Book Guide 7, January, 2003
Discuss my book selection in the Forum - and add you own recommendations.
The art of looking sideways. Alan Fletcher. Phaidon.
The furniture making son of the late Princess Margaret
spoke so highly of this on Desert Island Discs, a
programme I rarely catch, I decided to seek it out.
Described as "a primer in visual intelligence" this is
one of those books you can have around for years and
will always be able to dip into to find something
fascinating and new. From the "we are made of
stardust" prologue forward, not a page disappoints.
There is too much to even begin to describe. However a
photo of a curved Indian tailor's ruler, Dakota animal
hides with pictograms, great stuff about number,
colour, iconographics, printing, creativity, architecture
etc will do for starters. From ruins to ironmonger's
samples, brains to Goethe who thought thinking more
interesting than knowing but less interesting than
looking, anyone and everyone would enjoy this book. It
ends on page 528 with "writing enlarges the landscape
of the mind." I think he has a point.
Find it at Amazon: The Art of Looking Sideways
The Poisonwood Bible, Barbara Kingsolver. Faber and Faber + The Poisonwood Bible, a Reader's Guide, Linda Wagner-Martin. Continuum.
Linda Wagner-Martin who wrote the guide thinks the
Poisonwood Bible "may well prove to be one of the
most important books of the 1990s". Her guide adds
considerably to this great book set in the Congo and
Georgia and covering three decades. The Poisonwood
Bible is everything the novel at its best can be, with
various narrators and wonderful characterisation but
only multiple readings convey how wide-ranging and
informative it truly is, a tour de force. It is as much about
America as Africa, a "portrait of a nation that sent the
Prices to save the souls of people for whom it felt only
contempt".
In naming sections, the things we carried, the things
we learned, the things we didn't know and the things
we lost, Kingsolver pays homage to the Tim O'Brien's
great story about the Vietnam War. And she is such an
ambitious writer, doing more than justice to chapter
titles like Genesis, Exodus, the Judges, and Revelation.
An inspiring book.
Find it at Amazon: The Poisonwood Bible
Glasgow, Discovering Cities series Michael Pacione + Classic Landforms of the Assynt and Coigach Area, Tim Lawson. Geographical Association.
Those of us who hold the view that nothing can beat a
good guide with decent maps will be thrilled with these
two books from the G A. If you want a job done properly
ask a professional. Geographers write both new series
and they are aimed not only at students, but travellers
and locals who are interested in their environment. The
first of three sections of the Glasgow book traces the
historical development of the city and provides some
fascinating early maps. "Towards the post-industrial
city" is followed up by area studies of the mercantile
and Victorian sections of Glasgow and a piece on
housing. The Sutherland landforms book is just as
good, with super material on rough terrain from Stac
Pollaidh to the Stoer Peninsula. The language here
sings loud and clear!. Torridonian rock, glacial friction,
karst, Lewisian Gneisses and igneous intrusions
punctuated with Gaelic place names that read like
poetry.
Find it at Amazon:: Classic Landforms of the Assynt and...
Stone Voices, Neal Ascherson. Granta Books.
One feels moved to pity for our old pal, the Scots
identity, under scrutiny yet again, this time from the
laptop of Ascherson. He has some great stuff to get off
his chest, and every word is deeply considered and
well written. His take on Edinburgh as a giant lecture
theatre provides an example of the ideation in a unique
combination of geology and history. It covers some of
stuff on standing stones that Scott (the Road Less
Travelled) Peck does in In Search of Stones and I prefer
the Scott Peck book on that, because he and his wife
did such a thorough trek round Scots ancient
monuments, but Neal Ascherson takes a much more
complex premise, i.e. "a people and its stones form a
single cultural landscape". He names "the traumatic
chasm dividing the confident minority from the
mistrustful majority" St Andrew's fault and goes on to
explain why. We mistrustful souls are more than
fortunate to have people with minds as broad and roots
as deep in Scotland as Ascherson's, voluntarily
devoting their intellect and time to placing writing like
this in the public domain. Hopefully readers will take a
look.
Find it at Amazon: Stone Voices: The Search for Scotland
Glasgow Art Gallery and Museum. Harper Collins.
I include this book because we are dining in the
last chance saloon here. It will probably be unavailable
soon, as Kelvingrove closes for 3 years this summer.
Doubtless a sparkling new guide to the sparkling new
place will be out in 2006. Buying gallery and exhibition
guides, an indulgence some may understand, can be
expensive, but anyone without a copy of this book could
not do better for £4 right now. First published in 87 and
updated in 94 this book illustrates more than 600 of the
thousands of objects in Kelvingrove. It has a preface by
Spalding, an illuminating introduction and sections on
Science History and Art. It provides a simple overview of
European painting, jewellery, ceramics etc and has
lovely pictures. I think I'll buy a couple to send to friends
in England.
Find it at Amazon: Glasgow Art Gallery and Museum
Oor Wullie. D C Thomson & Co Ltd.
