Book of the Month: January

My top book for the month of January is The Sisters of Versailles. Based on a true story, this historical fiction novel presents the bizarre story of the five Mailly Nesle sisters, four of whom had affairs with Louis XV.

While the background of the story was about sex, it did not go into detail about the sex itself. The book showed the differences between the sisters' personalities and how each of their strengths, or vanities, propelled them toward Louis and power in his Court.

They loved backstabbing each other like no other characters you have ever read about before. They grew up on the poor side of aristocracy but had an incredible zest for power and had an innate sense on how to obtain it.  They mesmerized me.

I have already read book two of this trilogy.  It was good but I don't think the mistresses in book 2 can beat the ones in book 1 for their political and sexual maneuvers. I will soon be getting the third novel and conclude reading this delicious trilogy.

The Splendor Before the Dark

The Splendor Before the Dark is the sequel to Margaret George's The Confessions of Young Nero.  The story begins when Nero is 26 and has been emporer for 9 years.  It covers a 4 year period of time which is also the last 4 years of Nero's life.

The story opens with Nero helping to put out the Great Fire of Rome.  Here he is a benevolent ruler with concern for the poor citizens as well as the rich citizens of Rome. His political and administrative skills are top notch.

Rumors begin to circulate that Nero started the fire which wasn't true because he was out of town when it started. He brushes the rumors aside initially because all emporers have to deal with them. Nero sets about to rebuild Rome with grand public features even though some wealthy citizens will have to be displaced to make room for them. The houses will be grander and the placement of them will be organized into a beautiful city plan. The rumors become more intense that Nero started the fire so that he could rebuild the city and he decides that he can no longer ignore them. He comes up with a plan to blame the Christians for the fire.

The author presents a Nero who loved to stage plays, play music, engage in athletics and compose lyrics. He is a man who fiercely loved 2 women. Acte is the girl he grew up with and who knew him as he really was, not as an emporer. He adored his wife of 2 years, Poppaea. When she died he was devastated. This is a sensitive man, not the man of history that we have come to know, except for the part about blaming and punishing the Christians by burning, crucifixion and feeding them to beasts.

While I enjoyed the book in the beginning, it was slower reading than the first book The Confessions of Young Nero. It was a little wordy and less exciting than Confessions. It took me 6 weeks to read it! In addition, I don't remember Nero being such a nice guy in the first book. He had to become evil in order to survive his family.  The family was rough. They killed each other for power. There seems to be a missing link between what Nero was like at the end of book 1 and what he was like in book 2. Am I missing something here?  Did becoming emporer free him to be himself or did being the only surviving member of the family free him? I am just speculating.

Margaret George is well known for her research on the people she writes about.  It is confusing to me that she gives us a nice Nero. Nero is not known historically as a nice person. She shows us Nero as a human being and explains in the Afterward that most of what we know about Nero was written by his enemies who had an agenda to destroy his reputation.  However, she whitewashes the treatment he ordered against the Christians by preferring to focus on his leisure activities both before and after he made decisions to torture and kill them. This did not sit well with me. Most of the book was about Nero finding time to be an artist. If he was truly just an artist, why does she need to end the book with his successor killing everyone associated with him? He does not sound like a benevolent ruler here and it seems that she left out many of his ruthless actions as emporer.

She explains in her Afterward that she agrees with the historian Edward Champlain that Nero's actions were rational and that much of what he did resonated with contemporary social attitudes. She further stated that the Christians may have started the Great Fire in order to bring about the end times which is exactly what Nero believed and was the reason he persecuted them. However, she writes in the novel that they had no involvement in the fires but writes in the Afterward that they may have. In addition, she states that no one knows how widespread the persecution was and that the Christians may not have known about it. Ms. George has failed to read all of the historical accounts of the persecution. I find her thoughts offensive.

What is "the dark" referred to in the title? It's the last chapter where Nero is forced to commit suicide for an unknown reason. If you know history you know why he had to commit suicide. If all you know is the history presented in this book you must be confused.

