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May 02
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Debra
marked as to-read:
Graphs, Maps, Trees: Abstract Models for a Literary History (Hardcover)
by Franco Moretti
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Debra
gave
to:
The Path to Rome (Penguin Travel Library)
by Hilaire Belloc
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Debra said:
"Published in 1902. Belloc, like Patrick Leigh Fermor and a few other daring souls, decided to walk across Europe and his journey to Rome over the Alps is amazing. His account of hiking up a misty mountain near Interlaken and, when the clouds parted...more
Published in 1902. Belloc, like Patrick Leigh Fermor and a few other daring souls, decided to walk across Europe and his journey to Rome over the Alps is amazing. His account of hiking up a misty mountain near Interlaken and, when the clouds parted, realized that the path had ended and he was on a precipice just about to step out over a drop of thousands of feet into the lake below, is stunning. He vividly describes the mountains, vistas and his fellow travelers make this one of my favorite travel books....less
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Debra
added:
A Girl's Wanderings In Hungary (Hardcover and Google Web Scan---see URL)
by H. Ellen Browning
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Debra said:
"This is one of my favorite travel books by a woman, a young British girl who traveled to Hungary just before the turn of the last century. Traveling alone, she vividly describes the countryside of the Hungarian steppes, Transylvania's Carpathian mou...more
This is one of my favorite travel books by a woman, a young British girl who traveled to Hungary just before the turn of the last century. Traveling alone, she vividly describes the countryside of the Hungarian steppes, Transylvania's Carpathian mountains, the many wonderful homes in which she stayed and with a constant humanity and generosity of spirit. I enclose a favorite episode where, arriving late at night at a small town train station, she is taken by sleigh to a remote family estate in Transylvania after after leaving the hospitality of another a family in another town:
"It was impossible to get away from their hospitable midst in les than ten days, so that it was nearly the end of October before I started off on my return journey to Szt. Mihály. I went by rail to Magyar Nádas, the nearest station, and the journey seemed never-ending. The trains on all the branch lines simply crawl along, stopping at every little poky station an unconscionable time. The good doctor’s wife had insisted on packing me a basket of what she called ‘Mundvorrath,’ and very acceptable it proved. Cold roast chicken, white rolls, hazel-nut cakes, some slices of sausage, a few pears, a handful of walnuts, grapes, and a small bottle of wine, covered by a dainty white serviette. Our farewells were of the most cordial nature, and full of gratitude on my part; but they all seemed to feel that it was I who had conferred a favor upon them. Quite a large party assembled to see me off, each bringing an offering of flowers, bonbons, candied fruits, or cakes of some kind, and waved handkerchiefs at me with tearful eyes till my train passed beyond the line of vision.
By the time our dilatory engine pulled heavily into Magyar-Nádas it was already eleven o’clock at night, and before it crawled lazily on its way I was tucked safely into the sleigh sent to meet me, presenting the appearance of a bundle of fur rugs crowned by a red wool shawl. The thermometer stood below zero, and it snowed hard and fast. How soft and white those falling feather flakes were! What a world of whiteness and mystery we were passing through! Not a sound except the jingle of the bells on the horses’ necks and the crisp crunch, crunch! of the frozen snow under the rapid runners of the sleigh, that flew so swiftly and smoothly along. How delightful it was! I had a feeling that the world was empty and wide, yet filled with a delicious joy that thrilled me through and through. Empty of everything, except one solitary, flying sleigh, enveloped in circling clouds of soft, silent, snowy spirits that seemed nestling tenderly around me on every side. A mad longing that my steeds would rush into space and carry me onwards for ever and ever, in an eternal environment of fast-falling snow took possession of me, and I almost wept when we drew up at the hall door of the sleeping Kastely, and the maid Pepi came running out exclaimning: “Küss die Hand, gnädiges Fräulein. Was für ein schreckliches Wetter! Das arme grädige Fräulein muss ja ganze gefroren sein.” She was right. Our drive had lasted an hour and a halve and I was nearly frozen, though this little fact had not dawned upon me until she mentioned it."
