Elsa Schiaparelli

I am currently reading the biography of Elsa Schiaparelli and have been utterly captivated. 

While perusing the biography section at the library I came across this blush pink cover and brought it home with me. After being in a bit of a literary lag this summer and not reading as much as I would have liked the past few weeks, I threw the biography in my tote bag when I went to the pool this Monday to spend some final hours sun bathing and page turning. 

Elsa Schiaparelli: A Biography, written by Meryle Secrest, came out last fall. Covering the life & legacy of one of the most pivotal figures in fashion, I have had such an enjoyable time reading about the artist, her creative mind, her muses, models and devotees, her partners (artistic and personal) and the historical undertones that wove through her life & transformed not just the world of fashion, but the world as we know it.
The first time I heard of Elsa Schiaparelli was in my early days of blogging, although her influence came even earlier. As a young adolescent, I devoured the kate spade books (style, occasions, manners). In style, kate spade featured the infamous lobster dress, created by Elsa Schiaparelli and Salvador Dali, and worn by Wallis Simpson (blogged about here). That dress reoccured for a brief moment in college. It was the first or second weekend of my freshman year in college, one of those end of summer evenings when weather is in its absolute prime and I was walking around fraternity hill (probably in white shorts, a crew neck t-shirt and a flower pin), thinking about how absolutely delightful it would be to have a white tent party with twinkling christmas lights, a champagne fountain and a big band jazz band - right here on the hill. My outfit of choice? A lobster dress. But in reality what were the party venue options in college? I was headed to a gross fraternity house that reeked of stale beer with girls and guys that were far from stylish. It didn't take long for me to understand that my dreams of a champagne, starlight evening in a lobster dress might have to start on some ugly couch sipping Natty Light. Needless to say, my transition and journey through college, was quite interesting to say the least...and I guess Elsa Schiaparelli will always have somewhat of a lasting impression on my introductory college status quo :)
If you're looking for a book to read, I'd definitely recommend this biography. Listen to the NPR review below and you can purchase the book here.

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Celebrating 75 years of Madeline

Madeline, one of my favorite characters, turned 75 this year.

I have always enjoyed the books, in fact I think I love them even more now, than I did as a little girl. The presentation of twelve little girls in two straight lines running through Paris is marvelous. With beautiful illustrations, charming rhymes, and a fantastic depiction of a young girl's adventures through one of the most fabulous cities on earth - who wouldn't envy Madeline? 

She finds a way to get into trouble wherever she goes, but with a yellow coat and Eiffel Tower in the background, a fiesty red-head couldn't look better :) 

This past weekend, The CBS Morning Show had a wonderful segment on the beloved story books, that I have shared below. 

While researching the segment, I came across a couple wonderful articles that I would recommend checking out if you're interested in the history of Madeline, author Ludwig Bemelman and Madeline's legacy. 

New York Parenting: Celebrate 75 Years of Madeline

The New York Times: At 75, Still Stepping Out of Line

I took bits and pieces of an excerpt from The New York Times piece by Edward Rothstein for you to read below:

"Could anything be more steeped in the order and orders of the Old World than those 12 little girls leave an old house covered with vines, in two straight lines, in rain or shine? It has been 75 years since they made their appearance in Ludwig Bemelman's classic Madeline with their hairbows and yellow hats: models of propriety being led through the gradeur of touristic Paris (the Opera, the Place Vendome, Notre Dame, the Tuileries). Except, of course, for Madeline, who never quite stayed in place. 

"Many readers under the age of 95 have Bemelman's images and words inscribed in their consciousness: Madeline daring to 'pooh-pooh' a tiger in the zoo; Lord Cucuface thinking it disgraceful for 'young ladies to embrace a dog of uncertain race;' and, of course, Miss Clavel, the only woman in children's literature, who, when afraid of a disaster, could run fast and faster, and give the black habit of a nun the sweep of a superhero's cape. 

"Yet there are many particular aspects to the first and best of these books...Here is a tale about Paris by an Austrian immigrant to the United States, who began writing it on the back of a menu in Pete's Tavern on Irving Place in Manhattan. Madeline first appeared in Life magazine in September 1939, the same week World World II began, but she is immersed in a sacral, almost antique world...

This Paris certainly didn't exist at the time, and was doomed to become an even more distant memory in a matter of months...

"In fact, the books have not found a French audience the way they have found an American one. They show an imagined France, not an experienced France. The only hint of disruption in their fantastical vision of an old order is Madeline herself, whose spunky individualism is a mark of modernity, and whose mischief just manages to shake Miss Clavel's equanimity without the more serious consequences history was about to provide...