The Splendor Before the Dark is thought provoking. It gives the reader a different perspective on Nero than history provided but still shows him as a ruthless killer albeit indirectly. I must state, though, that my opinion of Margaret George has changed. In historical fiction writing the reader expects the author to be true to history. In this book she wasn't. It seems to me that she and Nero have the same opinion on Christianity. Otherwise she would not have focused so much attention on how more important his leisure activities were than ordering the slaughter of a group of people.

2 out of 5 stars.

Frost Quakes and Polar Vortexes

Here in the American Midwest we are in the middle of a polar vortex which has brought freezing temperatures. It is currently colder where I live than in Antarctica. At the time I am writing this post the actual temperature is -21 degrees with a wind chill factor of -54 degrees.

Last night I woke up three times in the middle of the night hearing loud thuds outside. I got up to look out the windows to see what was happening outside or to see if the windows cracked but saw nothing. This morning the TV weatherman explained that we were all hearing frost quakes which is a seismic event.

Here is how a frost quake occurs. While water naturally freezes underground, when the weather is in a deep freeze the water goes deeper underground. This forces the soil upward which releases kinetic energy. The release of the energy makes a loud sound that is called a frost quake.

Here is a photo of a frost quake in nearby Milwaukee, WI showing that it's much more than a loud sound. This is scary.

I guess if you lived in Antarctica this would be common knowledge for you. Now it's common knowledge for those of us in the Chicagoland area. The quakes are still occurring this morning. It is going to get a little warmer today and by that I mean -13 but I don't know at what temperatures the quakes stop.  We had a -17 degree day 2 years ago and we didn't have frost quakes then.

With three polar vortexes now under my belt I should be accustomed to their challenges. No one ever said anything before about a frost quake. Now I am worried about the ground opening up near my highrise apartment. We have never seen the train tracks set on fire before either.

The steel tracks get pulled apart into pieces during extreme cold and after being set on fire they can be molded back into one piece that the trains can run on tomorrow.  I don't really trust those train tracks. They just don't seem safe.

Polar Vortex 2019 has been the toughest and it's not over yet.

2019 My Kind of Mystery Challenge

I am rejoining this challenge this year. It runs from February 1, 2019 through January 31, 2020.  There are no reading requirements for the challenge which I find freeing. I think I actually read more mysteries than if I knew I had to read a certain number of them. Based on what I read for the challenge last year I presume that I will be reading mysteries published in 2019.  We'll see!

Irresistible

In Irresistible-Reclaiming the New that Jesus Unleashed for the World, the reader in invited to embrace the original form of Christianity, the version that turned the world upside down 2,000 years ago. The author, an Atlanta, Georgia pastor, shows how a shift from faith in the resurrection of Jesus to a Bible-centric faith has left Christians with an anemic version of the faith that is not very interesting to those outside the faith or even inside the faith.

The premise of the book is that the first century Christians, not having any Scriptures other than the Jewish Scriptures spread the faith with their eye witness accounts of the resurrection. Succeeding generations similarly used their zeal over the resurrection event to gain new converts to the faith. It worked. The faith spread like wildfire even though getting caught and having to admit it meant that you would be put to death by the legal authorities. The author wants us to regain that zeal for the resurrection that our predecessors in the faith had. He believes it will transform how outsiders view the church and Jesus himself and bring people to Jesus as well as bring backsliders back into the church.

The author spends a lot of time distinguishing between the old covenant between God and Israel and the new covenant between God and everyone willing to participate in the new covenant. He explains that when the church became organized, rules and customs were set that were a blending of the two covenants. The two covenants were never supposed to be blended as after the resurrection the old covenant was ended because a new one had been created. Forty years later when the temple was destroyed in 70 AD and animal sacrifices could not be made any longer, ancient Judaism ended. Here he produced a considerable amount of Scripture and history as proof of his thesis.

