№ 30 reading list: Proust in spring

Spring has arrived and it's time to update the blog with a new reading list. I shared the last one in January but in my defence, I'm more active on my Instagram account with book-related content. For over a decade I have wanted to read Marcel Proust’s masterpiece In Search of Lost Time (À la recherche du temps perdu) and recently bought the 1st volume of 4 by Everyman’s Library. The novel has seven parts and this volume contains Swann's Way (Du côté de chez Swann), which most are familiar with, and the first part of Within a Budding Grove (À l'ombre des jeunes filles en fleurs). I’m only a few pages in and am already captivated by the narrative voice and the rich prose. Proust in spring will be a gratifying pastime.

№ 30 reading list:

1  Essays Two  · Lydia Davis
2  Swann's Way  · Marcel Proust
3  What I Loved  · Siri Hustvedt
4  Der Untergeher  · Thomas Bernhard [German]
5  The Makioka Sisters  · Jun'ichirō Tanizaki [rereading]

Translated by: 1) Swann's Way: C. K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin;

5) The Makioka Sisters: Edward G. Seidensticker

Reading Essays Two spurred me on to read Proust. Lydia Davis translated the latest available English edition of Swann's Way and discusses the project in some of the essays. (The Moncrieff translation I’m reading is older but has been updated.) These essays are my first Davis and I’m also reading Siri Hustvedt’s fiction for the first time. A fun fact: Hustvedt has been married to American writer Paul Auster (4 3 2 1, The New York Trilogy) for forty years who before was married to Davis.

I have mentioned before that each time I’m disappointed with a book and decide to toss it I reread one of my favourite books. On my last list, I had My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante, the first book of her Neapolitan Quartet. I truly made an effort but gave up on Chapter 20. Neither the plot nor the characters appealed to me, and the style felt repetitive. To make it up to me I decided to reread The Makioka Sisters, a Japanese classic by Tanizaki. Before going to sleep, it's comforting to spend some time in the company of the Sisters.

Richard Diebenkorn, Untitled, 1981

image by me | Diebenkorn art via Richard Diebenkorn Foundation on Instagram

№ 29 reading list: Woolf starts the new year

Happy New Year! This week I realised that I completely forgot my New Year's tradition, reading Little Women into the new year. This tradition started in Scotland; I used to read a few pages or chapters into the new year while others were letting off fireworks or whatever entertains them, but this year I watched the fireworks with my son. I made up for my forgetfulness by watching Greta Gerwig's film adaptation (2019), starring Saoirse Ronan, Florence Pugh and Timothée Chalamet. It's great. On New Year's Day morning, I relaxed on the daybed in pyjama bottoms and kimono with coffee and the fourth volume of Virginia Woolf's diary, which starts in 1931. It's on my new reading list.

№ 29 reading list:

1  My Brilliant Friend  · Elena Ferrante
2  The Diary of Virginia Woolf, Volume 4 1931-35 
3  Mrs Dalloway  · Virginia Woolf [rereading]
4  Mythos: The Greek Myths Retold  · Stephen Fry
5  Wittgensteins Neffe: Eine Freundschaft  · Thomas Bernhard [German]
6  Póetík í Reykjavík: Erindi 14 höfunda  [Icelandic]
7  Living on Paper: Letters from Iris Murdoch 1934-1995  · edited by Avril

Horner and Anne Rowe

Translated by: 1) My Brilliant Friend: Ann Goldstein

The list has undergone many changes. Stephen Fry and the Icelandic book (14 literary essays) are the only works that were on the original one, which I meant to share last autumn. I don’t know why it took so long to put this one together, probably a mixture of being busy with my studies and restlessness. I read a few pages, even a few chapters, in a book that I wanted to have on the list only to put that same book aside a short time later. Wanting to read a book is sometimes not enough for me, the time and place have to be right.

I found many wonderful books under the Christmas tree which will appear on lists in the near future. I gave myself a few, e.g. used books that have never been read. Among these are the first two books of the Neapolitan Quartet by Elena Ferrante, the pseudonymous Italian writer. I also bought the Everyman's Library edition of The Makioka Sisters by the Japanese writer Jun'ichirō Tanizaki (№ 6). It's one of my all-time favourite books.

