My following book reviews first appeared over the past few years in an alternative tabloid publication in Hamilton. Perhaps reading the following paragraphs will tempt you to visit your local independent bookstore and to check them out there. Here’s Part II:
1.)Shakespeare for the People: Working-Class Readers 1800-1900, published by Cambridge University Press, is a compelling study that is rich with humanity, partly because author Andrew Murphy uses as his resource more than a hundred fascinating autobiographical texts, from the era, in either published and manuscript form. Thus we discover the profound connection between bard and working-class readership, with special focus upon radical readers “for whom Shakespeare’s work had a special political resonance.” We also learn how access to cheaper editions and public elementary education in Britain developed over the nineteenth century and how, in time, Shakespeare became “annexed” by an academic elite while the working class also turned instead to “mass-circulation newspapers or fiction.” We meet numerous individuals in this intriguing study, like Betsy Cadwaladyr who worked as a servant, ship steward, and nurse in the Crimean War with Florence Nightengale, all the while a diligent reader –and actor- of Shakespeare.
2.)The Grove Book of Opera, edited originally by Stanley Sadie, and here for this revised Oxford University Press edition by Laura Macy, provides 250 meticulously detailed plot synopses, cast lists, and substantial and very readable introductions to each opera’s literary, social, and musical background. As with the almost suspenseful account of La Boheme’s origin, the process of creativity by which some operas were ultimately produced is considered in dramatic detail and we come to appreciate in new light these long-loved operas of ours and many others we have yet to explore. Character-catching photographs, like Lotte Lehmann as Fidelio or Fischer-Dieskau as Falstaff, set sketches like a breathtaking watercolour for the 1868 premiere of Boito’s Mefistofele, musical examples, and an informative glossary at the end are added bonuses in this astutely considered and absolutely essential volume that every opera lover will enjoy for many, many years.
3.)From publisher Gibbs Smith, we have Singing Cowboys by Douglas B. Green which, on the cover, promises that the “Enclosed CD contains sensational hits by *Roy Rogers*Gene Autry*Ken Maynard*Tex Ritter*Smiley Burnette*and more!” “More” means as well that one can delight in succinct but informative chapters and oodles of lobby cards and promo shots from set and studio of fifty-six oater heroes who packed both six guns and guitars between 1935’s first Gene Autry films to 1959’s “drive-in quickie movies” of Marty Robbins. Along with enormously influential types like the Sons of the Pioneers, Bob Wills, Bing Crosby, and Merle Travis who had genuine musical chops, we also find here the likes of John Wayne who starred in but one film and was dubbed.
4.)Also from Gibbs Smith is the beautifully illustrated Mariachi by Patricia Greathouse which contains an irresistible CD of “Mariachi Favorites,” two dozen recipes for Tequila, Drunken Beans, Golden Potatoes with Cilantro Lime Salsa and the like, plus mind-expanding chapters on the History of Mariachi Music, Screen Stars and Early Mariachi, Instruments and Song Forms, and What is Mariachi? No doubt this informative guide will provide a delightful entry for many into the music south of the Rio Grande.
5.)Because I did my M.A. at U of T, even before some of the buildings discussed herein were built, Larry Wayne Richards’ handsomely produced University of Toronto: An Architectural Tour from Princeton Architectural Press brings many memories of decades ago to vivid recollection, especially because Tom Arban’s stunning photographs are both bold and mysterious at one time and Richards’ text well serves both historical and guidebook ends. More than 170 buildings from all three campuses –St. George, Scarborough, and Mississauga- are featured, and one can read the background of, say, University College of 1858, Hart House of 1919, Massey College of 1963, and even the Royal Ontario Museum with photographs from both 1914 when it opened and today when it went wild on Bloor Street in architect Daniel Libeskind’s hands.
6.)I have long, in my travels, been a grateful user of lonely planet guides which, over the years, have become even more reader friendly than before. The compact but 1012 page France, for example, is like a crammed-full Louvre of information and, for a volume whose pages are densely abundant with information, it is a pleasure to look upon these same pages with their bold-fonted headings, their many easy-to-read maps, their informative inserts, their easy-to-navigate organization of sections, and, I guess above all, their carefully considered information and suggestions which accommodate travellers in all price ranges. I also recommend their City Guide series which includes Paris and New York, with their introduction of bold blue font headings and each clocking in at around 440 pages. Just can’t do without lonely planet!
7.)We hear so much facile babble nowadays about creative process, so it’s a pleasure to encounter the catalogue of Laurence King Publishing, www.laurenceking.com, whose offerings actually show creative minds manifesting themselves in various stages of making things in space. Sketchbooks: The Hidden Art of Designers, Illustrators & Creatives by Richard Brereton is a genuinely intriguing example with forty-one international artists from “advertising, design, graphic design, art, street art, and illustration” showing us hundreds of visual first steps, ideas in visual form on the “journey to final execution.” The artists also explain their use of sketchbooks and Brian Grimwood, for one, informs us, “When at home I keep my sketchbook in the loo” while Serge Bloch says, “I draw stories and write drawings.”
