Skip to content

Posts tagged reading

A Little About Pearl Bailey

A Little About Pearl Bailey published on No Comments on A Little About Pearl Bailey
By William Morris Agency, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=28343387

It’s been a while since I worked up an Every Month is ____ History Month post. Truth is, I got rather stalled on Pearl Bailey. The more information I found on her, the more I became completely fascinated, and nothing I found was quite enough. Unlike many other personalities that no-one I know seems to remember, Pearl Bailey wrote quite a bit about her life. I can’t tell you how excited I was to find out she had penned her own memoirs and social commentary. Suddenly, only her own words would do. I acquired a few of her books and, unfortunately, they got added to my to-read shelves. And, that is where the research post ended, until now.

No, I haven’t finished reading her biography (the one I picked up). I have read through Hurry Up America and Spit (1976), and I am currently picking through Pearl’s Kitchen (1973). The song on our Christmas mix, ‘Five Pound Box of Money’ by Pearl Bailey is just too good not to share now, and since I have got enough information for a basic biographical sketch, I figured why keep waiting. I am now a confirmed Pearl Bailey fan. I’m not going to have any trouble revisiting this great lady in another post once I have read about her story in her own words.

Pearl Baily was born in 1918 in Newport News, Virginia to Reverend Joseph James and Ella Mae Ricks Bailey (Pearl Bailey, 2022). Her brother, Bill Bailey was well known on the vaudeville stage. In a later article, Bailey recounted how she stumbled accidentally into show business by way of what sounded like a sibling spat. She had been sent to the theater to fetch her brother, who was rehearsing his dance act. He brushed her off and sent her home, so she returned, entered, and won the amateur contest that night. She was just fifteen (Pearl Bailey is serious about ambition to teach, 1956). After some time on vaudeville stages and touring the country with the USO during WWII, she made her Broadway debut in St. Louis Woman in 1946 (Pearl Bailey, 2022) to excited and complimentary reviews (Pearl Bailey’s easy style clicks on Broadway, 1946).

“The way I sing is the way I live,”  Miss Bailey says…”What I do is like telling a story to music, it’s got to be something that brings a chuckle.  The audience enjoys it because it tells of things they know.”

– Pearl Bailey (Pearl Bailey’s easy style clicks on Broadway, 1946)

Early on, she would describe herself as a writer when speaking with reporters and critics. Throughout a very successful career entertaining on stage, through which she was often featured in newspapers, she would carefully craft and plan her shows based on her projections of what the audience would be (Pearl Bailey’s next role, 1956). By 1956 she declared a desire to follow her long time dream of becoming a teacher, taking classes at UCLA towards that ambition (Pearl Bailey is serious about ambition to teach, 1956). She would later earn a degree in theology from Georgetown University, but before this she published several books (Pearl Bailey, 2022):

  • The Raw Pearl (1968)
  • Talking to Myself (1971)
  • Pearl’s Kitchen (1973)
  • Hurry Up America and Spit (1976)
  • Between You and Me (1989)

Somewhat satisfyingly, her achievements and greatness were awarded many times over during her lifetime. She was appointed special ambassador to the United Nations by President Gerald Ford; she received a Special Tony Award for the title role in the all-black production of Hello, Dolly!; she won a Daytime Emmy award; she was the first African-American to receive the Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award; she received the Presidential Medal of Freedom; and she was awarded the Bronze Medallion, the highest award conferred upon civilians by New York City (Pearl Bailey, 2022). Pearl Bailey died at the age of 72 from arteriosclerosis (Pearl Bailey, 2022).

There is so much more that I haven’t covered here and, I promise, I will get to it. But for now, enjoy a little Christmas:

References

The best of reading intentions

The best of reading intentions published on No Comments on The best of reading intentions

Based on the bookshelves lining the walls of the room we alternately call the dining room, office, and library, I might be a bibliophile. I am susceptible to an interesting title, book cover, and synopsis, though I have a test that I do before bringing anything home: after being pulled in by the title, cover, and synopsis, I start reading the first page. If I am not grabbed then I skip ahead deeper in the book, if I am still not grabbed, I put the book down.

