Quaint, Exquisite

Quaint, Exquisite
Author: Grace E. Lavery
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 240
Release: 2019-05-28
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0691183627

How Japan captured the Victorian imagination and transformed Western aesthetics From the opening of trade with Britain in the 1850s, Japan occupied a unique and contradictory place in the Victorian imagination, regarded as both a rival empire and a cradle of exquisite beauty. Quaint, Exquisite explores the enduring impact of this dramatic encounter, showing how the rise of Japan led to a major transformation of Western aesthetics at the dawn of globalization. Drawing on philosophy, psychoanalysis, queer theory, textual criticism, and a wealth of in-depth archival research, Grace Lavery provides a radical new genealogy of aesthetic experience in modernity. She argues that the global popularity of Japanese art in the late nineteenth century reflected an imagined universal standard of taste that Kant described as the “subjective universal” condition of aesthetic judgment. The book features illuminating cultural histories of Gilbert and Sullivan’s Mikado, English derivations of the haiku, and retellings of the Madame Butterfly story, and sheds critical light on lesser-known figures such as Winnifred Eaton, an Anglo-Chinese novelist who wrote under the Japanese pseudonym Onoto Watanna, and Mikimoto Ryuzo, a Japanese enthusiast of the Victorian art critic John Ruskin. Lavery also explains the importance and symbolic power of such material objects as W. B. Yeats’s prized katana sword and the “Japanese vellum” luxury editions of Oscar Wilde. Quaint, Exquisite provides essential insights into the modern understanding of beauty as a vehicle for both intimacy and violence, and the lasting influence of Japanese forms today on writers and artists such as Quentin Tarantino.

Quaint, Exquisite

Quaint, Exquisite
Author: Grace Lavery
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 240
Release: 2021-08-10
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0691227799

How Japan captured the Victorian imagination and transformed Western aesthetics From the opening of trade with Britain in the 1850s, Japan occupied a unique and contradictory place in the Victorian imagination, regarded as both a rival empire and a cradle of exquisite beauty. Quaint, Exquisite explores the enduring impact of this dramatic encounter, showing how the rise of Japan led to a major transformation of Western aesthetics at the dawn of globalization. Drawing on philosophy, psychoanalysis, queer theory, textual criticism, and a wealth of in-depth archival research, Grace Lavery provides a radical new genealogy of aesthetic experience in modernity. She argues that the global popularity of Japanese art in the late nineteenth century reflected an imagined universal standard of taste that Kant described as the “subjective universal” condition of aesthetic judgment. The book features illuminating cultural histories of Gilbert and Sullivan’s Mikado, English derivations of the haiku, and retellings of the Madame Butterfly story, and sheds critical light on lesser-known figures such as Winnifred Eaton, an Anglo-Chinese novelist who wrote under the Japanese pseudonym Onoto Watanna, and Mikimoto Ryuzo, a Japanese enthusiast of the Victorian art critic John Ruskin. Lavery also explains the importance and symbolic power of such material objects as W. B. Yeats’s prized katana sword and the “Japanese vellum” luxury editions of Oscar Wilde. Quaint, Exquisite provides essential insights into the modern understanding of beauty as a vehicle for both intimacy and violence, and the lasting influence of Japanese forms today on writers and artists such as Quentin Tarantino.

Beautiful Dreamer

Beautiful Dreamer
Author: Melissa Brayden
Publisher: Bold Strokes Books Inc
Total Pages: 328
Release: 2019-07-16
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1635553067

Who says you can’t go home again? Philadelphia real estate broker Devyn Winters is at the peak of her career, closing multimillion-dollar deals and relishing it. She’s pretty much blocked out her formative years in Dreamer’s Bay, where the most exciting thing to happen was the twice a year bake sale. Unfortunately, a distress call hauls her back home and away from the life she’s constructed. Now the question is just how long until she can leave again? And when did boring Elizabeth Draper get so beautiful? Elizabeth Draper loves people, free time, and a good cup of coffee in the warm sunlight. In the quaint town of Dreamer’s Bay, she’s the only employee of On the Spot, an odd jobs company. She remembers Devyn Winters as shallow in high school, but now everything about Devyn makes her lose focus. Though her brain knows Devyn is only home temporarily, her heart didn’t seem to get the memo.

