Mario Testino's Take on Kate

Taschen is out this month with its Testino tome on Kate Moss, the legendary model and muse of the legendary fashion photographer. It's 230 pages of glossy goodness -- for $1,000. It's a status symbol for your coffee table! I'm saving up for Lady Gaga...

What are you reading?

It's my seasonal question...



At the moment I'm reading Jonathan Franzen's Freedom (love it...and yes he is all that!)
Next, I plan to read Ken Follett's "Fall of Giants." (It's nearly 1,000 pages long. It could be my winter and spring reading too!)
In between: I'm studying James Beard's On Bread. (One of my cousins recently gave me an awesome starter, renewing my quest to make the perfect loaf of bread.)

So what are you reading!?


Photo above by Allister Ann via Lomography.com.

(Some of your previous responses here on the EM reading list.)

Weekend in review....

This is my unofficial media roundup for the weekend.
Just a few bits I found especially interesting...

First off, Ken Follett has a new book coming out called "Fall of Giants." It's a novel that follows royals and commoners through World War I and the revolution and it's good, says the NYT, which ran this lovely illustration (below) by the phenomenal Grady McFerrin with their review...


Roger Boylan, who reviewed the Follett book, writes: "The giants of the title, the crowned heads of Europe, are solidly ensconced in their palaces when the story begins in 1911 but all gone (except King George V of Britain) when it ends, in 1924. In between, various upheavals remake the world, affording plenty of scope for action, and Follett takes full advantage of this opportunity."

I'm a Follett fan anyway. Add royalty and scandal and I'm blissed...

*

Next, Rita Konig had a wonderful piece in the Wall Street Journal. The WSJ has been ramping up its lifestyle coverage and, wisely, grabbed some of the former Domino staffers to help out...

Rita writes about interior designer Todd Romano's
decidedly "Unoffice-y Office."

The photos are by Johnny Miller:


There's also a very cool virtual tour:




It looks better in person so visit it here.

*

Finally, we went to see The Social Network. I LOVED it...Rooney Mara (who was recently cast as the lead in "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo") stole the opening scene playing Mark Zuckerberg's girlfriend. (Her character's name is Erica Albright and there's
much discussion at the moment about whether or not Ms Albright actually exists.)

Anyway, Rooney is gorgeous (various Wireimage photos below) and I can't wait to see her in Dragon...



Ok, that's all from me...Have a lovely Monday everyone. I'll be back here tomorrow night!

Shoes Lebowski

Our rescue kitty, fattened up!!


Isn't he cute!!?

My new banner and blog layout...

Hello my dears, I'm very happy to announce several key changes to my blog! In keeping with my new focus here at the English Muse (writing mostly about books), I asked illustrator Lori Langille to create a new banner. Take a look and let me know what you think!

I love Lori's work -- sort of Victorian eclectic. Her day job includes producing illustrations for a variety of newspapers and magazines in Canada and the US. In the evenings, she updates her fantastic design blog, Automatism.

Here are a few more of her works. (Check out her website for more!)





Have a lovely Monday!

Is Jonathan Franzen all that?

The Franzen frenzy started a month ago when TIME magazine put the author on its cover and labeled him the "Great American Novelist." I finally have a copy of his new book, Freedom. (My reading this weekend). I'm anxious to see if he's really all that.

Any thoughts?

(Illustration above by Joe Ciardiello for Barnes and Noble Review.)

Prada 2010 Fall/Winter Look Book

Hello darlings. Is there anything that gets the mind and imagination working quite like the printed page? The other day I wandered into Prada in Beverly Hills. And while I couldn't quite afford anything on the racks, they were happy to let me leave with
one of their lovely new (and free!) lookbooks.

Take a look at some of the images:









The hefty-sized lookbook features styling and artwork by OMA (Alexander Reichert & Fausto Fantinuoli) as well as photography from Phil Meech. It has that cool Internet, on-the-street fashion blog vibe, but printed on craft paper. I wish I had all the back issues!

What's your favorite lookbook?

At the Cabin...

We're back from our trip to the High Sierra. It was, well, bliss. I'm wading through a mountain of laundry. Will be back to regular blogging here later this week (I'm not sure, is anyone still out there reading this? I hope so!).

xo
Tina

PS: The photo -- taken by the lovely Emma -- is of a young buck who wandered through our camp almost daily...