Reading all these books I bring home in a timely manner, is another matter entirely. I really don’t. But I have been making some progress this past year or so, thanks to friends inspiring good habits. I feel compelled to list them out:

  • Witch by Christopher Pike
  • Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
  • Rules of Magic by Alice Hoffman
  • The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
  • Akata Witch by Nnedi Okorafor
  • The Things I Did for Love by Ellen Conford
  • Hurry Up, America, & Spit by Pearl Bailey
  • Magic Lessons by Alice Hoffman
  • Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
  • The Darkening Age: The Christian Destruction of the Classical World by Catherine Nixey
  • The Daughter of Doctor Moreau by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
  • Appointment with Death by Agatha Christie

I feel like there is a better method of commemorating the read. Perhaps I need to get back into the 100th page comics challenge. Of course some of this friendly inspiration has been book-club like, so my goal to read through the books I’ve already acquired is competing a little with reading books that a book club has decided to address.

Chocolate Tipsy Cake

Chocolate Tipsy Cake published on No Comments on Chocolate Tipsy Cake

My friends and I started up a book club to get us reading, and among other titles, we are reading books from Alice Hoffman’s Practical Magic series. Hoffman’s books are full of mentions of curative foods and drinks, yet very few full recipes are included. Fan’s of the series have already jumped in to fill this omission and have created recipes in an attempt to approximate those mentioned in fiction. One of the best versions of Aunt Isabelle’s Chocolate Tipsy Cake, as is mentioned in the Rules of Magic is the one on Potpourri with Rosemarie. True to form, I changed the recipe a little when I made it, and I flubbed the icing, but it is one delicious cake!

INGREDIENTS:

  • 1 c unsweetened cocoa powder + additional for dusting pan
  • 1 c fresh coffee
  • 1/2 c dark rum
  • 1 c salted butter
  • 1.5 c brown sugar
  • 2 c flour
  • 1 1/4 tsp baking soda
  • 2 large eggs
  • 1/2 c buttermilk
  • 1 tsp vanilla
  • 1 tsp cinnamon
  • pinch clove
  • 1/2 bar dark chocolate (chopped)

Preheat oven to 325 while you grease and dust with cocoa powder a large bunt pan. Add to a saucepan on medium-low heat: coffee, rum, butter, cocoa powder, chopped chocolate bar, and sugar until all is melted and combined, then cool. Once the coffee and chocolate mixture is cool add buttermilk, eggs and vanilla. Sift in flour mixed with soda, cinnamon, and clove a little at a time until well combined. Pour into pan and bake 40 minutes or until toothpick comes out clean.

The rum icing, in the recipe on Potpourri with Rosemarie was made with chocolate chips, butter, half and half and dark rum. I had only the darkest chocolate on hand so I wanted to sweeten it. While I should have just added white sugar, I was lazy and dropped in simple syrup, which is why my glaze in the picture looks all lumpy and weird. It tasted lovely though.

The Key of Hell: an 18th-Century Manual on Black Magic

The Key of Hell: an 18th-Century Manual on Black Magic published on No Comments on The Key of Hell: an 18th-Century Manual on Black Magic
Source: The Key of Hell: an 18th-Century Manual on Black Magic | The Public Domain Review

Are you in the market for some ancient writings on magic in multiple languages with arresting illustrations and helpful diagrams? I am a sucker for ancient mystery texts, though my interest is far from well researched. So, when the Public Domain Review did a write up on the grimoire of Saint Cyprian, also known as Clavis Inferni (“The Key of Hell”), by Cyprianus, I saved it as a note to myself and possible blog post with the intention of diving deeper into it and its history. That note has been sitting around so long, the time to share it with y’all is now.

Cyprian, was either an intensely evil man or an astoundingly beautiful one. Accounts of the man behind the story vary. However, the name Cyprian became a pseudonym for people who lived on the fringes of society and practiced dark magic (Cvltnation).  Cyprian was also linked to the Black School at Wittenberg, which was one of multiple schools in legend that were supposedly run by the Devil himself. Though the promise of secret knowledge was great, students entered the school with the knowledge that a percentage of them would be dragged to hell by the Devil before they could leave (Jason Colavito).