H. Ellen Browning – A Girl’s Wanderings in Hungary - 1897
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Debra
gave
to:
A Girl In The Karpathians (1892)
by Menie Muriel Norman
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Debra said:
"Another amazing history of a single woman traveling through the Karpathians---Transylvania and Poland---before the turn of the last century. It is a startling place to visit now as a woman alone, and it is also a rare product of its times in the not...more
Another amazing history of a single woman traveling through the Karpathians---Transylvania and Poland---before the turn of the last century. It is a startling place to visit now as a woman alone, and it is also a rare product of its times in the not so hidden prejudices against gypsies and Jews. But well worth the journey so far....less
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Debra
gave
to:
The Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death (Hardcover)
by Corinne May Botz
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read in January, 2006
Debra said:
"When we lived in DC for a few months we heard of this amazing museum of miniatures, open by appointment only, in the Office of the Medical Examiner in the murder capital of the U.S., Baltimore. David Byrne had mentioned it as one of his 10 favorite ...more
When we lived in DC for a few months we heard of this amazing museum of miniatures, open by appointment only, in the Office of the Medical Examiner in the murder capital of the U.S., Baltimore. David Byrne had mentioned it as one of his 10 favorite things in his hometown of Baltimore and when we went, with a special appointment weeks in advance, his name was just three before ours in the guestbook. The 25 or so diaoramas were made in exacting miniature by a Mother Jones looking bespectacled grandmotherly woman, a forensic scientist at Harvard. She even knit nylon stockings with thread like spider webs on two straight pins for several of them, and each is a scene of a murder, with all the clues scattered across the perfectly rendered 1940s noir-esque environment. And as an act of absolute love of her field, two of the dioramas were arson scenes so after making them with such care, she burned them as carefully, leaving the clues about for her students to decipher. The dioramas languished in a closet at Harvard before Baltimore purchased them and began using them for international conferences on forensics they host annually. The rooms were installed, with the help of a team of conservators from the Baltimore Museum---armed with tiny vacuum cleaners and dusters---in glassed-in cases in a small room adjoining the Med Examiners office. When we were there, back in 2002, I hoped someone would photograph them, as so many people would enjoy seeing them. Each room had a placard with the bare facts that the police were given, and viewers were challenged to solve the crimes based on the visible evidence they could see. What a rare combination of precision and care up against malevolence and sadness. The photographer who produced this book expertly captures all of it, and I highly recommend it to artists and anyone interested in mysteries and crime....less
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New comment on Debra's review of
The Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death
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May 01
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Debra
gave
to:
Between the Woods and the Water (New York Review Books Classics)
by Patrick Leigh Fermor
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read in January, 2005
Debra said:
"My favorite travel book of all time. Patrick Leigh Fermor walked across Europe in the 1930s with just a backpack and this eloquent account of what he found along the way is something I read again and again. His descriptions of Hungary and especiall...more
My favorite travel book of all time. Patrick Leigh Fermor walked across Europe in the 1930s with just a backpack and this eloquent account of what he found along the way is something I read again and again. His descriptions of Hungary and especially of Transylvania are utterly compelling and you wish you had a time machine to join him then. A fine excerpt:
All through the afternoon the hills had been growing in height and now they rolled into the distance behind a steep and solitary hemisphere clad to the summit with vineyards. We turned into the tall gates at the foot of it and a long sweep of grass brought us to a Palladian façade just as night was falling. Two herons rose as we approached; the shadows were full of the scent of lilac. Beyond the french windows, a coifed and barefoot maid with spill was lighting lamps down a long room, and, with each new pool of light, Biedermeier furniture took shape and chairs and sofas where only a few strands of the original fabric still lingered; there were faded plum-coloured curtains and a grand piano laden with framed photographs and old family albums with brass clasps; antlers branched, a stuffed lynx pricked its ears, ancestors with swords and furred tunics dimly postured. A white stove soared between bookcases, bear-skins spread underfoot: and, as at Kövecsespuszta, a sideboard carried an array of silver cigarette-cases with the arms and monograms of friends who had bestowed them for standing godfather or being best man at a wedding or second in a duel. There was a polished shellcase from some Silesian battle, a congeries of thimble-sized goblets, a scimitar with turquoise-encrusted scabbard, folded newspapers—Az Ujság and Pesti Hirlap sent from Budapest, and the Wiener Salonblatt, an Austrian Tatler full of pictures of shooting parties, equestrian events and smart balls far away, posted from Vienna. Among the silver frames was a daguerrotype of the Empress Elizabeth—Queen, rather, in this lost province of the former Kingdom—another of the Regent dressed as admiral of a vanished fleet, and a third of Archduke Otto in the pelts and the plumes of a Hungarian magnate. Red, green and blue, the squat volumes of the Almanach de Gotha were ready to pounce. A glittering folio volume, sumptuously bound in green leather, almost covered a small table and its name, Az ember tragediája, was embossed in gold: The Tragedy of Man, by Imre Madács. It is a long nineteenth-century dramatic poem of philosophic and contemplative temper, and no Hungarian house, even the least bookish—like English houses with the velllum-bound Omar Khayyám illustrated by Edmund Dulac—seemed complete without it. Finally, a rack in the corner was filled with long Turkish pipes. This catalogue of detail composes an archetype of which every other country-house I saw in Transylvania seemed to be a variation.
At the other end, beyond the double doors of a room which was half-study and half-gunroom, more antlers proliferated; figures moved in the lamplight and the voices of guests sounded, as I hastened upstairs to wash and get some of the dust off before meeting them…
Next morning revealed the front of a late eighteenth-century building. Between the wings, four wide-spaced Tuscan columns advanced and ascended both floors to form a splendid loggia. White louvred shutters continued the line of windows on either side, each leaf touching its neighbour on the façade when they were open while indoors the light poured across the floors; closed, with their slats ajar when the sun became too hot, they striped the wide polished beams underfoot with bars of light and dark,. There was a wheel with a handle which cranked out an enormous slant of white awning and, looking out, one might have been on the deck of a schooner painted by Tissot with tree-tops for waves. Beyond, the vine-clad hemispherical hill of Mokra soared like a volcanic island against snowy heaps of cloud and a pale sky. The smells of lilac, box and lavender drifted in, goldfinches moved about the branches, and now and then house-martins from the nests clustering along the pediment strayed indoors and flew in desperate circles or swept clean through the house and out the other side.
Patrick Leigh Fermor
BETWEEN THE WOODS AND THE WATER, 1934
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Debra
gave
to:
A Time of Gifts (New York Review Books Classics)
by Patrick Leigh Fermor, Jan Morris
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April 29
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Debra
gave
to:
Rumors of Peace (Paperback)
by Ella Leffland
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