Four Favorite Books

It’s happened again. Today is the last day of the month and by now I should have shared my 4 favorite books with you…but…but…but I didn’t read any books this month. Not one.

However, I do have 1 favorite book to share anyway — I didn’t read it (it’s 99% pictures), but I had a great time mentally reorganizing its contents into new collections — which I’ll tell you a bit more about in a minute.

The book is the one I mentioned my friend Betsy Balch loaned to me, called The Printed Square * Vintage Handkerchief Patterns for Fashion and Design * by Nicky Albrechtsen, Published by Harper Collins, 2012.

This is the kind of book that I want two copies of. One to keep as a book, and the other to tear the pages out of so I can frame my favorites and then play with them in a variety of arrangements. It’s divided into chapters with the handkerchiefs grouped by color — red, orange, yellow, green, azure, blue, pink, purple, beige, brown, black and white. Which makes me think, this book would be fun published as a folio so you could create your own sets. They could as easily be divided into floral, geometric, Oriental, Western, or by decades — 20’s, 30’s, 40’s or 50’s. So if you get this book, buy two, and make one into a folio!

And now, confession time. Though I didn’t read this month, I did watch plenty of Netflix. But before you get all up in my grill about brain-rot, remember that when I watch TV I can also make pom poms, carve wood blocks, ink altered magazine pages, Kantha stitch quilts, and paint my boots. All of which I have done. This month. Which brings me to my tangential inspirational favorites….

Here are 2 Netflix series I enjoyed in April, the best bon bons to eat while watching them, and the “collections” of vintage handkerchief patterns I mentally put together for each of the series’ heroines.

Series #1: “The Paradise” is a BBC costume drama loosely based on the Emile Zola novel, The Ladies’ Paradise. Denise Lovette is hired as a shop girl in the women’s department of The Paradise department store. She is a natural talent with lightning quick inspiration, obvious intelligence, a kind heart, and a working class background which means she starts at the bottom. Luckily John Moray, the owner of The Paradise, sees Denise’s true genius.

A cup of English Breakfast black tea with cream and honey, and some Turkish Delight are my bon bons of choice with this series. (Watch the powdered sugar if you are making pom poms!)

My Printed Square Collection for Denise Lovette…”Get Lost in Paradise!”

Series #2: “Hit & Miss” stars Chloe Sevigny who plays Mia, a transexual contract killer who finds out she has an ll year old son by her former girlfriend Wendy. Wendy has died leaving their son Ryan, as well as 3 other children in need of a parent though none of the kids is too sure about having a dad for a mom. Mia has almost saved enough money from her contract killings for her final transition operation, but now the kids are being threatened with eviction, and a really attractive man at the pub has just asked her out.

I hate when that happens. But when it does, I have some really strong coffee with cream, and Dark Roca with my Netflix marathon.

My Printed Square Collection for Mia…”Fire Away!”

We’ll see if there’s more time in my schedule for books next month when I don’t have any looming deadlines. Best guess right now? That’s a definite MAY-be.

Oh good grief! Another month has flown by and I have barely had time to read the “Suggestions for You” on my Netflix account, much less entire books.

As a result, this month I’ve chosen 3 old favorites and only 1 new book — the cookbook — which simplifies the time I spend dealing with meals and thus gives me more time to get to those sanity preserving Netflix marathons.

I’ve chosen A Big Storm Knocked it Over by Laurie Colwin as my novel, and yes, the title is a nod to the main distraction of my month.

Laurie Colwin, as you know, is my favorite author and after my little rant in last month’s Four Favorite Books for February the choice of this book should come as no surprise. In fact, the New York Times review of this novel said “Laurie Colwin was utterly fearless in writing about happiness….The novel makes the idea of happy endings for decent people seem entirely plausible, almost inevitable — no small feat for a writer these days and no small pleasure for a reader.”

This novel is about Jane Louise and her marriage to Teddy Parker, her becoming a mother to Miranda, her best-friendship with Edie and her partner Mokie, and the intertwining of their families and lives in Manhattan, and in Marshallville in the Parker family home on Cabbage Hill Road. It’s about belonging, even when you feel like a total outsider, and about the family we build with our hearts, not simply our bloodlines.

For my book of interior design I chose RENOVATE — What the Pros Know About Giving New Life to Your House, Loft, Condo or Apartment, edited by Fred A. Bernstein, and published by Barnes & Noble, 2004.

Remaking less than perfect spaces into ones which suit me and my family must be considered, after 9 houses, as one of my main focuses in life. I am always interested in what other people do to their homes and often find inspiration in their solutions. This book has one renovation in particular which I absolutely love.

It is Leo Adam’s home which started out as a small cabin on the edge of the Yakima Indian reservation and is now an expansive space graciously transitioning the outdoors in while expanding the inside out. Leo is a painter, but he has the ability to take the most humble of materials and transform them into art. In the photo above, the base of the table is an old washtub resting on a wheel hub. The cross shaped wall-hanging is the outside of an old refrigerator, which Leo found, rusted and shot at in the desert. Like me, he doesn’t like carpet so his floors are OSB, with “rugs” of masonite painted like oriental carpets in his earth-toned palette. And yes — those rugs were the original inspiration which led me to paint rugs directly on my floors. Genius.