He continues that the church today still blends the old covenant with the new covenant with Bible focused preaching and reading requirements. However, today's preachers are failing to tell their parishioners that the Old Testament was a means to an end. It brought Jesus to the world. The author is critical of those who pull passages and promises from the Old Testament and apply them to themselves when the passages apply to ancient Israel. This is also what he calls blending the two covenants. The final third of the book deals with how Christians should handle themselves with each other and with those outside the church in a new covenant manner, all backed up with Scriptural references.

The topic was well researched.  Stanley presented Scriptures from Genesis through the New Testament as well as historical references from ancient Israel and the early church as proof of his interpretation and conclusions. He knows the material well.

The writing style of the author is poor. He writes in the same way that he speaks. Unless you are a member of his congregation and are accustomed to this approach you will find the writing disconcerting. Consequently, I found it difficult to connect the points as I got bogged down in the writing method.

Irresistible is the first book of Stanley's that I have read.  I was expecting a serious book given the title and the back cover blurb. The writing style subtracted from the strong ideas that Stanley presented. Having said that, the author did do a good job of setting up major points in a dramatic fashion. However, he then fell into his culture-specific speaking style. He should, in the future, realize that his audience reaches far beyond the culture of his own congregation and city and adjust his writing accordingly.

This is an intellectual book written in an unintellectual manner.  Because it has strong arguments that the church should hear, I would like to refer it to it to a few friends.  I believe the book's message is important.  However, I am not sure that they will read a book that does not appear to be serious in the beginning section. They might give up and put it down.

Irresistible counts as a selection for the 2019 Christian Reading Challenge as a book that was a 2018 bestseller.  I would have rated it 5 stars for the thought content but due to the writing problems I can only give it 3 out of 5 stars. 

The Fleece and Fiber Sourcebook

Deborah Robson and Carol Ekarius began writing the Fleece and Fiber Sourcebook after the United Nations declared that 2009 would be the International Year of Natural Fibers. The declaration was an environmental one as the process of producing synthetic fibers released harmful compounds into the air. The result was smog and many health problems for people who lived near the areas where they were produced.  The book was published in 2011.

As a person who spins fiber into yarn, having a book with information on 200 different sheep and other animals is quite resourceful to have on my bookshelf. The hair, or fiber, that is shorn from each type of animal has different characteristics and may need to be spun a certain way.  A spinner may need to purchase more fiber from a particular species to complete a project than from another species. Having all this information at your fingertips helps in making purchasing decisions.

When an animal can be grouped into a category, it is.  For example, there is the Cheviot Family of sheep, a Down Family, English Longwool Family, Merino Family and others.  Goats, camelids, bison, yak, rabbits and musk ox are also covered. Note that a camelid can be an alpaca, llama, guanaco, vicuna, or camel.

For each sheep/animal there is a description of its traits, facts on its fleece weight, length, diameter, lock characteristics and natural colors. There is also information on how to prepare it for spinning, how well it takes dyes, and the types of garments it is best suited for. In addition, there is a full color page showing the fiber in various forms.

You can see with all this information at hand, the spinner or weaver basically has a goof proof guide to selecting the best fiber for a project.

This is a must read for all spinners! 

Botanical Portraits with Colored Pencils

I came across Ann Swan's YouTube channel earlier this week and was pleased to find a botanical artist who only uses colored pencil in her botanical drawings. Usually colored pencil is only used as a final highlight after pen, ink and watercolor have been used. I immediately ordered her book from Amazon and it arrived yesterday.

This book is not for beginners.  The author assumes that you know how to draw as well as how to use colored pencils.  You need to be a high achieving intermediate colored pencil artist or an advanced one before taking on botanicals. The first thing the author teaches the reader is the need to know the scientific structure of the plant that you are drawing. How does it grow? How is it constructed? How are the leaves on the stem arranged? You need to study the pattern of the veins on the leaves, all of them, as no two leaves are alike. In addition, the artist needs to study the life cycle of the plant, making measurements of each part of the plant as it changes.  It seems like the artist needs to buy a botany book on the plant before getting started as there is so much scientific information needed before you can start your drawing.

