Books

On My Reading List

~ Martha B.

#34- Interior Design- ‘Every Room Should Sing’ by Beata Heuman, 2021.

“Working out your style is never straightforward. We are bombarded with images of how the ideal home should look. You are given the top ten interior trends to follow, only for them to change a few months later, leaving you sitting in your newly renovated Memphis-style kitchen…feeling not quite right. Interior design has long been an aspirational field, and it is easy to become preoccupied with trying to copy the perfect look. But the truth is that if you try to completely imitate another person’s style, you will always fall slightly short…

…There’s a lot of joy in expressing one’s individuality. It is freeing. It can be exhilarating. It can also be pretty irresistible when you see the unabashed, true character of another individual. It may be very different from yours, but it is all the more alluring for it. Therein lies the secret of any work of art that touches me, books that make me think, rooms that linger in my mind and people whose spirit intrigues me.”

On My Reading List

~ Martha B.

#33- Biography. ‘Dutch Girl: Audrey Hepburn and World War ll‘ by Robert Matzen, 2019.

” But the war was chasing Audrey. The war had been tailing her for the past forty-seven years, a relentless pursuer. She gave energy for eating too much and too little because of the war. She gave energy to keeping the secrets of her mother. She had started smoking to celebrate war’s end and never stopped. Above all, she felt it was her duty to walk with children who today faced what she had once faced when cruel warmongers had decided the fate of innocents. The war was catching up now and the long, black shadow of its hand reached out. ‘I’m running out of gas,’ she said. And there was still so much to do.”

The Gravity Of Time

~ Martha B.

“Now, as I approach the age that Strand was then, I get it. Perhaps it’s an age-appropriate thing, this deep communion with the natural world. Although it’s not always as simple as it first appears. One sees this return to simplicity throughout the history of art, when toward the end artists often discover the meaning of the seasons, or meditate on nature, or death, in the manner of their time, and with its various methods of expression. Perhaps it’s the winding down of ambition and the measuring of the time that is left that draws us toward this simplicity, within which lies the subtle complexities of nature that are often hidden from the eyes of the young.” – Photographer Joel Meyerowitz’s essay for ‘The Garden At Orgeval’ by Paul Strand.

A Page From…

~ Martha B.

…’The Wisdom Of Donkeys’ by Andy Merrifield, 2008 .

” A donkey’s tail is different from a horse’s: less proud, less flamboyant, more disheveled like a cow’s, more Zen-like in it’s rumpled simplicity, with its short body hair and tuft at the end. It’s somehow just there: a frayed, everyday rudder without pretense.”

(Photo- Martha Browne)