemed Captive, but have yet to read it.

I'm pretty lax about my wishlist. Anything that sounds remotely interesting gets thrown on so I can find it later.

Received through LTER, review far overdue. Read last year.

The Hustle: One Team and Ten Lives in Black and White by Doug Merlino

I’m a bit unsure how to approach reviewing this book. Framed as the story of a mixed race youth basketball team formed in 1980s Seattle, the book speaks more about race relations in general, the fractious neighborhoods in post-segregation America, and how this affects our lives. Merlino, after reading about the murder of one of his teammates, sets out to track down all the members of the team and see what has happened in their lives. The white students, all of the most prestigious private school in Seattle, are very successful, while the black students range from somewhat successful to almost without hope. While the story is interesting, it is also unsurprising. These are the things we see and live every day – a team of demographic statistics – which makes for a pretty depressing read. Merlino doesn’t try to offer any easy answers, or even suggest that the team changed their lives in any large way. But at the same time, he does think that it was meaningful and ultimately a good thing. I suppose that’s why I find myself so conflicted. The book is well written, and entertaining, but I don’t feel like I came to any conclusions or learned anything I didn’t already know.

Christmas present from my dad, also read last year.

Italy: The Beautiful Cookbook by Lorenza De'Medici

Nothing too special here, lots of standard Italian recipes. Lots of beautiful photos of the food and gigantic villa the author lives in.

Slow to catch up. It's nice to see you posting again, even if that's old news. Love your lists and article summaries. The Hustle sounds quite interesting.

Beautiful day here today.

Columbia Magazine
Winter 2011-2012

Smoking Rules - The university is considering banning all smoking on campus. I’m all for it but am not a smoker. No one has particularly convinced me that this is a breach of civil liberties or anything.

The Commuting Type - Review of the new book Helvetica and the New York City Subway System about the standardization of graphic symbols for the subway when the various companies merged.



The Believer
July/August 2011: The 2011 Music Issue

The Farting Bedpost - Subtitled “A Cultural History of the Bassoon”. Really quite hilarious.

Mashup City - A sort of urban design problem played out through the idea of the sample. Not much more depth than that.

Brian Eno in Conversation with David Mitchell - Excellent back and forth. More thoughts on some particularly interesting bits later.

Martha Wainwright - Interview with Martha Wainwright (Rufus’s sister) about family, death, and motherhood. Picked up that she does an internet show where musicians come to her house and they cook and play – sounds right up my alley.

Julianna Barwick - Microinterview. I had not heard of Julianna Barwick before reading this, but I found her quite charming and interesting so looked up some of her stuff. She’s got a kind of odd surreal quality to her songs. I think I either don’t care for it or could easily get obsessed.

New York Magazine
October 17, 2011

Just Kids - Part review of Jeffrey Eugenides’s new novel The Marriage Plot, part profile of his famous circle of friends – David Foster Wallace, Jonathan Franzen, Mary Karr.

This edition was the urban design issue:

Exhibit: Oh, Say Can You See… - Profile of the MoMA’s exhibit on housing in response to the financial crisis.

The Delirious City: A Survey - Several architects, designers, and critics pick their favorite urban interventions. The highlights:

Detroit; affordable housing



New York, competition winner to replace city scaffold designs



Paris, Flower Tower apartment building



London, under overpass public space



Seoul, unearthed stream



Design Hunting: Global Edition
A Cement Plant Turned Family Compound - A pretty amazing intervention.



A Pied-à-Terre for a Teeny Footprint

 

Emergency Architecture: Occupy Caracas - Fascinating story about the occupation of a skyscraper in which construction stopped, taken over by the community and run commune style.

New York Magazine
December 19-26, 2011

Quick image of an installed prototype of the proposed new scaffold design for the city:



Reasons to Love New York 2011

#3. Because These Little One-Percenters Are Standing With the 99 Percent

#6. Because Our Marlboro Man Is a Novelist - Jeffrey Eugenides billboard:



#9. Because Every Sunday Afternoon, Marjorie Eliot Turns Her Three-Bedroom Washington Heights Apartment Into a Jazz Club

#29. Because You Run Out of Toilet Paper - and can get more anytime.

#34. Because St. Mark’s Bookshop Lives - it almost went under.

#42. Because We Look Backward and Forward at the Same Time - specifically referring to the High Line.

Trying to follow up your links whenever I get spare moments jane...lots of interest here.

The David Mitchell - Eno conversation was one I immediately honed in on. Big fan of Eno and his outlook on life.

60 - I think The Believer has only snippets of their articles on the web, requiring you to purchase a back issue for the full article (I would mail you mine, but all my 'music issue' mags are promised to a musician friend). It's worth it though, the conversation was fascinating and I have a few things I want to discuss in more detail from their comments.

And thanks for the support. I like having my little thoughts here because I always think of things I read that I want to recommend to someone or other and can't seem to remember what or where it was. This helps.

Received from: I bought this used since I enjoyed the first in the series.

The Other Lands by David Anthony Durham

Sequel to Acacia which I read a while back. Durham wrote first in the historical fiction genre and it shows – lots of political, military, etc details. Like most middles of trilogies, the characters are all over the place and you jump around a lot. I enjoy the writing a good bit and will finish the trilogy, but I don’t think there’s anything groundbreaking here.

Received from: Bought used for study purposes.

Interior Design Reference Manual: A Guide to the NCIDQ Exam by David Kent Ballast

This is a test prep book for the interior design licensing exam. I have now read through it twice. All the material is there and clear, but I wish it had more information on the practicum section of the exam which is the hardest and needs the most explanation.

I’ve passed a quarter of the exam with the remaining 3/4 coming this Friday and Saturday. Hopefully after this I will be done with this manual and my accompanying flashcards, practice tests, etc. and will be back to reading real books!

Very cool picture, Jane!

Received: LTER

Touch: A Novel by Alexi Zentner

This was an ER novel I received, set in the wilds of Canada. I’ve been intrigued with the cold areas of the world of late – mostly because I just cannot understand how a body could survive. The novel is multi-generational, spanning from the founding of the town to roughly present day. There’s an air of magical realism, family tragedies, lyrical descriptions of nature. All of which led me to quite enjoy this slow-paced story. I even found it somehow comforting even though the themes are not particularly happy ones.

A couple notes on the Brian Eno / David Mitchell conversation.

BE: “Perfume seems to have a similar directness, in that we are affected by it without really being able to articulate why; as opposed to stories, for example, where we have a clearer sense of what’s going on and why it might matter to us.” – I just love this comparison of music to perfume. I have always thought it amazing how scents can instantly put you in mind of something hyper-specific.

DM: “I’ve noticed just by placing a sentence a - about a ladybird, say – next to sentence b - about a man’s last three seconds of life – a c gets generated as if by alchemy. It’s not there, but it is. You don’t even have to write c - in fact, you shouldn’t.”

This quote I have a bit more to say about. The other day a group of us were having a conversation about modern art – a friend’s client just bought a Cy Twombly* and also owns a Rothko**. After a minor derailment featuring me getting mad at a friend for being shocked that I could identify a Rothko just by a picture, we had an interesting discussion about understanding or ‘getting’ modern art. I really love it; my husband a several friends don’t feel anything special for it. I was trying to explain what I love so much which led me to analyze the things I like best. I am most attracted to things like Rothko with large fields and extremely repetitive detailed things. The way I explained it was that it makes you slightly uncomfortable – either leaving something out or putting so much in – that kind of obsessive repetition or blankness. I read this conversation shortly after and thought this quote sort of perfectly summed it up. Once you have an ‘a’ and a ‘b’, you sort of know where ‘c’ is going; you don’t need it wrapped up in a little bow for you. But it’s the stories, art, music, etc that leave off the ‘c’ or just say ‘a’ over and over that tend to stick with you. I think Mitchell has a pretty good point there.

* Not this one but you get the idea:



** Also not this one:

I love this thread.

