Another post about stuff I read...

Since I read a lot and feel like blathering about it.


Read this, mostly, on the plane home. It's about the author's life in Paris with a young family after leaving New York City for a couple of year. It's breezy and entertaining and there was a great comment he made about how, inevitably, books about foreign countries written by ex-pats are really books about America. Very interesting.

Also in the middle of this, about the daughter of Pope Julius, who commissioned the Sistine Chapel. Very well written, though there's a great deal based on conjecture.

So, like, I had a New Year's Resolution. I was going to update my blog at least twice a week every week.

And then I remembered that I have a bad track record with resolutions, so. Awesome. Mostly I've been doing a lot of sketches this break, including something with a Dalek that's still not quite done, and a lot of reading. I just finished:

And am in the middle of:
And will soon start:
I've got a really limited scope of interest. Can you tell?

Bibliomania

So by now it should come as a shock to absolutely no one that lately my obsessions have been with cabarets and the acid decadence of Weimar-era Germany, the 1930's and 40's, and old starlets. I think my fixation with Anita Berber is beginning to bore or trouble most of my acquaintances, but I just want to know more about her. She seems like a made-up character sometimes, too wild to be real. Yesterday, I put in an order for that book.

I paid more for that book than I probably should have, but it's out of print now.

I also want to read this new biography of Hedy Lamarr that's just come out. Sounds like a crazy life story too.