Musings from Brian J. Noggle

Of all the picture books I’ve been browsing lately, this book has a distinction: I actually started looking through this book last football season, and it remained on the side table, often-dusted, until I finished it this season.

This book, as its title might indicate, is a retrospective of Rembrandt’s work and a pretty detailed biography of the man. Too much text, almost, to read and keep one’s place while watching the intermittent plays of a football game. I learned a bit about Rembrandt’s rise and fall and the meaning of chiaroscuro. That might be the only thing I retain long term, but it’s enough.

Related story: I’ve had two copies of Rembrandt’s Man in a Gold Helmet in my life. The first I bought when I was in college with a freshmanly minted credit card. The Alumni Memorial Union had a print sale in it, and I wanted copies of Wyeth’s Christina’s World and Seurat’s A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte. Since it was three for $15 or $6 each, I picked a third. The third was Man in a Gold Helmet.

Sometime later, I divested myself of those prints, but I found a framed one inexpensive at a garage sale or an estate sale back when I was hitting them all the time. I bought it, and I hung it in Casinoport, and I hung it in Old Trees, and I hung it at Nogglestead. But when I was talking to my beautiful wife about the painting, I couldn’t remember where we’d hung it. The living room is rife with Renoir, the bedroom has a Monet (I’ve discovered recently it’s a Monet) and a couple of Hargroves, but I drew a blank on the Rembrandt. I didn’t know if we’d stored it or if we’d donated it, but I’ll be darned if I remembered it or could find it.

Until my wife and I were sitting in a chair together, a chair I don’t normally sit in, and I saw it: it is in the small hallway between our offices, a hallway that we rarely light. I pass by it several times a day, but I’d lost it there until such time as I was sitting somewhere I normally don’t and looked into that hallway.

So I still have it, and now that I have reviewed this book, I can definitively and with more authority say that it’s my favorite of Rembrandt’s work. Probably partly because of the history I have with it, but also probably because the affinity I have for it thematically and stylistically I would have had with it even if I’d seen it in the book for the first time.

So the book’s worth checking out. Rembrandt was a very interesting painter, and he lived a very interesting life.

Books mentioned in this review:

I’ll be honest: this book appealed to me for a specific reason. As you remember, I only bought the book because I saw it and Rosemary’s Baby together at a book fair.

I wanted it to read it now, of all times, because my children have both gone off to school full time, and as I work at building up some contract work, I’m cleaning the house pretty regularly and meticulously. As a matter of fact, I’m cleaning things and places people don’t see, and I’m sort of taking a weird pride in it. On one occasion, I’ve wondered if I’ve turned into a Stepford wife. Since I have the book, I could investigate.

Spoiler alerts follow Continue reading “Book Report: The Stepford Wives by Ira Levin (1972)” →

I have bought a large number of guides to Missouri flora and fauna like this book so I can be more definitive when my children ask me about plants and animals they see on our long nature hikes. I don’t know when we’re going to take these long nature hikes–I’m not much of an outdoor hiker, although I am a bit of an urban walker when living in urban domiciles–but I’ll be prepared, I hope, if I just thumb through enough of these.

This small product of the Missouri Department of Conservation gives a high-level primer on birding, including identifying the distinguishing features of birds and tips to help with identification, but this is not an identification book or a field guide. Most of the book is given over to charts identifying the frequency of birds’ appearances in Missouri by month and habitat so you’ll know what to look for in the field and in the field guides.

A quick browse and, as I mentioned, a very early primer for anyone who wants to get into birding.

Heaven help me, I know how birdwatchers refer to themselves. I might as well get The Big Year on Blu-Ray.

Books mentioned in this review:

This book is the source for the 1953 film.

In it, a Philadelphia cop, not the smartest guy on the squad, but the straightest and the most methodical, is called to investigate the apparent suicide of a police clerk. Ranking cops want it to be a suicide, but Bannion, the cop, thinks there might be more to it and is reluctant to give it up. Eventually, he stirs up a mob hit that kills Bannion’s wife instead, and Bannion goes all in, giving up his career as a police detective to find and punish those corrupt city officials who make it all possible.

This is a good bit of noir. It’s third person, so it lacks the immediacy of the stuff that makes the latter half of the 20th century narration, but it makes up for it in spades. Because I bought it in a detective book club edition, I expected less than I got. Recommended.

Books mentioned in this review:

As I might have mentioned, it’s football season again, so it’s time to look at books with pictures of cars in them amid the cartoon books and art books. Last year, it was Triumph Sports Cars by Graham Robson. This year, I’ve read Triumph Sports Cars by the same author. While that book was a hardback, this is a short gallery book (32 pages) given over to photographs, mostly, with a brief history of the models.

It’s more of a primer than the other book, probably sharing some copy and photos. The Shire Album series is a collection of pictorial guides to old British things, with other books in the series covering Playing Cards and Tarots, Cricketing Bygones, Agricultural Hand Tools, and the like. So it’s geared to the collector. What’s odd or ironic is that the books themselves, judging from the price on the Internet, are collectibles themselves, which means there might be room for a Shire Album entitled Shire Albums. Or maybe not.

Someday, I’m going to have to write a detective series where the investigator drives a TR7 or something to make sure that I put these books to use and can write off the five bucks or whatever I’ve dedicated to the innumerable books.

Books mentioned in this review:

This book is a collection of black and white photographs, along with a couple of poems, by the author, a former architect who brought his design eye to photography. He prefers, as do many photographers, the wild, bridges, and old buildings. He also is a fan of a certain photographic techinique–longer exposure times or development times–that washes water splashing into a white miasma. I remember when my photographer for the St. Louis Artesian used a similar technique for the first cover with her photograph “Shattered Water”. Wow, I was the editor of a literary magazine such a long time ago that its Internet presence is slim? That was almost twenty years ago.

At any rate, the photographs are what you would expect. None leapt out at me. I’m not a real critic, so don’t take my dismissal as definitive. I’m that way with most of the contents of museums and books of work by serious artists, too.

Books mentioned in this review:

I swapped a copy of my novel for these books, since I know the author from the old BBS days, when he dominated the local CG64 boards as White Knight. Or maybe that was me.

Regardless, these books collect the first two years (already?) of his Web comic Frik’in Hell. The motif centers upon a medieval warrior who finds himself out of war-work and takes up as the counter man in a fast food inn. He doesn’t take it too well, and beheads customers in between visits to a support group, attacks of ninjas, and a quest by another character to create ketchup.

Strangely, given that I’m an IT professional, but Web comics don’t tend to draw me in. I see the occasional Penny Arcade and XCD-something (see? I can’t even remember the name of it). I did read another book made from an online Web comic (RPG World). But it’s not my thing. Old Heathcliff? My thing. Maybe even Marmaduke.

But if you’re hipper than me, check his comic out at frikinhell.com.