I'm very interested in Helvetica and the New York City Subway System. I'm old enough to remember the signs for the IND, IRT and BMT trains in Manhattan from the 1960s and early 1970s (we lived in Jersey City, and my mother, brother and I regularly took the train to visit her parents in the Bronx). I think that there are still some old signs in some of the Manhattan stations (14 St & 6 Av?). My father, who commuted by train to the Brooklyn Navy Yard every day from the 1950s to the 1970s, still refers to the lines by the old names (e.g., IRT Broadway Local, rather than the 1 train).

The Brian Eno/David Mitchell conversation sounds fascinating; I may have to get that issue of The Believer to read it in full.

The designs in The Delirious City are fabulous. Where are the London and NYC ones located? I looked at the article online, and couldn't find either photo. I'd love to look for the design of the London space when I go there next month.

I haven't been to St. Mark's Bookshop in several years, since I discovered Book Culture on 112th St. BTW, have you (or Rebecca) been to the second store on B'way & 114th St?

I also liked 29. Because a Once-Notorious Mental Hospital Is Now a Publishing House, since I subscribe to the Bellevue Literary Review.

Ooh -- the new scaffolding designs are fabulous. I remember walking under and in and among lots of really awkward and ugly scaffolding in NYC in the 70s.

#67. I've read about the Helvetica book but haven't read it -- am interested both in typography and the NYC subway so probably should.

I have been to the BookCulture outpost on 114th Street. It's more like a regular bookstore with a lot of current fiction and nonfiction, a small backlist, cooking and children's books, etc. It's good if I know I want a particular current book, but the original is much much deeper. The bad part is that they have separate frequent customer systems, so books you buy at one don't count towards a discount at the other.

#68 I must say I haven't noticed any improvement in NYC scaffolding. Back in the 80s, I worked with a woman whose family was in the construction business and she warned me never to walk under scaffolding! Very hard to do these days!

I go to both Book Cultures (I live on 105th St so I'm right there). I would agree with Rebecca's assessment. I prefer the 'old' one. Though I still want to call it Labyrinth which was the name when I moved here (and a way better name in general).

They still have the old subway sign down here at the Fulton St 2/3.

The London location was called Folly for a Flyover and I believe was a temporary thing last summer, unfortunately. (If you go to the Delirious City link, click the main picture to get the slideshow of all the interventions.

The scaffolding was part of a competition to redesign the standard. The current scaffolding is (perhaps surprisingly because it's so generic) regulated by extremely strict guidelines. The spacing between posts, height, number of crossbars, diameter of pipes, etc is all extremely standardized. I believe there are only 2 companies that manufacture scaffolding - tons that install it but they are all renting from these two. The competition was an attempt to deal with some of the many problems of the current designs - all the bolts sticking out, no good way to light them, catches smoke and other fumes, etc. You can read a little more about it here. No word on an implementation date yet though.

March wishlist additions:

If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler by Italo Calvino – dmsteyn’s review and various other mentions.
The Preservationist by David Maine – Nickelini’s review.
Slash: Paper Under the Knife by David Revere McFadden – was looking at Brian Dettmer’s artwork and trying to find a retrospective book.*
Playing with Books by Jason Thompson – was looking at Brian Dettmer’s artwork and trying to find a retrospective book.*
Bookwork by Garrett Stewart – was looking at Brian Dettmer’s artwork and trying to find a retrospective book.*
How to Archer by Sterling Archer – yeah, my husband and I can’t stop watching this show.
Imagined Cities by Robert Alter – PeterKein’s mention.
Religion for Atheists by Alain De Bottom – Stand’s newsletter
Butterfly in the Typewriter by Cory MacLauchlin –biography of John Kennedy O’Toole, Stand’s newsletter.
The Flight of Gemma Hardy by Margot Livesey – avaland’s review, and several other mentions.
Pure by Julianna Baggott – avaland’s review.
The Interrogative Mood by Padgett Powell – bragan’s review.
Plotto by William Wallace Cook – PeterKein’s link to NPR review.
Imagine: How Creativity Works by Jonah Lehrer – Stand’s newsletter.
Helvetica and the New York City Subway System by Paul Shaw – Columbia Magazine review.
Oil on Water by Helon Habila – dchaikin’s review.

* Will do a separate post on book artists.

And this buttload that are all from Architects and Their Books:

Sexuality & Space edited by Beatriz Colomina
Architecture and the Sciences by Antoine Picon
Architecture and Utopia by Manfredo Tafuri
Los Angeles: The Architecture of Four Ecologies by Reyner Banham.
The International Style by Henry Russell Hitchcock
The Earth, the Temple, and the Gods by Vincent Scully
Piranesi as Architect and Designer by John Wilton-Ely
Pragmatism by William James
Terra Infirma: Geography's Visual Culture by Irit Rogoff
The Architectural Uncanny by Anthony Vidler
The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction by Walter Benjamin
The City, its Growth, its Decay, its Future by Eliel Saarinen
The Autobiography of an Idea by Louis Sullivan
Creation is a Patient Search by Le Corbusier
Against Architecture: The Writings of Georges Bataille by Denis Hollier
Sustainable Architecture White Papers edited by Earth Pledge Foundation
Sustainable Cuisine White Papers edited by Earth Pledge Foundation
All That Is Solid Melts into Air: The Experience of Modernity by Marshall Berman
An Unnatural Metropolis: Wresting New Orleans From Nature by Craig E. Colten
Nature's Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West by William Cronon
Social Justice and the City by David Harvey
The Urban Revolution by Henri Lefebvre
The Sphere and the Labyrinth by Manfredo Tafuri

Artists who use books as a medium:

Brian Dettmer

 

Cara Borer

 

Georgia Russell



Su Blackwell

Bought used because I’ve liked another of the author’s books.

The Darkness That Comes Before by R. Scott Bakker

This is the first in one of two trilogies set in the same world by this author. I’ve read the first of the second trilogy and so wanted to start at the beginning. What I liked about the other book I’ve read by Bakker is he kind of throws you right into the world; there’s not a ton of setup. Extremely detailed worldbuilding and a good helping of the literary equivalent of mood music. Character motivations are totally clear, but I suspect that a lot of that comes around in the later books.

AnnieMod over in the Short Stories group proposed an April challenge of reading one story a day. I'm going to try in the hopes that it kick starts me back into reading good (non-studying) things. Some sources below for my reference:

Southern Review
McSweeny's
Firebirds Rising
Flannery O'Connor LOA volumes
James Agee LOA volumes
Penguin 60s
Anthology of Japanese Literature
The Ends of the Earth
Louisiana Sojourns

Thanks, Jane, for that link about the scaffolding. What a change that will be! And I still have to stop and think "Book Culture" because I too still think of it as Labyrinth!

Love all the photos and lists of books and articles you post!

The Su Blackwell work looks quite magical.

From The Baron in the trees title I amguessing the themes of her work are also books...

#74 - great challenge. (well, not for me right now). I'll be interested to see how it goes for you.

Thanks for mentioning the short story challenge, tempting.

Good luck on your tests this weekend!

Coincidentally, there is a character in If on a winter's night a traveler who also makes sculptures from books.

Great to see your wish list, Jane! Mine will be forthcoming on Sunday. ;-) Also the book art is tremendous!

very nice. re: piranesi, you might find this interesting

http://www.librarything.com/topic/120871#3120724

and Piranesi's Carceri as Inconsistent

81 - I absolutely love the Carceri and was glad to see your post. Part of their draw is the fact that they are so structurally distorted. I was very lucky that Columbia's Avery Library had almost all of the plates - both the first and second printings. They are amazing to see in person - not big at all. Piranesi re-etched the plates for the second printing, making them much darker and adding more detail. The plate of The Well is a good example:

 

He also has an unorthodox style - large strokes, an almost furious scribbling thing. His other series look more like traditional etching, but have equally fantastic elements. There's a series on the ruins of Rome that contain lots of natural overgrowth and well dressed Grand Tourers wandering around. The views of Rome are almost entriely made up - ruins reconstructed from Piranesi's imagination, several monuments next to one another that are not in reality. And then there are his imagined cities:

Wow, the Roman ruins are wonderful pieces, I am going to have to look into that some more. And, oh more points of contact for 'Imagined Cities' ... (a la Calvino, Borges)

TAKANORI AIBA

Bonsai Buildings



Rock houses

There is an old three-volume edition of Gibbon's The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (Heritage Press 1946) that is illustrated with Piranesi etchings, which is an inspired combination IMHO.

