Jólabókaflóð bounty
Author Archives: Nerdishly
Christmas Day at Brookfield Zoo
A walk over the prairie and through the woods
Happy jólabókaflóð!
On jólabókaflóð, I feel sorrier for my TBR stacks than usual.
Inevitably, a few books end up being ditched for the newcomers.
Another of our winter traditions is to spend Thanksgiving and / or Christmas at the Brookfield or Milwaukee County zoo. For the last few Thanksgivings, our daughters’ studies have put the kibosh on the trip, but we’ve been consistent about visiting on or near Christmas, and on Friday, we had the Milwaukee County Zoo to ourselves. Tree kangaroos, fennec foxes, and tiger cubs! Oh, my!
Wishing you and yours a wonderful winter holiday!
Serendipity. Synchronicity. Synthesis.
My photo of Grant Wood’s “January” (1938).
Grant Wood’s work has always put me in mind of a Sinclair Lewis novel. At some point, I learned that this is not an arbitrary connection:
In 1937, Grant Wood was asked to illustrate a novel that, like his painting American Gothic, had already become a classic: Sinclair Lewis’s Main Street. Published nearly twenty years earlier in 1920, Lewis’s novel had come to represent the Midwest just as Wood’s paintings symbolized that region during the 1930s. Today Sinclair Lewis and Grant Wood still endure as cultural figures who captured something distinctive yet elusive about the Heartland; yet Lewis and Wood looked at the American Midwest through different eyes. Lewis saw provincialism and narrowness, while Wood gloried in the solid, earthy strength of his fellow midwesterners and their land. Both men felt conflicted about their homes, and these dichotomies filtered into their work.
At the Art Institute’s “Master Drawings Unveiled: 25 Years of Major Acquisitions,” Wood’s “January” reminded me anew that serendipity-synchronicity-synthesis weaves powerful connections in my learning life: At the urging of my youngest, who is currently reading Arrowsmith on the recommendation of a mentor, I have moved my copy of the 1925 Lewis classic to the top of my TBR stack.
From the museum, we made our way to the Chicago Shakespeare Theater for The Winter’s Tale, a play with which I grow more irritated each time I see it. It’s a fairy tale, my older daughter has patiently explained. Well, then, I have retorted, the only suitable conclusion would be the lonely and terrible death of Leontes. Cheek by Jowl’s production earned my respect not only for its inventive direction and wonderful performances but also for amplifying my sense that, yes, Leontes is a disturbed drama king, and his queen, his friend, his court are his enablers. This staging unabashedly holds all of them accountable for the despair that defines their kingdom, and it made. me. think. High praise.
On the way home, as we discussed the psychology at work in such an interpretation of the play, I scanned the landscape and wondered how Wood would capture the cold night. Oh! “January” is a winter’s tale.
Serendipity. Synchronicity. Synthesis.
The following are a few other images I took during our recent visit to the Art Institute.
Recent acquisitions
Only five more days…
Recent acquisitions.
… until jólabókaflóð!. As I shared last year, it delights me that the way in which we have celebrated Christmas Eve for more than thirty years has a name, “Christmas book flood.”
A flurry of coupons, gift cards, and textbook sellbacks has meant that I’ve experienced a bit of a flood before the flood, so to speak. Speaking of recent acquisitions, The Vegetarian is a fine book, but it has, in my opinion, been rather over-praised. The “Kafka-esque” description, for example. Really? It reminded me more of Josephine Hart’s Damage (1991) — fraught, erotic, offbeat, memorable even; but, ultimately, slight.
Soon it will be time for my annual reading life review. At this writing, I’ve completed 120 119 118 books, of which thirty were graphic works and seventeen were plays. Interestingly, at least a dozen were rereads, including a number of books first read in high school or earlier (e.g., The Call of the Wild (Jack London) and The Turn of the Screw (Henry James)).
What have you been reading? What books do you hope to receive this holiday?