More images from the Clavis Inferni can be browsed at the Wellcome Collection‘s record of the book. And if you, like me, are drawn to old mystery texts, I would also suggest the Grimoire Encyclopedia. It collects links to online copies of ancient grimoires and captures metadata on the history, origins, and authors of the texts.

Perception, Gender, Identity, and Otherness: Un-Defining the Giallo Film

Perception, Gender, Identity, and Otherness: Un-Defining the Giallo Film published on No Comments on Perception, Gender, Identity, and Otherness: Un-Defining the Giallo Film

Introduction

Any discussion on the origin of the giallo, whether the discussion is concerned with the literature or the film phenomenon, will most likely begin with an explanation that the giallo took its name from the yellow book covers used by Mondadori to color code their mystery novel publications (Pieri, 2011; Koven, 2006; Needham, 2002).  Eventually, giallo became a term used for any type of detective fiction, story with a mystery element, or intrigue.  Mikel Koven would coin it a “metonym for the entire mystery genre (2006 p2-3).” Initially, between WWI and WWII, the stories were imported from the UK, America, and France.  The foreignness helped to distance the stories of crime and murder from Italian readers while also becoming so attractive an element that Italian authors began to adopt anglicized pseudonyms to put their locally produced work on even footing with the popular imports (Pierri, 2011; Needham, 2002).   Italian writers of the giallo faced another hurdle in competing with the foreign imports in the strict oversight and censorship in the Fascist regime pre WWII for their production of what was considered low brow literature.  This label of ‘low brow’ followed the giallo from literature to film when the movies rose as a genre in the 60s and 70s, sometimes considered a component of a larger movement in Italian Fantasy Cinema that included horror (Palmerini & Mistretta, 1996).  The giallo in film has been popularly defined by its characteristics, by time period, and by driving personalities.  It has been said to be an “auteurist domain,” defined by the directorial names that made the most memorable examples of the genre; defined by Argento (Heller-Nicholas, 2012; Palmerini & Mistretts, 1996).  However, similar to the debate over the rigid, proscribed, and repetitive structure of crime fiction literature giving way, through that very repetition, to a dynamic and flexible reimagining of the genre (Maher & Pezzotti, 2017), the cinematic giallo has also been described as having “an inherently ambivalent form (Koven, 2010 p144)”.  Despite the giallo’s formulaic narratives and repetitious plot elements, the genre can seem even less definable in film than in literature, and may represent a cultural exchange that only adds to its fluidity and timelessness (Heller-Nicholas, 2012).  As Gary Needham thoroughly points out:

“One interesting point about the giallo in its cinematic form is that it appears to be less fixed as a genre than its written counterpart. The term itself doesn’t indicate, as genres often do, an essence, a description or a feeling. It functions in a more peculiar and flexible manner as a conceptual category with highly movable and permeable boundaries that shift around from year to year…  (2002)”

What follows is an exploration into the phenomenon of and discourse on the cinematic giallo, as it is intrinsically linked to giallo literature and to the unique historical environment in which it evolved, to determine what, if any, are the defining elements that make a film a giallo.  Perhaps like it’s literature forebears, the giallo’s blending of characteristics from different genres creates “dynamic conceptual structures” that cannot be defined without allowing for blurred boundaries (Maher & Pezzotti, 2017 p9).Continue reading Perception, Gender, Identity, and Otherness: Un-Defining the Giallo Film

Conjure Wife

Conjure Wife published on No Comments on Conjure Wife

A bachelor’s degree in English Literature and a career in libraries almost killed my fiction consumption.  I’d read a story here and there, but mostly, I was reading articles, and nonfiction manuals and analyses of library services, assessment and copyright.

Then, one evening, I walked into our dining room-library-office and looked at the shelves full of interesting books that we had, for various reasons, picked up over the years.  I reached out and I grabbed one.  Probably by design, I grabbed one that I knew wouldn’t be to hard to get through – an Agatha Christie Poirot mystery.  I followed it with another Poirot, then a young adult ghost story, and then, the spine of the Conjure Wife winked at me from a short stack of books on the shelf one down from the top.

