Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose

Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose: The Story of a Painting by Hugh Brewster, mysteriously found its way into my shopping bag on Saturday (along with a few other books) as I was Christmas shopping for the nieces and nephews at the Nelons-Atkins Museum Store. It tells a charming tale about John Singer Sargent and the creation of this famous painting, now in the Tate Gallery in London. The narrator is five-year-old Kate (Katharine) Millet, a young girl who was originally to be a model for Sargent but was replaced by Polly and Dolly Barnard, whereupon she makes a little song: "I hate Polly, and I hate Dolly. Now they're here I'm not very jolly..." Kate is soon reconciled with her friends, though, and Sargent eventually paints a portrait of her.

Brewster's book is wonderful for both children and adults, combining Kate's observations with period photographs, art work, and other details related to the story, along with interesting background information about the artists who gathered at the village of Broadway, Worcestershire in the mid-1880s, including Edwin Austen Abbey, Alfred Parsons, Francis Davis Millet (Kate's father), Frederick Barnard, and the American novelist Henry James.

Column Envy

I had column envy after visiting cool blogs with three columns instead of two, like dovegreyreader, so I googled some help for adding a column to the Blogger minima template and found this article on Tips-For-New-Bloggers. Worked like a charm.

Mrs. Mabb

“Majestic trees of great age and height stood about a great expanse of velvety green lawn. The trees had all been clipped into smooth rounded shapes, each one taller than Kissingland church tower, each one a separate mystery, and each one provided by the evening sun with a long shadow as mysterious as itself. Far, far above, a tiny moon hung in the blue sky like its own insubstantial ghost.”

from “Mrs. Mabb,” The Ladies of Grace Adieu, by Susanna Clarke

An Owl

Going out front yesterday evening to snip some rosemary for a chicken I was roasting (my first whole roasted chicken :-) ), it had already grown quite dark, and as I started snipping off sprigs, I heard an owl softly hooting. I looked at all the nearby trees where it might have been perched, but couldn’t spot it. I went back inside for my binoculars, and heard it again when I came back out, but still couldn’t see it. It was making a who hooting call, something I haven’t heard barred owls do. Mark McK said that great horned owls make a soft call like that. I have seen great horned owls before, but they are usually silent. And I would have thought an owl that big would be easy to spot.

The chicken turned out well. I was following an Alice Waters recipe for roasted chicken, which called for an hour in a 400 degree oven with three turns — breast up, breast down, breast up. I had read through quite a bit of direction in our Cook’s Illustrated New Best Recipe guide, which said the approach recommended by Waters (they did not reference her directly, just the temperature she specified) would result in the outer 1 inch of breast meat being overcooked. And, they were right. It was still good, but I plan to follow the Cook’s Illustrated approach for my next chicken.

This is neither an owl nor a chicken, but my next door neighbor Joan wearing a festive hat. I took the picture yesterday when Joan and Diane were putting up Christmas decorations in their yard.

Devour Pinot Noir 2005

The accompanying image of this inaptly named pinot indicates what Elly and I did not do with the bottle — devour it. This 2005 Napa Valley Carneros district pinot looks (and unfortunately tastes!) for all the world like water tinted with a slight amount of red food coloring. Not recommended.

What’s with the FCD?

FCD stands for Friend of Charles Darwin. Not just anyone can claim these initials! To find out more, visit the Friends of Charles Darwin website. But now I have a problem. How exactly should the FCD be printed? All capital letters? All lowercase? Should each letter be followed by periods? We have so little experience with this sort of thing in the states...

Is This Dangerous Reading?

I’ve been surfing around looking for cool blogs on reading and have found a few, most notably Eloise by the Books Piles, which is absolutely charming and first-rate. A “must see” for readers. Eloise led me to Ex Libris, which led in turn to Estellas Revenge: A ‘zine about books and the My Year of Reading Dangerously Challenge.

The challenge is to read one intimidating or dangerous book per month during 2008, and the Estella article linked above includes a list of 12 official titles, but also encourages readers who want to develop their own list to do so.

Like I needed encouragement to go my own way? :-)

I decided to pick 12 books already in our house. This isn’t the limiting factor some might suppose — we have literally thousands of titles begging to be read. In fact, whenever I start doing housework, straightening things up, putting books away, etc., it is hard not to notice some interesting book which has languished on a shelf for years, pick it up for a quick perusal, and let an hour slip by before I feel the eyes of Elly on the back of my neck and hear an amused (and mildly chagrined) comment along the lines of “So this is where you have gotten off to.” Last Sunday, for example, I was lead astray by The Letters of E.B. White. (What self-respecting reader could resist such temptation?)

Anyway, here is my list of 12. These aren’t necessarily dangerous — as long as I’m not reading them when I should be doing chores — they are just books I have meant to read, or reread, and have actually acquired copies of through the years, but have somehow not made time for them. Also, while novels predominate, several works of nonfiction are included, not necessarily with any rhyme or reason but simply because when I wandered through the house picking out titles they caught my eye.

January: Rob Roy by Sir Walter Scott.
February: The Faerie Queen by Edmund Spenser.
March: Don Quixote by Miguel De Cervantes.
April: The House of the Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne.
May: The Voyage of the Beagle by Charles Darwin.
June: Moby Dick by Herman Melville.
July: Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain.
August: Boswell's Life of Johnson by James Boswell.
September: Middlemarch by George Eliot.
October: Barchester Towers by Anthony Trollop.
November: The Wings of the Dove by Henry James.
December: The Old Curiosity Shop by Charles Dickens.

And now Samba has arrived to remind me it is well past his dinner time...