Winter break
The last exam slot during finals week was 7 to 10 p.m. Friday night, and when our younger daughter emerged from the laboratory building, the sidewalks and roads were so slick with ice, we wondered whether we should check into a hotel and try for home in the morning. We pulled away from their residence hall after 11 p.m. Sleet. Wind. Snow. It was a long, treacherous drive, and after we pulled into the garage, we cleared the driveway and walks. By the time we crawled into bed, it was nearly 4:30 a.m.
But they are home.
And all is right in our world.
The year of the house sparrow
As I shared here, the bird I first espied this New Year’s Day was a house sparrow — one of a sizeable tribe that calls our yards home. After making my Project FeederWatch observations this week, I captured a few images. Would that I had had the camera out when the hawk chased several birds into the picture window and then stunned itself on it! (All survived the mishap.) It has been cold, so I have not yet removed the ghostly bird prints etched into the glass surface.
Random bits:
■ We first saw the Q Brothers more than three years ago at the Chicago Shakespeare Theater (CST). Their Othello: The Remix, an “ad-rap-tation” of Shakespeare’s play, rendered us immediate and forever fans of the Brothers and their crew. We have seen The Remix six times and A Q Brothers’ Christmas Carol three times; and we traveled more than three hours to see Q Gents at the 2015 Illinois Shakespeare Festival. So, yes, I am biased, but from the moment Hamilton first edged into the news, I have thought, “GQ and JQ have been robbed.” Make no mistake. I believe Lin-Manuel Miranda is wildly talented, but he was working ground the Brothers had already broken. It delights me that someone else thinks so, too:
Lest anyone think these B-boys are riding on Hamilton’s red coattails, writers-directors-stars-siblings GQ and JQ pioneered hip-hop theater back in 1999 with their uproarious The Bomb-itty of Errors, inspired by Shakespeare’s similarly titled romp.
Othello: The Remix is currently playing at the Westside Theatre in NYC, and folks are enjoying it. (NYT review here.)
■ Even though I think the Q Brothers should be recognized for their role in transforming the American musical, I would be lying if I said we weren’t all beyond excited about seeing Hamilton over winter break. And, no, I haven’t any “How we scored tickets” stories. Ticketmaster. Straightforward and simple. None of us can believe our good luck. We will also see The Winter’s Tale and King Charles at the CST, that latter of which has been well reviewed (here and here). Oh, and Pygmalion at Remy-Bumppo. These adventures may well be the exclamation marks that punctuate our staycation.
■ A couple of other things we think will shape our break: The Hollow Crown: The Wars of the Roses. “Master Drawings Unveiled: 25 Years of Major Acquisitions.” Quirkle Cubes and Ticket to Ride. The weather!
■ Early in the semester, my daughter wanted a copy of Arrowsmith (Sinclair Lewis) because it is one of her physics professor’s favorite books. Later in the semester, it was The Forever War (Joe Haldeman). Both were on our shelves, so when I heard she was reading the latter during her mini study breaks, I pulled it down. I cannot wait to hold our informal book club meeting. In other reading news…
The perseverance in this world, despite it all, of things done right.
That sentence describes the “point” of The Last Policeman (Ben H. Winters) perfectly. I so adored the first of the trilogy that I’ve actually prevented myself from turning to the second book; I don’t want to be disappointed.
While my husband continues to study for his certification exams this weekend, I hope to finish (finally) Life Reimagined (Barbara Bradley Hagerty). I also have this week’s comics and a stack of magazines.
■ I cannot believe I never mentioned that The Americans became my small-screen obsession (s-so) when I finished with Mr. Robot. Wow! Amazing acting, compelling storytelling. Highly recommended. My next s-so will likely be Rectify but not until mid-January, when my daughters head back to university.
Faintly falling
From James Joyce’s “The Dead”:
A few light taps upon the pane made him turn to the window. It had begun to snow again. He watched sleepily the flakes, silver and dark, falling obliquely against the lamplight. […] His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.
About five inches of snow faintly fell yesterday. The walks and roads were clear when we rose this morning, but the yards were a white blanket, wrinkled only by my husband’s path to the feeders and the many prints of seed-seeking birds and critters. Beautiful.
Nerdishly 