Books Read: January 2021

Instead of my annual end-of-the-year report on books read, I decided to do it month-by-month.  Why?

Because I can, of course.

So, in January, I knocked off ten books.  I'll admit that one of them was really short and geared towards kids but hey, the others were pretty substantive on the whole, mostly.  Whatever.  I read a lot, which is one of my goals for this year.

Well, truth to tell, it's the only goal I've actually set for myself so far.  Pretty easy to do, too.  Set the bar low for 2021 -- I think that's a sound strategy, don't you?

Right.  Here are my January 2021 Books Read, in the order of finishing:

I decided to re-read the Holmes canon.  This is one of the four novels, and except for the lengthy "story within the story" bit, it held up pretty well.

The Cards Can't Lie was purportedly a history of playing cards, but its focus was so solidly on the tarot deck that I found it disappointing and rather a slog to get through.  Only a few short chapters address anything other than the tarot cards.  

This was my "cheat" book -- geared to middle-grade readers, short, lots of illustrations, took about an hour to read.  Charming drawings by the author.

The second novel in my pursuit of all things Holmes and Watson.  

A succinct history of Hanford's role in the Manhattan project, with plenty of photos.  Decent enough intro, though a bit narrow in focus (mostly about life at the site works).  

An illustrated collection of newspaper and magazine articles about all things Holmes/Doyle, from the 1890s through the 1960s.  For diehard fans only.

A different view of what Hanford wrought, through the eyes of a naturalist surveying the lands that were left undisturbed for 60 years because of the security buffer around the Manhattan Project and its aftermath.  The Reach is now a National Monument.  Susan Zwinger is the daughter of Ann Zwinger, a naturalist who wrote a favorite of mine, A Desert Country Near the Sea, about the Baja Peninsula.  

And again, the Holmes re-read continued with this collection of short stories.  Good stuff, all in all.

I stopped reading Penny's series about Quebec detective Gamache many years ago, due to what I felt was character assassination for the sake of more melodramatic plots.  I decided to give it another try, starting where I'd left off (this is number 7 in the series).  I'm sorry to say that despite good writing overall, the melodrama continued to annoy me.  It's a pity, because I do like Armand Gamache, and his second-in-command, but the storyline was not to my taste.  And I really, really disliked the major (and recurring) characters of Clara Morrow and her husband Peter, both artists, who I find weak-minded, and self-centered, with childish emotions.  No thank you.  I'm done.

This biography came out in 2017, and it's excellent.  Leonardo was a fascinating man who had a habit of not finishing what he started -- in too many fields to list -- and still managed to accomplish ten times more astonishing works than anyone else did during the Italian Renaissance.  Who would have predicted that an illegitimate, gay, left-handed vegetarian would become famous in his own time, patronized by dukes, princes, and kings--and lauded, applauded, and beloved nearly everywhere he went?   

The reproductions of the art and the notebooks are quite decent for a relatively inexpensive paperback.  The best book I read in January.   

"Talent hits the target no one else can hit.  Genius hits the target no one else can see."   (Schopenhauer)

Sums it up nicely.

Dachshund Pics Galore

 There are a lot of pics of Truman and Pippin in this post, but first, I shall get the art stuff out of the way.

The Zoom sketch practice group met FOUR TIMES this past week!  Goodness.  The first photo we chose to draw from was a scene of colorful pots, which I did in pencil and watercolor:

The next day, I was late to the meeting due to technical issues, and by the time I got sorted out, the group had already chosen a tree photo.  I remembered drawing the same tree a few months earlier, but the others did not recall doing it, so decided to go ahead and do it again.  

I did not enjoy drawing it back then, and didn't like the result.  So I opted to do it the second time using Adobe Fresco on the iPad just for fun.  

Here is the first drawing from a few months ago, done in colored pencil (messy, if you ask me!):

And here is the digital version (a bit more colorful!):

I really do not enjoy drawing trees.

Another drawing from last week was of a Notre Dame gargoyle.  Everyone else drew just the statue, but I like to put in everything in the photo, and over-achieve.  It wasn't entirely successful, but not too shabby.

I typically use pen and watercolor or pen and colored pencil for these practice sessions, but this past week it was mostly watercolor alone.  My absolute favorite drawing, not just for last week but probably over the past several months, was done with a very simple pencil sketch and then just watercolor.  It was of a doorknob -- though it was a fabulously fun doorknob.  

Here is the intriguing photo we worked from:

Challenges all over the place!  The reflection on the knob!  The hard lines of the wood next to the soft fuzzy reflection in the glass!  The white spaces and lines!  Whee!!

I totally loved every minute of painting this piece, and of meeting those challenges.  I used dry-brush watercolor technique for the doorknob, wood, and icy white-blue frames of the window, and then used wet-in-wet technique for the landscape reflection.  The result made me very very pleased:

So that was a full and formative week of art!

And now here is what you've been waiting for:  WIENER DOGS!

Recently, I bought new beds for the Hounds.  Most of the time, they sit near me on the sofa, but at times they like to use an actual dog bed.  Pippin's new bed arrived a few weeks ago and he has been enjoying it (much softer and plumper than his previous one).  Truman somehow knew it belonged to Pippin, and left it alone.

