Hieronymus Bosch: Visions and Nightmares

 By Nils Büttner

This book was not an easy read. It requires more concentration than I afforded it. I believe it is divided into chapters in a way that makes sense, and there are some enlightening descriptions of some of the paintings (and color reproductions of them are included, sometimes with enlarged details). But it often feels too scholarly for a lay reader. I did enjoy the artwork and especially seeing the sketches Bosch made (see below). [non-fiction, 208pp. including references and index]

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Country, Park & City: The Architecture and Life of Calvert Vaux

By Francis R. Kowsky

I like learning about the lives of people who made a huge difference in my life and the lives of many others. Calvert Vaux is one of them. A co-designer of Central Park (together with Frederick Olmsted), he revolutionized the idea of what park is for, re-envisioned apartment buildings, and the importance of incorporating architecture wisely in the landscape. This book does a good job describing all this, with added notes about his life and misfortunes, though it does tend to go into more architectural detail than I find necessary for a lay person like me. [320pp plus notes and index]

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Love Unknown: The Life and Worlds of Elizabeth Bishop

By Thomas Travisano

This is a biography of a poet I've never heard of before, though she has been known and respected from a young age, and her reputation has increased as she aged and further after her passing. Her childhood was not typical and neither was the life she lived as an adult. Her father died when she was only 8 months old, and her mother was committed to a mental health institution when she was five. She grew up with relatives and never felt she had a home of her own until much later in life. This book describes her travels and life in Europe, Key West, Brazil, and various places in the US, while weaving her poems into the context of the life she lived while writing them and the scenes in her life she was describing in them. [Non fiction; 422pp, including notes and index]

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The Teacher

 By Michal Ben-Naftali

A story about a teacher who writes about her high school English teacher, who killed herself some months after the narrator's graduation. Nobody new much about the teacher. She was there and not there. Not sharing her past and her life with her students. Not with words, anyway. It was the narrator's job to piece out what information she could find and invent the rest to tell the story of the teacher, treading carefully, not to offend the late teacher, claiming it's all fiction. The teacher grew up in Hungary and was sent to the ghetto during the war, when she was in her twenties. She was part of the rescue deal known as the Kastner Train. [English translation; 196 pp.]

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The Butterfly Lampshade

 By Aimee Bender

A book about a girl whose mother's illness takes her away from her home to find a new home and family with her aunt. Weird things happen to the girl. images of things come alive, except they're dead. Are these things real? Is she imagining all that? It is a lovely story and beautiful writing. [285pp.]

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Beatrix Potter: A Life in Nature

 By Linda Lear

A very detailed biography of an amazing woman. No, she wasn't perfect (for example, she was against women suffrage) but she was ahead of her time in so many other ways! Including the preservation of land and animals in England's Lake District. With the money she made from publishing her wonderful books, she bought 14 farms in the area with the intention of leaving them for the National Trust. She was also a breeder of award-winning Herdwick sheep, not too conservative to avoid trying new veterinary approaches. Really amazing reading about her. It took me a long time, and now all I want to do is watch videos about her and about where she spent most of her adult life, including two world wars. [biography, 583 pp. (including notes, index, etc.)]

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Glikl, Memoirs 1691-1719

Presented by Chava Turniansky

This was quite a journey in time and spce, to late 17th century Europe, following the life and stories of one woman and her family. Glikl (official name is Gluk) was a Jewish woman of the merchant class who tells in her own words (translated from Yiddish and Hebrew) what women like her at the time were living like and what was on her mind. Obviously, religion was a big part, the belief in the afterlife and the importance of penance and suffering. At the same time, money-making was a big part of her life as well. She was a very successful businesswoman, both before and after her first husband's death, lamenting the misfortunes/ineptitude of her sons in their businesses and having to always help them to get them out of trouble, and later her second's husband's bad lack and loss of fortune. Also interesting to see how common power shifts were in the area (today's Germany, France, Belgium) and their effects on the Jewish communities there.

Her words are accompanied by notes from Turniansky, which are sometimes helpful and interesting (other times they are stating the obvious, or are reference pointers). 

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