The author recommends using a small sketchbook to record details about the plant's growing habits as well as making a series a thumbnail sketches of the flowers, stems, roots, leaves, and buds.  She also recommends taking a series of photographs to use as a reference for your drawing.

One fact I learned is that botanical paintings are always lifesize. That was why you needed to take measurements of the plant in the planning stages of your drawing. Also, Ms. Swan shows the reader how to use the Divine Proportion, which occurs in nature everywhere, when planning the composition of the drawing so that it is aesthetically pleasing. I also learned that there are 3 styles in botanical illustration. There is the traditional style which was the only style I was aware of, the contemporary style where the focus is on just one part of the plant and the abstract style where one part of a plant is enlarged and it's the only part of the plant that is drawn.

The author also includes great tips on which colors to use when shading leaves in the foreground versus shading them in the background as well as how to develop a critical eye toward the style and elements in your drawing.

The latter half if the book consists of how-to demonstrations of various plant subjects.  Ms. Swan primarily uses Polychromos pencils but will also use Prismacolor and Luminance pencils for blending. I was surprised that she didn't use the Luminance pencils more often since they are 100% lightfast but the colors they come in are not suited for botanicals. In fact, they are not very vibrant for other types of drawings and I wish Caran d'Ache would create more colors for us.

Botanical Portraits with Colored Pencils is a wonderful addition to the colored pencil instruction books. It is quite unique from the rest since botanical art requires a different skillset.

This book is a must-read.

Drawing Birds with Colored Pencil

Kaaren Poole's Drawing Birds is a beginner's guide to drawing birds with colored pencils.  However, more advanced colored pencil users may be able to pick up a few tips from her too.  I know I did.

Ms. Poole begins her book with the usual beginner information on supplies, creating a sketch, how to transfer it to the paper you will be using and color theory.  However, she has a section on bird shapes and anatomy that I think is unique in colored pencil instruction books. Anatomy is a subject that I have neglected in my own drawings and perhaps I need to study it.

The skeletal structure of humans has always been taught in the classes I took in art school when we were learning how to draw the human form in various poses.  It makes sense that when you are drawing a bird or other animal you need to first draw its skeleton and then smooth out your lines to the shapes that your eyes actually see of the creature.

The author moves on from there to the anatomy of the eyes and beaks and shows how to correctly position them. The tip regarding the eyes is going to help me tremendously with my drawings. Now that I see how she does them I can see that my drawings fall flat because of the eyes.

The bulk of the book consists of step-by-step demonstrations of various birds. These demonstrations are quite detailed and even include the type of pencil to use as well as the color to use and in what order.  There is an emphasis on layering.  The author layers color over three times and her instructions tell the reader exactly how to do that.

Drawing Birds with Colored Pencil is a great resource for the artist.  I definitely rate it 5 out of 5 stars.

The Rivals of Versailles

The Rivals of Versailles picks up the story of the mistresses of Louis XV from the first book in this trilogy The Sisters of Versailles.

After Louis XV recovered from an illness he found himself without a mistress. He soon met a bourgeois girl from Paris, Jeanne Poisson, and fell in love. Jeanne, not being royal, needed a name worthy of Versailles and was granted a title that was held by someone else. She became the Marquise de Pompadour and was given a large apartment formerly occupied by Louis' last mistress Marie Anne Mailly Nesle. The newly minted Marquise redecorated the space to distinguish herself from her predecessor and for four years captivated the king. After suffering two miscarriages with Louis her doctor said she must abstain from sex if she wanted to live.

The Marquise told Louis that their sex life was over and he began to stray. However, he needed her company and political advise but found that he could no longer physically climb the stairs to her apartment. Louis ordered a new and much larger apartment for her that was closer to his bedroom even though he had found a new lover, which astonished her enemies.