It was a book that Richard had picked up, probably because of the cover or the ‘Gothic Horror’ emblazoned on the front.  Everybody has their own method of selecting unheard of literature…pleasure reading.  My method is to allow the title, cover and description to grab me, then to open the first page of the first chapter and read.  If what I read doesn’t grab me, I open to a random page in the middle and read.  If what I read the second time doesn’t grab me, I put the book down.  This is a luxury of selection that I was not able to enjoy while getting my English Literature degree, and am not able to enjoy while researching and studying for my work.  When I picked up the Conjure Wife from our shelves and tried my method on it, I found myself standing in a dimming room, facing the corner of books, while I read several pages without being able to tear myself away.

It was fascinating and timeless, set within an envelope of academia that seemed so familiar and yet different from what I experience every day.  Fritz Leiber writes so that you know every corner of a room and every freckle on a person’s face without tediously focusing on any one thing or bloating his work with never ending descriptions.  The scene is laid out like the action, so that they are both one thing, inseparable.  In the same way, Scriabin’s Sonata No. 9 was so tied to the emotional state of the character/narrator that I wasn’t always sure which was being described; that I was propelled to seek out the music to hear the story in another way.

 

But, I can’t tell you any more about the story because Richard hasn’t read it yet.

John Philip Sousa and the Fifth String

John Philip Sousa and the Fifth String published on No Comments on John Philip Sousa and the Fifth String

In my quest for author voices I found that John Philip Sousa, great conductor and composer, had also penned an impassioned and oddly prophetic argument about phonograph music as a copyright infringement and a harbinger of the death of amateur music. Looking further, hoping to find more comments on copyright, I found that he had written fiction as well.

Can you imagine my surprise? Marching band legend, and writer of marches that permeate pomp, circumstance, cartoons and popular culture (who I recently found out is not as well known as I expected) was also a spinner of yarns! The Fifth String is a story that seems utterly familiar: a man going to impossible lengths to win the love of a lady, a quest to attain the unattainable, a deal with the devil, etc. The writing is perfectly engaging and walks at a pace that you might expect from a story published in 1902, and it is, every now and then, peppered with perfectly lovely imagery and delightful vocabulary:

“blinking-eyed cabs came up the avenue, looking at a distance like a trail of Megatheriums, gliding through the darkness”

Just in case you haven’t heard any Sousa, here is the March of the White Rose (not as ubiquitous as most, but I like the beginning):

Sacré Bleu a review of sorts

Sacré Bleu a review of sorts published on No Comments on Sacré Bleu a review of sorts

sacreblue

Now, in his latest masterpiece, Sacré Bleu, the immortal Moore takes on the Great French Masters. A magnificent “Comedy d’Art” from the author of Lamb, Fool, and Bite Me, Moore’s Sacré Bleu is part mystery, part history (sort of), part love story, and wholly hilarious as it follows a young baker-painter as he joins the dapper Henri Toulouse-Lautrec on a quest to unravel the mystery behind the supposed “suicide” of Vincent van Gogh.

-from http://www.chrismoore.com/books/sacre-bleu/

If you have not read any  books by Christopher Moore,  now might be a good time to start…because I’m telling you how awesome they are, right now.  All of them.  Okay… all the one’s I’ve read and I have read more than one.  The most recent was Sacré Bleu.  It was enveloping, alluring, and magical, the kind of book that makes you chuckle out loud in a crowded airport, no matter who looks at you funny.  See the quote above; I’m not alone.

Art inspired by the story.

Scarlet Pimpernel

Scarlet Pimpernel published on No Comments on Scarlet Pimpernel

Thescarletpimpernel1908I read The Scarlet Pimpernel (Wikipedia) by Baroness Orczy (Wikipedia) right after reading the Count of Monte Cristo. I was desperate for some kind of sequel or anything else of Alexandre Dumas’ that could live up to it that wasn’t about the three musketeers.  The Scarlet Pimpernel came to my rescue then, and thanks to project Gutenberg, I am now buried in sequels.  You could say, I am making it a new obsession.

