TALE OF BENJAMIN BUTTON FOR ARC AUGUST

Read on my Kindle

Here's my review and artwork for August's Artful Readers Club.  I wanted to read 'The Curious Tale of Benjamin Button' by F Scott Fitzgerald because we have the DVD and I always like to compare a movie with the original story.  Have you read 'Chocolat' by Joanne Harris and seen the movie with the lovely Johnny Depp?  Then you will know how different a film can be from the original book.

The only thing the film of 'The Curious Case of Benjamin Button' has in common with Fitzgerald's story is the title and the concept of someone being born old, living backwards and dying as a newly-born baby.  I felt Fitzgerald cheated a little here because Benjamin should have lived another nine months in the womb going backwards until he was a mere speck in the process of his creation.   It is a case of the film being so different that Fitzgerald ought to be given the opportunity to write the book of the movie if he were still alive.

And the film was better!

My version of Benjamin Button.  I think I would have enjoyed a book about these fellas instead.

Although I realised that this was only one story in a book of short stories, I expected it to take up a good proportion of the book, so it was rather a disappointment to find how quickly it ended.  When I was quite young I read a couple of Fitzgerald books and never took to his writing, and I have to say that his style doesn't appeal to me enough to read any more of his books.  In fact I'm not even tempted to read the other short stories in this book.

There's not a lot I can say about the story.  Benjy is born very old, which he objects to.  The story rambles through his life backwards in what I found was a rather pedestrian and uninspiring manner.  Sorry all you Fitzgerald fans.

ARTWORK

I was stumped to come up with an idea for the artwork, which is always the case if I haven't enjoyed or been inspired by a book.  Then I remembered reading a sentence that said various newspapers of the day ridiculed Benjamin by drawing him with the body of a fish, the body of a snake, or with horns.  That gave me a start.

This is the final piece of artwork.   

You will notice that the central figure has a tail and pitchfork as well as horns.  I thought just giving him the horns was a bit wimpish, so I gave him a bit more of a devilish appearance.

This is how I created and put the whole thing together:

I started by drawing the three figures with a Pitt Artist's pen, and painted them with Inktense pencils and a little water.

For the background I worked through various ideas in my mind, but decided in the end to cut up pieces of newspaper and glue them randomly on a sheet of paper, to represent the newspapers that were always commenting on his strange life.  I gave the newspaper background a sepia tone on Photoshop and reversed it just in case it was possible to read some of the modern text.

Then I needed a clock to indicate the reversal of the passage of time, though it is still the right way round in the picture above.  I forgot to keep the original picture before starting to alter it and had already faded it out a little and added some white lines across the clock rim.  I think the image came from a shop catalogue but I can't remember which.

I flipped the clock to indicate the reversal of time. Then I merged the three images together on Photoshop.  It took a little messing about because they were all different sizes, but I managed it in the end.  I finished off by adding the name of the book by copying the title text from the book cover.

I didn't have any faith in the whole image right from the beginning and found it hard to persevere.  It was only the absolute lack of any other idea that made me soldier on.  And you know what?  I was really happy with it in the end.

It only 'shows to go', as we often say.

IT'S ALL MY OWN FAULT - MARCH BOOK REVIEW AND ARTWORK FOR A.P.R.

The 'frieze' above is a Photoshop montage/colour-change of one of the artwork images for my March book for the Artful Reading Club.  For some obscure reason I had downloaded to my Kindle "The Secret History of the Pink Carnation" by Lauren Willig.

WHAT ON EARTH HAPPENED TO ME!  Was I so entranced by the title and price of 99p that I didn't read the reviews and 'look inside the book' facility on the Kindle Daily Deal?  I think so, fool that I am.  It's exactly the sort of book I take care to steer well clear of. 

To help you (and me) through this review I'll scatter the sketches I painted for the artwork - and they are relevant ... (ish) ....  

So the choice of book was all my own fault.  I respect the fact that many people enjoy this type of book, but it's just not for me.

But as a true blue member of the ARC I gritted my teeth and read every page when I would otherwise have ditched it on page 10. 

It's a historical romance, linked with a modern-day equivalent romance, and with the emphasis on ROMANCE.  

GOOD POINTS:

I'm a very fast reader and, to face the challenge of getting through it, I put my skates on.  Because of the 'quality' of the writing I was able to whizz through the pages so quickly the page-turn button got hot.  

In fact I was able to start my April book halfway through February, so that must be a good point.

Another good point - you DON'T have to add this to your own ever-growing list of books to read.

BAD POINTS

Researching and writing a book is not easy, and I don't like to be too dismissive of what is clearly a very popular book.  It's simply that I was the wrong audience.  