Is Emma Watson the new Jean Seberg?

Harry Potter star Emma Watson (right photo) debuted her "pixie cut" last week, leaving her fans spellbound and Internet style pundits a little, well, breathless. Maybe it's because her new haircut makes her look so much like 1960s Breathless star Jean Seberg? (Left photo). What do you think?

PS: Sorry my posting has been so spotty. Our French foreign exchange student, Emma, is visiting from Paris this month and we've been running around LA like mad tourists. Next week we're headed to the lake house in the High Sierras!

Introducing...The Big Lebowski

...Or Dude for short...


Thank you all for your wonderful suggestions! I suspect Winston Churchill would have been flattered to know that his name is so cat worthy. But I couldn't resist the Big Lebowski. It's perfect!!

Have a wonderful weekend!! I'm busy working on my new blog template...hope to launch next week!

Penguin Classics (Red) Editions

So, here's my latest obsession: UK Penguin's (Red) Editions....



I love the text snippets on the covers. It makes the classics seem so current and, well, sexy.

You can see the entire set on the UK Penguin website.

It's for a good cause: a portion of the money raised from the sale of the books goes to help fight AIDS in Africa.

Electronic Books or Hardcovers?

Amazon.com officials announced this week that the company now sells more e-books in its online marketplace than hardcovers.

So I wanted to ask....

Quizzes by Quibblo.com

Help Name This Cat...

Hello Everyone,
I would like for you to meet the newest member of our family....
A very large, sweet cat...

He was abandoned by his owner about six months ago and left to wander the streets. When my daughter and I saw him on Friday, he wasn't looking so good. We put him in the car and took him straight to the vet, who fixed him up and then sent him home with us. We're very happy to have him, but we're having trouble deciding on a name!

Any suggestions?


He's the longest cat I've ever seen -- nearly three feet long. At the moment, he's really skinny, but he could top 18 pounds once he's been properly stuffed with Fancy Feast. One of my friends suggested that he might be a Maine Coon -- the most gigantic breed of house cat ever.

I don't even want to tell you how many animals we now have living in our flat for fear our landlady might be reading this blog. But we have a few -- and all of them are black. (Weird how it always turns out that way for me.)

This big lug of a cat with white paws was known around the neighborhood as "Shoes," although Shoes doesn't seem grand enough. Maybe Brando? Joe Kennedy? The Big Boss? (Imagine the jokes at the vet's office..."The Big Boss needs his rabies shot..." etc...)

So...any ideas!?

Thank you!

Damn Dan Brown

The literary blogosphere continues to buzz with angst and dismay as thousands -- or maybe even millions -- of people learned the shocking news this week that they write like ...Dan Brown. The growing outrage -- sparked by a computerized prose analysis on a obscure website called "I Write Like" -- could be the biggest controversy involving Brown since the release of his insanely successful but widely reviled book, The Da Vinci Code. (BTW, Audrey Tautou was lovely as Sophie in the movie version.)

In a move that some hoped would calm the fears, the NYT's Paper Cuts blog weighed in on the controversy Thursday with a post titled "I Write Like...Yeah Right."

"I entered my last blog post and was told I write like Edgar Allan Poe," NYT blogger Jennifer Schuessler wrote. "Pretty neat. But then a colleague plugged in a paragraph from Poe’s “Fall of the House of Usher” and was told it sounded like Sir Arthur Conan Doyle."

One reader commented: "Thank you for debunking that. It told me I write like Dan Brown,
and I almost killed myself."

Brown, meanwhile, has gone into seclusion after learning that he writes like Jane Austen.

PS: Only parts of this post are true. The rest is fiction. I would like to dedicate it to Jonas (I hope you've gotten that dreadful program to finally give you Hemingway.)

Also, I have no idea who did the cartoon -- now floating freely about the Internet. (Email if you know the source.)

Postcards and Souvenirs

I'm a predictable flea market shopper. I always end up on a treasure hunt for things I can bring home without much ado...
...Like postcards...

....Old matchbooks...

...Fifty-year-old bottles of "My Sin" and pink nylon slips...