The astonishing, even miraculous thing is that
Wullie has both moved on from 1936 to 2003 and yet
remains the same, still on unnumbered pages. The
strip shifts effortlessly between the pastoral/ small town
environment of Auchenshoogle, to schoolroom, shed
and Wullie's imagination. He staggers around with a
globe on his shoulders saying "Noo I'm just like Atlas",
plays blues on his guitar "I'm Howling Wullie,
Auchenshoogle's finest blues singer", gives friends a
lift to to school in a steering wheel car, and still finishes
sitting on his bucket the way he did when I first came
across him in Uncle Bertie's Sunday Post in 1955. I
love the way he blushes in his kilt for the school photo,
causing girls to fight. He slides around on any available
ice, avoids the bath and demonstrates against global
warming. What a character! Fat Bob and Soapy Soutar
declare him a man of principle as does Ian Jack, editor
of Granta, who saw fit to pay tribute in the Guardian
Review (11th January) to which I refer the curious.
Find it at Amazon: Oor Wullie
Make your own Working Paper Clock. James Smith Rudolph, Harper & Row.
Other than remarking on the preface on time
measurement by Isaac Asimov, and the back page
photo of a somewhat swotty, decent young lad of 12 or so,
constructing his clock, there is not much to add. The
pages are strong card, marked with folding and cutting
lines, ready to build "a timepiece Galileo would have
given his eye teeth to own" as Asimov says. What a
sensible occupation for anyone at a loose end, or
incarcerated, or folk who talk too much, or those intent
on waging war. They must take heed however."Cutting
and assembly of this construction require great care
and patience. Do not try to work too fast. Follow the
detailed instructions below and you will be rewarded
with a paper clock that actually works and that will tell
the time as precisely as your wristwatch."
Find it at Amazon: Make Your Own Working Paper Clock
Cathures, Edwin Morgan. Carcanet with Mariscat Press.
Our own Glasgow poet Laureate rings out loud and
clear in this super book. I'm even less knowledgeable
about poetry than I am on clock making, but am, like
most, unable to resist Morgan's appeal. I heard him in
St Mary's Cathedral last year and won't forget that.
Some of the poems he did that evening are in this
book. It reaches back to the Roman Empire and out to
the Leonids but is predominantly about Glasgow, in the
"days of" Cathurian Lyrics. Days of the Adam Smith club
is my favourite, it brings the enlightenment home. At
eighty is great, they're all great. I've put his New
Selected Poems (2000) and Collected Poems (1990)
on to my shopping list, and am ashamed not to own
then already, but till I read this, I felt intimidated by
poetry. I now know better.
Find it at Amazon: Cathures
Glasgow Girls, Women in art and design 1880-1920, Ed Jude Burkhauser. Canongate.
First published in 1990, a mere 70 years late, this
remains the definitive volume on the subject. The
Glasgow Girls knew the Glasgow Boys intimately, and
worked alongside them. It's not uncommon for interest
in Scotland to be kindled from abroad and it was an
American who took matters in hand and got this super
book organised. Some of the contributors, all
distinguished in their field, come from Canada, and
America, but most are UK based. An essay about "the
new woman in the arts" follows the introduction on the
second city of the empire. The next three sections cover
the Glasgow style, the designers and the painters.
There are old favourites here, like Jessie King and
Margaret Macdonald Mackintosh, and many more
whom I for one was thrilled to come across. And this
beautifully illustrated book gives a vivid impression of
what was going on here a century ago, what a buzz
there must have been then, when these young women
strode confidently into the art school, went out with their
palettes and exhibited in Paris. Norah Nelson Gray's
portraits, studies and landscapes are breathtaking.
She went to France as a VAD nurse for the Scottish
Women's Hospital in the French Red Cross Hospital at
the Abbaye de Royaumont in the spring of 1918, at the
final onrush of the German army when the hospital was
frequently bombed. She was on night duty and painted
during the day, and in 1920 was commissioned by the
Imperial War Museum. There is great writing from Donald Campbell, Ali
Smith, Ron Butlin et al. There isn't space here to
mention, let alone comment upon, all the distinguished
contributors whose poetry and prose form the bread of
a sandwich in which Jack Vettriano is the slice of
gammon. He seems to be heavily influenced by Norah
Nelson Gray, his people have something shadowy in
common with hers. The prints are accompanied by an
interesting piece addressing the vexed question, it's a
painting but is it art? I like Joy Hendry's poems, and
those of Alasdair Gray and Brian McCabe, also a
commentary from Angus Calder on parallels between
the deaths of Hamish Henderson and the Queen
Mother expanding the theme of Scottish Culture and the
End of Britain.
CM jan 03
Find it at Amazon: " Glasgow Girls": Women in Art and...
Chapman 100-101, centenary issue, part 1 (of
3)
Archive: Book Guide 5
Discuss my book selection in the Forum - and add you own recommendations.
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