A Trip to Legacy Books and Barnes and Noble

My cache all within an hour's time (some freebies but mostly not!):

The Sartorialist Came to Big D

A few months ago I had a posting on Quinn Cummings and her book Notes from the Underwire. One of the questions I asked Quinn had to do with some of her favorite websites. Her first favorite site was The Sartoritalist. Quinn is very word smart and I was embarrassed that I honestly did not know what the word “sartorial” meant, much less what a "sartorialist" was. Quinn commented that she liked this site because “it’s thrilling to watch people mix patterns correctly.” OK, so I figured it was some sort of fashion site, but since Quinn is so very witty, I thought maybe it was a site that made fun of what people were wearing. I was very wrong. After looking up the word “sartorial” and discovering that it means “of or relating to a tailor or tailored clothes” (thank you http://www.m-w.com/) and then from actually going to the website  and following the postings, I realized that this site is devoted to celebrating the clothes people wear and I now understand Quinn’s great attraction. The Sartorialist is actually a guy named Scott Shuman who takes pictures of people he thinks have a unique and appealing fashion sense. He adds very little prose to his photos, but each posting seems to draw a lot of comments.

Last week The Sartorialist came to Dallas to promote his new book, also entitled The Sartorialist. I went to hear Mr. Shuman interviewed by a Dallas Morning News fashion writer (Jason Sheeler) and sign books at Dallas' flagship Barnes and Noble across from NorthPark. The Sartorialist did not disappoint. He was interesting, warm, witty, and has an engaging personality. I thought he might be a man of few words (like on the blog), but he had a lot to say and I enjoyed his straightforwardness and honesty. He is a very good public speaker and was much more comfortable in front of the audience than Mr. Sheeler. The crowd was made up of a lot of young, stylish fashionistas and then the rest of us. I am sure many people dressed their best without going overboard since they were getting to meet The Sartorialist. I was dressed comfortably and confidentially enough so that I didn’t feel completely out of my element (as I really was).

--from Wikipedia.com

 Following are some of the more interesting pieces of information I garnered from the interview:

–Mr. Shuman’s dad was a photographer, too, but not of fashion (sales training and trade shows) and he is from Indiana. He likes photographing his kids and enjoys their pictures.
-His girlfriend is Garance Doré, a French fashion photographer with her own site as well.
-He previously worked in the fashion industry in various aspects.
-He does not like a lot of the other fashion blogs because they get their pictures from other and variant sources and therefore have no consistency.
-Some of his photographer heroes are Bruce Weber, August Sander, Steve McCurry, and Bill Cunningham.
-He doesn’t take too much time with any subject, but the amount of time differs with each one. Most people pose themselves and he doesn’t even talk to some.
-He is good at being oblivious to get a great shot.
-He feels no pressure. His site has integrity in that it is him doing everything: shooting in his own unique way using no assistants and no strange lighting.
-In 2010, instead of just the fashion cities of Milan, Paris, and New York, Mr. Shuman wants to go to some smaller cities and shoot more variety and national dress. Some of these places include perhaps Thailand, Rajasthan (India), and/or Peru.
-He uses a Canon EOS 5D Mark II and then uses the next model up for the bigger jobs.
-He is building The Sartorialist brand and he is working towards an online retail element.

Here is a link to his October 2009 postings. Just scroll down to Monday, October 26, 2009, 10:17 am and you can find his recent picture relating to Dallas.

Materials Miksang

One of the reasons I like the Miksang photos by Julie Einstein is because of the colors . . .

Click to enlarge.

Check out these and others at http://jeinstein.zenfolio.com/!

Dale Chihuly Exhibition at Dunn and Brown Contemporary

Yesterday was the last day of a Dale Chihuly exhibition at the Dunn and Brown Contemporary gallery near Javier's Restaurant close to the Knox/Henderson area in Dallas. The Dallas Museum of Art has had a Chihuly work in its atrium for years now. I also love looking at the ceiling installation in the Bellagio in Las Vegas. I was glad to see this exhibition thanks to some very nice friends. 

Photos courtesy of Marie Novy.