>69, 70 Thanks, Rebecca and Jane. It doesn't seem as if I'm missing anything by sticking with the original Book Culture on 112th Street, so I won't bother going to the other location. Jane, I still have my "Labyrinth Books" membership card; it took me awhile to get used to the new name. I believe that the other Labyrinth Books store, on Nassau Street in Princeton, has still kept the name and logo.

>70 Thanks for the info about 'Folly for a Flyover'. As you said, it was only a temporary summer installation, located on the edge of the Hackney Marshes. (Ooh, that reminds me; I should finish reading Hackney, That Rose-Red Empire next month).

>72, 82, 83 Fabulous!

Sorry, this jumps back a bit, but >59, #6 (Eugenides billboard) is great.

#85 I think that the ownership may have changed, or they may have disassociated themselves form the Princeton LB, and so they had to change the name. Going back to an earlier point, you shouldn't give up on St. Marks Bookshop, Darryl. They narrowly escaped having to go out of business because of the landlord's attempt to dramatically raise the rent, and I really should go down there and buy some books to support them. (But of course, I'm not trying to avoid buying books!)

>87 Right, Rebecca. I didn't give up on St. Mark's Bookshop intentionally, I just happened to like the selection at Book Culture better. I would be thrilled if there was a bookshop as good as St. Mark's in Atlanta, and it would be much more difficult for me to stick to my book buying restriction. I haven't set foot in a bookstore since several of the 75ers went to the Strand on Boxing Day, as the four bookstores closest to me (three branches of Borders, and an LGBT bookstore four blocks south of me) have all closed in the past 6-9 months.

88 - Were you keeping them in business? Kidding aside, that's a real shame, though I knew Borders was closing a lot of locations.

86 - It's pretty awesome advertising.

84 - That is quite a good combination.

Short Story #1 (040112): Story in Harlem Slang by Zora Neale Hurston
Library of America’s Story of the Week

Jelly, a Harlem pimp, is trying to find someone to buy him a meal. He runs into an acquaintance; they trade some barbs and try to convince a young lady to feed them. Excellent start to my little project as it was quite funny and had a 3 page glossary.

“All you did by rolling out early was to stir your stomach up. That made you hunt for more dishes to dirty. The longer you slept, the less you had to eat. But you can’t collar nods all day. No matter how long you stay in bed, and how quiet you keep, sooner or later that big gut is going to reach over and grab that little one and start to gnaw.”

What a great start.

Short Story #2 (040212): As You've Planned It by Line-Maria Lång
The Southern Review- Winter 2011 and read here by the author.
Translated by K.E. Semmel

A very short (3 page) story about sitting with a loved one who is dying.

I swear, I do not mean to make light of what must have been a moving story, but I misread it as sitting with a loved one who is *drying*. I thought it was a quirky story topic, esp. for what I am guessing is a Scandi writer. Dying definitely made much more sense.

Wallpaper City Guide: Chicago

I love the Wallpaper guides and this is no exception - beautiful photos, brief synopsis, and some hidden gems.

We're planning a trip out over July 4th. Can't wait!

Chicago is a fun place to visit, at least for a New Yorker, because you can walk and walk and walk, just like here. And there are interesting things to see, places to visit along the way. I don't know the Wallpaper guides, so I'll have to look for them.

Have a great time, Jane! Chicago is one of my favorite cities.

Jane, have fun in Chicago! I highly recommend the Chicago Architecture Foundation tours and events.

Also, take note of July 4-related changes that are possibly not reflected in guidebooks -- the big July 3 fireworks in Grant Park are no more, but I think there are some at Navy Pier twice/week + July 4. Also, the Taste of Chicago has been shortened to 5 days and moved to mid-July.

95-97 - Thanks guys. I'm pretty excited as I've never been which is sort of crazy for an architect. We're going with my best friend who's from Evanston and staying with his parents so I don't have to do a ton of planning as I plan to just let him take care of everything. :) I've also got 2 other friends living there now so it should be a pretty easy going trip.

The Revisionists by Thomas Mullen

Set in contemporary DC, The Revisionists centers on Zed, a time traveler from the ‘perfect present’, whose job is to ensure that certain historical tragedies are enacted so that this perfect present can exist. We follow several other characters – a lawyer who leaked politically damaging information on a client, a former spy, a diplomat’s housekeeper – as they stumble through various political intrigues and into each others lives. The plot was interesting and moved along a fairly rapid clip, but I was left a little unmoved. Part of this is because Zed is played so straight. Several characters find him to be strange, his cover story is of a somewhat crazy guy, and about ¾ of the way through, I thought perhaps he really was crazy. But Mullen never really delves into this too much, preferring to stick with philosophical questions about end vs. means. Overall enjoyable, but nothing special.

My husband was lucky enough to be able to sneak out of work to see the space shuttle fly into NY this morning:

Very cool!

I was sorry I missed it. By the time I checked, it was about to land at JFK.

The Revisionists sounds like it should be added to the (long) list of books where a great idea was not successfully put into practice!

Architectural Record
March 2012

This issue was devoted to building for social change which is something I’m very interested in.

The New Frontier in Education - A profile of several design build studios becoming more popular in universities across the country.

Does “Doing Good” Pay the Bills? - An interesting piece on firms that are making a living off of pro bono and volunteer work.

Activist Exhibitions Overcome Display Difficulties - The challenges of pulling off an architectural exhibition, particularly one devoted to low income design.

And some of the projects profiled:

Windsor Super Market; Windsor, NC



Lions Park Playscape; Greensboro, AL



Fernando Botero Library Park; San Cristobal, Medellin, Columbia



Nueva Esperanza School; Manabi, Ecuador



Public Projects, Gando Library; Gando Village, Burkina Faso



Shizugawa Banya; Miyagi Prefecture, Japan



Ecole la Dignite; Jacmel, Haiti



Center for the Advancement of Public Action; North Bennington, VT

 

Forest of Hope; Altos de Cazuca, Soacha, Columbia

April, 2012

The Afterlife of Drawings - Commentary on the state of hand drawing in the digital age.

Record Houses 2012 - The selection of houses this year leaves something to be desired personally. Nice, very large, modernist structures – there is some beauty in the details.

Twin Houses Kastanienbaum; Luzern, Switzerland



Heavy Metal House; Joplin, MO



House Roces; Bruges, Belgium



Genius Loci; Montauk, NY



Mirror House - A playful park installation in Copenhagen.

Love the pictures!

I second that!

April wishlist adds:

Bury Me Standing: The Gypsies and Their Journey by Isabel Fonseca – deebee1’s review
The Means of Reproduction: Sex, Power, and the Future of the World by Michelle Goldberg - DieFledermaus’s review
Singing the Dogstar Blues by Alison Goodman – read on of her short stories in Firebirds Rising
Beyond Shelter: Architecture and Human Dignity by Alfredo Brillembourg – mentioned in Architectural Record
Still Life with Shape-shifter by Sharon Shinn – one of my favorite fantasy authors
30 Things Every Woman Should Have and Should Know by the Time She's 30 by Pamela Redmond Satran – the horror show of my current emotional state
Prague Winter: A Personal Story of Remembrance and War, 1937-1948 by Madeleine Korbel Albright – saw her speaking about it on a news program
The Sovereign Map Theoretical Approaches in Cartography Throughout History by Christian Jacob – quote put up by Poquette on her thread
A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry – detailmuse’s review
The Rich and the Rest of Us: A Poverty Manifesto by Tavis Smiley – saw Smiley and Cornel West on Colbert, hilarious and worth looking up; also West is just a genius
World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War by Max Brooks – wandering_star’s review
Monsignor Quixote by Graham Greene – Rise’s review
Rich Relations: The American Occupation of Britain, 1942-1945 by David Reynolds – wandering_star’s review
Memoirs of Hecate County by Edmund Wilson – dmsteyn’s review of on of the short stories in this book
Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris – recommended by a real life friend
Matched by Allyson Braithwaite Condie – bragan’s review
Life, A User's Manual by Georges Perec – was being read in Le Salon
Straight: The Surprisingly Short History of Hetrosexuality by Hanne Blank – DieFledermaus’s review

Catching up on my short story challenge. I didn’t quite make it to 30 stories or manage to read one a day, but I did pretty well and will probably knock out a couple more tonight.