"Even the final lines of Madeline are meant with a wink, as we learn 'And that's all there is - there isn't anymore'...and though you aren't left deeply moved by the fascinations of this show, by the end, you feel an urge to applaud." 

read more here.

If you happen to be in New York, this weekend is the last opportunity to visit "Madeline in New York: The Art of Ludwig Bemelmans" at the New-York Historical Society. The collection honors the 75th anniversary of Madeline's publication, with an exhibition of more than 90 original artworks. Drawings from all of the Madeline books will be featured, in addition to Bemelman's drawings of the old Ritz Hotel in New York, murals from a re-discovered Paris bistro, panels from the Onassis yacht, and cache fabrics based on an early picture book, as described by the New-York Historical Society's exhibition announcement. 

Enjoy your weekend, toodles!

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Jane Austen

Most of the books I read this year are pretty heavy: 12 Years A Slave, In The Garden Of Beasts, Killing Jesus, One Flew Over The Cuckoo Nest, Fountainhead, In Cold Blood...you get the picture. These are remarkable books and left strong impressions, but it's time for a little happy-go-lucky. Jane Austen was the first author that came to mind - and Sense and Sensibility is sitting on my bedside table as the next on my "to read" list. 

Austen is a timeless author who will continue to impact readers for generations to come. Her legacy is rich and cherished. She has addressed some of the most relatable issues of love and romance in an enjoyable and charming fashion. Life is not all sunshine and roses for the characters in Austen's novels,  but she creates a beautiful journey - touching all of our emotions in different capacities. 

Austen creates characters with faults that we can find rooted in our own personalities. Seeing characters with their own flaws, making mistakes, overcoming hardships, and encountering life's perfectly unplanned moments, can help us on our own life journey. We can empathize with the likes of Emma and Elizabeth Bennet; acknowledge and appreciate their imperfections, helping us do the same with our own. And, a little like life, the characters that are kind of heart are rewarded. Not exactly as planned - but it helps us look through life with rose colored glasses. 

 It's easy to get distracted by the "romance" element of her stories, just as it is in the modern day. But Austen isn't just a romance novelist. She told the story of life, and love and marriage are two of the biggest players - is that not much different from today? But, when reading her works, keep in mind this quote: "I wish, as well as everybody else, to be perfectly happy; but, like everybody else, it must be in my own way." She envelops this message in each of her stories. 

Just like the characters in Jane Austen's novels, the best way to reach happiness comes from your own effort. There's no rule book, no Mr. Darcy guarantee...but you'll be quite pleased at where your best perfectly happy may lead you. 

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A quick synopsis of Jane Austen's works from JaneAusten.com:

Northanger Abbey

Jane Austen's first major novel was written in 1798-99, when she was in her early twenties. It is a comic love story set in Bath about a young reader who must learn how to separate fantasy from reality. Miss Austen sold the novel (then entitled Susan) to a publisher in 1803, and the work was advertised, but never published. She bought it back many years later, and her brother Henry Austen published the novel as Northanger Abbey after her death in 1817. 

Sense & Sensibility

Sense and Sensibility was the first of Jane Austen's novels to be published. She began to write it sometime around 1797, and she worked on it for many years before its publication in 1811. The title page said that is was written "By a Lady," and only her immediate family knew that Jane Austen was the author. Impetuous Marianne Dashwood tumbles into a fairytale romance that goes sour, and her practical older sister Elinor copes with the family's financial problems while hiding her own frustrated romantic hopes. 

Pride and Prejudice

Pride and Prejudice was first written in the late 1700s, then rewritten in 1811-12 and finally published in early 1813. It is probably the most-read of all of Jane Austen's novels and is a popular favorite among many. Originally entitled, First Impressions, the novel deals with the misjudgments that often occur at the beginning of an acquaintance and how those misjudgments can change as individuals learn more about each other. 

Mansfield Park

Mansfield Park was written between February, 1811 and the summer of 1813. It was the third novel Jane Austen had published and it first appeared on May 4, 1814. During her lifetime, it was attributed only to "The author of Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice," and the author's identity was unknown beyond her family and friends. It is Jane Austen's most complex novel and deal with many different themes, from the education of children, to the differences between appearance and reality.

Emma

Emma was written in 1814-15, and while Jane Austen was writing it, it was suggested to her by a member of Prince Regent's household that she dedicate it to His Royal Highness. Austen took the suggestion as it was intended -- as a command -- and Emma was thus dedicated, but the dedication itself is rather slyly worded. Emma deals with a young woman's maturation into adulthood and the trouble she gets herself into along the way. 

