8 posts tagged “books”
Helen of Troy: Goddess, Princess, Whore, by Bettany Hughes.
A masterwork by a brilliant Oxford-educated historian, this books deals with Helen of Troy as a historical and literary figure. Very well-researched, it is scholarly without being boring; erudite without being pompous and arrogant; interesting without being pretentious.
The book is flooded with facts, and the deluge will leave you breathless under the waves of words, but once you sink into the Late Bronze Age world that Bettany reveals to us, you will float away to a place and time alien to our own, but still a part of it.
Helen may have been a cultic goddess worshipped in trees and other forms of nature; she may have been a version of Aphrodite; she may have been an aristocrat during the days when matriarchy ruled, when the feminine was venerated and revered over the masculine; or she may have been a mixture of all these.
What matters is that she was an empowered female figure, whose personality was magnetic, whose beauty was iconic, whose story became legendary, and today stands for the strength of the feminine, which is in all of us women, if we but claim our right to it.
For some reason, the lives of dead European, especially British, royals have fascinated me no end. Since I outgrew fiction some ten years back (except for Agatha Christie mysteries, can't get enough of those), I have amassed a modest collection of biographies and histories on the subject.
I've had this book for quite some time, but lately have been re-reading it. It's all about the woman for whom a king gave up a throne - Wallis Warfield Spencer Simpson, the Duchess of Windsor.
The book's author, Charles Higham, whose father was a member of the British nobility, had access to information and dossiers that were probably until recently kept classified. His "in" into British and European society also helped him obtain personal reminiscences from people who were the Duchess of Windsor's contemporaries or their descendants.
So this book dishes out a lot of juicy tidbits, not only about Wallis' (notorious) personal life, but also about top-secret political machinations around the time of the Second World War.
But beyond the gossip, fashion, scandal, and intrigues that swirled around this magnetic couple, on thing is clear - the love that Edward had for his Wallis.
Would that we all could find someone to love us as utterly and completely!
Last April 2007, rambling through the aisles of one of my favorite haunts, Fully Booked at Rockwell, I came across this book on top of one of the "new bestseller" tables. The other books on the table were heaped - ten, fifteen copies - but of this particular tome, there were only three left.
The title was intriguing; the author's name, recognizable in that vague, dreamy way of having heard it somewhere before, something like "Isn't she that famous writer for that top magazine in the States?"
When I choose books, I go through these steps: first, the cover grabs my attention with its artwork - vibrant, colorful, interesting? drab, dark, morbid? I then check out the title and the author - heard, or never heard?
Next I turn to the back for the blurb. If the synopsis there (written, I am sure, by savvy marketing people who know that the blurb is the quickest and best way to grab the consumer and not let go) tweaks my curiosity even to the slightest degree, I then flip through the pages. The language must jump out, awaken my senses, make me reel in the headiness of the words, the prolixity of thought and verbiage coming together like a potent drug. If the book has this effect on me, then I get it.
"Insatiable" is one such book, penned by the famous food writer of New York magazine. She is witty, intelligent, an unabashed hedonist who enjoys the pleasures of the table with the same sensuality that she explores the pleasures of the bedroom. It is honest and alive with detail; Gael holds nothing back in describing her lovers, her meals, her friends, the delights of the senses that encompass her world and make up her life story.
Be sure to read this book on a full stomach, as the exquisite description of French and Italian cuisine will make you hungry and want to go on your own gastronomic adventures in our food-obsessed Manila.
Here are a couple of excerpts:
"We are going to have a nice salade composeé," said Julia (Child) in that rolling profundo that promised if she could cook it, you could, too... I must admit I was disappointed. Disappointed? Shocked. What did I expect? Nothing complicated. A lovely cold pork roast. A deviled chicken. I was not demanding a suckling pig turning on a spit or a laborious ballontine requiring birds be boned and gelatin gelled... To be with Julia... it should have been enough. What an ingrate I am to have expected lukewarm loup de mer with a sauce gribiche. Forever the Insatiable Critic. (p. 241)
I remember thinking, Okay, show me. And to my astonishment, she (chef Alice Waters) did. There was something radically daring in the simplicity of every perfect vegetable, the pristine leaves of baby greens that had not yet hit kitchens in New York, the clarity of an oddly shaped tomato. Until that moment, heirloom meant a hideous vase you dare not send to the thrift shop because it had been your grandmother's. If there were zealots reviving forgotten spieces of tomato or twenty strains of heirloom potatoes on the East Coast, I was not yet aware of it. (p. 172)
"Jewels - A Secret History", by Victoria Finlay, takes us into the glittering, scintillating hearts of gemstones, their history, what they are, and where they come from. She tackles ten different stones and arranged the chapters according to Moh's scale of hardness of minerals.