Short Story #3 (040612): Welcome, Lost Dogs by Vanessa Blakeslee; The Southern Review- Winter 2011 – A woman struggles with her life alone in Costa Rica after the kidnapping of her rescue dogs.

Short Story #4 (040812): Like (Love!) in Mississippi by Elizabeth Kaiser; Oxford American No. 73 – Excellent, atmospheric story about first love and the ability to recognize it.

“Women get old fast here, in the South, in my town. There are other things to console you, friends and the limbs of live oaks and the heat wrapping around you like arms. But it’s not the same, and it’s not good to stay too long. I’ll be getting out any day now.”

Short Story #5 (040812): The Sickness, the Dinosaurs, Baby Dan, and the Swollen Hand by Mike Powell; Oxford American No. 73 – Another excellent short tale working like a series of linked vignettes.

“But one thing I’ll never get over is being fed. I will never get over someone standing in their kitchen and making food so that I can eat it. I will never get over eating the food and feeling like there’s a presence in my stomach where there was once an absence, especially if the presence has hot sauce on it. And then being able to say I was hungry and you fed me: A manageable but humbling debt.”

Short Story #6 (041412): Groundscratchers by Gabriel Welsch; The Southern Review- Winter 2011 – Very interesting story of a grounds supervisor at a large estate as his life falls apart.

Short Story #7 (041412): Angel’s Wolf by Nalini Singh; Angels of Darkness – A damaged vampire is assigned to help a powerful angel discover who is trying to poison her.

Short Story #8 (041612): The Best Party Ever: But What’s Wrong with Mama? by Cary Holladay; Oxford American No. 73 – A young girl observes her family preparing for her older sister’s birthday party as she enters her teens.

Short Story #9 (041612): Last Summer by John Brandon; Oxford American No. 73 – A very sad story about a man fixing up a restaurant, feeling stuck in a sort of limbo life.

“A lot of us were already looking forward to hurricane season because a great storm might direct our energies, because specific misfortune was purifying, and so we regarded the constant breeze lisping night and day as a squandering of strength.”

Short Story #10 (041712): Action Figure by Adam Prince; The Southern Review- Winter 2011 – Pretty freaky narrative tracing a meth addict’s descent.

Short Story #11 (041812): Alphas: Origins by Ilona Andrews; Angels of Darkness – A woman is drawn into a parallel world of demons and other fantastical creatures and must figure out how to navigate the perils to save her son.

Short Story #12 (041812): We Are Taking Only What We Need by Stephanie Powell Watts; Oxford American No. 73 – An African-American family takes on a white babysitter after the mother has left, and things soon become complicated for the daughter.

Short Story #13 (041812): Nocturne by Sharon Shinn; Angels of Darkness – A cook discovers a broken angel living in an off limits house on a school campus and determines to find out why he is there.

Short Story #14 (041912): Ascension by Meljean Brook; Angels of Darkness – An angel is tracking a demon and runs into an old flame.

Short Story #15 (042412): Section 8 by Jaquira Diaz; The Southern Review- Winter 2011 – A powerful and sad tale of two friends discovering their sexuality in a neighborhood dangerous for those who are different.

Short Story #16 (042712): After the Winter by Kate Chopin; Library of America Story of the Week - A strange story about a reclusive man and Easter redemption of a sort.

Short Story #17 (042912): Huntress by Tamora Pierce; Firebirds Rising: An Anthology of Original Science Fiction and Fantasy – A teen encounters a group of pack hunting teen runners.

Short Story #18 (042912): The Doll by Charles W. Chesnutt; Library of America Story of the Week - A southern politician tests a northern black barber with a story of his father’s murder.

Short Story #19 (042912): Unwrapping by Nina Kiriki Hoffman; Firebirds Rising: An Anthology of Original Science Fiction and Fantasy -

Short Story #20 (042912): The Real Thing by Alison Goodman; Firebirds Rising: An Anthology of Original Science Fiction and Fantasy – A short interesting story about best friends and secrets.

Short Story #21 (042912): Little (Grrl) Lost by Charles de Lint; Firebirds Rising: An Anthology of Original Science Fiction and Fantasy – A girl moves into a new home and discovers a Little living behind her baseboard.

Short Story #22 (042912): I’ll Give You My Word by Diana Wynne Jones; Firebirds Rising: An Anthology of Original Science Fiction and Fantasy – A boy tries to protect his strange big-word using younger brother.

I finished a few things this month while doing this challenge.

Oxford American, No. 73

Other things of interest in the issue:

Rant with Collards by John T. Edge – A profile of Vertamae Smart-Grosvenor, a groundbreaking African American memoir/cookbook writer.

The Rapture of the Deep by Bronwen Dickey – A description of a lake dive to see the remains of a mining town that was deserted prior to the power company flooding the area.

Ridin’ Dirty Face by Wes Enzinna – A profile of Mike Brodie’s train photography. A fascinating look into the world of young rail riders. There’s a sort of tension here in that these kids of sort of reenacting a different era. I don’t think many people in this country are poor enough to have to live like this, or at any rate almost certainly aren't young white hipsters. But there is something extremely powerful about the images still.

   

Odes to the Very Best of the South 2011

…An Outlandish Gumbo by Sara Roahen - A gumbo which has no roux. I am still skeptical, but it’s near my parents’ house so perhaps I’ll try it next time I’m down.

…the Blood Bank Cats by Megan Mayhew Bergman - A visit with vet cats (strays, etc) who are kept for blood transfusions.

Angels of Darkness – I finished this collection of four novellas. Nothing spectacular, but it was enjoyable, particularly for plane reading.

The Southern Review- Winter 2011 Vol. 47, #1

Crazy Way by Albert Godbarth – An interesting poem:

“I will work forty hours a week clerking at the painstore.”
-from a poem by Donald Hall. I’d rushed,
and glazed over the t

and yet my accidental revision
feels right for the crabbed, defensive life
that Hall gives voice to, and in fact
for Ace Digornio, who I knew

when I was a child and who did
spend forty hours every week behind the counter
at Talman’s Home Décor and Paint Store.

The Moviegoer, Fifty Years Later by Robert Lacy – A review of the classic New Orleans book which I really need to get to this year.

Paintings by Ed Smith – exotic paintings of clumps of birds.

#108, I didn't see dmsteyn's review of Memoirs of Hecate County, but I really disliked that book. I think I said in my review that the best thing I could say about it was that I bought it at a remaindered price!

>113 - Rebecca, I only reviewed the one story in the book, 'The Man Who Shot Snapping Turtles', which I quite enjoyed. The rest may very well be real stinkers. :)

Don't remember that one in particular, Dewald, just my overall impression, so it could very well have been the best of the bunch.

The Shape of Desire by Sharon Shinn

Shinn is one of my favorite fantasy authors. I buy everything she writes and will continue to do so, but this one was disappointing. Maria dates a shape shifter who is gone for frequent periods while he is changed. When several deaths from mysterious animal attacks occur, she beings to worry what or who is behind it. What annoyed me about it is Maria’s complete devotion to her lover – ‘you’re my whole world’ type crap. When this started out early on, I thought there was a chance Shinn might turn it on it’s head, but it never really got there.

113-115: Hmm. I'll keep that in mind.

Finished earlier this year but just getting around to reviewing.

How acquired: I bought this in an airport during one of those 'did I bring enough to read with me on this trip?' panics.

Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann

Framed by Philippe Petit’s tightrope walk between the World Trade Center towers, this series of linked stories centers on characters who are all troubled or searching for something. I’m not really sure how to describe them. I went up and down with this one. At the beginning I was really enjoying it, then I got bogged down for a while, then would pick back up. I found that I enjoyed it more at the beginning before the stories started collapsing on themselves and becoming more connected. In the end, I liked it, the writing was beautiful, but I can’t say that I loved it.

