More Christmas Books

Helen asked if I got any more books and the answer is a resounding Yes!   

Red Lily is one I asked for -- on Kay Byer's recommendation. "Isabel Zuber's poems weave their way quietly and sinuously into the reader's ear and imagination.  Their emotional landscape pulses with mystery mixed with a keen-eyed awareness of life's seasons and the reverberations that ripple ceaselesly from that knowledge."


Oh, yes. They do, indeed.

My niece, who reads my blog and has probably noted that I like wandering about graveyards and looking at old headstones, sent me this terrific field guide(profusely illustrated) to cemetery symbolism and iconography. 

I absolutely love it. And I forsee taking some day trips to graveyards farther afield.

My sister-in-law sent this charming old book -- copyright 1885. It's set in a boy's school that reminds me in many ways of the Plumfield of Alcott's Little Men. Most of the boys are manly little fellows and the girls are paragons of womanly virtue. It should be cloying but it isn't, at least not to me. But then I grew up reading my grandmother's old books. And it's a painless way to research the era.

Interestingly enough, the illustrations --"by the best American and English artists" -- seem to have been gathered nilly-willy and fit to the story, much as we bloggers glean images from the Internet.

 

The Encyclopedia of the Exquisite, a fascinating and eclectic little book, roams all over the place from lazzi (comic gags used by Renaissance actors) to confetti (originally candied fruits) . . .

 

to omelets, frilly lingerie, big hair and beyond.

The Hare with Amber Eyes is the story of a wealthy, cultivated Viennese family who, because they were Jews, lost everything on the Nazis' entry into Austria. Everything, that is, but a collection of netsukes. I've just begun and am really enjoying it.

The hefty package from my son and daughter-in-law had the clue "interred in the desert sands"on the label. (In the family, we put clues on our gifts to one another and try to guess what's inside before ripping the paper off.)

I should have guessed but the size and the weight had me confused. It's a Doonesbury Retrospective and I'm having a great time filling in the years I missed before I discovered that I could begin my day with a fresh Doonesbury on line.

So, what are you reading?