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World War Two was the most devastating conflict in recorded human history. It was both global in extent and total in character. It has understandably left a long and dark shadow across the decades. Yet it is three generations since hostilities formally ended in 1945 and the conflict is now a lived memory for only a few. And this growing distance in time has allowed historians to think differently about how to describe it, how to explain its course, and what subjects to focus on when considering the wartime experience.

The post The long history of World War II appeared first on OUPblog.

It’s sometime in the 1940s. A guy plays an accordion in the yard of a Chicago brick walkup. Chin up, with a cocky grin on his face, a cigarette dangles from his lip. He’s hamming it up for the camera, you can see he loves the attention.

This is my Grandpa Nick.

Sifting through old photos today, this one jumped out at me for all the reasons above. It was so iconic, I decided to make a halftone print. Sometimes we don’t choose what the art will be, it chooses us.

It’s pouring outside here in Boulder (really pouring…like a monsoon. Seriously, there are flash flood warnings in effect.) This turn of events has ended a streak of blistering hot days and put me in the mood for autumn. Bring out the galoshes and wool sweaters! Serve up the hot tea and warm soup! I’m ready.

So, without further ado, here is an illustration I made at work today to celebrate the changing of the seasons:

You’re probably wondering why I haven’t updated my website since February. Yes, February. As in, A LONG TIME AGO. My only excuse is that I became slightly busy with little things like changing jobs and getting married. (I know, some people manage to still update their websites while doing other things, but some of us are a little more bloggingly-challenged.) Anyway, that’s what I have been up to. I can now happily say that I am now a full-time professional illustrator for a company here in Boulder, and I can also happily say that I have been married for a whole 10 days. Hooray!

My new employer is called Mocavo and is a genealogy web searching service where you can find out all sorts of delightful secrets about your great aunt Mildred and so forth. Unlike other web start-up companies I have encountered, this one had the good taste to hire a full-time illustrator to be on staff. Brilliant! You can find the Mocavo website here.

So, folks, I’m glad to be back here posting again. I have a ton of illustrations to share since I draw and paint almost every day now, so stay tuned for more to come!

The post An Autumn Stroll appeared first on Jessica Lanan Illustration.

I’ve read it now. It’s lovely. Why do people use “women’s fiction” as a derogatory term?

I was lucky enough not to remember the movie very well when I read the book, so I came to it with only a vague idea of the plot. Not that the movie isn’t good — I went and found it streaming online as soon as I’d finished the book–but the book is better, as books often are.

Now, Voyager is the story of Charlotte Vale — a dumpy, unattractive, unhappy spinster under the thumb of a wealthy and autocratic mother — and her transformation into a well-liked and attractive woman who has a lot to offer, and knows it. First an extremely intelligent psychiatrist shows her how to change, and then a cruise ticket unwanted by its owner gives her the opportunity to do it. Add a weight-reducing illness and her sister-in-law’s cast-off (but still fashionable) wardrobe, and Charlotte has as much of a clean slate as one could realistically expect.

She uses it as well as one could realistically expect, too, which gives the story a sort of fairy tale quality, but mostly Prouty manages to keep it pretty down to earth. Charlotte’s love interest, for instance, isn’t the suave, handsome, self-assured man that Paul Heinreid plays in the movie version. J.D. Durrance has kind of a lousy life, and an array of problems to match Charlotte’s. The similarity between their various issues gives them common ground to connect over, which…well, the last book and the last short story I finished both had young couples bonding over their instinctive understanding of each other, and that’s adorable, but it’s easier to believe in when two people bond over having been miserable in similar ways.

Also, Prouty really has a thing about couples in love choosing not to be together, doesn’t she?

Here’s part two. You may notice that the formatting is unbelieveably horrible. I tried to fix it, but I’ve given up now.

7. The Trumpet of the Swan, by E.B. White

The dust jacket on my copy is long since lost.

So, here’s an unpopular opinion for you: this is the best E.B. White book. Charlotte’s Web is pretty good. I like it a lot. Stuart Little coasts on the fact that tiny things are cute. The Trumpet of the Swan is better than either of them. When I was little, I also thought it was completely hilarious — I would reread bits and sit there giggling to myself — but it’s probably only moderately funny. That’s okay, though, because it’s clever and thoughtful and enormously weird, and when it comes to children’s books, that’s what I want most.

