books read
Oct. 31st, 2005 12:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
fleaDiana Vreeland (and ghostwriters), DV (1984).
This autobiography of the former Harper's Bazaar and Vogue editor remind me why I have given up my long-held subscriptions to fashion magazines. I like clothes, a lot. I am interested in pictures of clothes, discussions of why a garment works or doesn't, what garments are flattering to what bodies, and women's personal style. My favorite Vogue article ever was one by memfault, a famous female author, on how she dressed and why she chose the clothes she did. It was very much, "I am 70 years old, and I know what looks good on me, and I know what doesn't, and I get pants made that fit me by a dressmaker, buy Keds, and buy couture, because I know my needs." Diana Vreeland's book is about the other part of fashion magazines - the name-droppery and the "ooooh, it's fabulous!" She's also appallingly racist and classist (even for a woman born at the turn of the century) - black people uniformly have innate style, and various Europeans are described in approving terms as "a complete peasant." Also, who names their kid Frecky? I spent the whole book wondering what it was short for.
Lenemaja Friedman, Shirley Jackson (1975).
I read most of this book - it's a little bit biography, mostly literary criticism - because it was the only thing the library had on-shelf about Jackson. It's not a good book. Don't read it. Especially don't read our copy, because it has very annoying pen underlining all over it. The best thing about this book was that it made me think about how life has changed since the 1950s (Jackson and her friends all drank like fish; today they'd all be on anti-depressants, and in Jackson's case probably needfully so) and it contained this gem, a quotation from Jackson's daughter Joanne, "...although she wasn't what anyone could rationally call beautiful she was an extraordinarily charming woman and throughout my childhood there were hundreds of people who partied at our house and came to see her for the pleasure of rapping with her" which keeps making me go into giggles over the thought of Ms. Jackson bustin' rhymes over the sherry while she's cooking dinner. (Yes, I know "rapping" had a different meaning in 1975. Still, hee!)
This autobiography of the former Harper's Bazaar and Vogue editor remind me why I have given up my long-held subscriptions to fashion magazines. I like clothes, a lot. I am interested in pictures of clothes, discussions of why a garment works or doesn't, what garments are flattering to what bodies, and women's personal style. My favorite Vogue article ever was one by memfault, a famous female author, on how she dressed and why she chose the clothes she did. It was very much, "I am 70 years old, and I know what looks good on me, and I know what doesn't, and I get pants made that fit me by a dressmaker, buy Keds, and buy couture, because I know my needs." Diana Vreeland's book is about the other part of fashion magazines - the name-droppery and the "ooooh, it's fabulous!" She's also appallingly racist and classist (even for a woman born at the turn of the century) - black people uniformly have innate style, and various Europeans are described in approving terms as "a complete peasant." Also, who names their kid Frecky? I spent the whole book wondering what it was short for.
Lenemaja Friedman, Shirley Jackson (1975).
I read most of this book - it's a little bit biography, mostly literary criticism - because it was the only thing the library had on-shelf about Jackson. It's not a good book. Don't read it. Especially don't read our copy, because it has very annoying pen underlining all over it. The best thing about this book was that it made me think about how life has changed since the 1950s (Jackson and her friends all drank like fish; today they'd all be on anti-depressants, and in Jackson's case probably needfully so) and it contained this gem, a quotation from Jackson's daughter Joanne, "...although she wasn't what anyone could rationally call beautiful she was an extraordinarily charming woman and throughout my childhood there were hundreds of people who partied at our house and came to see her for the pleasure of rapping with her" which keeps making me go into giggles over the thought of Ms. Jackson bustin' rhymes over the sherry while she's cooking dinner. (Yes, I know "rapping" had a different meaning in 1975. Still, hee!)