You know, the stuff that's easy to carry to the car in 105 degree heat.
But someday I'm going to make a grand show of it: I'll drive up to the flea market at 6 am in a
U-Haul truck with two brawny guys. We'll cart off all those things I really wanted to buy but didn't because they wouldn't fit into the back of my old Mercedes station wagon. (And I didn't have room in the house anyway. ) ... Someday...

Happy Weekend everyone. It's the third Sunday of the month, which means Long Beach and then coffee at Chuck's! See you Monday!

I write like...Kurt Vonnegut??

My friend Carolyn Kellogg at the LA Times' fantastic Jacket Copy book blog had the most clever post today. She found a website -- called I Write Like -- where you can enter a few paragraphs of your prose to find out if you write like Hemingway, Chuck Palahniuk or even Bram Stoker. (There are a bunch of other authors ranging from Stephen King to J.K. Rawlings).

Take the five-second test and let me know here how it goes!

If you write like Jane Austen, you win a special prize -- a date with Colin Firth! (Joking.)

I was surprised to learn that I write like Kurt Vonnegut. I had no idea Mr. Vonnegut used so many exclamation points in his prose, but I applaud him!!

xo


(Above photo found at F--- Yeah, Kurt Vonnegut! on Tumblr.)

My Terrace Garden: Progress so far...

Pink azaleas and hydrangeas

A white rugosa rose...

New Dawn on the railing...

More photos to follow!

The Future of the English Muse, Part II

Hello Everyone!
Thank you so much for participating in my little survey. I've been thinking a lot about your answers this weekend and I've decided to turn the English Muse into a blog about books (mostly!). It will focus on the sorts of books that we all love: Decor, fashion, photography, art, gardening and literature. I also hope to include Q&As with authors! It would be impossible for me to write a blog about books without including my two other loves: Magazines and newspapers.

I hope the English Muse will become your destination to learn about interesting, beautiful and stylish printed media.

I'm working on the redesign of the blog now so please stay tuned for the launch date!

Thank you!!

Tina


PS: The illustration above is by artist C.J. Metzger. It accompanied an article I did some time ago about etiquette books. I loved the illustration so much that I asked Ms. Metzger if I could buy the original. (The photo she used in the collage is of her grandmother.) It's now framed in my kitchen!

Terrace Garden

One of the hardest things about moving out of our house into our new flat was giving up our garden, complete with picket fence and roses. But, as my sister-in-law advised me at the time, roses also grow in pots. So I'm excited get started on designing my terrace garden. I've been turning to several NYC sources for ideas.

I picked up a copy of Rebecca Cole's book, Paradise Found: Gardening In Unlikely Places. It's become my favorite gardening tome. She specializes in designing rooftop plots. I love these photos of some of her designs on her website:




I also found a blog, called Garden Bytes, with lots of practical information. Ellen Spector Platt's photo (below) of the rose New Dawn growing on a nearby terrace prompted me to give the rosebush a try on our railing.



More pictures to come!

Two Kitchen Tables

"Tabletops are the daily canvases upon which we sketch," writer/illustrator Leanne Shapton mused recently in her T Magazine blog column, We Three Things. She says: "A glance at someone’s coffee table, kitchen island or even computer desktop offers a revealing self-portrait: bookworm, neat freak, train wreck, mom."

It made me stop and look at my own tables. We now have two kitchen tables in our oversized dining room. (One table didn't seem to fill the disproportionate middle space.) I have no idea what all this clutter says about me, other than I'm, well, a clutterer.

So here are some iPhone snapshots of this little hub of our flat:


Decor books, magazines, a Farrow & Ball paint brochure...

A collection of my daughter's scissors (a new one bought every year for school); an old Chinese bakelite box for holding rubber bands and paperclips...

And painted bug pins in a bowl...

After I read Shapton's post, it reminded me that I had saved an old Elle magazine profile of her in one of my inspiration files. The story prompted me to buy her book, Was She Pretty?

Shapton blogs that her own tabletops "tell short stories of collection and compulsion." She adds: "What gets randomly, or precisely, set down can be read like tea leaves; our surfaces are anything but shallow."

So, what's on your tabletop? If you'll email me a photo (send to englishmuse at yahoo dot com), I'll post it here next week!