Richard Diebenkorn, Untitled, 1949

images by me | Diebenkorn art via fan page on Twitter

Mothers, Fathers, and Others: Essays · Siri Hustvedt

A new collection of essays, Mothers, Fathers and Others, by Siri Hustvedt was recently published by Simon & Schuster. On Hustvedt's website it is thus described: 'Feminist philosophy meets family memoir in this new essay collection from an exploration of the shifting borders that define human experience, including boundaries we usually take for granted which turn out to be far less stable than we imagine.'

This morning I listened to editor Sam Leith of The Spectator Book Club in interesting conversations with Hustvedt about the book.

Cover image: Louise Bourgeois, Self Portrait, 1994
Photo: Christopher Burke

Mothers, Fathers, and Others: Essays
By Siri Hustvedt
Hardcover, 304 pages
ISBN: 9781982176396
Simon & Schuster

Fierce Poise: Helen Frankenthaler and 1950s New York · Alexander Nemerov

Later in March, Penguin releases a new book, Fierce Poise: Helen Frankenthaler and 1950s New York by art historian Alexander Nemerov. It's a somewhat short biography that focuses on a particular period in the artist's life. Enthusiasts of abstract expressionism might recognise the cover photo, taken for Life magazine and shows Frankenthaler sitting on a painted canvas in her studio on West End Avenue in New York. Frankenthaler, who in the 1950s made a name for herself in the art world of post-war America, was one of the major artists of 20th-century America and had a great influence on contemporary art.

It so happens that I'm still reading Ninth Street Women (see № 25 reading list), about the career of Frankenthaler and her fellow artists Lee Krasner, Elaine de Kooning, Grace Hartigan, and Joan Mitchell. Its author Mary Gabriel praises Nemerov's new book by saying that his poetic descriptions read ‘like one of Helen’s paintings.’

Cover photo: Gordon Parks, 1957

Fierce Poise: Helen Frankenthaler and 1950s New York
By Alexander Nemerov
Hardcover, 288 pages
ISBN: 9780525560203
Penguin Press

№ 25 reading list: women only

Happy New Year! I would like to start the year with a new reading list, consisting of books by women only. As you probably know, Elizabeth Hardwick is a great favourite; her essay collection Seduction and Betrayal features female writers and women in literature. It so happens that Joan Didion, who has a book on the list, writes the introduction to the collection, which includes an essay about the Bloomsbury group and Virginia Woolf, who is also on the list.

№ 25 reading list:

1  Seduction and Betrayal  · Elizabeth Hardwick
2  Ninth Street Women  · Mary Gabriel
3  Approaching Eye Level  · Vivian Gornick
4  Intimations: Six Essays  · Zadie Smith
5  On Beauty  · Zadie Smith
6  The Waves  · Virginia Woolf [rereading]
7  Slouching Towards Bethlehem  · Joan Didion [rereading]

I have to confess that the list has been so long in the blog's draft that I have already read five of the seven books. I'm not far into the Mary Gabriel one - its snappy full title is Ninth Street Women: Lee Krasner, Elaine de Kooning, Grace Hartigan, Joan Mitchell, and Helen Frankenthaler: Five Painters and the Movement That Changed Modern Art - but can already recommend it. Gail Levin's biography of Lee Krasner was on my № 24 reading list. I can also recommend that one but if I had to choose between the two I would pick Ninth Street Women. Even though Gabriel doesn't go into details about the artists' childhoods, I find her book more enjoyable to read. It's also better designed and images of artworks are in colour. Levin's book about Krasner is obviously well researched but the text is sometimes too academic for my taste which restricts its flow. In my copy, a William Morrow paperback, the paper is of poorer quality and the images of Krasner's artwork are in black and white only.

Lee Krasner, The Seasons, 1957

images mine, the 2nd appeared on Instagram 05/11/20 | Lee Krasner artwork, Pollock-Krasner Foundation / Whitney Museum of American Art via Haus der Kunst

James & Nora · Edna O'Brien

Out today in paperback is James & Nora: A Portrait of a Marriage by Irish writer Edna O‘Brien, published by W&N. This is a reissue of a slim book, originally published in the US in 1981, with O'Brien‘s portrait of Irish writer James Joyce and Nora Barnacle‘s marriage. The timing of its release is no coincidence, just in time for Bloomsday on June 16, celebrated by many fans of Joyce. It's named after the protagonist Leopold Bloom in his work Ulysses, which takes place on that day in 1904.

