Book Report by Adela Meadows

One of the first things a guest blogger is asked to provide is a list of their favorite books so that they can be temporarily added to those already shown on something called Shelfari. Not yet being participants in the whole phenomenon of computerized networking…no FaceBook, MySpace, LinkedIn, Twitter, Flickr, etc…I’d never heard of Shelfari.

Turns out it’s owned by amazon.com, and since the vast majority of the stuff I read is not your normal fare, I suspected that Shelfari was not going to be familiar with most of it.

I read a lot; 99.9% of it non-fiction. When we shipped things to our Parisian pied-à-terre, I knew I was going to need a little something to read, so along came forty boxes of “bare necessity” books…each box filled with as many books that would fit in a space measuring 12 inches by 12 inches by 16 inches.

Last summer, when we relocated to our current apartment…same size, but different configuration…I was forced to cull deeper into my 92,160 cubic inches of books and ended up giving 150 books to the American Library in Paris. I suppose I could have sold them…as they were worth a pretty penny…but this way, I can go visit them and the separation is not quite as painful…for I’ve read all of my books…most of them so many times that I instantly know what passages can be found where.

The official list I submitted to Blogmistress Maggie consists of books that I thought Shelfari would be able to handle…including a copy of our book, bien sûr, because when you click on the image of a Shelfari book, you find a brief synopsis and as well you’re just a couple of clicks away from ordering it via amazon.com. (Although, if you want an autographed copy of our book, you still need to order it the old-fashioned way…through our website).

As I mentioned, most of my favorite reads are not to be found through normal channels since they are usually either not in English or are an out-of-print treasure uncovered somewhere in a dusty corner of a musty store specializing in old books. I have many books about many subjects…antiques, folk art, photography, history, and, of course, books about pottery from all over the world…including one large antique bookcase devoted solely to books on French pottery.

Narrowing it down to Quimper pottery, there are shelves filled with books ranging from this pioneer 1975 publication by Marjatta Taburet…

...right on up to the latest book on Quimper faïence saints…Terres sacrées by Antoine Maigné…

The five-volume Encyclopédie des Ceramiques de Quimper is a “no-brainer” favorite. Volume one covers the history of Quimper pottery from its origins to through the eighteenth century…

Volume two continues with the nineteenth century…

Volume three follows with the twentieth century…

Volumes four and five provide a wealth of information about some of the individual artists who contributed to the success of Quimper pottery; listed alphabetically, in volume four are the artists A through La…

...and volume number five, completes the artists...those from Le to Y...

Christian De la Hubaudière is well-represented in our stack of books, beginning with Quel tricentenaire?, which documents his search that led to the final establishment of the year 1708 as the true beginning of modern-day Quimper pottery production…

Then his three volumes of historical novels…if I’m going to do fiction, it’s historical…these just happen to be fictionalized accounts of the history of Quimper potters and pottery:

La Vierge de faïence was the first in the trilogy, it covers the beginning of faïence in Brittany up to the turn of the eighteenth century…

La Fille du faïencier continues the story with Marie Elisabeth Caussy as the title character…

...and Madame la faïencière completes her history…

L’Art de la Fayence des Caussy written by Christian De la Hubaudière with Chantal Soudée Lacombe…is a finite discussion of the Traité de la faïence completed in 1747 by Pierre Paul Caussy in which all the secrets that went into the making of Rouen faïence…which were eventually used in Quimper…are documented…

This book comes with a CD featuring a three-dimensional rendering of an early kiln that, unfortunately, I can’t seem to get to open…the CD, that is, not the kiln.

And I have every publication issued by the Museé de la Faïence…beginning with that first booklet about the 1931 Colonial Exposition…

…plus a ton of exhibition catalogs and lots of books published by the Musée Départemental Breton.

Representing Malicorne, I enjoy Les Faïences de Malicorne by Stéphane Deschang and Gilles Kervella…

…and Léon Pouplard (PBx)…faïencier à Malicorne by Alain Champion and Gilles Kervella…

For Niderviller, Luneville, and other vintage faïence from the Lorraine, Céramique Lorraine…chefs-d’oeuvre des XVIIIe & XIXe siècles, the catalog from a fabulous exhibit at Atlanta’s High Museum of Art, is the one I grab first…

And so on and so on…as you can imagine, if I were to list my favorite books on French pottery, it would be a very long list, indeed!

Some of my non-pottery-related favorites that I would recommend:

My old copy of Village in the Vaucluse by Laurence Wylie is high on the list...

French for Cats and Advanced French for Exceptional Cats both by Henri de la Barbe, aka Henry Beard...

The Historic Restaurants of Paris by Ellen Williams...

I also treasure Perfume from Provence written in 1935 by Lady Winifred Fortescue. Unfortunately, the dust jacket for my copy is long gone.

For an interesting insight into the French, I recommend The Frenchman and the Seven Deadly Sins by Fernando Diaz-Plaja...

The Superstitious Mind…French Peasants and the Supernatural in the 19th Century by Judith Devlin...

Wines of France by Alexis Lichine...we must have dribbled a wee bit of Château Pétrus 1982 on it...or was it the Château Le Pin 2000...as this one no longer has its dust jacket either.

And if after all that wine you can’t sleep? Grab your bedside copy of Histoires inédites du petit Nicolas by René Goscinny and Jean-Jacques Sempé and at least you’ll be a chuckling insomniac...

It also doubles as a French phrase book…for nowhere else will you come across the unique combination of vilain cafard…potentially useful as a retort should someone beat you to the last piece of chocolate cake or, heaven forbid, a piece of Quimper pottery at a brocante.

Which reminds me…for those of you who might shy away from a book because it is written in French…many, many French words are written exactly the same as they are in English…it’s the pronunciation that differs…and since in the privacy of your own easy chair you’re not pronouncing anything anyway, you’re already half way there…throw in the photographs and you’ve nothing to fear!

On my end table right now? A personally-autographed copy of Chroniques d’un vétérinaire atypique (Chronicles of an atypical veterinarian)...

Published using a pseudonym, the author is none other than Jean-Pierre’s veterinarian.