Matthew Pearl's Appearance at Collin College

Last Wednesday night, October 14th, I went to hear Matthew Pearl speak at Collin College’s Book-in-Common presentation in Plano, Texas. The book chosen for 2009 was Pearl’s The Poe Shadow (see previous post). Never having been to this campus located only 5 minutes from my house, I found the auditorium by following the crowd entering one of the buildings. I was impressed with the number of students filing into the auditorium and was afraid I would be near the back of the room. Since I was by myself, I boldly walked to the front of the room and found a seat on the second row. One of the college’s adjunct professors happened to sit next to me and was as excited as I was to get to hear Mr. Pearl speak. The auditorium became so crowded that two partitions on both sides of the room were opened to the overflow crowd.

After a few introductions by the college president and others, Mr. Pearl took the stage and began his talk. Matthew Pearl has a very amiable personality and is an interesting speaker. He began by reminding the audience that this was the bicentennial of Edgar Allan Poe’s birth and the anniversary of Poe’s death had just passed a week earlier. The first two stories that Mr. Pearl had ever read of Poe’s were “The Black Cat” and “The Purloined Letter,” which both repelled him and intrigued him. Apparently, Poe loved cats and had his own. Mr. Pearl had the copy of his own first Poe collection that was tattered and missing the cover. He talked about how he was challenged to start writing because one of his classes in law school. This particular class was a legal writing class and at the beginning the professor said that when they finished that class they would never write creatively again. Pearl took it as a challenge.

Mr. Pearl acted on this challenge by first writing a test chapter (which turned into his first novel, The Dante Club). Doing this gave him some confidence in his abilities and then he wrote more and started investigating how to get his work published. By the time he was writing his second novel, The Poe Shadow, he was more aware of his decision making regarding his writing. These two novels were not written quickly. The Dante Club and The Poe Shadow took 3 ½ and 3 years, respectively, to complete. Mr. Pearl was adamant that you have to find a topic you really love so much to write about, so much so that you still like it when you most hate it!

Mr. Pearl was motivated to write about Poe because of his mysterious death. Of course, one of the things you hear about Poe was that he was “drunk in the gutter” right before his death. Mr. Pearl was intrigued by this literary history and the puzzle of Poe’s death. Doing research on Poe was not so easy because Poe himself constantly lied about his life when he was alive. Mr. Pearl had to sift through Poe’s lies such as that he had lived in Paris and that he held a swimming record to find what was true and what was not to be as accurate as possible. Poe also claimed to have served in the Polish army.

Some interesting Poe tidbits as given by Mr. Pearl during his talk:

• Pearl named the book The Poe Shadow because Poe is “over” all the characters and the story, but he is not present in the book as a character.
• Poe was striving for a normal life before he died—he was going to be married again and was going to stop drinking (Poe reacted very badly to small amounts of alcohol, leading some to believe he was an alcoholic).

• At the time, Poe’s writing was considered grotesque, dangerous, and unreligious.
• Poe’s writing has a timeless quality (it is not fixed to a moral point in history).
• Many intellectuals such as E.L. Doctorow do not have high regard for Poe’s work.
• Poe wrote one novel, but mainly wrote short stories and poems because at the time writers were paid in copies of their novels, but short stories and poems paid cash.
• Poe’s writing was popular in France before it was popular in the U.S.

During his discussion, Mr. Pearl showed some international covers of The Poe Shadow and these can be found on his Facebook page.

After he was finished with his presentation, Mr. Pearl answered a great number of questions submitted via index cards that audience members formulated. A few of these were:

How do you organize your ideas when writing a novel?

Mr. Pearl stated that he files everything he researches in documents that he stores and accesses on his computer. For example, he has separate documents for each city he researches and for each character.

What are some tips for getting a novel published?

Even though this is a very general question, Mr. Pearl stressed 3 important points: 1) find a literary agent (kind of like a real estate agent), 2) your query letter just to convince an agent to look at your manuscript is of utmost importance, and 3) write about something you are passionate about.

What is your process of choosing names for your characters?

Mr. Pearl keeps extensive lists of names from his research in a particular time period that he can refer to when needed. Some names are from history and just “fall into his lap.” Lastly, some names are tributes to friends such as the main character’s name in The Poe Shadow, Quentin.

The last question was about what Mr. Pearl believed to be the cause of Poe’s death. Matthew Pearl is the first to point out the theory that Poe perhaps died of a brain tumor. But, of course, Poe’s death will forever remain a mystery.

Mr. Pearl will be lecturing and signing again tomorrow night, October 20th, in Irving, Texas for an Irving Public Library event. Details can be found on his website.

Mr. Pearl's latest novel is The Last Dickens, another intriguing historical fiction and mystery.