Now I'm going to do a bit of a Chicago binge leading up to this trip. Started The Devil in the White City this week. (Thanks to Bragan for the copy)!

>117: You're welcome! Hope you like it.

(And I have Let the Great World Spin on my TBR pile. I really must get to it sometime.)

I did love Let the Great World Spin; I not only found it beautifully written, but also deeply moving.

What a fabulous thread! I admit to being completely mesmerized by the photos of buildings, but I do enjoy your magazine reports also. I've also enjoyed the reviews of short stories by various members who were participating in the same challenge.

Gosh I love your illustrations!

Very, very far behind here. Caught up on about half the threads (apologies to those I haven't gotten to yet). Also quite far behind in my own reviewing. But here's a start.

Columbia Magazine
Spring 2012

Dreaming American - A review of the MoMA show Foreclosed: Rehousing the American Dream which had some interesting housing proposals as well as its fair share of controversy over the ‘haves’ designing for the ‘have nots’. The nicest project I thought was ‘Nature City’, Keizer, Oregon:



To Capture a King: A Short Story - A semi-whimsical tale about a female American tourist playing chess in a small bar in Madrid.

Mess, mess, mess…art - Brief shot of Sarah Sze’s sculpture. Sze will represent the US at the Venice Biennale. Example of her work:



How low can we go? - An interesting land reclamation program centered on lower Manhattan/Governors Island.

And some wishlist updates:

June wishlist additions:

Proofiness: the dark arts of mathematical deception by Charles Seife – Robert Durick’s review
Radioactive: Marie & Pierre Curie: A Tale of Love and Fallout by Lauren Redniss – dchaikin’s review
Merlin's booke by Jane Yolen – ncgraham’s review
The dictionary of imaginary places by Alberto Manguel – mentioned in Poquette’s thread
Strange maps an atlas of cartographic curiosities by Frank Jacobs – mentioned in Poquette’s thread
Mr. Wilson's cabinet of wonder by Lawrence Weschler – RidgewayGirl’s review
Jesus : a revolutionary biography by John Dominic Crossan – AuntMarge64’s review
Lady Cottington's pressed fairy book by Terry Jones – mentioned in the SciFi group
Flesh and stone: the body and the city in Western civilization by Richard Sennett – mentioned in the SciFi group
Arcology, the city in the image of man by Paolo Soleri – mentioned in the SciFi group
The art of eating by M. F. K. Fisher – mentioned in the Cookbookers group
Naked city: the death and life of authentic urban places by Sharon Zukin – Oxford Univ Press newsletter
The Acadian Diaspora: An Eighteenth-Century History by Christopher Hodson – Oxford Univ Press newsletter
A voyage to the moon by Cyrano de Bergerac – DieFledermaus’s review
White Bread: A Social History of the Store-Bought Loaf by Aaron Bobrow-Strain – don’t really know, maybe just saw it on the ER list

May wishlist additions:

Life Everlasting: The Animal Way of Death by Bernd Heinrich – detailmuse’s review
Gulag: a history of the Soviet camps by Anne Applebaum – many mentions here on LT, this one added after arubabookwoman’s review
The sense of paper by Wendy Holden – janeajones’s review
Godless: how an Evangelical preacher became one of America's leading atheists by Dan Barker – Nickelini’s review
Imperfect: An Improbable Life by Jim Abbott – dchaikin’s review
The night circus: a novel by Erin Morgenstern – many interesting reviews here on LT
On painting by Leon Battista Alberti – somehow shockingly not in my library, rectified through Poquette and baswood’s threads
Plastic: A Toxic Love Story by Susan Freinkel – bragan’s review

Jane - I love your lists, but I'm especially encouraged that my review of Radioactive has already inspired you...I haven't written it yet. : ) (Nonetheless, the book comes highly recommended from me.)

I hope you find Plastic as interesting as I did, if/when you get to it!

124 - Blast, must have just been a mention or possibly someone else's review. Sorry about that. :)

More easy catch up. (Anyone else getting an error loading this thread?)

New York Magazine
May 14, 2012

”I Want to be Like Jesus” - Very interesting profile of Cornel West.

May 21, 2012

What Do You Subscribe To? - A variety of strange monthly subscription based things.

May 28, 2012

A Life Worth Ending - A heartbreaking story about the decline of the author’s mother. Having sat with my grandfather through his end life, I thought Wolff perfectly captured the conflicted feelings, guilt, and politics of elderly care.

Go Ahead, Have Another - A rundown of hot bars, drinks, etc.

June 4, 2012

Why I Drive - One motorist’s defense of driving in the city.

June 11, 2012

49 Minutes with Danny Bowien - profile of a very interesting San Francisco chef. His restaurant is phenomenal (everybody in NY pick up and go right now!). While we were waiting, he walked out, and I almost passed out – got a bit of crush going on him.

It’s Going to Be Huge - trends in art shows, the bigger maybe not the better.

New York Plans a Bike Lane Solution to Crosstown Traffic - more bike lanes, yay!

June 25, 2012

Born on the Bayou - review of the Cannes propelled phenomenon Beasts of the Southern Wild

Roll Deep - everything you need to know of NY’s new rental bike system.

Here Piggy Piggy Piggy - where to find some more obscure meats.

Platt Judges New York’s First-Ever Ultimate Picnic Challenge - given a set amount of money and specified shopping location, three chefs must prepare a picnic.

July 16, 2012

Eat Cheap 2012 - always a great guide

#127 with links! Very nice.

#126 - I have mentioned it somewhere around here. : )

That monthly subscription article has me itching for a life of regularly delivered bouquets, gourmet soups and custom crafts kits.

Why Women Still Can’t Have It All - Amazing article in The Atlantic by Anne-Marie Slaughter which really touches on a lot of the things I’ve felt as a member of the younger generation of feminists.


New York Magazine
July 9, 2012

Brrrrrrrr! - Bloomberg’s air conditioned car – ridiculous.

The Money-Empathy Gap - I’m not sure about the research here. Seems a little too twee for the current political climate, but an interesting article nonetheless.

A House on an Island - The single family house in Manhattan, an interesting beast. One of the only freestanding houses on the island is a block down from me and just stunningly large and beautiful:



Justin Davidson on the Redesigned Governors Island - The island is getting a bit of a facelift to offer more park and public space. Looks like it will have some fun stuff.

Movie Review: Weighting the Ambitious Beasts of the Southern Wild - I’m going to see this movie tonight and cannot wait. Lots of raving about it.


July 30, 2012

Thr Urbanist’s Guide to Seattle - I absolutely adored Seattle when I visited a few years ago. I would love to plan a trip back next year – I have an aunt and uncle there who just bought a house and are wanting us to visit.

First Look at Murray’s Cheese Bar - The famous and wonderful Murray’s Cheese is opening a restaurant. Bestill my heart.

The Biggest Picture - Kodak used to have a huge color transparency ad in Grand Central. They are brining several of them back for an exhibit. Very Kodak-y Americana images.

Architectural Record
May 2012

Designing Women - The Pritzker Prize is the highest honor an architect can received. This year is it is awarded to Wang Shu who is the partner of a firm with his wife. The award is given to him alone, not the firm. It is really unfathomable and makes me wonder why I even bother.

A Monumental Debate - There is quite a controversy over the new Eisenhower Memorial planned for DC. I’m a little unsure why this is so controversial. We should be having more discussions about the fact that it looks to be fairly ugly rather than what type of statute is appropriate for a president.

Starbucks Global Store Development - They have some interesting things going on these days.

 

Probing the Depths - Really cool research station in Nebraska.

 

Capital Improvement - Awesome looking lighting installation at the Hirshhorn Museum in DC.



Forest Chapel - Pretty stunning wedding chapel in Japan.

   


June 2012

Material man - Profile of British designer Thomas Heatherwick whose done a number of different interesting industrial design projects.



Dune House; Suffolk, England - Pretty stunning vacation home.



London Now! - Great breakdown of all of the Olympics construction. Particularly interesting is the section titled After the Deluge which reviews the current state of Olympic construction in various cities.

Cabins in the Sky - I want to escape to this wonderful looking resort in Mexico’s wine country.




July 2012

Battered by the Recession, Architects Pursue New Careers - Some interesting developments here.