Exquisite Corpse

Exquisite Corpse
Author: Michael Sorkin
Publisher: Verso
Total Pages: 388
Release: 1991
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 9780860913238

'Exquisite Corpse' was a game played by the surrealists in which someone drew on a piece of paper, folded it and passed it to the next person to draw on until, finally, the sheet was opened to reveal a calculated yet random composition. In this entertaining and provocative book, Michael Sorkin suggests that cities are similarly assembled by many players acting with varying autonomy in a complicit framework. An unfolding terrain of invention, the city is also a means of accommodating disparity, of contextualizing sometimes startling juxtapositions. Sorkin's aim is to widen the debate about the creation of buildings beyond the immediate issues of technology and design. He discusses the politics and culture of architecture with daring, often devastating, observations about the institutions and personalities who have dominated the profession over the past decade. Their preoccupation with the empty style of 'beach houses and Disneyland' has consistently trivialized the full constructive scope of contemporary architecture's possibilities. Sorkin's interventions range from the development scandals of New York where 'skyscrapers stand at the intersection between grid and greed', through the deconstructivist architectural culture of Los Angeles, to the work and ideas of architects, developers and critics such as Alvar Aalto, Norman Foster, Paul Goldberger, Michael Graves, Coop Himmelblau, Philip Johnson, Leon Krier, Frank Lloyd Wright, Richard Rogers, Carlo Scarpa, James Stirling, Donald Trump, Tom Wolfe and Lebbeus Woods. Throughout Sorkin combines stinging polemic with a powerful call for a rebirth of architecture that is visionary and experimental--a recuperated 'dreamy science'

Exquisite Captive

Exquisite Captive
Author: Heather Demetrios
Publisher: Harper Collins
Total Pages: 320
Release: 2014-10-07
Genre: Young Adult Fiction
ISBN: 0062318586

For fans of Laini Taylor’s Daughter of Smoke and Bone series and Leigh Bardugo’s Grisha Trilogy comes the first book in the Dark Caravan Cycle, a modern fantasy-adventure trilogy about a gorgeous, fierce eighteen-year-old jinni who is pitted against two magnetic adversaries, both of whom want her—and need her—to make their wishes come true. Nalia is a jinni of tremendous ancient power, the only survivor of a coup that killed nearly everyone she loved. Now in hiding on the dark caravan—the lucrative jinni slave trade between Arjinna and Earth, where jinn are forced to grant wishes and obey their human masters’ every command—she’d give almost anything to be free of the golden shackles that bind her to Malek, her handsome, cruel master, and his lavish Hollywood lifestyle. Enter Raif, the enigmatic leader of Arjinna’s revolution and Nalia’s sworn enemy. He promises to release Nalia from her master so she can return to her ravaged homeland and free her imprisoned brother. There’s just one catch: for Raif’s unbinding magic to work, Nalia must gain possession of her bottle . . . and convince the dangerously persuasive Malek that she truly loves him.

The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender

The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender
Author: Leslye Walton
Publisher: Candlewick Press
Total Pages: 317
Release: 2014-03-25
Genre: Young Adult Fiction
ISBN: 0763670340

A 2015 William C. Morris YA Debut Award Finalist Magical realism, lyrical prose, and the pain and passion of human love haunt this hypnotic generational saga. Foolish love appears to be the Roux family birthright, an ominous forecast for its most recent progeny, Ava Lavender. Ava — in all other ways a normal girl — is born with the wings of a bird. In a quest to understand her peculiar disposition and a growing desire to fit in with her peers, sixteen-year old Ava ventures into the wider world, ill-prepared for what she might discover and naive to the twisted motives of others. Others like the pious Nathaniel Sorrows, who mistakes Ava for an angel and whose obsession with her grows until the night of the summer solstice celebration. That night, the skies open up, rain and feathers fill the air, and Ava’s quest and her family’s saga build to a devastating crescendo. First-time author Leslye Walton has constructed a layered and unforgettable mythology of what it means to be born with hearts that are tragically, exquisitely human.

Cottages and Mansions of the Jersey Shore

Cottages and Mansions of the Jersey Shore
Author: Caroline Seebohm
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
Total Pages: 238
Release: 2007
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 9780813540160

In this delightful collection of personal accounts, historical anecdotes, and gorgeous photographs, Seebohm and Cook cast a fresh eye on the array of quaint cottages, quirky bungalows, and splendid mansions that generations have chosen as their summer homes.