I am so happy to have invested a few hours time to hear Matthew Pearl speak on Edgar Allan Poe.

Da Vinci Discovery

I think this is really exciting . . .

http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/europe/10/13/da.vinci.portrait.found/index.html?eref=igoogle_cnn

Coco Avant Chanel

Coco Avant Chanel (Coco Before Chanel) has been in the theatres for a short time, and I took advantage of a rainy weekend to go see this movie by Anne Fontaine at the Plano Angelika. Audrey Tautou starred as Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel from her teen years until right after her Paris shop became well known, but before World War I. Not really knowing too much about Chanel, I enjoyed the movie but just have to say that Coco was a very, very lucky girl in the early 1900’s. Of course she had talent and perseverance, but she was fortunate to have met two very rich friends, Étienne Balsan and “Boy” Capel. Balsan was a wealthy man she met when she worked for a tailor by day, and in the movie she sang at cabarets in the evenings. They became friends and lovers and she eventually went to live with him. Later she met the Englishman Capel when he came to visit Balsan. The actors that portrayed Balsan and Capel were very well cast.

Balsan supported Chanel by giving her a place to live and work (designing hats). Boy Capel financed her first shop. Unfortunately, Capel was killed in a car wreck before he and Chanel were supposed to rendezvous one year on the Riviera. After his death, a devastated Chanel concentrated on her work and became more and more successful.

--from www.thisisu.com

Audrey Tautou was perfect for the role of Chanel. She is thin, beautiful, and can convey much emotion just with her facial expressions. She was so perfect for her role in Amélie, and I enjoyed seeing her in this movie, another French-made film. In The Da Vinci Code, her sparkling personality was never allowed to develop in the role of Sophie Neveu.

I really enjoyed the clothes Chanel made from the men’s clothes in the movie, and it was interesting to see how she was inspired. She hated corsets and all the feathery, unnecessary accoutrements of women’s fashion in the early 1900’s. Instead, she liked simpler, more comfortable clothes. Traveling to the sea and seeing the sailors gave her inspiration to use and wear different materials.

The ending to this movie was a bit strange as an older Chanel in one of her signature suits is sitting on the steps of her apartment/shop in Paris after many models walk down the stairs in her famous designs. The movie did not really concentrate on her dresses and couture clothes, as much as her beginnings designing hats and casual clothes. This last scene did not really blend in with the movie, but it showed how creative and talented she was and how famous she became.

The Poe Shadow

For my last book club meeting, the book discussed was The Poe Shadow by Matthew Pearl. As usual, I put off reading it until about a week and a half before we were to meet. I was sorry to have done so, since I would have liked to have read Mr. Pearl’s other two books (The Dante Club and The Last Dickens) before we met. 

The Poe Shadow is a work of historical fiction, a genre I very much appreciate due to the research done to give credibility to the story. Our book club leader is a literature professor and his college has a program called Book-in-Common. This program sponsors many events dealing with the book chosen for that year, including movie screenings, historical and other discussions, an essay and short story contest, author presentations and signings, and an author workshop. Not being associated with this college, I am very happy to have read the book and excited to have the opportunity to attend some of the events.

I was intrigued with The Poe Shadow from the beginning. The book is told from the point of view of a young man, Quentin Hobson Clark, who happens to witness a sparsely attended funeral one afternoon. Young Quentin is a lawyer whose own parents had met an untimely death months before the somewhat known author Edgar Allan Poe’s unfortunate demise and sad farewell service. Quentin had read Poe’s work and was trying to support Poe’s efforts to start his own literary journal. However, Poe was residing in Richmond, Virginia, and when Quentin found out Poe died in Baltimore, and that the funeral he observed was Poe’s, he became obsessed with how Poe might have died and why he was in Baltimore. What disturbed Quentin more was the bad press Poe was receiving about his problems and how there was little good press about what a great writer Poe seemed to have been.

--from www.philadelphia-reflections.com

This obsession leads Quentin to alienate his foster brother, Peter, also his law partner in the firm that Quentin’s father left them to run, as well as his lady friend he has known since he was a boy, Hattie Blum. Eventually, Quentin takes leave of the law firm, Peter, and Hattie to go to Paris to track down the real person that Poe’s character, C. Auguste Dupin from “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” was modeled after to help him solve the mystery of Poe’s death. This gentleman, Duponte, and some other characters from Paris return with Quentin to Baltimore to determine the truth about Poe’s death.

