X Books

Recently I did an exhibit highlighting my museum's collection of glass and china. Before I began, I admit I really didn't know all that much about china. As I searched our research library for books on the subject, If Dishes Could Talk by Mary L. Jackson caught my eye.

Published in 1971, Jackson's overview of old china covers dozens of companies, providing the reader with a history of each one, as well as representative photographs of key patterns and important pieces. I was able to match several pieces in our collection to examples in this book.

To create my exhibit, I first surveyed what we had in the collection. Whenever I found a company listed in the collections records, I turned to If Dishes Could Talk to see if it was included. Only a handful were not listed in her book, and they were rather obscure companies that I had not heard of either.

The first chapter introduced the concept of Chinese Export Porcelain, which was among the first pieces of china used in Europe and America. Jackson creates an appropriate historical context for the companies she discusses in subsequent chapters.

For my research purposes, chapters on Wedgwood, Spatterware, Majolica, American Belleek, and Haviland were particularly useful. Jackson provides a detailed explanation of the British Registry Mark, instructing the reader on how to decode its many symbols so you can date your piece of china.

If you are hoping to delve deep into any one company, then this is not the book for you. It is more for someone who is curious about the china, or the novice collector who is trying to create a collecting focus. My exhibition was more of a "showcase" of the museum's collection, with a brief history of the companies whose ware is displayed. I was not looking for a tremendous amount of information on each company, so Jackson's book was ideal for me.

I would have liked to see some color photographs, if only a few plates in the center of the book. Everything Jackson included was in black and white. Sometimes it is easier to identify a maker or pattern if you can see the piece in color.

As with any work that is 30 years old, you can only trust it until the date of its publication, meaning when the author says "today," she means "1971" and not "2006." If you are interested in the more modern story of any of these companies, you will need to do additional research. But as a historical resource, this is a great book!

Iguanas In The Snow And Other Winter Poems is an impressively presented bilingual children's picturebook in English and Spanish. Each two-page spread features a different free-verse poem in both languages by Francisco Z. Alarcon, and is jubilantly illustrated by Maya Christina Gonzalez with simple, exciting color artwork. Iguanas In The Snow/Iguanas en la Nieve is especially recommended for young people learning to read in both the English and Spanish languages.

This beautiful suede book contains The Adventures, Memoirs, and Return of Sherlock Holmes, plus The Hound of the Baskervilles. The real attraction of this book lies in the original sketches that were created by Sidney Paget that were included. Each picture was meticulously drawn and helps to convey atmosphere of the stories. One is drawn into a world of horse-drawn carriages, gaslights, and foggy London air. Also inluded is a both moving and factual introduction plus the format of that the stories were presented in in the Stand magazine, where they were originally published. The reader is drawn into the comfortable ambience of the brilliant Sherlock Holmes, humble Watson, and the memorable cases which they solved. It is a shame that this book is no longer in print, and if any reader of this review should ever come in contact with it, I would urge that person to buy it and add it among their library. This is a true classic.

The iMovie 3 Visual Quickstart Guide is a thinner book than most others
in the VQSG series. It has only 170ish pages and is labeled for the
beginning to intermediate user. After looking through the book, though,
I don't see any topic that is not covered (and I have used iMovie
pretty extensively). So I think that maybe there isn't such a thing as
an advanced iMovie user; advanced users are probably using Final Cut.
For any iMovie 3 user, this book would seem to satisfy the need.

iMovie is meant for the novice user; it is meant to give the average
person the ability to produce videos that look semi-professional and
can be easily burned to CD-ROM or emailed. This book undeniably meets
this demand. OK, you say, but what about iMovie 4, the newest version
of iMovie? Well, I chose this book for two reasons: first, there is not
a good selection of iMovie 4 materials yet, and second, only buyers of
iLife '04 and new Macs (since March 2004) would have that program
whereas iMovie 3 is still a free download and usable by anyone with
10.1.5 and up.

Although people argue that iMovie 4 is worth the upgrade, that is
another discussion. My focus on the utility of this book is intended to
reach a larger audience. This book contains EVERYTHING you need to know
about iMovie 3 and has added sections on using a digital video camera
and integration with iDVD 2 (only available on Macs with a Superdrive).
The iMovie 3 VQSG is an excellent resource to have around and will
likely find a home in my classroom where my students can benefit from
it.

iMovie and iDVD are two of the iLife programs that ship with your Macs. Many folks think that, because they are the "simple or basic" programs, that they don't have a lot of features or can't do professional looking movies.

The fact is, you can get VERY nice results with these applications. There was a fellow who won a prize at Sundance Film Festival for a movie he made entirely with a cheap miniDV camera and iMovie. If you have budding aspirations as a filmmaker, or you just want to video a birthday party or wedding, you can get great results, too.

Jeff Carlson's book is aimed at beginner-to-intermediate users. It takes a visual, step-by-step approach. Everything is explained well and accompanied by lots of photos.

I was really pleased to see that he devotes the first 50 pages of the book to explaining how to use the DV camera, including how to take good video to start out with. He covers focus, depth-of-field, lighting, composing your shots, how and when to move the camera, etc. The term "garbage-in-garbage-out" was invented for computers, but it is really true with video and photography, as well.

Part 2 covers iMovie in logical order. He starts with an overview, then tells you how to import footage, edit video, edit still pictures for video, edit audio. He pays nice attention to the audio portion, including how to adjust the audio that came with the video, adding sound effects, music from iTunes and GarageBand, and adding audio from other sources. He also covers transitions, adding titles and making them look good on-screen, and adding visual effects to the movie.

