Double-Stacked Bookshelves

Teaser Tuesday:  Girl with a Pearl Earring Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly meme hosted by Jenn @ A Daily Rhythm . Here are the rules: grab whatever you're reading, open to a random page, select no more than two sentence (NO SPOILERS), share the title and author, and GO! Here's today's teaser: "I had almost touched the real one the day van Ruijven's wife left it on the bed.  I had just been reaching over to stroke the fur collar when I had looked up to see Cornelia in the doorway, watching me.  One of the other girls would have asked me what I was doing, but Cornelia just watched.  That was worse than any questions.  I had dropped my hand and she'd smiled." --page 53           Girl with a Pearl Earring by Tracy Chevalier  I'm quite enjoying this one so far, but I know that Cornelia is up to no good! Happy reading!

Week one of the A-Z Blogging Challenge has come to an end and landed on the letter G.  Today's post is all about my favorite painter: Gustav Klimt I remember the first time I encountered one of Klimt's works.  It was in college during a Vienna 1900s course taught by my favorite German professor, Dr. Laura Stahman (an incredibly inspirational woman who I still have coffee with).  In this class we covered everything pertinent to that era in Vienna: literature, culture, economics, society, and art.  The first painting of Klimt's she showed us was this: Life and Death   I remember being in awe right off the bat.  The use of color and the juxtaposition of elements is breathtaking.  The actions and feelings of society are clearly reflected throughout his work. His work is a true representation of the Fin de Siecle of Austria, especially Vienna.  I became obsessed with Klimt and all of his work.  He had such a wide array of work that it's imp...

Margaret Atwood's Cat's Eye was...was...waaasssss...I don't even know how to describe it.  It just was.  It took me a bit to get into this book and it took me even longer to finish it.  I can't put my finger on why I didn't enjoy it.  It's not like the book was absolutely terrible (believe me, I've read worse), but for some reason it just didn't grasp my attention or keep my attention. The novel centers around Elaine, an artist...though she prefers to be called a painter because the term "artist" conjurs up pretension, according to her.  She's come back to Toronto, her hometown, for a gallery show and, while there, she spends her time wandering around the much changed city.  The reader is taken back to her childhood through interspersed chapters and it is these sections that hold the most appeal.  Through these episodes you really get to know what drives Elaine and why she left Toronto in the first place.  Also, Elaine focuses a lot of...