This week, Truman's new bed arrived.  He immediately claimed it as his own:

Pippin, however, decided perhaps he needed a second bed, and went on the attack:

His attempt at a takeover was momentarily successful:

But Truman soon wrestled him out of the bed, and defended his new territory:

In the end, Pippin backed down, and has since acknowledged that this bed is Truman's.

They have achieved detente.

In other adventures, we visited our favorite new walking place, the Columbia Point natural area, twice last week.  

On one of those visits, I spotted a winter-plumage Common Loon on the river!

Here is what the Hounds typically look like when I announce that we are going for a walk:

Full of tail-wagging joy!

And here is what they look like halfway through our walks:

This is their "CAN WE GO HOME NOW?"  pose.  Yay.

They are always twice as eager to go back to the car as to walk away from it.  Go figure.

Our second outing to the Point was on a cloudless day, and though it was only 40 degrees out, the brilliant sunshine made it feel much warmer.  

We spotted several groups of alert Canada Geese trying to hide among the sagebrush.

Because it was so lovely out, we went farther than usual, and found a pleasant viewpoint.

The Hounds enjoyed the trails.

This area is close to where the Yakima River empties into the Columbia.

Truly a beautiful spot.

Here we are heading back towards the car, which is parked just on the other side of that overpass.

Pippin is eager to go home!

That's all (and quite a lot, I must say) for now.

Have a great week, and stay safe out there!

Take Last Week's Post and Repeat

 Sometime I may be able to do something different than draw stuff, walk the dogs, and decorate my home, but last week was not that week.

No, I did the same thing as the week before, right down to replacing light switch plate covers.

Here is the boring, ordinary style of plate cover in the main bathroom:

And here is the charming and colorful style of plate cover now in place:

Sadly, most of the switches in the house are of the "rocker" type, which take up too much of the cover's decorative space, such as this one in the library:

It is most vexing!  However, I did manage to find a cover that worked for this room, which is decorated with a lot of beach-themed stuff (including lighthouses):

So that was fun.

Speaking of lighthouses, one of our Zoom sketch practice drawings was of a lighthouse!  It was not an ideal picture to draw from, as the lighthouse was small, and there were far too many complex rocks, but I did my best (using ink and watercolor):

We have been taking more time with our Zoom meetings lately -- they used to be one hour, but now we tend to go for 90 minutes, which is good, because we've often chosen complex reference photos lately.

This is the other drawing we did -- I definitely needed the entire hour and a half to render this street scene (using ink and colored pencils):

And here it is after adding the colored pencil:

And finally, no week would be complete without a cute dachshund pic.  This is Truman and Pippin lounging on the chaise in the library:

This is our favorite spot in the afternoons, when I like to get a bit of reading in.  I'm determined to improve my book reading this year, having read only a pathetic 46 books last year (about half of a typical year's total).  So far, so good--I've read seven books this year. 

I like to have one work of fiction and one of nonfiction (often two) going at the same time.  I like to read nonfiction during the day and fiction in the evening.  My current books are The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (I've been rereading the whole Holmes canon), and Leonardo da Vinci, a recent (2017) biography by Walter Isaacson which is excellent.

That's all for now -- have a lovely week!

Fun with Home Decor

 I am always looking for ways to make my home more interesting, and recently decided the light switch plate covers were boing.  So that obviously required changing.

The old plate covers are perfectly nice, and their style goes with the closet and room doors, but still -- BORING:  

Look at the fabulous ones I found:

I got two of these, to replace the rocker switch covers in the kitchen and dining room.  They make me very happy.

I have three more coming soon, in a different style, for one of the bedrooms and one of the bathrooms.

When I posted the above pics to Facebook, my friend Mary said she had replaced hers by way of decoupage.  OOH.  THAT gave me ideas.  All I needed was the right photo for one of the older, flip-switch plate covers.  

And I found the PERFECT one:

Aziraphale, the angel from Good Omens, looks so wonderfully startled and confused in this picture, which delightfully expresses his feelings about suddenly acquiring a new nose:

So that worked out well.

The rest of the plate covers are rocker switches with grooved surfaces, which don't work well with decoupage, so they will have to be replaced with store-bought ones.  Oh, well.  At least I have one fun cover.

The Zoom sketch group met twice last week, as usual.  We did some desert rocks, which I did not like, and did not do all that great a drawing of, but oh well.  It's just for practice.

The second picture was of a snowy section of Hadrian's wall, which I also had some trouble with, but I like the result better than the first effort.

And last, but hardly least, the Hounds got a good walk in on one of the warmer days (it's been quite nice for Winter, in the mid-to-high 40s).

I found a new trail that I like a lot.  We've been to this area before--it's called Columbia Point, a triangular section of natural habitat jutting into the river.  But I stuck to the wider trails or paved trails on previous visits, and didn't find them all that exciting.

But on this visit, I noticed an offshoot trail from the main one, which was narrower, and which ran alongside the river instead of through the middle of the sagebrush.

It was lovely, and out of the way, and we had it completely to ourselves.  It was short, though--only a quarter mile or so.  It ended at this viewpoint:

There were hundreds of wigeons here.

This is what most of the area looks like--a huge triangle of sagebrush:

We much preferred the riverside trail.  I'll definitely be back.

That's all for this week.

Stay safe and sane out there!