Please Miss

Please Miss
Author: Grace Lavery
Publisher: Hachette UK
Total Pages: 242
Release: 2022-02-08
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 154162064X

“The queer memoir you’ve been waiting for”—Carmen Maria Machado Grace Lavery is a reformed druggie, an unreformed omnisexual chaos Muppet, and 100 percent, all-natural, synthetic female hormone monster. As soon as she solves her “penis problem,” she begins receiving anonymous letters, seemingly sent by a cult of sinister clowns, and sets out on a magical mystery tour to find the source of these surreal missives. Misadventures abound: Grace performs in a David Lynch remake of Sunset Boulevard and is reprogrammed as a sixties femmebot; she writes a Juggalo Ghostbusters prequel and a socialist manifesto disguised as a porn parody of a quiz show. Or is it vice versa? As Grace fumbles toward a new trans identity, she tries on dozens of different voices, creating a coat of many colors. With more dick jokes than a transsexual should be able to pull off, Please Miss gives us what we came for, then slaps us in the face and orders us to come again.

The Other Side of Beautiful

The Other Side of Beautiful
Author: Kim Lock
Publisher: HarperCollins Australia
Total Pages: 267
Release: 2021-07-01
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1867214911

What happens when fate says 'go'? Lost & Found meets The Rosie Project in a stunning break-out novel where a vulnerable misfit is forced to re-engage with the world, despite her best efforts. Meet Mercy Blain, whose house has just burnt down. Unfortunately for Mercy, this goes beyond the disaster it would be for most people: she hasn't been outside that house for two years. Flung out into the world she's been studiously ignoring, Mercy goes to the only place she can: her not-quite-ex-husband Eugene's house. But it turns out she can't stay there either. And so begins Mercy's unwilling journey. After the chance purchase of a cult classic campervan (read tiny, old and smelly), with the company of her sausage dog, Wasabi, and a mysterious box of cremated remains, Mercy heads north from Adelaide to Darwin. On the road, through badly timed breakdowns, gregarious troupes of grey nomads, and run-ins with a rogue adversary, Mercy's carefully constructed walls start crumbling. But what was Mercy hiding from in her house? And why is Eugene desperate to have her back in the city? They say you can't run forever... Exquisite, tender and wry, this is a break-out novel about facing anxiety and embracing life from an extraordinary new talent. PRAISE: 'Tender, funny and quietly profound, The Other Side of Beautiful is a breath of fresh air.' - The Sunday Times 'A colourful, engaging story of escape and road-trip adventure ... also compellingly cinematic and features an endearing narrator-heroine with plenty of meaty real-world troubles.' - Sydney Morning Herald 'An engaging story about second chances and a life changing road trip ... a heart-warming story.' - Canberra Weekly magazine 'Mercy Blain is a character you find yourself cheering on. Kim Lock mixes the transformative journey of Alice Hart with the quirkiness of Eleanor Oliphant in this story about embracing life, even when it threatens to overwhelm you' - Tricia Stringer, bestselling author of The Family Inheritance 'Mercy Blain is an unforgettable character who will capture your heart from the first pages and hold it through until the end. Her madcap journey towards forgiveness - of herself and others - is moving and funny and all other good things that will make you want to keep reading and make you sad when your time with Mercy comes to an end.' - Sophie Green, bestselling author of The Shelly Bay Ladies Swimming Circle

The Book of Extraordinary Deaths

The Book of Extraordinary Deaths
Author: Cecilia Ruiz
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 81
Release: 2018-10-23
Genre: Humor
ISBN: 0399184058

A welcome dose of dark humor for these dark times, from acclaimed illustrator Cecilia Ruiz The Book of Extraordinary Deaths introduces readers to the bizarre demises of thinkers, writers, monarchs, artists, and notable nobodies throughout history. Beginning in the seventh century BC with the unusual death of Draco and journeying chronologically to the present day, Ruiz’s playfully sinister giftbook illustrates and describes the infamous deaths of these unfortunate souls. From stories of the hot-air balloon duel that claimed a Frenchman’s life to the fatal wardrobe malfunction of famed dancer Isadora Duncan, The Book of Extraordinary Deaths is a uniquely clever and gorgeously rendered meditation on life’s ironies and mysteries. With Ruiz’s witty descriptions and rich, captivating illustrations, her characters come to life on the page even as they shuffle off this mortal coil.