Sunday, July 25, 2010

Read in June 2010 (part two)

9. The Awakening, by Kate Chopin
Sentence by sentence, the prose isn't exactly my taste, but it builds a good story. I definitely had to wrestle with the main character and the ending, just to decide...what I thought of her.

10. Black and White Photography [Manifest Visions], ed. by James Luciana
Not really an aesthetic that interest me or speaks to me. A bit too...theatrical? There were some gems in there, though.

11. 50 Ways to Soothe Yourself Without Food, by Susan Albers
This book could have been called 50 Healthy Coping Mechanisms or 50 Healthy Ways to Soothe  Yourself. While it's aimed at addressing emotional eating, the destressing/soothing techniques they present are quite universally applicable

12. Charles Sheeler: The Photographs, ed. by Theodore E. Stebbins
What a wonderfully spare aesthetic he has. One of the old master photographers.

13. A Geisha's Journey: My Life as a Kyoto Apprentice, by Naoyuki Ogino
Brief, interesting, and pretty to look at. [Photographs + interviews with the geisha in question.] For a while back in high school, I used to read everything geisha that I could get my hands on. Old habits die hard, I guess. :)

14. Photographs: Annie Leibovitz, 1970-1990, by Annie Leibovitz
She's so flippin' talented; her pictures just light the inside of my head up. In some of her pictures, you just KNOW that she's captured more of her subjects than they meant to show of themselves. Just brilliant. You gotta check out her book Women too.

15. Adam: God's Beloved, by Henri Nouwen
I love this writer, but this one didn't communicate that much to me. Possibly because he died before it was completely through the publishing process? Anyways, it's about the author's time (he's a theologian) living in a community for mentally disabled people. The main thing I took from it is the idea that because God's love for us depends on nothing, we are freed to simply and peacefully be.

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