Book Shelves #49, 12.02.2012

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Book shelves series #49, forty-ninth Sunday of 2012

Unless I’ve somehow miscalculated, this is the last book shelf in my house. It’s difficult to describe the room it’s in—sort of like a storage corridor that serves as an attic (my attic is tiny) with an ersatz workshop. Kids paints and art supplies dominate the top shelf; photo albums and year books the bottom. The middle holds all sorts of books that I can’t bear to get rid of, including a coffee-table history of MAD Magazine which is one of the first books I can remember begging my parents to get me.

There are also many, many back issues of MAD:

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Also, lots of old books with out of date info, like a book about Jacques Cousteau, a book of Indian recipes which is more of a cultural guide, and this book of my home state:

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Several old music zines (I should probably donate them to a zine library).

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I have several dozens of these history packets called Discovery that I loved as a kid—they’d come with a booklet that illustrated the historical event in context, including opposing viewpoints, and they also had cool activities and games. I think they really helped me to learn as a child, and I can’t bear to get rid of them. Apparently Dennis Miller sat for the portrait of Guy Fawkes in the second issue.

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The Science in Science Fiction probably deserves its own post it’s so wonderfully weird and silly.

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Although this is the last shelf in my house, I said I’d do these posts each Sunday of 2012—and there are four more. I’ll visit the bookshelves in my office, the books in my car, take another look at the books on my nightstand (where I started) and then do a review post. Then I will never, ever do anything like this again.

 

Leontine Reading — Pierre-Auguste Renoir

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Eco/Krasznahorkai (Books Acquired, 11.30.2012)

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Reading Nude — Theodor Pallady

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Reading Girls — Nikolay Bogdanov-Belsky

Reading — Berthe Morisot

“All schools are bad” (Thomas Bernhard)

All schools are bad and the one we attend is always the worst if it doesn’t open our eyes. What lousy teachers we had to put up with, teachers who screwed up our heads. Art destroyers all of them, art liquidators, culture assassins, murderers of students.

From Thomas Bernhard’s novel The Loser.

Spetssom — Anders Zorn

The Reader — Federico Zandomeneghi

Book Shelves #48, 11.25.2012

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Book shelves series #48, forty-eighth Sunday of 2012

Another doublestocked shelf: The front stack (on the right) are all books I’ve been intending to read at some point, or been reading slowly or piecemeal. Behind and to the left: Lots of old hardbacks—some Yeats, some H.G. Wells, Arthurian legends, and Shakespeare-related texts. A totally misshelved and out-of date Lonely Planet guide (why is it there?). Some Asimov. A few faves:

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Reading Aloud — Ilya Repin

Jeanne Reading — Camille Pissarro

Interior at Arcachon — Edouard Manet

Still Life with a Book — Paul Signac

Nutcracker, Illustrated by Maurice Sendak (Book Acquired Some Time in October, 2012)

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We’ll be running a giveaway contest for one of these beautiful editions of Hoffman’s Nutcracker, featuring illustrations by Maurice Sendak sometime next week.

Vacation Boy Riding a Goose — Norman Rockwell

Incantation — Felicien Rops