Wednesday 24 June 2009

Quick catch-up

I've read:

Giotto by Camillo Semenzato. This is the sort of book we cataloguers would describe as "chiefly ill." which is good for a book-a-dayer ... Giotto's frescoes seem to span the Middle Ages and the start of the Renaissance, with his solid, three-dimensional figures accompanied by an endearing lack of perspective. I noticed that my undergraduate self had altered the name of the person responsible for layout of the book from Wim to Wimp. How I must have larfed at the time!

Little Houses of Fife was a beautifully designed booklet from 1974, about the progress of the National Trust for Scotland's Little Houses Improvement Scheme. There were lots of before and after photos of the houses which had been saved (some not so little - they must mean little as opposed to mansions or castles).

Getting Around the Clyde: a Pictorial Guide by Jack House must have been published just after the war. Even with black and white pictures though it makes the scenery down the Clyde look enticing - so that's another location for me to visit.

The King at the Front: Official Photographs in Colours is a Daily Mail publication from the First World War years. The photographs look more like paintings, but I suppose that it because they have been tinted. While taking an sanitised view as you would expect, they still include photographs of the trenches and of an unknown soldier's grave.

I read Hamlet again to refresh my memory of Rozencrantz and Guildenstern (after reading Tom Stoppard's play). It was pretty easy to read - but possibly that's because the whole play is so familiar.

Day 258; Book 248