The Marquise found ways to get Louis girls but in a way where she retained control over the situation. When the girls began to ask for treasures, or her banishment, they were sent home. Louis, now 50, still loved the Marquise and made her a Duchesse while he continued to have sex with many other women, proving her power in the Empire.

After I finished the book my first thought was how well did Louis govern when he was with a mistress every afternoon, evening and most weekends? This does not count the number of weeks he spent holidaying at various chateaux each year.  He seemed to me to be a party animal but it also appeared that this socializing was required by the French Court. How could Louis possibly have spent enough time on governing his nation?

Louis' loyalty to the Marquise/Duchesse was interesting to say the least. Why stay loyal to her but cheat on her with other women? Note that his wife, the Queen, was still alive and living at Versailles while all of his sexual affairs were happening.

The Marquise/Duchesse certainly had a hold on Louis' heart. Her path to power was no different than those of the mistresses in Part 1 of this Trilogy.  Was he in love? It seems so but he had been in love with his Queen too and stayed loyal to her long past the time expected by his Court.

I am looking forward to the third and final installment in this trilogy.

5 of of 5 stars.

Drawing Comics

Robyn Chapman's Drawing Comics is a beginner's guide to getting started in comics.  The book covers each step you need to take to get a finished comic book.

The initial exercises are on drawing.  However, most of the exercises in the book are on character development and storytelling. The layout of each of the 52 exercises is the genius of the book.  Each exercise is encompassed in a 2 page spread. One page has a small box with a materials list, another box with an inspirational quote, and a photograph. The second page consists of a half page set of instructions for the exercise and a half page of tips from a cartoonist. The layout makes each step look easy to accomplish so the reader can feel relaxed about the process.

Some of the other exercises include page building, panels, lettering, inking, publishing pages at home and writing proposals for publishers. If you do all of the exercises you should have a comic strip at the end of the book.

Drawing Comics is a book for the absolute beginning cartoonist. The instructions are so well laid out that anyone should have a product at the end of the book if they do each exercise before reading the next exercise. No other comic instructional guide makes writing comics this simple nor do you have a comic strip done at the end of the book.

Simply the best comic instructional guidebook!  5 out of 5 stars!

Painting Light with Colored Pencil

Cecile Baird's Painting Light with Colored Pencil is chock full of inspiration and instruction in its 128 pages.  After an introduction to composition and lighting the author delves into instructing the reader on how to create fruit and flowers that glow. She then spends a chapter on how to capture light on water.  The final chapters have 7 step-by-step demonstrations on how to use the techniques she discussed in the earlier chapters.

The author has the easiest teaching on how to produce light in your colored pencil paintings that I have ever seen in any colored pencil instruction book. However, she shows you how to do it in step-by-step instructions with Prismacolor pencils which I no longer use.

Prismacolor was sold to a company based in Mexico 5 to 10 years ago and quality control was eliminated.  The pencil casings were made thinner and with cheaper wood. The pigments are still the best but when they are encased in a wood pencil that breaks too easily that you need to replace them 4 or 5 times they are not worth the trouble or extra expense.  If you are not an experienced colored pencil artist you may find it difficult to substitute pencils from better brands that will get you the same results.

One thing the author gets right is adding in demonstrations on working with metal, glass, wood, and in draping fabric. These topics are usually in separate books or dvds and here we are lucky to have them all in one place which is a great value for the reader.

One new skill I will take away from this book is how to create fabric folds.  This will be useful in portraits as well as in still lifes that have fabric in them.

4 out of 5 stars!

Leading Lives that Matter: What We Should Do and Who We Should Be

Mark Schwehn and Dorothy Bass have put together an anthology of readings from 61 individuals who found a way to lead lives of substance and significance.  They try to answer the questions "must my paid employment define who I am?" and "is a balanced life possible and preferable to a life focused primarily upon work?"  The readings endeavor to help the reader to make better judgments about their own life by exploring three vocabularies: authenticity and individualism; virtue and character; vocation and the divine.

