Day 82 (07/27): Paul Collins - Sixpence House: Lost in a Town of Books

Paul Collins - Sixpence House:

Lost in a Town of Books

Considering today's book is about Hay-on-Wye (HAY-ON-WYE!!!!!!) and I love travelling, here are some book-based travel destinations on my list :).

- Hay-on-Wye. Basically my hometown. See review below.
- For the same reason: Montelieu in France, Stillwater, Minnesota, and Gold Cities BookTown, Grass Valley, California, in the U.S. and Redu, Belgium. No need to go to Japan (Jinbōchō, Tokyo), I can't read Japanese books, this would be too depressing.
- For the same reason also Mühlbeck, which is about 2.5 hours away from me AND I NEVER KNEW!
- Cecil Court. Bookshops over bookshops, and a look that inspired Diagon Alley. (And it's in London, which makes it absolutely ideal for a visit while I'm there to seeThe British Library.)
- The Library of Congress. I'm not a patriotic American, but I'd love to see it. If only because the architecture looks stunning.
- International Book Fair, Frankfurt am Main. I KNOW that "our" book fair in Leipzig is almost as big and way cooler due to cosplay and things, but all of my favourite authors only come to Frankfurt. (You may have realized that this annoys me.)

(4*-review of today's book under the cut)

Day 81 (07/26): Ransom Riggs - Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children (Miss Peregrine, #1)

Ransom Riggs
- Miss Peregrine's Home for
Peculiar Children
(Miss Peregrine, #1)

Last week (or, considering the day I was supposed to do this, in two days time), my mum and I spent (will spend) time with a friend who likes to take photographs.
He also likes to visit art galleries, and we went to a Carl Blechen exhibition in Coswig (Carl Blechen is my favourite of the romantic painters, he lived from 1798 to 1840 and had an amazing output considering his short career). Two days later we went to an exhibition of modern art, the collection of a Bavarian art dealer called Alfred Gunzenhauser that he donated to the city of Chemnitz, Saxony. (See Branitz Castle and Museum Gunzenhauser (German website!) for details respectively.)

We were talking about what to expect from a picture, be it a painting or a photograph. He said that he doesn't care whether a picture is beautiful, but that he wants it to be good. I agree with that only if I don't have to hang the thing on my wall; in that case I'm superficial enough to want a beautiful picture.
The people who took the pictures in today's book certainly didn't go for the beautiful type either, and in a period were photographs were more expensive it is interesting that someone invested such a lot of time in setting up pictures like these. Ransom Riggs certainly weaves an interesting story around them, but I wonder what the pictures were meant to express at the time they were taken. Because no matter if you take a picture to convey something beautiful or something interesting, you want to express something. What do you express by creating a floating child?


(4*-review of today's book under the cut)