Books in order of publication:

  1. The Scarlet Pimpernel (1903)
  2. I will Repay (1906)
  3. The Elusive Pimpernel (1908)
  4. Eldorado (1913)
  5. The Laughing Cavalier (1914)
  6. Lord Tony’s Wife (1917)
  7. The First Sir Percy (1921)
  8. The Triumph of the Scarlet Pimpernel (1922)
  9. Pimpernel and Rosemary (1924)
  10. Sir Percy Hits Back (1927)
  11. A Child of the Revolution (1932)
  12. The Way of the Scarlet Pimpernel (1933)
  13. The Scarlet Pimpernel Looks at the World (1933)
  14. Sir Percy Leads the Band (1936)
  15. Mam’zelle Guillotine (1940)

The novels and other collections of short stories were not typical sequels.  They jumped about in time, each a piece of the French revolutionary world that the Baroness had created.  Their huge popularity at the time drove her production as much as it inspired movie versions:

Movies:

  1. 1943 movie with Leslie Howard
  2. 1938 sequel with Barry Barnes
  3. Another sequel in 1950 starring David Niven
  4. 1940 Pimpernel Smith starring Leslie Howard
  5. The Scarlet Pimpernel, 1955 (starring Marius Goring)
  6. 1966 Carry on Pimpernel
  7. 1982 movie with Anthony Andrews and Jane Seymour
  8. 1999 miniseries with Richard Grant
  9. 2010 rumblings of Michael Armstrong directing a new version with Neil Jackson.

But there is no comic.  Oh, there were advertisements of The Pimpernel: An Adaptation Of The Scarlet Pimpernel by Doug Kissock, but it doesn’t seem to have gone anywhere, much like the 2010 movie plans of Michael Armstrong.

Giallo Meltdown

Giallo Meltdown published on No Comments on Giallo Meltdown

giallomeltdown

Richard and I are racing.  His book:  Giallo Meltdown:  A Moviethon Diary is now available for sale on Amazon.  I drew that cover ya’ll!

If you haven’t wandered over to DoomedMoviethon.com and tasted his literary stylings then, do! do!  Richard’s writing is engaging and witty.  It will pull you in, make you giggle, and embarrass you at the bus stop where people will gawk at you both for reading (who does that anymore) and for openly enjoying yourself in public.  I say this because it’s true, not because I’m biased in any way.

The Transpacific Partnership| Economix Comix

The Transpacific Partnership| Economix Comix published on No Comments on The Transpacific Partnership| Economix Comix

So, I’ve mentioned TPP before, and I’m sure I’ve advertized my love of educational comics.  Of course I love Economix:  How our economy works (and doesn’t work) in words and pictures.  And economics is important because it has a lot to do with trade and intellectual property laws, laws that often include strange little bits about internet monitoring, whether people own what they buy, and how much the government and other organizations can snoop on the casual consumer through what they buy. Included in the book is a nifty segment on TPP:

 

Curiosities of Puritan nomenclature (1888)

Curiosities of Puritan nomenclature (1888) published on No Comments on Curiosities of Puritan nomenclature (1888)

If I have not said this before, I love the internet archive.  I imagine that the sentiment is shared by anyone trying to dig up old information.  I have been saved by books digitized by the internet archive in my work, and in my private genealogy research.

I also love the Public Domain Review.  It is almost like a best of the internet archive, in that it pulls out items of interest like the Curiosities of Puritan nomenclature (1888).  Of course, the Public Domain Review also highlights items of curiosity in other places all over the net.  It is a great place to find archival collections of all sorts that are normally not easy to pull out of a [insert name of search engine here] search.

Now if you, like me, have spent some real time with genealogical research then you have spent time with the nitty gritty of history.  You have read over land grants, court transcripts, and small claims; you have dissected the language of historical sketches and town diaries written hundreds of years ago; you have wondered why 15 men within two generations of the same family are named Vine.  So books like the Curiosities of Puritan nomenclature (1888) are interesting because they explain why surnames came about at all, where they came from, why there are so many Rogers and Johns, and much more.

