The Invention of Hugo Cabret, by Brian Selznick

This book is an intriguing combination of graphic novel and traditional narrative. The illustrations are beautiful (the author is most well-known for his illustrations), and unlike either a picture book or graphic novel, are completely separate from the text, and some parts of the story are told only through the pictures. It’s fun to try to watch for clues in the illustrations, and see how certain aspects are used later in the text. The novel takes place in a Paris train station in 1931, and the drawings invoke it wonderfully. Selznick was influenced by the art of early movies, as well, but I won’t say any more so as not to risk giving away the plot!

~ Sarah

Color-Plate Books in Special Collections

I stumbled upon Augustana’s collection of color-plate books almost by accident. This spring, I was asked to give a session to the Art History department’s History of Printmaking class. While searching for representative examples of printmaking used in book illustration, I came across a color-plate book. And then another. And then another, and another. I have now discovered almost thirty titles, and I’m sure there are more to be found.

Color-plate books are an interesting and unusual type of publication, popular mostly in Britain between 1790 and 1860. The books are particular outgrowths of interests of Regency and Victorian society; popular topics included travel and antiquities (especially in the Near and Far East), sports such as hunting and horse racing, scenes of British life, landscape gardening, and caricature. Most illustrations were produced using either aquatint or lithography. Aquatints were usually produced in one or two colors, with the rest added later by hand. It is the process most suitable for reproducing watercolors, a popular medium at the time. Lithography gradually came to replace aquatint because it was a cheaper process and it eliminated the need for hand coloring.

Special Collections holds a number of celebrated color-plate books, including some with plates by two of the best-known illustrators of the genre: Thomas Rowlandson and John Leech. Rowlandson (1757–1827), is best known for the books he did for the publisher Rudolph Ackermann, such as the three Tour of Doctor Syntax books (all found in Special Collections), about a cleric at the mercy of the world around him. He was equally adept at depicting classic rolling countryside and incisive caricature. John Leech (1817–1864), is best known for his work for the British humor magazine Punch, his comic illustrations for such books as Gilbert A’Beckett’s The Comic History of England, and his illustrations for A Christmas Carol (both in Special Collections).

It’s hard to describe the style that can be seen in color-plate books; they really need to be seen in person. Feel free to stop by special collections and take a look! For more information on the genre, see John Harthan’s The History of the Illustrated Book: The Western Tradition, and for information on Rowlandson and Leech see their entries in The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.

~Sarah

Cookbooks, anyone?

Last week’s edition of the “New York Times Book Review” included a rundown on recent cookbooks, good for summer. This one caught my eye: “Outstanding in the Field: A Farm to Table Cookbook” by Jim Denevan and Marah Stets. Denevan is a chef who drives around a bus named “Outstanding” in which he takes guests to dinners in fields, vineyards, gardens, etc. The Times characterizes Denevan’s mobile dining as “performance art, meant to reconnect people to the land.” Maybe with Augie’s interest in the environment and sustainable living, we should suggest a learning community that consists of a course in environmental cooking and a course in theatre; dinners could be held by the Slough, on the athletic field, and on the banks of the Mississippi. What should we name the van?

From “The River Cottage Cookbook” by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, we get this nugget of wisdom: “Pigs must have a secure shelter to sleep and rest in, but it doesn’t have to be fancy.” Thank you.

Or how about this from “The Elements of Cooking” by Michael Ruhlman? “Recipes are sheet music.”

“Izakaya: The Japanese Pub Cookbook” by Mark Robinson reminded me of my daughter Hannah’s discovery of a tiny Italian restaurant in Tokyo that is run by one man who plays the same Italian tape every night year after year. Hey, at least they had pasta with tomato sauce.

Margi

 

Ginger Cookies

Ginger Cookies (submitted by Vicky Ruklic)

Fresh gingerroot is the secret of these fragrant cookies.–”A Taste of Mexico: Vegetarian Cuisine” by Kippy Nigh

2 1/2 cups whole wheat flour
2 1/2 cups white flour
1 1/4 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. salt
1 cup butter
2 eggs, beaten
1 cup white sugar
1 cup dark sugar
4 tsp. grated fresh ginger
1 tsp. ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp. ground cloves
1/2 tsp. ground allspice
1 tsp. grated lime or lemon ring
1 tsp. grated orange rind
3 Tbl. yogurt

Combine the two flours, baking soda, and salt. Beat the butter and add the eggs one at a time. Add the sugars and then the flour mixture, combining well after each addition. Add the ginger, cinnamon, cloves, allspice, lime rind, orange rind, and yogurt, and stir until well mixed. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F. Form the dough into teaspoon-sized balls, and arrange on a lightly greased sheet. Back for 10 minutes until the cookies barely begin to brown.  Makes 5 dozen cookies.

The Brief Wonderous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz

This book is amazing. Traveling back and forth between urban New Jersey and the Dominican Republic, and drawing equally on imagery from and references to science fiction and fantasy novels, comic books, and Dominican history and folklore, Oscar Wao is hilarious and gut wrenching at the same time. Example: describing the drawn-out beating of a character by the Dominican police as “like one of those nightmare eight-a.m. MLA panels: endless.” And Díaz’s footnotes explaining various aspects of Dominican history are fantastic — informative, hilarious, and and bitingly dismissive of Americans who just don’t get it all at once. It’s the sort of book where you can’t help but admire its construction, the careful layout, the fantastic one-liners, and then completely forget about all of it because you’re so drawn into the characters. As it hurtles toward the ending that seems inevitable, and that you know is the right ending for this book no matter how much you wish it wouldn’t happen, there’s only one thing to do: decide to read it again, so that you can admire its construction, dialog, and characters all over again.

~Sarah

“The Library in Your Future”

My colleague, Sarah Horowitz, pointed out Richard Darnton’s article in the June 12, 2008 New York Review of Books called “The Library in the New Age.” Darnton is Director of the University Library at Harvard and writes a wonderful piece about the future of research libraries in the face of Google’s effort to digitize the contents of Harvard’s library along with New York Public, Michigan, Stanford, and Oxford’s Bodleian. After outlining four major changes in information technology over the millenia, Darnton asserts that information has always been unstable and offers by way of example how news from the Revolutionary War front was distorted in its transmittal by the American and European press. (Librarians take note: Darnton views newspaper accounts not as primary sources that detail what happened but as sources that show how contemporaries viewed events.)

Darnton believes and demonstrates in this article that the Google digitization project will not supercede the role of research libraries, for the following reasons. Google is not digitizing all books; libraries will still house books that are not digitized; the Library of Congress, for example, has not joined the Google project. In most cases, special collections of libraries are not included in the digitization project. Copyright prevents most books published after 1923 from being digitized in full by Google.  Electronic media are not as stable as books in research libraries. Digitization is not perfect; the process will create mistakes. Google will not classify or otherwise distinguish between editions other than through an algorithm based on demand; scholars will still have to view and compare the original copies of books. Google will not be able to convey the physicality of books, an important element of reading.

This issue of the New York Review of Books is now located–in paper form–in the cozy reading space on the second floor of the Tredway Library. If you insist, you can read it online but it’s not nearly as fun. The paper doesn’t crinkle, the pictures are missing (library reading rooms from around the world), and there are no columns. How dull–to read a newspaper article not in columns. — Margi