The individuals referenced in the book cover a time period from 300 B.C. to the twentieth century. However, most of the individuals are from the twentieth century. Instead of giving actual advice to the reader, the authors offer a wide range of material from fiction to philosophy to biography to poetry as an example for the reader to figure out for themselves how best to deepen their own life.

One of my favorites was the Martyrdom of Perpetua. Since I am not a Roman Catholic, I was not aware of Perpetua before reading this book.  Vibia Perpetua was a North African Christian who was martyred in the year 203. The story of her imprisonment, torture and death was written shortly after her death by Tertullian.  At the time of her arrest she was 22, newly married with an infant son and a new convert to Christianity.  When led to the prisoner's dock her father pleaded with her to renounce her belief in Jesus for the sake of her family who would be destroyed if she was killed.  However, when asked by the soldiers whether she believed in Jesus she said yes.  She was led back to prison and a few days later she was led to the amphitheater where she was fed to several beasts naked in front of a live audience.  I was in awe of her decision.  I probably would have lied to save myself.   How could someone new to the faith be so sure of herself?  I found this astonishing.

This is a book that you should own and re-read throughout your life.  It can bring clarity to your decision making on play, study, love, sexuality, leisure, family, friendships, and worship.  It is not just about working and surviving.  There is another book titled "Callings" written by the late Rev. William Placher that follows the same format as this book but uses the lives of people who lived in the past twenty centuries.  I am looking forward to reading that book because Leading Lives that Matter has been thought provoking for me.

Definitely 5 out of 5 stars!

The Sisters of Versailles

The Sisters of Versailles is the first book in the Mistresses of Versailles Trilogy.  It is a fictionalized account of the true story of the 4 Mailly Nesle sisters who were all mistresses of Louis XV, both concurrently and sequentially, during a ten year period of time.

The chapters alternate between the stories of each sister from the time the oldest, Louise, left their childhood home to be married and eventually was sent to Versailles where she worked for the Queen.  There she met the King but did not become involved with him until his aides asked her to be his mistress as he was becoming bored with his wife. Their relationship was one of mutual love and respect. However, Louise was a meek and mild woman and was not prepared for the strong personality of her younger sister Pauline when she arrived for a visit.  Pauline took over at Louis' Court and pushed her sister out of the king's bedroom.

Pauline flirted with the king and he fell in love. Pauline would not sleep with him until he arranged a good marriage for her. Once the marriage took place the king scandalized the nation by supplanting the new husband on the wedding night. Pauline was more interested in obtaining political power and was not in love with the king. When Pauline died after the birth of a child the foolish Louise invited the next youngest sister Diane to visit. A mistake for sure but before Diane arrives another sister, Marie Anne, obtains a job as a lady-in-waiting to the Queen and moves to Versailles. She brings her married sister Hortense with her.

Louise gets talked into resigning her position with the Queen and Marie Anne soon has her banished from Versailles. Marie Anne is Louis' next mistress and then Marie Anne and Diane together as a threesome.  After the king falls ill and is expected to die he banishes Marie Anne and Diane so that he can confess his sins and receive the final sacrament. He recovers but does not ask for them back as his confession was published.

This story was well written.  I was engaged from the first page and could not put this book down.  Of course, the salacious material probably made it more interesting but the reader still needs good writing to stay engaged.

What confounded me was that all of these sisters had a religious upbringing.  I guess it didn't take as all but one was quickly willing to commit adultery with the king and didn't bat an eye about back-stabbing a sibling. In the beginning chapter when they were still together in the family home they seemed to be close. I guess that old adage that "power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely" holds true here.

Will I read the next book in the trilogy? Absolutely! I look forward to it.

5 out of 5 stars.