Cover image: Nora Barnacle and James Joyce by artist John Nolan

Edna O'Brien was awarded the prestigious David Cohen Prize in 2019, given to British or Irish writers for a lifetime achievement in literature. Her first novel was The Country Girls, published in 1960. It caused a scandal in Ireland and was both banned and burned. O‘Brien's large body of work consists of novels, short stories, plays, poems, non-fiction, and her memoir Country Girl.

James & Nora: A Portrait of a Marriage
By Edna O'Brien
Paperback, 80 pages
ISBN: 9781474616812
Weidenfeld & Nicolson

Legacy of the Masters: Painting and Calligraphy from the Islamic World · Will Kwiatkowski

I am starting the new year on the blog with a book cover that made my design heart beat a little faster. Legacy of the Masters: Painting and Calligraphy from the Islamic World by Will Kwiatkowski was published last October by Paul Holberton Publishing. It contains 75 colour illustrations of paintings, drawings and calligraphy from the Safavid, Uzbek, Ottoman and Mughal Empires from the 16th to early 19th century. This book would grace the coffee table of anyone interested in decorative art and Islamic culture.

Legacy of the Masters: Painting and Calligraphy from the Islamic World
By Will Kwiatkowski
Hardback, 192 pages, illustrated
ISBN: 9781911300731
Paul Holberton Publishing

Life with Picasso · Françoise Gilot

The term has finished and I have a study break until January. This morning I watched two episodes of Kiljan, a weekly literary TV program in Iceland, read the first pages of Patti Smith's new book, Year of the Monkey, and caught up with books podcasts, which I haven't had time for since mid-October. In the coming weeks I intend to enjoy days like these to the fullest.

When I last signed in I had some ideas about how to keep my blog alive during my studies, for example with a new category about beautiful book covers, and nothing happened. This is the cover I wanted to feature first, a new edition of the memoir Life with Picasso (1964) by Françoise Gilot and Carlton Lake, which was published by New York Review Books last summer.

Cover image: Françoise Gilot, Self-Portrait, 1953
Cover design: Katy Homans

Françoise Gilot, So Far, So Near, 2016

In 1943, Gilot was just over twenty when she met Picasso, then 61 years old. They never married but their relationship lasted ten years and they had two children. The book will be on my next reading list, which I meant to share in October, and I can recommend it to anyone interested in art. The sections of the book containing her and Picasso's conversations about art are a joyful read.

Life with Picasso
By Françoise Gilot and Carlton Lake
Paperback, 384 pages, illustrated
ISBN: 9781681373195
New York Review Books

bottom image by me, appeared on Instagram 03/07/2019 | Françoise Gilot painting via The Elkon Gallery

№ 20 reading list | Lee Krasner exhibition

I am sitting on the patio, under an awning, taking in the spring, the scent of purple and white lilacs from a corner of the garden. One by one, book podcasts are playing on the tablet. Let's take a look at the reading list. Last year a new translation, by poet Michael Hofmann, of the classic Berlin Alexanderplatz by Alfred Döblin was published by New York Review Books. I like their book design and have added many of their titles to my wish list. I never read the old translation and therefore, have no comparison. It's set in the underworld of Berlin, the Weimer Republic in the 1920s, and the book starts when Franz Biberkopf - shall we say the colourful? - is released from prison, determined to turn his life around. The other book I bought for the list is The Years by Annie Ernaux, which I mentioned in my last entry. The others are from the library.

№ 20 reading list:
1  The Years  by Annie Ernaux
2  Berlin Alexanderplatz  by Alfred Döblin
3  The Wife  by Meg Wolitzer
4  The Mexican Night  by Lawrence Ferlinghetti
5  The Garden Party  by Katherine Mansfield
6  It All Adds Up  by Saul Bellow
7  The Diary of Anaïs Nin 1931-1934 

Translated by: 1) The Years: Alison L. Strayer; 2) Berlin Alexanderplatz: Michael Hofmann

It has been years since I read a volume of Anaïs Nin's diaries and it felt soothing somehow to pick up the one on the list, which starts in 1931. For a long time, I have been meaning to read stories by Katherine Mansfield, having been introduced to her work through Virginia Woolf's diaries and letters. The short story collection The Garden Party starts well and the writing style already appeals to me. Mansfield was only 34 when she died and one can only imagine what she could have accomplished as a writer.