Au Naturel - Pretty stunning museum, particularly the cladding.



Medieval Armor for Modern Art - Really like the chain mesh.

 

Light Craft - Lovely project at Rice University by the always interesting James Turrell



Site Specific - New sustainable landscape rating system.

Cloud City - The new installation on the Met’s rooftop. I plan to go soon though am a bit worried about my fear of heights.

 

I continue to love the very cool architecture photos you post -- thanks!

The last year we lived in Manhattan, I started to have very vivid dreams of single family houses -- mostly on Riverside Drive (where we lived then) -- it got very weird and detailed. I guess it was a signal that it was time to move....

I'm excited to see the article on the building at Rice U. I can go see that.

Firebirds Rising: An Anthology of Original Science Fiction and Fantasy edited by Sharyn November

An overall good collection of fantasy and sci-fi geared towards the young adult market. My favorites:

Unwrapping by Nina Kiriki Hoffman - A short interesting story about best friends and secrets.

The Real Thing by Alison Goodman – Fairly straightforward sci-fi, but well written and I’ll be looking for more by this author.

I’ll Give You My Word by Diana Wynne Jones – A boy tries to protect his strange big-word using younger brother.

In the House of the Seven Librarians by Ellen Klages – Great story about a young girl being raised in a closed library.

Wintermoon Wish by Sharon Shinn – The reason I bought the collection (I read all of Shinn’s work), a story set in her Safe-Keeper series.

Quill by Carol Emshwiller – Very strange sci-fi tale of a sheltered society of strange beings.

Blood Roses by Francesca Lia Block – Creepy, ephemeral story about two sisters following trouble.

What Used to Be Good Still Is by Emma Bull – Heartbreaking story about young love and the environment.

Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino

Plenty of other much better reviews but I just wanted to leave a few comments. I loved this. Calvino has a way of nailing down the feelings that places engender in us through descriptions of any number of things – the buildings, a ritual, entrance. I’m going to go back and reread in a different order and will have more comments then.

Oh, I remember listening to "In the House of the Seven Librarians" in podcast form, and it was terrific.

>135 & 137 - ooooh, am working on downloading the podcast of 'In the House of the Seven Librarians' now. This is what I love about LT - I never would have heard of this otherwise. Thanks!

lol! Jane snagged me with "In the House of the Seven Librarians" too and then I saw the podcast tip, thanks!

Happy to have tipped you guys off to the podcast! On reflection, I perhaps should have included a link, but I don't imagine it was difficult to google for.

137-140 - Glad y'all found it. It was really cute.

Catching up on some magazine reading...

Columbia Magazine
Summer 2012

Very good issue this quarter.

The Gas Menagerie - A profile of Josh Fox whose documentary Gasland brought fracking into the spotlight.

Thought for Food - Profile of Anita Lo, chef and owner of Annisa in NY. Just look at how gorgeous the food is:



The Dot Matrix - A feature on Columbia’s Spatial Information Design Lab, the director of whom was one of my professors. They do some really interesting work. What she was working on while I was there was mapping incarceration statistics by home address of the person incarcerated rather than scene of the crime (for Brooklyn, left is crime location map, right is home address of prison admissions):

 

And of course a good majority of these are for small time possession, very typically arrested under entrapment means in NYC (and now stop and frisk), and incarcerated for extreme lengths of time under NY’s three strikes law.



The idea being that if you throw out three strikes, step back some on the war on drugs, and reinvest in some of these hotspots where there is little viable means of employments, you could get better results.

And a couple of interesting book reviews: Wheel in the Sky about The Roebling Legacy by Clifford W. Zink and the wire rope technology used to build the Brooklyn Bridge. And It’s Easy if You Try about Imagine: How Creativity Works by Jonah Lehrer.

Architectural Record
October 2011

The World of Online Interiors - Feature on various online blogs/websites for interior design.

House of the Month - Beautifully composed little house:

 

Lotte Magic Garden - Sculpture for a department store in Seoul:



Fast Food Culture - Pretty fun little design for a restaurant






August 2012

House of the Month - Dramatic, sculptural house in Australia’s wine country

 

Two lighting design features:

National September 11 Memorial which is stunning:



And Broken Light, a pretty cool installation on a street in Rotterdam:



Snapshot: Serpentine Gallery Pavilion - Another archeaologically influenced installation by Herzog & de Meuron, partnering with Chinese artist Ai Weiwei.

Dwell
November 2011

Walk This Way - Desire lines, the paths made by people choosing the most convenient path.



Top Shelf - The pros and cons of a few wall mounted bookshelves

All We Need - A beautiful small wood home in Portland



Tunnel Vision - A fun space designed by LOT-EK, one of the more interesting firms out there.



From Torrent to Current - Photography of hydro power infrastructure in France. Quite stunning. The slideshow here is highly recommended.

 

An Introduction to Renting - Just what it sounds like and fairly amusing.

Thanks for the photos and links to the associated articles, Jane. I'll have to remember to ask my best friend, who received his PhD from Columbia, for that issue of Columbia Magazine.

>143 Desire lines, the paths made by people choosing the most convenient path.
Who knew they had a name? Fascinating, as is much else in that issue. I've eyed Dwell on the newsstand and think I need to bring an issue home.

New York Magazine
August 6-13, 2012

He & He & He - Interesting profile of a throuple (three partners) and their online porn business.

Making History - Really nice, creative restoration project.




August 20, 2012
See Mitt Read - Mitt Romney’s strange book mentions.

Dead Books Club - A history of pulping books.

Is Football Wrong? - So it’s very popular to dump on the NFL because of concussions, but boycotting I don’t think is helpful for anyone. I mean, are we going to boycott the ballet for widespread anorexia/bulima/drug use?

Couple of good looking restaurants I want to try: Lulu & Po and Exchange Alley

Why Your Pint Is Being Downsized - The trend towards smaller beers.

Been a while since a concert update, and we’ve been seeing some good stuff lately.

Laura Marling at Celebrate Brooklyn, June 14 – I’ve been really digging her since we saw her, thanks to a friend’s recommendation. She’s got a pretty creepy vibe.

The Tallest Man on Earth with Strand of Oaks at Town Hall, June 19 – The opener, Strand of Oaks was pretty good – dark and deep. Town Hall is an awesome venue, but it takes a lot for one dude and guitar to rock it. He did. Little bonus, Regina Spektor was in the audience and came down to sing the last song with him.

Portland Cello Project with Emily Wells at Housing Works, June 25th – I knew nothing about Emily Wells but she does some pretty crazy stuff – records and bit of what she’s playing and the plays it back and keeps layering it. I still don’t totally understand but it’s very interesting. Portland Cello Project is exactly what it sounds like – bunch of cello players doing arrangements of everything from pop to classical to rap to jazz. A ton of fun.

Trombone Shorty with Dayna Kurtz and Brooklyn Steppers Marching Band at Celebrate Brooklyn, June 29 – Hands down the best show I’ve ever seen. I had known a good deal about Trombone Shorty – he comes from a huge music family, began playing at 4-6, and is generally a prodigy and virtuoso. He was touring with Lenny Kravitz during Katrina and was starting to really take off, but he’s sort of refocused into his roots and doing a lot of blends of jazz, funk, rap, etc. His playing has everything – power, excitement, perfect technical skills (he did a Louie song where the phasing was so precise it was creepy), circular breathing. But for everything he does individually, his real accomplishment is as a band leader. All of the musicians he plays with are phenomenal of course, but he is able to get the most out of them by his direction and stage presence. And look how cute he was as a kid:



Neko Case with Charles Bradley and His Extraordinaires and He’s My Brother She’s My Sister at WFC Plaza, July 12 – This was quite a disappointment. I am in absolute love with Neko Case, but the sound equipment was malfunctioning so all of the levels were off and most of what you could hear was the bass player.

Arturo Sandoval at Celebrate Brooklyn, July 21 – Great, though I guess that’s to be expected.

