What's a Picture Worth?

Just read Annie Leibovitz At Work by Annie Leibovitz. In this book she describes the history and technique behind some of her most famous works, starting with the pictures she took for Rolling Stone through today's images for Vanity Fair.

Leibovitz is certainly one of the more recognizable photographers out there today. I wouldn't go so far as to say all her pictures look the same, but they do share many elements. Reading about the research she does and how she sets up each shoot helps explain this.

One of the more interesting things about this book was learning how photography has changed so much in the past forty years. Even little things like a change in page size or paper quality at Rolling Stone made a huge difference in how a picture looked. I was really fascinated by how Leibovitz makes all those composite pictures for Vanity Fair, and how difficult those were to create before digital came into being. Someone who understands a bit more about the technical process than I do would appreciate this book. I enjoyed it very much.

The buzzard picture is mine. It has nothing at all to do with the book. I just enjoy them!

Food for Thought

I don't read much fiction, but The School of Essential Ingredients by Erica Bauermeister was recommended on a blog I follow so I though I'd give it a try. This turned out to be a lovely story. Set in a restaurant cooking class, each chapter focuses on one of the students and how the food they prepare is a reminder of something important in their lives. The book has an easy pace. Bauermeister has a beautiful way with descriptions (the sort of writing often described as "lush") and there were many paragraphs I went back and read again just for the sound they made. The theory that food has magical qualities and is a reflection of the soul isn't new, but when handled correctly can be a great reminder of the many levels of nourishment we receive at the table. If you liked Chocolat (the book, not that pathetic excuse for a movie) or Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant (note to self: read more Anne Tyler) you will like this book.

Eat, Memory is a collection of essays from the Sunday New York Times. The authors of these stories were given a simple task: write about an important event in your life that involved food. The results include the heartbreaking (cooking for a dying mother), the hilarious (a summer job spent in the B&M baked bean factory) and the historical (Julia Child's failing her Cordon Bleu final exam). Fun to read, but if you always read the Times Magazine you've seen them all before. Edited by Amanda Hesser with lots of recipes.

The subtitle of this book is "A Global Adventure in Search of Culinary Extremes." Sigh. In The Year of Eating Dangerously, British food critic Tom Parker Bowles travels the world looking for extreme things to eat. It's been done before, and done better. At least Parker Bowles comes straight out and admits that he's no Bourdain. Tom seems like a nice enough man, and he writes very well, but I just didn't need another story about durian and dog. For me, the most interesting part was the introduction when he talks about the food his mother cooked (Camilla, as in wife of Charles, as in Prince) and the crap he was fed at boarding school. If you haven't OD'd on food/travel literature the way I have give this one a try.

No time for books!

Seriously, both Survivor and Amazing Race are starting new seasons this week. Who has time to read? Not to mention Last Restaurant Standing (new sets this year, and subtitles for Raymond), Hell's Kitchen (so far no shirtless Grrr shots), and now that they're finished with tryouts, American Idol.

It's hard to believe that this is the eighteenth season of Survivor. Thankfully no beach this year. Brazil is gorgeous! But is it just me, or are the players getting a bit dimmer as each season goes by? And could Jeff be any more obvious with his interfering comments? Let them play the game, Peachy!

Whew!

I know, I know! My attention to this blog has been shameful lately. Just haven't really been in a reading mood. Not sure if it's the weather or the fact that I've got a dozen other things hanging over my head, but I haven't managed to finish a thing in over a week. But I've got seven or eight books going now and should have some stuff written up by next week.

To try and get myself excited about books again, I took an afternoon and entered almost 100 of them into LibraryThing. Sad to say it was only ONE bookshelf:



Now obviously I left a couple of stacks off the shelf just so you could see all the others tucked up in the back. And quite a few of Mike's books (a dozen Graham Greene and John LeCarre thrillers) got shelved elsewhere with the hardbacks by those authors. But who would have thought that so many books could fit on one shelf?

I'm really trying hard to pare down and organize things this year. I did find one book to put in the donation pile (a duplicate), which makes me feel very tidy.

Only ten bookCASES to go!

The Name Says it All

Can we just say I'm really not feeling the love right now?

Time to Vote

Ballots are now available online for this year's Bloggie Awards. It's a great way to check out a wide variety of blogs in many different categories. There really is some wonderful writing being published online--I should know, I subscribe to over thirty different blogs these days. Probably the reason I don't have as much time to read "real" books as I used to.

There are cooking blogs, travel blogs, blogs that feature gorgeous photographs, even minimalist blogs (maybe someday we'll be voting for Beth). Don't forget to visit the pages for previous years to find even more fantastic sites. And if any of you have a favorite blog, I'd love to check it out.

http://2009.bloggies.com/

Busy Week!

Things have been pretty hectic around here, what with the inauguration (even though I was smart enough to celebrate from home), and birthdays, and the ramshackle creation of a new soap blog. So very little time for reading!

I did inhale the latest story by Janet Evanovich, Inc. called Plum Spooky. It could have been worse. At least I didn't finish it wishing for that hour of my life back. And you can never have too many bird-flipping monkeys in this world.