8.)The space in which one creates is, of course, a personal matter as Creative Space: Urban Homes of Artists and Innovators by Francesca Gavin proves in hundreds of images of thirty homes in which the muse also dwells. Each creator gets an interview to explain the nature of his or her surroundings and we learn, say, from Lukas Fiereiss of Berlin that “My home surely reflects, in its hybrid collage of things, my state of mind” and from Ludvine Billaud in Paris, “I constructed the space like a puzzle.” Meanwwhile, Guerilla Art, edited by Sebastien Peiter, is a book and DVD package in which we meet “the most influential street artists” through profiles, interviews, and loads of images of art happening on outdoor walls and streets. All three of these books from Laurence King Publishing are endlessly fascinating.
9.)A Night Out with Robert Burns: The Greatest Poems, arranged by Andrew O’Hagan, is indeed a special occasion of a book in which O’Hagan offers, poem by poem, a running commentary throughout. He provides many beautifully inscribed insights and here are some: “With a true poet, sedition may show itself in the metre, and Burns knew best of all how to breathe liberal philosophy into the rhythm of his lines.” Or, quoting Peter Hitchins, “Apart from the Russians and Scandinavians, I know of no people so dedicated to stupefying themselves with alcohol.” The poems are divided into chapters titled The Lasses, The Drinks, The Immortals, The Politics and for those who aren’t sure what the great one is saying in his verses, there is here included a twelve page Glossary with over four dozen terms to a page, things like “prie her mou’” meaning “kiss her” and “auldfarran” meaning “sagacious, shrewd.” A special volume, this one, to gaze upon, to browse throughout and, of course, to read aloud. Published by McClelland & Stewart.
10.)TV Guide calls it the “Encyclopedia of television” for good reason. At 1,834 paperback pages and with “more than 6,500 series listed!” in the “completely revised and updated ninth edition,” The Complete Directory to Prime Time and Cable TV Shows 1946-Present by Tim Brooks and Earle Marsh and published by Ballantine Books is both essential reference and illuminating goldmine of cultural information. Each entry includes broadcast firsts and lasts, casts and regulars, plus discussion of each show’s history and reasons for appeal written in engaging prose, plus information only a TV addict might know. For example, did you yourself know that Rosalind Russell and Joel McCrea, and not Ida Lupino and David Niven, were intended as part of the original quartet of Four Star Playhouse? Did you know that The Cisco Kid ran for 156 episodes? Or that The Ernie Kovacs Show ran from 1952-53 and in 1956? I still remember Kovacs introducing a sketch to the music of Bela Bartok! Imagine that today.
11.)We all know Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin, to be sure, but for the other fifty-four signees, the self-explaining Signing Their Lives Away: The Fame and Misfortune of the Men Who Signed The Declaration of Independence by Denise Kiernan and Joseph D’Agnese, published by Quirk Books, does an efficient and readable job of summarizing, in four pages each, the rest of the bunch. History does indeed come to life here, especially with details like the following: Francis Hopkinson, who designed the U. S. flag, was also a lawyer, mathematician, chemist, physicist, mechanic, artist, and musician who “wrote what was arguably the first American opera.” Or this: Ben Franklin changed Jefferson’s “we hold these truths to be sacred and undeniable” to “we hold these truths to be self-evident.” Or this: beside the nation’s third oldest cemetery one can sit at the Beantown pub and down a glass of Sam Adams beer “all while looking out over his grave.”
12.)More and more nowadays, one finds oneself needing to write advertising copy of some kind to sell something to someone, so I cheer the publication of *Copywriting: Successful Writing for Design, Advertising, and Marketing by Mark Shaw (Laurence King Publishing). As one might hope and expect, it’s a visually delightful volume that engages the eye and a book of useful instruction and advice that provides essential guidance on every page. Here, for example, are some bits from “Checklist: Editing” that too few think about as they write: “Achieve maximum clarity: Can the message be misinterpreted? If so, change it.” And “Remove repetition: Don’t waffle, be as succinct as possible.” Included you’ll find “Writing for websites and digital formats.” For mind-boggling options try Bob Gordon’s 1000 Fonts from Chronicle Books which promises to be a “fast and easy way to identify the font that works for every purpose. Included you’ll find “real-world examples of fonts in use,” “Fun” fonts, ornaments, a huge section on “script fonts,” and “Display” fonts. This one’s a genuine and essential bible for designers in all fields.