Abigail Washburn, Buckwheat Zydeco, and Carolina Chocolate Drops at Central Park, August 11 – All great acts. Abigail Washburn is a banjo player and singer who had a fun upbeat set. Buckwheat Zydeco made me a little sad – I’ve been seeing him since college, and he’s looking pretty old. Still can play though. Carolina Chocolate Drops is a really interesting group, an African American string band. They do a lot of research into traditional instrumentation, songs, etc. I’ll be looking for more of their stuff.

Amazing that Buckwheat Zydeco is still going strong. Enjoying your concert reviews. What a shame about Neko Case.

Really very far behind at this point. I've been keeping up a bit with everyone's threads, but work and football have had me pretty cornered. There is a huge backlog of reviews, but I'm going to start off with the quick hits and magazine articles.

New York Magazine
August 27 – September 3, 2012

Game Time - A profile of the (then still under construction) Barclays Center. This one more about the road to it’s development.

David Byrne and St. Vincent Break the Brass Ceiling - I need to get this albumn as these two are so quirky and great. The concert was tragically prohibitively expensive, but we’re going to try to go see David Byrne speak about his new book How Music Works later this year.

Junot Diaz's Counterlife - Been a lot floating around about Junot Diaz of late. This one is focused more on his life and it’s influence on his work.

Richard Artschwager Does More with Less - Show I need to get to at the Whitney.



The Carpenters' Greatest Hits - A 2x4 playing percussion group; I’m intrigued.


September 10, 2012

The Death Match - Who doesn’t love a good quarterback controversy?

1/100th of an Acre of Heaven - The NYC backyard garden. Highly appreciated as I luckily have a terrace myself.

Hysterical Formalism - Review of Zadie Smith’s new book NW which I’m still on the fence as to whether I’m interested in.

Dumpster Hive - Strange full gallery installation of a meth lab like space.


September 17, 2012

The Land That Time and Money Forgot - Nice article on NYC’s public housing system which has been one of the more successful in the nation, albeit still having a huge amount of problems.

Brooklyn is Eating Manhattan's Lunch - great sounding new restaurant.

The South is Rising - Guide to the south Williamsburg neighborhood.


September 24, 2012

Cheating Upwards - A story about the Stuyvesant High School cheating scandal that touches on some of the other upper echelon schools and the propensity to cheat.

Hope in Brokeland - review of Michael Chabon’s new novel Telegraph Avenue.

All You Can Eat - run down of the fall food festivals.


October 1, 2012

Haunts - A profile of the Atlantic yards area neighborhood, now poised for major changes with the stadium introduction.

The Golden Touch - Pretty wild apartment – I love that wood they used for the floor.



The Art of Lunch - cute profile of the museum cafeteria at PS-1.

Rusted in Place - architectural review of the new Barclays Center. It’s a bit of a conundrum. The building I think is beautiful, but as an urban intervention it’s poised to be fairly disastrous. I’m also torn between friends who are working on the project and those that live in the neighborhood.

October 8, 2012

What a New Adult Wants - another addition to the adults reading young adult fiction argument.

Extreme Oatmeal - oatmeal – yum. Worth just checking out the slideshow.

Clinging to the Wreckage - Pretty awesome looking art installation mocking up a wrecked cruise ship.


October 15, 2012

The Geek in the Gown - Profile of Yahoo’s new CEO Marissa Mayer whose selection and subsequent revelation of pregnancy was one of the more depressing things I’ve watched as a woman.

Global Urban Design 2012 - Various urban design interventions. Of particular inerst to me were the articles on the Hudson Yards development, the development at One57, and this interesting piece on a 12 person roommate situation.

Roberta's for Gourmands - Roberta’s is one of my favorite restaurants in this city, and this their sister tasting room sounds amazing.

Triaesthete - A 1200 mile trek filmed by an artist from Chopin’s burial site to the location of heart.

Brownstone in a Box - Awesome looking brownstone focused graphic novel.



P.S. I Hate You - selections from the letters of John Lennon, some angry ones.


October 22, 2012

The Everything Guide to Urban Home Schooling - I’ve always been fascinated by home schooling and this is an interesting take on things in the city that help the process.

Darren's Ark - Noah’s ark on Long Island (for a movie shoot)

That's quite a list of fascinating articles. Had to look at the oatmeal slide show.... sign me up for#7.

Hi Jane. I appreciate the time taken to add all those links. It's like a mini treasure trove.

I spent some time with a mix of fine arts and architectural students and academics last weekend. They were interesting to talk to, working on various interesting projects.

Glad to hear (from rebeccanyc's thread) that you're OK. How's the downed subway system going to affect you? I can't fathom living in NYC without the subway.

Good to know (from message above) that you're OK. Thanks for the links which are fascinating as always! I have been listening to the David Byrne & St Vincent album on spotify, really like it. Shame you couldn't make the concert.

Fascinating as always! I have been listening to the David Byrne & St Vincent album on spotify, really like it. Shame you couldn't make the concert.

Thanks guys! We're doing fine here - far enough uptown that none of the flooding or power outages have affected us. My office is downtown and has no power and with no subway we've been closed. Can't say I can complain about that though. :) Fortunately our neighborhood has all the essentials you would need - the grocery store and various other things were open yesterday so no worries about being stranded or anything. Just staying pretty low key - cooking, reading, watching movies. We were supposed to leave for Louisiana tonight but have been delayed until Saturday morning which is a little sad, but I guess I just have to think of it as a really long vacation. I am going to try to use all this free time to catch up on reviews.

151 - I'm pretty intrigued by some of the savory oatmeals as I would never have thought to do that.

152 - Architects are interesting sometimes. We tend to want to know a lot about a lot of different fields.

154 - Yeah, it's good. Concert was just a bit too pricey for me.

Wishlist Additions:

July
Louisiana Saturday Night: Looking for a Good Time in South Louisiana’s Juke Joints, Honky Tonks, and Dance Halls by Alex V. Cook – LSU press newsletter
The Making of Modern Medicine: Turning Points in the Treatment of Disease by Michael Bliss – kidzdoc’s review
Picasso's War by Russell Martin – no idea where I read about this but pretty sure I added it because it’s about the Guernica.
Dreams and Stones by Magdalena Tulli – DieFledermaus and rebeccanyc’s reviews
Is There a Nutmeg in the House? by Elizabeth David and Jill Norman – Nickelini’s review
The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes – several reviews here on LT, but I think it was Cariola’s that pushed it over the line
The Seven Basic Plots: Why We Tell Stories by Christopher Booker – I’d seen it mentioned several places before, not sure why I added it now.
Mentors, Muses & Monsters: 30 Writers on the People Who Changed Their Lives by Elizabeth Benedict – Linda92007’s review
Midlife Crisis at 30 by Kerry Rubin – shameful 30th birthday add

August
Work and Other Sins: Life in New York city and Thereabouts by Charlie LeDuff – edwinbcn’s review
Sweeney Todd – edwinbcn’s review
Phantoms on the Bookshelves by Jacques Bonnet – rebeccanyc’s review
A Fistful of Sky by Nina Kiriki Hoffman – read a short storey by her in Firebirds Rising
The Mammoth Book of Ghost Romance by Trisha Telep – not sure where this one came from
When I Left Home by Buddy Guy – avidmom’s review, which I’ve sense bought for my husband
Blowout in the Gulf: The BP Oil Spill Disaster and the Future of Energy by William R. Freudenburg and Robert Gramling – Disaster Buff’s group
The Roebling Legacy by Clifford W. Zink – I think from Columbia Magazine
The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander – DieFledermaus’s review and several others afterwards
Du torrent au courant, des barrages et des hommes en Savoie by Thierry Salomon – Architectural Record
Vernacular Architecture of West Africa by Jean-Paul Bourdier and T. Minh-Ha Trinh – Architectural Record
Silence by Shusaku Endo – several reviews – steven03tx, DieFledermaus, rebeccanyc, and kidzdoc
How Music Works by David Byrne – McSweeny’s newsletter and NY Magazine
The Labyrinth of Solitude: Life and Thought in Mexico by Octavio Paz – avidmom’s comments
Listen to This and The Rest is Noise by Alex Ross – DieFledermaus’s recommendations on the Questions for the Avid Reader thread

