3 Free eBooks – June 2020
/So many materials available online…
The three I am featuring this month are a bit different. The first two are slideshows available on Internet Archive. It was hard to choose just two; check here for 300 or so of them. Each of the slide shows is accompanied by a brief biography of the artist.
Hussein Amin Bicar (1913 - 2002) – Egyptian. I enjoyed both the modern and the ancient depictions. I chose one of the modern images for the sample.
Josef Sudek (1896 - 1974) – Czech photographer. As I looked at the pictures – I thought about what made them most appealing to me and decided that there were multiple reasons:
The way the photographer captured unusual light and arrangement of places.
The historical aspect (I assumed that many of the damaged buildings were the aftermath of World War II).
The pictures of office clutter. I’ve known people that had similar piles of accumulated ‘stuff’!
Another reason I liked this artist: Half of my ancestors were Czech; the families immigrated to the US in the later 1800s. The life span of Sudek was like my Czech heritage grandfather’s (1896-1974 and 1901-1976). My grandfather was younger by just enough that he did not fight in World War I; Sudek did and was severely injured (an arm was amputated). What a difference in the way they experienced World War II! My grandfather was farming in eastern Oklahoma; Sudek lived through the Nazi’s in Prague and then Soviet domination of the country. Sudek lived most of his life in a European city: Prague; my grandfather lived on a farm, a small city, then the suburbs of a large city in Oklahoma and Texas. In 1960, my grandfather was injured in an accident (a leg was amputated). As I read the short biography of Sudek, I felt that in the last decade of their life, they would have enjoyed knowing each other.
I selected the sample picture because it was an unusual collection for a still life. The peacock feathers reminded me of the peacocks my non-Czech grandparents kept. The shells are something collected in travels by people that ordinarily live far from the sea (i.e. Prague or Oklahoma).
The other eBook I chose this month was autobiographical…with names changed which I guess turns it into a novel. It was known as autobiographical when it was published so is usually discussed from that perspective.
Scott, Evelyn. Escapade. New York: Thomas Seltzer. 1923. Available at Internet Archive here. The parts that resonated the most with me were the author’s description of her pregnancy and the immediate aftermath. Her writing about her emotions and physical situation are so vivid. Her experience is often more intense because of the upheaval in her life early in the novel (eloping, moving from the US to London to Brazil) and then subsequent poverty and isolation. A brief biography of Evelyn Scott can be found here.
Unique activities for yesterday:
Bright heart of the forest. When I first went into my office at 6:10 AM, the sunshine was bright on a tulip poplar tree trunk that normally does not stand out in the shade of the forest. The glow lasted for a few minutes before fading as the sun continued its rise. It was a good start to the day to see the tree appear as if lighted from within.
Zucchini muffins. I used up some summer squash by making muffins at mid-morning. It’s an easy process using the food processor to do the shredding. I chose a recipe for Zucchini Spice Cake from a Moosewood Restaurant cookbook…brought back memories of the restaurant in Ithaca when my daughter was working on her undergraduate degree at Cornell.
Finishing the deck drapery project. My husband and I put up additional hooks to hold all the deck drapery panels and I made tie backs for them. We were both hot and tired when we finished because the day was so hot and humid. It was not better by dinner, so we waited to have an outdoor dinner for another day.
