Free the Shopper

"If there were no Frenchwomen, life wouldn't be worth living." Friedrich Engels

This always happens...buy LOTS of books for holiday gift-giving and have to buy a copy for myself too. Borders.com coupons help! 25% off any item with coupon: BAF6733G thru 11/25/09

Bought this today:

 

 

Paris and Her Remarkable Women
by Lorraine Liscio

This book evokes Paris from the Middle Ages through the twentieth century by tracing sixteen exceptional women whose lives intersected with Paris in remarkable ways and whose eventual fame depended on the city itself. Their stories bring to life medieval culture, Enlightenment ideas, the court of Louis XiV, the chaos of the Revolution, the nineteenth-century art scene, and twentieth-century breakthroughs in science and fashion. The sites associated with each of these women are located in the central parts of Paris that most visitors explore. When visiting Notre Dame, the reader will see the tragic figures of Abélard and Héloise in its shadows, and know to look for the enigmatic sculpture of Genevieve on the cathedral's facade. Elisabeth Vigée Le Brun's paintings in the Louvre and Camille Claudel's sculptures in the Rodin Museum will be all the more fascinating after readers have learned of the controversy they provoked.  Even those women whom most people thought they knew may prove surprising. Who would have guessed at the relation between Coco Chanel's convent-school origins and her fashions? What are we to make of Emilie du Chatelet's fame as Voltaire's mistress when he touts her as a "great man whose only fault was being a woman"?

mad, bad and dangerous to know

The letters of Lord Byron go up for auction at Sotheby's.....

Letters Offer An Intimate Portrait Of Poet Lord Byron

The British poet Lord Byron is well-known for his flamboyance. He had love affairs with women, men and the occasional relative, and one mistress called him "mad, bad and dangerous to know" — all of which makes his friendship with Francis Hodgson a surprise.

Byron and Hodgson, a clergyman whom the poet met at Cambridge, maintained a spirited, lifelong correspondence through letters. Now, a collection of their letters dating from 1808 to 1821 is up for auction at Sotheby's.

Gabriel Heaton, who works in the books and manuscripts department at Sotheby's, describes the letters as "just beautiful."

"The way that you can get a sense of Byron's thought process from his letters is just spine-tingling," he tells Renee Montagne. "There's always something interesting going on in Byron's life, and he always expresses it so wonderfully."

Read the full story on NPR here.

Lord Byron and the History of Desire

a girl's best friend is her mutter - Dorothy Parker

I might repeat to myself slowly and soothingly, a list of quotations beautiful from minds profound -- if I can remember any of the damn things.  - Dorothy Parker

Portable Dorothy Parker

who doesn't love a discount on clever and portable to boot?

A narcissist is someone better looking than you are - Gore Vidal

From the New York Times.....The infamously persnickety Gore Vidal would most probably balk at being designated an icon of style. However, his new book "Gore Vidal: Snapshots in History's Glare" (Abrams, $40), being touted as a “visual memoir,” serves as a fresh reminder of the esteemed place that he holds not only in literature, film and politics but also in the style world. Read more.

Buy any item and get the second 40% at Borders today 10/13/2009. Use coupon code BAF1013B

 

JumpStart’s Read for the Record

Join JumpStart and Redbook editor Stacy Morrison for JumpStart’s Read for the Record campaign, which kicks off this Thursday, October 8. The goal is to break the world record for the number of people reading the same book on the same day, at the same time raising awareness about the importance of pre-school reading and exposing the youngest children to books. This year’s campaign book is Eric Carle’s The Very Hungry Caterpillar  - we love it!

 

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Think an ellipsis is when the moon moves in front of the sun?

Think again! Today is National Punctuation Day!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

"A celebration of the lowly comma, correctly used quotes, and other proper uses of periods, semicolons, and the ever mysterious ellipsis."

As always, we are here to help!

dinner parties past

Laugh out loud at this brilliant riff on dinner party fads from the NYT this weekend:

The Fickle Palate 

MEMORIES of dinner parties past flooded in for many cooks when they heard that Sheila Lukins, the Manhattan caterer whose food most symbolizes 1980s entertaining, died of cancer last week. more...

Get your Silver Palate here.

summer reading

Best-sellers or beach reading.....get any 4 books and get the 5th one free at Borders.com Ends: 7/27/2009

Looking for that brilliant beach read go no further........

Motley Crue: The Dirt : Confessions of the World’s Most Notorious Rock Band

Probably posted this baby before but am such a fan.....just ordered one for the guy sitting next to me at BlogHer

What a day to be in Dublin

Happy Bloomsday!

Read all about it!

Study lends a kind of enchantment to all our surroundings.

Happy Birthday Honore de Balzac.

Seriously, there would be worse ways to spend the day than reading his captured quotes.

If you need more though try this.