The Trumpet of the Swan, for those of you unlucky enough not to have read it, is about a mute trumpeter swan named Louis. He can’t attract a mate without being able to make trumpet-y noises at her, so his father goes off and steals him a trumpet, and the rest of the book is all about people being wowed by his excellent trumpet-playing skills, which makes me happy because one of my favorite things in books is characters who are really good at what they do (cf. Carry On, Mr. Bowditch, two of the three books in the final section of this list, and that post I will someday write on Trustee from the Toolrom). Anyway, it’s a wonderful book all around, and a deeply satisfying one. Most books that I like leave me wanting to know more, but I think it’s actually better when a book gives you exactly as much as you need, and this is one of those.

***

6. Carry On, Mr. Bowditch, by Jean Lee Latham

I think this cover is gorgeous.

Okay, here’s one I read several times when I was, oh, maybe twelve? I ran across it at a used bookstore last summer, and thought, “I adored that book. Why haven’t I thought about it for the last dozen years?” And then I reread it, and, as it turns out, I still adore it.

This is a fictional take on the life of Nathaniel Bowditch, who revolutionized navigation in the late 18th century. Latham introduces us to Nat as a kid about to be apprenticed to a ship chandlery in Salem in the 1770s, and from there we follow his struggles to educate himself and others. It’s a sad book, because massive numbers of people die, but it helps to know that they’re real people who died, rather than characters the author is gratuitously killing off. And also, it’s an incredibly moving book, and I think it owes some of that to the historical environment. Nat’s family is very poor, and a career at sea includes the possibility of death, and Latham doesn’t minimize those things.

And then there’s the people-being-really-good-at-what-they-do thing. It’s fun to see Nat surprising people with his surreptitiously acquired book-learning, and it’s even better to see him winning over his shipmates with his expertise on practical matters. Especially

I ordered Snobbery with Violence, by Colin Watson, on the recommendation of Cristiane, and on the whole I liked it, but I do have some reservations. Well, a  lot.

Snobbery with Violence is a discussion of some of the most popular authors of crime fiction between, approximately, World War I and the 1960s, when the book was written. Watson’s premise is that an era’s most popular fiction tells you the most about its reading public, and obviously that’s a thesis I can get behind. What bothered me was that most of the snobbery involved seemed to come from the author. Colin Watson may think he likes mystery novels, but my impression is that he hates them and the people that read them.

The best parts are when he recounts the plots of ridiculous thrillers by Edgar Wallace, Sapper, and the like — my favorite includes an episode where Bulldog Drummond hits a tarantula between the eyes with a poker — but once he finishes the description, he always makes sure you know that he’s laughing at the authors and the readers, not just the funny plot twists. At times, the book feels like a list of popular mystery writers with a brief explanation of why each one was bad. He rarely gives anyone credit for anything positive.

I also, somewhere near the middle of the book, became a little bit suspicious of Watson. I wasn’t very familiar with most of the writers he talked about, but I have read all of Dorothy Sayers’ Peter Wimsey novels, and when Watson began to talk about them, I could see where he was simplifying things in order to make his points, and where that simplification led to false impressions.

An example: he talks about a bit in Have His Carcase in which Harriet Vane spends time with a professional dancer. She can dance with him, says Watson, but she can’t socialize with him for any other purpose than to get information from him, because heroines have to be chaste. And that’s true enough, as far as it goes, but Watson probably ought to have chosen another example, because we are frequently reminded, throughout the books in which she appears, that Harriet Vane used to live with a man she wasn’t married to, and to leave that out seems deliberately misleading. And it’s a little thing, but it made me doubt Watson’s information on the books I was less familiar with.

So, yeah. Watson is a horrible snob who hates popular authors, the reading public, and television, and I don’t think he’s the most ethical writer out there. But Snobbery with Violence is a fun book to read, and it’s helped me to add lots of things to my reading list. Just — if you read it, take it with a grain of salt.