The art book I selected this time is Fantasy Worlds published by Taschen, 1999. My friend Allison gave it to me a few years ago before I ever produced any public art but it was prescient nonetheless because in spite of the fact most of the examples in this book at least started out as private art, they are public art now, and an odd comfort to me as I struggle with familiar materials on an unfamiliar scale.

The book shows many examples which you may have seen before like the Watts Towers in LA, and the work of Niki de Saint Phalle — mosaic works works apparently hold up better in windstorms!

There are also many examples of surface pattern design which I find particularly inspiring.

My last choice this month is a brand new cookbook from one of my favorite bloggers – Michelle Tam, and her husband Henry Fong. It’s called nom nom paleo — FOOD FOR HUMANS and is published by Andrews McMeel Publishing, 2013.

Over the past 15 years I have transitioned from low-carb to Primal to essentially Paleo, and Michelle’s take on the Paleo paradigm is perfectly aligned with my current understanding of how best to meet our nutritional needs — while eating like gourmets.

All the recipes are made with whole foods using unprocessed ingredients. She even provides recipes for foods we are used to buying processed like mayonnaise and sriracha, and the right ingredients to replace those we no longer eat like using coconut or almond flour in place of wheat flour.

And of course there’s plenty of bacon.

So on that note, as Porky Pig would say… “Th-th-th-that’s All Folks!”

Let us all prepare to dab our eyes, blow a kiss, and bid a fond farewell to February 2014 — the fastest little month in the year.

But before we do, let’s pause a moment to enjoy my Four Favorite Books for February. (You thought I was going to forget didn’t you?!)

Be forewarned however, my choice for Fiction comes with a nonspecific Spoiler Alert — i.e. I am going to tell you a little bit about what I DON’T like about this book first.

My choice for February’s Favorite Fiction (triple F, it must be good!) is Bel Canto, a novel by Ann Patchett.

OK, here’s what I don’t like. I don’t like that the whole time you are reading this lyrically written story and the magically realistic spell is being cast, seducing you into believing with your whole heart that it could happen, and beauty and truth will prevail, your whole heart is actually growing heavier and heavier with the dread that it couldn’t, and they won’t. (Hearts aren’t idiots.)

So what’s the story? In a small country somewhere in South America a lavish birthday party with opera’s most famous soprano as the entertainment is being held for a Japanese business man in the home of the country’s Vice President. As the lights go down after her final aria, all 250 guests are taken hostage by a small band of terrorists. The story is what happens, that you would not predict, and that makes perfect sense….if only.

I loved this book right up to the last chapter. If you are like me, and Bradley Cooper in Silver Linings Playbook,

read this book. You’ll love it. Just DON’T READ THE LAST CHAPTER. There’s no reason to. It’s just a story after all. Let the story live forever ending with the penultimate chapter. You will thank me for that. (And by the way if you haven’t read Farewell to Arms, or Cold Mountain, yet, I’d recommend the same course of action with those books as well.)

For my book of Interior Design I chose PAD, The Guide to Ultra-Living by Matt Maranian. Photographs by Jack Gould, Illustrations by Susan Tudor. Published by Chronicle Books, 2000.

With sections titled Launch Pad (Introduction), Living Wombs, Sanitary Pads (Bathrooms), Crash Pads (Bedrooms) and Padios this book is a hoot. It actually features photos from the homes of eclectic artists like Jon Bok, and Dan Nadeau who decorates like “a tortured alcoholic homosexual priest with a passion for hunting.”

The book also has a lot of helpful how-to instructions for the DIY crowd, including my favorite, the GARISH GARNISHES:

Believe me, after almost finishing Bel Canto, and spending even a short month doing DIY projects, if you’re like me you are going to need your drink to have a garnish which is a meal in itself!

Which actually makes a nice segue to my February Cookbook: The ABC of Canapes from Peter Pauper Press, copyright 1953.

I am actually getting to be very much like Cher’s character Mrs. Flax in Mermaids who served hors d’oeurves for every meal. Her cookbook was called Fun Finger Foods, but I’d bet it didn’t have the recipe for Idiot’s Delight. Not that I would actually cook Idiot’s Delight — it’s made with Accent, which I think is MSG, which makes my throat itch. That would be silly.

Still, any cookbook that lets you swap out peanut butter for cheese gets attention at our house.

My final pick for February is the Art book, and my choice is Just Above the Mantelpiece: mass-market masterpieces, by Wayne Hemingway, published by Booth-Clibborn Editions, 2000.

The author was born in 1961 on the NW coast of England, and raised in his Nan’s “art gallery” filled with mass market masterpieces including windmills, playful gnomes, coiffured poodles, velvet bulls, vintage car ashtrays, as well as the paintings of “unreasonably vibrant-skinned oriental beauties [who] fought for precious wall space with big-eyed animals and even bigger-eyed children.”

He knows his subject upside and down, and has a true affection for it, as well as the artists who produced the work. It’s actually fascinating to follow the “big-eye” phenomena and to think about its expression now in Japanese anime and the Blythe doll craze, for example.

Well that was fun! I’m off to have some of Jenny’s Mock Caviar and a cocktail with a Crystal Craze GummiSaver Kabob garnish for dessert. Happy reading!