The hidden wonders of pearls, emeralds, rubies, and sapphires are revealed. Do you recall the story of how Cleopatra was said to have dissolved a pearl in vinegar and drunk it before Caesar to show off her wealth and power? Finlay experimented with a river pearl , and the results are surprising.
I loved the chapters on jet and amber, since they are almost unknown here in the Philippines.
Reading about these precious materials brings to mind a friend I had in UP, Punay Caccam, whose dad was a mining engineer and actually owned, or had shares in, a jade mine. Punay said that the Philippines is rich in mineral wealth, but strict and obstructive laws make it difficult for mining companies to be profitable.
Meanwhile, us ordinary folks will have to content ourselves with gazing into jewelry shop windows and reading books to enjoy the world of gems and minerals.
Victoria Finlay's first book explores the origins of color, or where people obtain the pigments and dyes used throughout history. I loved her second book, "Jewels", and this book is just as fascinating.
As a creative person, I had to learn the color wheel and the lingo associated with it for my quilting. As a visual person, I enjoy reading books that are highly descriptive; it makes the story come to life for me.
From the blurb at the back:
On her quest to uncover the secrets of colour, Victoria Finlay visited remote Central American villages where women still wear skirts dyed with the purple tears of sea snails; learned how George Washington obsessed about his green dining room while he should have been busy with matters of state; and investigated the mystery of Indian yellow paint, said to have been made from the urine of cows force-fed with mango leaves.
Another interesting read I picked up at Fully Booked last May 2007 (along with Colour).
This one's by Joan deJean, who has written seven previous books on French literature, history, and culture, and is a professor of French at U-Penn, also holding positions at Princeton and Yale.
It traces the reasons why Paris is the fashionista center of the world, and why Hermes, Vuitton, and Creme de la Mer are must-haves despite their exhorbitant prices.
Apparently it was all Louis XIV's fault. This maitre of style ruled the French court with his highly original and decorative ideas on dress, etiquette, and urban planning, which to this day have repercussions on the monde of haute couture.
Starbucks is not only my favorite caffeine delivery system, it is also my ideal global business. Its stock has risen 5,000% since 1992, and has hundreds of stores around the world.
Dr. Joseph Michelli attempts to explain in this book the reasons for this phenomenal success. He interviewed "partners" (employees) on how they deliver their own particular brand of customer delight that makes people come back for more and more.
My sister-in-law Dr Mitas Alcasid got me this copy for $14 (regular price was $22) at Walmart in Oswego, when we visited them last February.
Picked it up at Booksale for cheap (ain't Booksale just GREAT! they should give the owners a medal for bringing inexpensive literature to the masses). It's a biography of mother and daughter Alva and Consuelo Vanderbilt, of the American railway fortune - where the moral of the story is, riches can't always make you happy.
It was the late 1890s, when opulence and decadence were the hallmarks of the lifestyles of the rich, while frightful squalor and poverty afflicted the less fortunate. Fortified by great wealth, ensconced in her grand mansion called "Marble House", Alva did not have much to do in her cosseted life save to look after her milionaire husband William Kissam Vanderbilt and their children (Consuelo, William Jr., and Harold Stirling), and to seek dominance in upscale New York and Newport society, dominated at that time by Mrs Astor.
In her quest to become "Queen of Newport" during that fussy, protocol-laden era, the determined and bossy Alva married off Consuelo at 19 to the 9th Duke of Marlborough. Not only was the teenager tall, beautiful, and endowed with swan-like grace and high intelligence, she was also obscenely rich, with a dowry in the millions of dollars.
The Duke, called "Sunny" (from one of his hereditary titles, "Earl of Sunderland", and not because his nature was particularly bright), only wanted Consuelo's money to save his family's aged ruin of an ancestral palace, Blenheim Castle.
Though Consuelo was in love with another man (socialite Winthrop Rutherfurd), Alva railroaded the marriage through. Naturally, the marriage was not happy and did not last, ending later in divorce. Consuelo married again, to Lt. Col. Jacques Balsan, the love of her life, with whom she spent her twilight years.
Aside from being a window into the past, it is a brilliant story that reinforces an idea I've formed through the years - that many times, first marriages don't work out and it's the second one that brings wedded bliss and happiness.
