I’m hopelessly behind with reviews and I’m fairly sure I won’t have much free time between now and the end of the year… so, catching up with what I liked (or didn’t) about four recent reads. Continue reading
Tag Archives: Jessie Burton
The Miniaturist – Book vs. TV Series
TV series (which is saying a lot because I loved the book). Continue reading
Lately (winter edition)
Wishing: that every week was Negroni Week if these are the things that distillers come up with Continue reading
Bookish (and not so bookish) Thoughts
01. I’m obsessed with caprese salad, so it stands to reason I’ll be obsessed with caprese skillet lasagne.
02. Eeek! Will be starting #20BooksofSummer tomorrow (my May reading took longer than expected). Continue reading
Six Degrees of Separation – from How To Be Both to The Portable Veblen
It’s time for #6degrees. Start at the same place as other wonderful readers, add six books, and see where you end up! Continue reading
Bookish (and not so bookish) Thoughts
01. I took my daughter to the Katy Perry Witness concert last week. As always, Perry was FUN, energetic, and wearing amazing costumes. Highlights: the staging for Swish Swish and the eighties South Beach vibe for her Teenage Dream set (bad pics but you get the idea). Continue reading
Bookish (and not so bookish) Thoughts
01. Late-afternoon-altostratus taken at McCrae beach. Continue reading
October Rewind
My October rewind includes three books that I still think about, years after reading them. Continue reading
The Muse by Jessie Burton
I continued my theme of reading ‘art thrillers’* with The Muse by Jessie Burton.
The story begins in 1967, in London, where Odelle Bastien, a budding writer from Trinidad, gets a job as a typist at a well-known art gallery. Her boss, the elegant Marjorie Quick, takes a special interest in Odelle and her writing. Meanwhile, Odelle meets Lawrie Scott, a young man who has inherited a mysterious painting – the masterpiece, Quick believes, of a Spanish artist called Isaac Robles.
The history of the painting takes the story to a village in southern Spain in 1936, where Olive Schloss is living with her art dealer father and her glamorous but troubled mother. Although Olive is a painter of considerable talent, her father dismisses women as artists.
“Was the difference between being a workaday painter and being an artist simply other people believing in you, or spending twice as much money on your work? As far as Olive saw it, this connection of masculinity with creativity had been conjured from the air and been enforced, legitimised and monetised by enough people for whom such a state of affairs was convenient – men like her father.” Continue reading
Sample Saturday – a tulip, a waitress, and a painting
Sample Saturday is when I wade through the eleventy billion samples I have downloaded on my Kindle. I’m slowly chipping away and deciding whether it’s buy or bye.
The Black Tulip by Alexandre Dumas Continue reading