Carlson calls Part 3 "Sharing." He tells you how to get your finished movie back to video tape or export it in other formats, such as QuickTime. Depending on the QuickTime compression scheme, you can put your movie on a CD, the web or send it via e-mail. And ... of course, you can send it to iDVD, complete with chapter markers.

Part 4 tells you everything you need to know to make a DVD. He tells you how to apply themes, customize them, create sub-menus, add chapters to an existing iDVD project, and creating slide shows with background audio. Then, he shows you how to create a project archive and burn the DVD. He finishes up with a chapter on troubleshooting.

I wont this additio

Woodblocks-manuscripts-calligraphy-paintings on silk-rubbings from bronzes and tomb carvings-books-silk screens-maps: the U. of California East Asian Library has them all. The eclectic, museum-like library holdings are studied by scholars. Such historical and cultural characteristics of the varied items are recorded in annotations for the photographs of them written by the collection's curator--Deborah Rudolph; who has advanced degrees in both classical Chinese studies and library science. Collecting East Asian antiquities ran in her family. With many of the items, she also notes production techniques, materials, design features, and other technical aspects dealt with by the artists and craftsmen.

The book is visually rewarding as well. Each piece is photographed so that its overall appearance can be apprehended and its details appreciated. For its knowledgeable text and its handsome, skillfully formatted visual matter, "Impressions of the East" succeeds in "allow[ing] the general reader to appreciate [the] worth" of the Library's collection--the main purpose of the book as denoted by Rudolph in the "Preface." While the Library's holdings cannot have the breadth or depth of museum collections, it's clear they are second to none in quality and in value for scholars. The collection is also an ideal representative collection for the public.

X.J. Kennedy published two books of poetry in 2007. He writes that In a Prominent Bar in Secaucus "has the best poems [I've] written, plus 27 new ones, some of them pretty good too. This collection has been cited as a 2008 Notable Book by the American Library Association."

The second volume is Peeping Tom's Cabin; he promises to write no more comic verse until 2009. "This book collects the cream of [my] light or comic verse written for adults (not children) over a lifetime, and includes parodies, limericks, clerihews, previously unpublished 'brat' poems, a section called 'Tawdry Bawdry', and much besides."

(Kennedy admits that he has "never understood how you tell light verse from poetry, exactly," I suppose you could buy a copy of both books, and see if he's separated the poems from the comic verses properly. One temptation: "Once upon a midnight dreary,/Blue and lonesome, missed my dearie./ Would I find her? Any hope?/ Quoth the raven six times, 'Nope.'")

I happily chose this book of the more serious poems. Kennedy is a master of light and satirical verse. His style is laconic, with a sharp and caustic wit. All of his poems are delivered with a lilt, for example, "Nude Descending a Staircase" inspired by Duchamp:

"We spy beneath the banister
A constant thresh of thigh on thigh -
Her lips imprint the swinging air
That parts to let her parts go by."

He treats an even more serious subject with that same sure hand:

So I went to the funeral of God,
A ten-Cadillac affair,
And sat in a stun. It seemed everyone
Who had helped do Him in was there:
Karl Marx had a wide smirk on his face;
Friedrich Engels, a simpering smile,
And Friedrich Nietzsche, worm-holed and leechy,
Kept tittering all the while.

Kennedy visits with other dignitaries, including the Pope who is worried about future employment at his advanced age, and then walks out in a stupor when the coffin turns up empty:

The sun kept pursuing overhead
Its habitual endeavor,
And the bountiful earth rolled on, rolled on,
As though it might last forever.

The title poem is a wonderful riff on gathering rose buds while you can. The heroine remembers better days:

In a car like the Roxy I'd roll to the track,
A steel-guitar trio and bar in the back,
And the wheels made no noise, they turned ever so fast;
Still it took you ten minutes to see me go past.

And delivers her warning:

Let you hold in mind, girls, that your beauty must pass
Like a lovely white clover that rusts with its grass.
Keep your bottoms off bar stools and marry while young
Or be left, an old barrel with many a bung.

Finally, what other poet could take an important message from modern marketing?

Innocent Times

When doctors puffed their cigarettes and fat
Advanced unchecked, invading hordes of hearts,
When cheap thermometer and thermostat
Leaked jets of mercury like poison darts,
When every shoe store's miracle machine
Displayed the bones x-rayed inside your shoes,
When like a knight in armor Listerine
Slew dragon Halitosis, clear heads chose
Calvert, and loving housewives loaded pies
With sugar (as "your family deserves"),
When soothing syrup smothered babies' cries
And Sanka vanquished Mister Coffee Nerves,
When toothpaste came in squooshy tubes of lead,
And safety belts in cars seemed passing fads,
How in the Sam Hill could you end up dead?
Hadn't you lived according to the ads?

Bite, clarity, humor, insight. Kennedy delivers more than 50 years of collected pleasure.

"In Remembrance of a Special Cat" is similar to a sympathy card in that it has poems and verse to help the recipient handle grief. I gave a copy to a friend whose pet died. A month later that friend showed me the book and the pictures of her cat, from kitty to maturity, that she had glued into the book on the pages reserved for photographs. My friend told me that, of all the words of condolence she had received from friends, that this little book was the most important.

In 'X', Catherine Pavlou has written something extraordinary, and wildly original. Is she being approached by film producers seeking the rights to this fascinating, even revolutionary, book? Probably not: they're mostly men (actually it's about 60%/40% in their favour in the screen trade), which means they're probably too busy trying to conquer the world (and the nearest woman) to realise that this book isn't remotely anti-men. In fact this reader gets the impression the writer rather likes us neanderthals. But I'm a neanderthal and proud of it, and my only question is: why the hell is this book not better know? It's a cleverly researched and structured, multi-disciplinary tour-de-force - the product of a first rate mind. Seriously: read it.

Nick Green