Fan Fiction and Copyright by Aaron Schwabach

Fan Fiction and Copyright by Aaron Schwabach published on No Comments on Fan Fiction and Copyright by Aaron Schwabach

I have just finished reading through Fan Fiction and Copyright : Outsider Works and Intellectual Property Protection by Aaron Schwabach, and since I can’t stop mentioning it to friends I run into and have lunch with, I’m going to mention it to you too.

You might think that an examination of fan fiction’s use of another’s intellectual property under copyright law might be a little dry and laborious.  You might even think that such a work by a law professor would be like returning to school during the days of your most intense burn-out.  You would be wrong.  Not only does Schwabach present a work that bridges the gap between legal expertise and a layman’s understanding of extremely complex laws, to which the review in the Times Higher Education points as the book’s strength, he also convinces you that he has read all the Harry Potter books, seen the movies, and all the Lord of the Rings as well.  In fact, his voice in the book comes across as that of a fan and intellectual consumer, not a wholly impartial observer.   In a book with heavy treatment of fan communities and the way they celebrate their appreciation of a creative work, and one that attempts to reach those same fans with information relevant to their activities, this is extremely important.

Though I am sure that legal study introduces one to several interesting pieces of information, it is a way of studying human history, I am loathe to attribute Schwabach’s mention of London exclusive societies, ancient greek poetry, Mozart, WWII history, and ballet to his legal study alone.  I could almost not contain my nerdgasm* when he pointed out that in the Dark Night the Batmobile does lose a wheel and the Joker does get away as is described in “Jingle Bells, Batman Smells.”

Schwabach’s breadth of knowledge is impressive.  He comes across as someone who would be a joy to talk with over dinner because he, for the most part, relates various tidbits of information with clear indication of his feelings and opinions of the thing itself, more evidence that he didn’t simply read up on the material as one would study for a research paper.  All of this and very pointed and specific examination of legal precedent that builds the structure within which fans write their tribute to the characters and the worlds of the author’s they admire makes Fan Fiction and Copyright the best nonfiction I have read all year.

*when I say nerdgasm I refer to the excitement generated when one’s concentrated devotion to a medium allows one to understand a connection between two seemingly unconnected ideas.  I do not mean nerdgasm as it is defined by the Urban dictionary.

I’ve been looking for this

I’ve been looking for this published on No Comments on I’ve been looking for this

Years ago, I undertook the ransacking of my memory to create an exhaustive list of books I’ve read.  You might think that was crazy, one of my best friends did.  And I probably did fail to remember some of the stories I had read during my near thirty years of life (at the time).  But I used some tricks and did some searching and came up with something that was pretty complete.

Eventually, all I was left with were those books for which I could remember the cover or a few plot points, but could never find the right thing.  The Things I Did For Love is just such a book – THE final book plot and cover details that haunted my memory and would not allow me to simply write off that I could not write it down in my Great Read It list.

Thanks to CLIQUEY PIZZA 2: more 80’s teen book series & pop culture, I now know what the title of this dang book is, and the author, and I can put it on my Read It list for good.  In fact, once I read the Cliquey Pizza coverage on The Things I Did For Love, I automatically went out and re-purchased a copy that I intend to re-read just because it has been a massive thorn in my list for so long!  …and because I’m not quite done reliving the cheesy teen romances that I used to love.

Thank you Cliquey Pizza for saving my list!  Thank you from the bottom of my heart!

I couldn’t stop laughing as I read…

I couldn’t stop laughing as I read… published on No Comments on I couldn’t stop laughing as I read…

But there is really good content therein.  I don’t usually end up in situations where I might be beat up or anything else …now that I think about it – ‘or anything else’ has happened to me.  I thought I was just lucky.  Ok, so the technique of giving calm but nonsensical responses that Derren Brown describes in  Derren Brown’s Guide to overcoming Awkward Situations – Entertainment – ShortList Magazine wouldn’t necessarily also have come in handy when I was being followed around the record store I worked in by a guy who repeatedly told me he liked my shape, and who continued on with other lewd comments and offers to take me home after my shift.  That was a long time ago.  But, Derren Brown’s advice on other situations is good to have in your head just in case.  To sum up:  awesome article, and hilarious in its description of the technique.

Primary Sidebar