My favorite character in the book is the woman named Bonjour who came to the States to assist her friend, the “Baron” Dupin, based on a real person, and another candidate for Poe’s model of the Dupin from his stories. Bonjour is street smart, self sufficient, and beautiful. Her name is Bonjour due to her skills as a thief in Paris. She would go into rich people’s houses and if she encountered someone, she would immediately say “Bonjour!” in greeting and carry on as if she was supposed to be there. She also knew how to use a knife.

One thing about reading this book of historical fiction was that I did find myself having to reread parts of the book to remember what was going on because there were so many characters involved and so many associations between people that I could not easily remember. Of course, one of the reasons I do like historical fiction is guessing which characters were real people and which were not. A laptop comes in handy.

Another problem I had with this particular book is the font used in the 2007 Random House paperback. I thought it was horrible. The letters get really thin and I found this particular font very hard to read, especially late at night in bad light! Hopefully, the original hardback had a more readable font. I think font choice is one of the more important aspects of book publishing that is taken for granted.

The Poe Shadow has many more positives than negatives, that is for sure. I like Mr. Pearl's writing style. He is informative and humorous. I really liked Quentin Hobson Clark and was rooting for him to solve the mystery, despite the obstacles he kept encountering from his friends and his family, much less the people he engaged to help him solve the mystery. I don't know if Mr. Pearl outlines or storyboards or what, but he did a tremendous amount of work and research on this mystery. I enjoyed his historical notes section, as well as a reader's guide at the end. The reader's guide has questions for Mr. Pearl, discussion questions and special topics about the book, more notes on Poe's death, and also contains a secret chapter not included in the text of the book. After going to http://www.matthewpearl.com/, I found there were a few more chapters not included that I was able to read. 

My own history of reading Poe began in the seventh grade with "The Cask of Amontillado" followed by "The Tell-Tale Heart." Even at that age, a reader can see how wonderful and creative a writer Poe was and how well he knew human nature. I have read many of his other stories but now want to do some serious rereading, especially of the murder mysteries involving C. Auguste Dupin and his sleuthing skills. In high school I remember buying the album by the Alan Parsons Project and loved hearing aspects of Poe's works set to music.

Beautiful Halloween Music by Kristen Lawrence

THE GIVEAWAY IS OVER AND THE WINNER IS PAPERWHITE. CONGRATS PAPERWHITE!

Not only do I read a lot of book blogs now, but I love reading the "style" blogs as well. Some of these include:

An Aesthete's Lament 

Cote de Texas –from Houston

Architect Design -he just got back from Paris and has fabulous pictures

Makeunder My Life -adorable

and,  lastly, Adventures in Renovating a Brooklyn Limestone (now called A Brooklyn Limestone in Progress) . . . There are many more, but these are my personal favorites!

Today is Ms. Limestone's 7th wedding anniversary and she is sharing photos of her beautiful wedding for today's posting in celebration.

However, I am writing about Ms. Limestone's blog today because she has a Halloween giveaway: a 2-CD pack "full of fabulously eerie Halloween music that is a lot more interesting than Monster Mash!" So if you want to participate in this giveaway, just go here!

The Betsy-Tacy Reading Challenge

After reading a kazillion posts lately about these certain books on the blogs, I have decided to participate in the Betsy-Tacy Reading Challenge, sponsored by A library is the  hospital of the mind . . .

book club girl has been posting about Maud Hart Lovelace and her Betsy-Tacy series of books for quite a while now. You can access her Betsy-Tacy posts here.

Booking Mama has also has many posts about Betsy-Tacy if you peruse her blog.

She is Too Fond of Books' posts on Betsy-Tacy are also accessible here.

--Maud Hart Lovelace from http://www.maudhartlovelace.org/

How to participate:

• Plan which books of the series you want to read (you don't have to read them all).
• Go to the A library is the hospital of the mind's site through October 10th and sign up on her Mr. Linky. Post your name and a link to your posting (not just your blog) that talks about the challenge (the permalink). 
• Read the books from the series or whichever ones from the series you want to read!
• On October 31st, go back and link more your thoughts and postings about the series after reading some (or all) of the books.
• Visit the other blogs that are on the Mr. Linky list to see what everyone else has to say about their readings of the books. Happy Betsy-Tacy reading! I can't wait to start!