Elton Ware

Elton Ware is a type of pottery produced from about 1880 to 1920, which I read about in Elton Ware: the Pottery of Sir Edmund Elton by Malcolm Haslam. Sir Edmund was a technically-minded baronet who decided to make his own pottery and after much trial and error started to produced work which was sinous and organic and sometimes even sinister ... here is a link to a Wikipedia page about him, but unfortunately with only one image. The best source of images seems to be this book.

Shakespeare - not so clever now?

While reading Hamlet, I was struck by how many of the phrases he uses we use today. In fact there's whole websites devoted to this subject. Here's one, where they say, "Many quotes from the works of William Shakespeare have entered into common usage".

But what if they didn't? What if Shakespeare's plays were actually full of cliches he'd ripped off from common usage of the day, ha ha! How would we know?

So the moral could be, fill your writing with cliches from 2009 and in only a few centuries you too could be the source of quotes! Except sadly it wouldn't work, because everything, even the most mundane, is recorded in writing these days, unlike in Shakespeare's. Foiled!

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

Among the Missing by Richard Laymon

This was a horrid book.

I'm not sure when it was first written (my copy was published in 1999), but it seems pretty unreconstructed. It's pervy yet dull. None of the characters are likeable and they have silly names like "Bass" and "Harney". Why? It's only merit was it didn't take long to read.

Adam Smith: a Primer by Eamonn Butler

Living only about 20 miles from the birthplace of Adam Smith, I decided it was time I learned more about him. I wasn't brave enough to tackle the 600-odd pages of The Wealth of Nations but I did find this clearly-written little volume. Here is a very topical quote from the philosopher and father of modern economics:

"It is the highest impertinence and presumption ... in kings and ministers, to pretend to watch over the economy of private people, and to restrain their expense ... They are themselves always, and without any exception, the greatest spendthrifts in the society. Let them look after their own expense, and they may safely trust private people with theirs. If their own extravagance does not ruin the state, that of their subjects never will".
The Wealth of Nations, Book II, ch. III, p.346, para 36.

So it looks like floating duck houses and moat cleaning are nothing new!

Here is a link to more information on Adam Smith.

A Passionate Man by Joanna Trollope

I hated this!

The writing was good and your view of the characters was cleverly changed - but the protagonist was awful. I hated him. In this Trollope and the last one I read she seems to be saying that so long as something "makes you feel alive" then any behaviour is okay, grr. Repress those feelings I say, and don't hurt other people.

She also featured an old woman whom I think was meant to be feisty and adorable, but she was just really horrible.

I got fed up with all the talk about prep schools as well. To the barricades, comrades!

Day 253; Book 241

The Wreck of the Whaleship Essex by Owen Chase

This true account apparently inspired Hermann Melville to write Moby Dick. I've tried twice, but never got past the second or third chapter of Moby Dick, but this was much more readable. The attack by the whale on the ship, which Melville apparently makes the climax of his novel, is to me actually the least interesting part of the story. How the crew survived is what I wanted to read about. The first mate, Owen Chase, wrote this account only a couple of years after the disaster happened and it's in archaic yet clear language. It takes you into another world completely.

Day 252; Book 240