Lee Krasner, Desert Moon, 1955

This summer I wouldn't mind taking a cultural trip to London, to see the exhibition Lee Krasner: Living Colour in the art gallery of the Barbican Centre, which opens on 30 May. Lee Krasner (1908–1984) was an American artist, born in Brooklyn; a pioneer of abstract expressionism. The catalogue says that her 'energetic work reflects the spirit of possibility in post-war New York' and the exhibition 'tells the story of a formidable artist, whose importance has too often been eclipsed by her marriage to Jackson Pollock.'

This is the first major presentation of Lee Krasner's art in Europe for more than 50 years, organised by the Barbican Centre, London in collaboration with these museums: Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt, Zentrum Paul Klee in Bern and Guggenheim Bilbao. Coinciding with the exhibition is the Thames & Hudson publication of Lee Krasner: Living Colour by Eleanor Nairne.

In October, here in Germany, we can enjoy the art of Lee Krasner when the exhibition opens in the museum Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt.

Artist Lee Krasner in her studio

Lee Krasner, Palingenesis, 1971

top image by me | Lee Krasner paintings via Barbican Centre: 1) LACMA (Los Angeles County Museum of Art) 2) Kasmin Gallery, NY | Krasner in her studio: Kasmin Gallery via Artsy. © The Pollock-Krasner Foundation.

Mood board for spring

In a perfect world. No, let's go with better, perfection is boring. In a better world I'm sitting in a rattan chair on the patio, feeling the warmth of the sun through the awning. On the table is a stack of books; notebooks next to my cup of coffee and the French press. Supporting my back, a thick, soft cushion with a cover made of any of the patterned textiles in my image above, which I call: My spring mood board with Annie Ernaux and Schuyler Samperton Textiles.

In reality I'm indoors. That harsh light of early spring still lingers and even though buds have bloomed, promising, sunny days suddenly turned colder (today we had hail). Waiting for spring is not my forte. The good news is that one of my current reads, Annie Ernaux's memoir The Years, translated from French by Alison L Strayer, has been shortlisted for The Man Booker International Prize. Apart from being smitten with my copy, a Fitzcarraldo Editions publication, the narrative voice, written in the third person, intrigues me. I don't remember having read a memoir in the third person. It covers the years 1941 to 2006 'told through the lens of memory, impressions past and present, photos, books, songs, radio, television, advertising, and news headlines.' I haven't finished it yet, but I wouldn't hesitate to recommend it. It's rewarding when a book one has wanted to read not only lives up to its expectations but exceeds them.

Magnolia in bloom, Antwerp 2011

We lived in Antwerp when I shot the blooming magnolia above. I cherish the photo - it was my first Belgian spring and I still remember the street corner - but it no longer appears on my old blog. An album connected to it seems to have vanished, which is why I decided to create a new link for the blog, with a slightly different layout. I haven't changed the blog name: I still note down my ideas for blog entries over lunch and latte.

Back to the textiles: Schuyler Samperton Textiles is an American brand my readers should recognise. Schuyler is one of my favourite textile designers. On the blog I have featured many designs from her growing collection. I have been waiting for spring to show you the two designs in my top image. Eden is the design at the top: The pale pink fabric is Eden/Sweet Pea, the pale green is Eden/Meadow. Shalimar is the floral fabric with the white background. The sample with the tag is Shalimar/Mist, a blue and green pattern. Shalimar/Cielo is the blue one. All these are 100% linen fabrics.

Dora Carrington, Farm at Watendlath, 1921

The green palette in the painting Farm at Watendlath by artist Dora Carrington fits my spring mood. In 1921 she spent a summer holiday in the Lake District. The little I know about her life is from the film Carrington (1995), which focuses on her relationship with writer Lytton Strachey, and from descriptions in the volumes I have read of Virginia Woolf's diaries. At first she doesn't seem to have made a favourable impression on Woolf, but in August 1920 the tone in her diary is different: 'Carrington is ardent, robust, scatterbrained, appreciative, a very humble disciple, but with enough character to prevent insipidity' (Vol. 2).

I will be back soon with a new reading list.

images by me | Dora Carrington art via Tate