September
Secret Ingredients: The New Yorker Book of Food and Drink by David Remnick – Robert Durick’s comments
Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions by Edwin A. Abbott – stretch’s review
My Life in France by Julia Child – not sure why this wasn’t on the wishlist already
Rocket Boys by Homer H. Hickam – avidmom’s review
A Time to Keep Silence by Patrick Leigh Fermor – lilbrattyteen and Linda92007’s reviews
Lion’s Honey: The Myth of Samson by David Grossman – lilbrattyteen’s review
Cain by Jose Saramago - lilbrattyteen’s review

October
A Walk on the Wild Side by Nelson Algren – I don’t remember how I came across this one
The Stray Shopping Carts of Eastern North America by Julian Montague – DetailMuse’s review
Bio Design: Nature Science Creativity by William Myers – MoMA newsletter
Comfort Me with Offal: Ruth Bourdain's Guide to Gastronomy by Ruth Bourdain – NY Magazine
The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky – because of the movie
A Wrinkle in Time: The Graphic Novel by Hope Larson – who wouldn’t want this
The Oxford Handbook of Food History by Jeffrey M. Pilcher – OUP’s newsletter
We Shall Not Be Moved: Rebuilding Home in the Wake of Katrina by Tom Wooten – mention by Whisper1 in kidzdoc’s thread
Building Stories by Chris Ware – NY Magazine
Ghost Dances: Proving Up on the Great Plains by Josh Garrett-Davis - Columbia Magazine
On Celestial Music: And Other Adventures in Listening by Rick Moody - Columbia Magazine

Uh-oh. Several additions to my wishlist coming from your wishlist!

158 - Yeah that tends to be a problem on LT. :)

Architectural Record
September 2012

New Trends in Museum Architecture - exhibition at Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Museum of Art showcases some more landscape based museum designs. The below from a NATO rocket launch base in Germany.



Welcome to Corporate Kindergarten - commentary on the couple of decades old trend of more playful designs for offices – a la Google. While it seems like it may be fun to work at some of these places, most of the point is to keep you there all the time so you do more work.

Sheer Wall - Gorgeous office constructed mainly of sheer fabric walls that give it a kind of ethereal look



Recipe for Success - Gorgeous renovation of an existing structure for the Scandinavian restaurant Noma’s test kitchen.



October 2012

Rebuilding Detroit Piece by Piece - preview of Detroit’s urban strategy plans set to be unveiled at the end of this month.

Infrastructure in the Election - analysis of both candidates policies on building and infrastructure.

Taking the Pulse of Architecture - review of the Biennale, as usual the old guys went conservative with a few splashes of interest from the younger exhibitors. I particularly liked this casting of the Villa Rotunda.



New Life for the American City - Catalog of urban renewal interventions in Oklahoma City, Pittsburgh, and Cleveland.

Set in Stone - the new FDR memorial on NYC’s Roosevelt Island, one of the last project designed by the great Louis Kahn.





- fun and funky branch library in DC by David Adjaye, one of the more interesting architects working today.



- Zaha Hadid’s contribution to the Biennale – beautiful and only more convinces me that she’s a better artist than designer.

Columbia Magazine
Fall 2012

Freshman Orientation - Duck family was living in the bushes in front of the library, for those of you who like that kind of thing, you know who you are.

Tennessee Rose - profile of country singer Laura Cantrell – made me interested to check out some of her stuff.

Frank Lloyd Wright papers coming to Avery - yeah, suck it Chicago.

Plainsongs - review of Ghost Dances: Proving Up on the Great Plains interesting sounding memoir of growing up in South Dakota.

Joyful Noise - review of On Celestial Music: And Other Adventures in Listening which I’ll try to pick up for my music studies.

The Believer
June 2011

An Occasional Hobo - profile of Josiah Flynt Willard, one of the first to bring the life of the rail riders to public consciousness.

People Floating Near You - conversation between Sheila Heti and Misha Glouberman about teaching techniques and friendships.

The Process - Interview with artist Dorian Fitzgerald on his piece Table Decorations, Oprah Winfrey Party for Sidney Poitier who paints in a thick flowing style.



Lena Herzog - Interview with photographer Lena Herzog on her work Lost Souls composed mainly of photographs from some strange collections of preserved fetuses, small animal skeletons, etc.

Thanks, Jane! I've added several books from your wishlist to mine, namely Picasso's War, Work and Other Sins, When I Left Home, and A Time to Keep Silence. I liked the section on Pittsburgh in New Life for the American City, particularly the renovation of the Cultural District and the renovation of the old Nabisco building, which was abandoned when I lived there. I looked at Lena Herzog's web page, and I found those images to be haunting and fascinating. I'd love to see her work in person in the near future.

162 - Yeah, I was a little hesitant to post her photos because they're pretty creepy, but I do find them really touching. The ones with the small animal skeletons (not sure what kind of animals) are arranged as an orchestra which I found especially surreal.

So, I'm woefully behind in reviewing and keeping up with my thread in general. Work and life has been crazy, and I've been cooking a ton including huge Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners and that's taking up a good portion of my free time. I'm trying to finish up a few reviews tonight and then the rest will just migrate to the 2013 thread. I did want to share this great picture of Darryl (kidzdoc) and I at Cheeky's Sandwiches after Thanksgiving:

The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson

Acquired: from bragan – thank you!

I read this in the lead up to my Chicago vacation and found it highly enjoyable. Or as enjoyable as a book that is half about a mass murderer can be. It traces the history of the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair – the political and architectural struggles – along side the story of H.H. Holmes a businessman and swindler who built a horror-movie style hotel – gas jets in every room, a body furnace in the basement, etc - which he used to kill anywhere from 9 to a few hundred people.

Larson writes a compelling narrative that moves quickly along without sacrificing detail. Obviously I was particularly taken with the portions dealing with the architectural design and construction of the pavilions and landscape. Though I do think he drastically overestimates the impact of the fair’s design on architectural styles. The Beaux Arts style of the fair was already the standard for high end design, not something the fair popularized. In fact, I would argue that the fair was a bit of a death rattle for Classicism – Europe was already sniffing at modernism, while electricity and the elevator would jump start it in the States.

Still very highly recommended for those who like narrative nonfiction.

Architectural Record
November 2012

Brits Declare War on School Curves - absolutely ridiculous legislation by the secretary of education of UK’s parliament that basically outlaws any number of architectural forms and materials – curves, angles, notches and doglegs, roof terraces, curtain walls, etc.

The Mysterious Art of Color Forecasting - Color forecasting sounds like one of the most fun job in the world – behind naming crayon colors for Crayola.

America’s Top Architecture Schools 2013 - rankings and other various other discussions.

Below the Fold - new visitor’s center for the Giant’s Causeway in Ireland, one of the most impressive natural formations in the world.

Center:

 

And the Causeway:

Hi Jane, seasonal greetings.

I work for a paint manufacturer, and we do a series of colour forecasts each year. As the company is global, the global colours tend to be anodyne. But our local colour forecasts for the uk tend to be like fashion shows, quite daring and ahead of the curve. Like fashion, a less adventurous version of the look tends to filter through into everyday use.

We tend to pick cultural trends like (using good examples from recent years) 'bling' and 'shabby chic' and relate them to colour and 'looks' i.e. whole room sets incorporating furniture, soft furnishings, different textures as well as paint colours.

Having said that, the fashion for the last 5 years has been neutral colours on 3 walls, with one feature wall of bright colour or rich wallpaper...

Glad to hear you liked The Devil in the White City! I was happy to be able to find it a good home. :)

Nice photo of you and Darryl, and love your architectural posts as always.

zeno, Very interesting about the colors for decorating; when we repainted a year or two ago we went for non-neutral colors, and we get a lot of comments about it!

167-169 - Thanks for stopping by y'all.

This was a pretty down year for reading for me. I got really bogged down with life on several occasions and just dropped things altogether. I'm looking forward to moving on - 2013 thread here

Minimalistic 2012 stats:

Books read: 23 – 8 nonfiction, 14 fiction, and 1 mixed anthology

Male/Female/mixed authors: 15/5/3

Highlights:

Yes, Chef by Marcus Samuelsson
The Glass Room by Simon Mawer
O Pioneers! by Willa Cather
The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov