First, an apology for the erratic site behaviour in the past 36 hours. My DNS hosts were fighting off alien attacks, or something. Never mind, we’re back now!
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Oxfam had its annual book sale in my area last Saturday, and we trudged along as usual to squeeze past many many others to see what second hand fare was on offer. If you looked hard enough, there were a few treasures.
Here are my treasures:
The one hardest to read is the Katherine Mansfield collection of short stories. I have a particular soft spot for this edition because it is the one I used during university when I did my first essay on the psychoanalytic interpretation – and implication – of literary texts. Which basically means there is a fountain in the driveway of the house in one of the stories (‘The Garden Party’, to be exact), and I tried to explain its significance.
Well, almost. Sort of.
It’s hard to explain…
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Moving right along, here are my real favourites:
I have a number of Oscar books already, none with as curious a choice of cover images as this one though (Not judging Ms. Field personally or anything, but really? That was she shot they went for?) I have read this Ted Sennett book before and it is full of the usual classic stills from the classic movies. The Gone With The Wind clinch on the front gives you a pretty good idea of what’s inside.
The most interesting one is the Life Goes To The Movies. Life was a magazine that ran from 1936 to 1972 and had – by their admission – an unabashed love affair with all things Hollywood and celebrity. There were a few stand-out pictures for me: one being a string of shots of a particularly harangued-looking Robert Taylor naming-names in front of the House Un-American Activities Committee. The other was this shot of a topless seven-year old Natalie Wood. In our age of Henson obscenity cases and a nude shot of Brooke Shields being recently removed from the Tate Modern it made me wonder what kind of controversy – if any – this photo of Natalie Wood would’ve made in 1945 when it was published.
Interesting to wonder.
Also? These books were only two dollars each. Bargain.
