The Epileptic Bicycle [a Gorey]

by Edward Gorey
Harcourts Brace and Company 1969

You can read it in 30 seconds and yet feel completely transformed for the entire day.



VG

The Awdrey-Gore Legacy

by Edward Gorey

I thought I'd read this before (and I probably have) but I haven't posted here, so it must have been in my pre-blog days.

Suffice it to say, the only thing really to say about Gorey books is that they're all good, in the same strange and enchanting way that all Tim Burton movies are good, or all Roald Dahl novels are good.

In that - it's strange - yet strangely familiar as well.

This one is simply a spin on English Parlour Mysteries, and that's all you need to know - just read and enjoy and as always, you simply wind up wishing that he made

MORE

of a book than what he gives you!


VG

Ninfa: A Roman Enchantment

from a series of books entitled Small Books of Great Gardens
photographs by Claire de Virieu
text by Lauro Marchett and Esme Howard
(c) 1999 The Vendome Press, New York

book describes a beautiful garden in the north of Italy - I thought the most interesting part was the geographical description how the Alps to the north protect it from cold winds and the winds/and rain from the sea blow into it to give it a uniquely prolonged growing season for that region of the country - the rest of the text is an overview of the history of these lands from almost a thousand years ago, and highlighted how it was fortified, fought over, bought, protected, left to ruin, and finally rebuilt.

The photographs are good, but for some reason don't seem to reveal the true beauty of the garden. I'm no photographer (and these were very good photos, don't get me wrong!) but it just seemed that actually standing there in the midst of these lands would be completely breathtakingly peaceful, in a way that the text actually made me feel but which the photographs don't really inspire.

Hmm. I'll have to go there sometime. See fer meself!


VG