Down But Not Out

16x20tulip_garden_2001_reduced_webSorry for the sketchy silence, but we’re having (another) one of those weeks. Yesterday saw the arrival of a bill adjusting our gas bill (long story short, someone came out to read the meter the other day) $1500 to our detriment. Ouch.

Despite all that, it’s spring outside, and feeling like it for a change. I bought Hemingway the Cat a bunch of toys, including one that C had to use his manly-putting-together skills to assemble, and which I don’t believe Hem’s bothered sashaying inside yet. That’s what catnip is for.

I’ve been reading the excellent Mohr this week; Unbridled Books continues to impress with their extremely strong editorial taste and beautiful packaging chops. The author Frederick Reuss uses a series of real photographs from Germany in the 1920s and ’30s of exiled playwright and novelist Max Mohr and his wife Kathe (and their lovely daughter, Eva) as an organizing principle and a jumping off point. The book jumps expertly between Mohr in exile in Shanghai and Kathe at the farmhouse in Germany. I’m not quite finished with it yet and will likely have more to say. It’s such an elegant book. The combination of the photos (which Unbridled has incorporated into the book design) and Reuss’ excellent novel add up to something that feels like a much larger story. Markus Zusak’s The Book Thief is next in line and I think it will pair wonderfully with this book.

The image up and to the left is from the gorgeous X-Ray art of Judith McMillan. Worth checking out.

Good weekends all. Happy chocolate egg or stale marshmallow bird hunting, if that’s your thing.

2 thoughts on “Down But Not Out”

  1. Oh, ouch. I had a similar kind of experience once, in my old apartment. I’d been there just about two years when I got a note from Pacific Gas & Electric informing me that, due to clerical error on their part, they’d only been charging me for electric (and not gas) since I moved in. And they wanted me to pay them two years’ worth of gas bill, ASAP. It was not a happy day.

  2. That’s the sound of me planning to get a copy of Mohr. It sounds fantastic – in my review I will certainly credit you as the one who sent me in the direction of Unbridled Books!

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