My next post for the #AlphabetHunt challenge by @barbara-orenya. This time we had to find words starting with letter 'T'. Pretty easy task, you will say? I lended the word 'Trouble' from @johannpiber's post (thank you, Johan!) -- cause it totally reflects my collision, I had too much brilliant entries to choose from, and it was a trouble, eventually it Turned into a no-go for me.
Then, I decided to make my life more complicated and to add extra restrictions -- to find the letter T exclusively on my bookshelves. A crushing success awaited me!
Also, I found out there exist a brand new community dedicated to books and reading: 'Hive Book Club'. I will make a cross-post there, and I hope, this blog will raise awareness about the said community and will be usefull... (well, unless the hiveans abandoned reading books at all, haha).
So... here we go.
T β Tolkien
First things first, right? JRRT was the 1st T I thought of.
Since my own and my wife's libraries merged, we have many different editions of same Tolkien novels. And after the birth of the child, we bought several more new ones! Most of all versions we have "The Hobbit".
If you can read, most probably you have been read this book once, or twice. Its a classic adventure, pirate and youth novel! 'Treasure island' by R.L.Stivenson. We've obtained this splendid fancy illustrated Russian edition of the novel for our baby and she became a fan almost instantly. And I totally cant remember what time it was for me, reading it - number 5, or maybe number 10?
If you are not totally alien to art books, you probably know this name. 'Taschen' is a venerable German publishing house that is creating excellent art books since the days of Albrecht DΓΌrer! No, just kidding: since 1980-es only. (Surprisingly, today its still run by the descendants of Benedict Tashen, who founded it.) Each library's structure over time become organized and takes its own unique shapes and certain direction; as a child I was buying a lot of sci-fi and later I was into history books, and after graduating from university I focused mostly on professional, reference and art books. 'Tashen' publishes two types of albums: solid compendiums, fully generalizing certain artist's heritage, and a light, "pop" versions of same books in paperbacks. Alas! even these lighter, cheaper versions were so expensive for me, that I always could afford to obtain much less than I wanted. I had to choose, and in the end, there are seven Tachen albums on my shelf today (there were eight, but I gave one to my friend). This is what I chose to get: Alphonse Mucha, Edvard Munch, Paul Klee, Amedeo Modigliani, Wassily Kandinsky, Dadaism, Antoni Gaudi, Maurits Escher. (I also have a great book on Pablo Picasso in different, then Tachen, edition).
I have got both the Russian and English editions; what can I say? although Russian one is hard-bound, and original is a paperback, the original one I love far more - it is printed on a better, yellowish, thicker paper and is much more fancy.
'The Twelve Chairs' (in Russian: 'ΠΠ²Π΅Π½Π°Π΄ΡΠ°ΡΡ ΡΡΡΠ»ΡΠ΅Π²') is a classic satirical novel by Soviet authors Ilf and Petrov (1928). Its plot follows characters attempting to obtain diamond jewelry hidden in a chair. Its main character Ostap Bender is a brilliant example of intelligent swindler and trikster. The novel has been adapted to films (very successfull and popular). What makes this novel especially remarkable is -- its a whole encyclopedia of life in post-revolutionary Russia of 1920s, a satirical depiction of devastation in people's minds, the decline of culture and everyday life. This is a masterpiece of world literature! PS. The heroes suffered a fiasco and did not find the hidden diamonds in the end, so no happy ending! PPS. I am lucky to posess a special, upgraded edition, which has all the fragments deleted by the Soviet censorship restored. The novel became thicker by 30%!
English artist Eric Gill (1882-1940) is an iconic figure of the 20th century. An incredibly laborious and fruitful man, he left us a huge legacy: stone-carving, prints, illustrated bibliophile books, fonts, journalism ... Gill was a socialist and religious thinker, an implacable fighter against the vulgarity of industrialism in design. This iconic book, published in his own printing house Hague & Gill in 1931, focuses on typography during the era of industrialism. No, I will not recommend this book to everybody -- it is for those who dig as deeply as Gill. The Russian edition of 2018 was published using a crowdfunding scheme, and I am proud that I have participated in its publication as an investor.
All the images taken by me, as always. I considered this round other words that came to my mind, which finally lost their position to more successful rivals:
Those are all good things... but nobody can fit an unfittable, right? ΠΠ°ΠΊ Π³ΠΎΠ²ΠΎΡΠΈΠ» ΠΌΠΎΠΉ ΡΡΠ°ΡΡΠΉ Π½Π°ΡΡΠ°Π²Π½ΠΈΠΊ-ΡΠ΅Π΄Π°ΠΊΡΠΎΡ: "ΠΠ΅Π»ΡΠ·Ρ Π²ΠΏΠΈΡ Π½ΡΡΡ Π½Π΅Π²ΠΏΠΈΡ ΡΠ΅ΠΌΠΎΠ΅! Probably I will create an extra post with T-leftovers... I havent decided yet. There was so much good stuff prepared for this week!
Now I think its a right time to create an index to my posts for this great challenge.