Persuasion

Persuasion was written in 1815-16, while Jane Austen was suffering from her fatal illness. She was still working on some revisions at the time of her death in 1817. The novel was published posthumously by her brother, Henry Austen. Persuasion is a novel of second changes, expectations of society, and the constancy of love. 

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Ten Best Sentences

I was listening to NPR last night while I dropped my brother back off at school. I was told that listening to NPR was just another one of the multiple reasons why I was "so weird" - or maybe it was "so lame..." Criticisms from my brothers all lump in the whatever pile after awhile.
 The perils of being the only girl. 

Regardless, there was a wonderful segment about the Ten Best Sentences in fiction and nonfiction works. I sometimes forget the beauty of literature beyond the plot development. Syntax, diction, vocabulary, and imagery are an art form on their own, but I rarely acknowledge them outside of poetry readings. It's easier, for me, to focus on the form of a dozen stanzas - rather than analyzing the same elements in a novel, especially when I'm swimming in sentences! I instead, progress with the plot, the story, the theme, the characters and focus more on the actions rather than the details. There are a couple of times where a particular quote or moment of literature stays with me - even years after the fact - but I don't give the art of writing as much credit it deserves. Although I can't imagine totally transforming my literary habits, I hope to recognize and appreciate the beauty of the composition a little more often. 

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See the complete list from The American Scholar below:

Its vanished trees, the trees that had made way for Gatsby’s house, had once pandered in whispers to the last and greatest of all human dreams; for a transitory enchanted moment man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an aesthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder.

— F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

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I go to encounter for the millionth time the reality of experience and to forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race.

— James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

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This private estate was far enough away from the explosion so that its bamboos, pines, laurel, and maples were still alive, and the green place invited refugees—partly because they believed that if the Americans came back, they would bomb only buildings; partly because the foliage seemed a center of coolness and life, and the estate’s exquisitely precise rock gardens, with their quiet pools and arching bridges, were very Japanese, normal, secure; and also partly (according to some who were there) because of an irresistible, atavistic urge to hide under leaves.

— John Hersey, Hiroshima

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It was a fine cry—loud and long—but it had no bottom and it had no top, just circles and circles of sorrow.

— Toni Morrison, Sula

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For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbors, and laugh at them in our turn?

— Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

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It was the United States of America in the cold late spring of 1967, and the market was steady and the G.N.P. high and a great many articulate people seemed to have a sense of high social purpose and it might have been a spring of brave hopes and national promise, but it was not, and more and more people had the uneasy apprehension that it was not.

— Joan Didion, Slouching Towards Bethlehem

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Anger was washed away in the river along with any obligation.

— Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms

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There are many pleasant fictions of the law in constant operation, but there is not one so pleasant or practically humorous as that which supposes every man to be of equal value in its impartial eye, and the benefits of all laws to be equally attainable by all men, without the smallest reference to the furniture of their pockets.

— Charles Dickens, Nicholas Nickleby

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In many ways he was like America itself, big and strong, full of good intentions, a roll of fat jiggling at his belly, slow of foot but always plodding along, always there when you needed him, a believer in the virtues of simplicity and directness and hard labor.

— Tim O’Brien, The Things They Carried

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There is nothing more atrociously cruel than an adored child.

— Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita

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And a bonus:

Like the waters of the river, like the motorists on the highway, and like the yellow trains streaking down the Santa Fe tracks, drama, in the shape of exceptional happenings, had never stopped there.

— Truman Capote, In Cold Blood

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wordy

I admire people with an impressive vocabulary and have talked about my infatuation of sophisticated jargon on the blog before. I always try to expand my vocabulary (although it's a continued work in progress), but what better time than the new year to add a splash of dictionary inspiration?! With a new year's initiative to spend less time swiping through my iPhone and more time buried in the pages of a book, I hope that will be a step in the right direction. I was directed to an article with the 100 most beautiful words in the English language. Although they might not appear too often in our everyday conversation, or even in modern literature - it can do no harm to review and maybe pick out a couple of favorites as a way to keep your creative mind stimulated!

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reading time

Studying literature at school not only filled, but cultivated my interest in the written art form. I love reading and have been able to read a bit in between my travels the past couple of months. 

My spring reading list:

The President's Club by: Nancy Gibbs & Michael Duffy

Nine by: Jeffrey Toobin

The Portrait of Dorian Gray by: Oscar Wilde

Life of Pi by: Yann Martel

She Walks in Beauty by: Caroline Kennedy

What have been your favorite reads lately?

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