A charming picture book for older children (and adults) about the life and work of Judith Leiber, who was truly the mistress of the handbag, or as she was also known, the Queen of Minaudières. Her exquisitely detailed crystal-covered evening bags came in every conceivable shape from animals to food to icons, and were carried by First Ladies, movie stars, opera divas and many others.
While Leiber lived a long life, she had known the poverty and tragedies that came with being Jewish in World War II Hungary. At the end of the war, however, she met a young American serviceman and the two married. She joined him on his return to the United States and they lived a long life together, dying at home just hours apart, after a marriage that lasted 72 years.
Examples of Leiber's handbags can be found today in museum collections around the world – or you can buy one, if you can afford it. Meanwhile, you can enjoy this delightful book and inspire a child with Leiber's story.
Thursday, July 23, 2020
The Eternity and the Unlikeliness of Love: Find Me by André Aciman
An incredibly beautiful novel, full of the lyrical writing and exquisite descriptions that make Aciman's work so vivid. Each character is as completely rendered as in a Sargent portrait and every setting is as detailed as a Church landscape, though in Rome, Paris and New York. Even something as ordinary as the purchase of fish in a market takes on a special beauty.
The novel examines the nature of love and its complexities. The relationships explored are both romantic and familial. A young woman and an older man fall in love as the result of a chance meeting, and the woman cares for the everyday needs of her dying father, a younger man and older man create their own bond of love, and the young man, now older is reunited with the love of his youth. The stories are complex and interlocking, yet simple...they are about the power of love and how it fulfills us individually and in our relationships.
The novel examines the nature of love and its complexities. The relationships explored are both romantic and familial. A young woman and an older man fall in love as the result of a chance meeting, and the woman cares for the everyday needs of her dying father, a younger man and older man create their own bond of love, and the young man, now older is reunited with the love of his youth. The stories are complex and interlocking, yet simple...they are about the power of love and how it fulfills us individually and in our relationships.
Tuesday, July 14, 2020
Smart Women in the Kitchen: Women on Food by Charlotte Druckman
Definitely a mixed bag of material, some really interesting, like the account of the rivalry between legendary restaurant critics Mimi Sheraton and Gael Greene, and an interview with Racheal Ray, but so much rather boring navel gazing and kvetching when Charlotte Druckman asks women working in the food world various questions and they give their responses.
The design of the book is troublesome. It's a paperback, but big and heavy, printed on a thick stock and with lots of space that could be better used to reduce the size of the book. I literally had a hard time holding it for more than an hour.
Definitely worth reading if you skip what you find less than appealing, and if you can prop the book on a cookbook stand and read it at a table so you don't have to hold it.
The design of the book is troublesome. It's a paperback, but big and heavy, printed on a thick stock and with lots of space that could be better used to reduce the size of the book. I literally had a hard time holding it for more than an hour.
Definitely worth reading if you skip what you find less than appealing, and if you can prop the book on a cookbook stand and read it at a table so you don't have to hold it.
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