The author had done her research, but it was the way she used it that grated on me - the flippant tone and constant anachronisms,  silly unreal situations, and her writing style.

When I was a very young teenager I read everything I could find of Georgette Heyer and loved it, but that was a long, long time ago.

This was Georgette Heyer meets Barbara Cartland (not read any of hers) on a really, REALLY bad day.  

Here are a couple of samples, describing the heroine:  "With a toss of her mahogany curls '' and "her face was a talented engraver's etching, small and decisive, her cupid's bow of a mouth in constant movement, exclaiming, talking, laughing".  

I really haven't the patience to describe the horribility of my experience with this book.  Suffice it to say the real finishers for me were the ridiculous passionate sex scenes (what my Eng Lit teacher used to call 'purple painted patches'). 

The only way I got through it all was to read it as though it were a farce/comedy.  I deserve an A.R.C. medal at the least.

The link of my artwork  to the story is that Napoleon's collection of Egyptian Antiquities is constantly referred to.

I'm bonkers about ancient Egyptian history and artwork, and Napoleon's collection gave me an excuse to refer to my ancient Egypt books and do a bit of Egyptian doodling as well.

So, here's the actual artwork - just a page of sketches in a large sketchbook, but I enjoyed myself greatly with these.  Hope you like them.   

THE LAST TELEGRAM - ARTFUL READERS - FEBRUARY REVIEW

My February book for the Artful Reader's Club was 

The Last Telegram by Liz Trenow,

read on my Kindle for 99p - a bargain for such a good book.

----oOo----

And for a bit of relevant history, this is the actual telegram that my mother received in 1942 when my father's ship was sunk in WW2 (but with the personal details blanked out).

  

NEGATIVES FOR 'THE LAST TELEGRAM':

• Um ..... um ........ um ...... um ..... can't think of any negatives

POSITIVES:

• I loved every page of this book, informative, emotional and true to life, well-paced, with believable characters, and very well written
• The WW2 background is about events I lived through, which gave it a special resonance for me, though the war is not the main focus.
• I learnt things I never knew, or things I hadn't realised or given thought to previously, so it kept my interest going all the way through
• Reduced to basics it's about silk, silk manufacture, love, prejudice against those who are 'different', and, I realised at the end, about how WW2 gave women the opportunity to move towards greater emancipation
• The silken thread that holds the story together is love of many kinds, including the tenderest of love stories whose quality pervades the whole of the book
• No romping, steamy sex passages, just a beautifully crafted story that rings true on every page
• As the end of the book approached the tears flowed fairly regularly, not really because the events were sad, but because of the tenderness with which the story is told
• I often find the conclusion of a book disappointing, but The Last Telegram sustained its quality right to the very last page, and the author's comments at the end were just as interesting
• Husband enjoyed it just as much
• I gained so much from reading it, and I hope you are encouraged to add it to your Wish List.

ARTWORK:

Such a full book that I wondered how I would find one image that picked out the central focus of the story for me.

As I finished the last page, this image jumped into my mind and I just drew it straight away.

I had to resist frequent temptations to 'improve' it 

because it just felt 'right' to me.

Pitt Artist's Pen and Inktense Pencils

Jez

ARTWORK AND REVIEW FOR JANUARY 'ARTFUL READERS'

                  MY FIRST 'ARTFUL' BOOK OF THE YEAR

Positives 

• This was a successful 'in-betweener', easy reading and light-hearted,  the kind I like to read between more serious books.
• I read it in just a few hours in my coffee breaks - it's one of those books I keep meaning to put down and then find myself well into the next chapter and into the next coffee break.
• It's unlike anything I've read before, beautifully daft, tongue-in-cheek, great fun, with a bit of black humour.
• Cleverly alternates between the present and past, with the great idea of the hundred-year-old-man acting as an unlikely catalyst in events of world importance.

Slightly less positive aspects - but not really negative ones

• As with most books, there are a few slow, patchy or repetitious pages, but it's well worth getting through those for the entertainment of the rest of the book.
• Perhaps readers much younger than me may not know of all the historical people and events, and may not enjoy those sections as much as I did.  Yes, there is a flavour of 'Forrest Gump' in there.
• Disappointed that I finished it so quickly - I'll read it again!

ARTWORK INSPIRED BY THYOMWCOOTWAD

     

As children my sister and I drew simple comic strips, and later I drew them for my young kids.  This story was so visual that I kept seeing it as a comic cartoon.  OK, elephants aren't pink, but grey elephants would have looked very dull, and given the quantities of alcohol imbibed in the story pink ones seem appropriate. 

I hope you enjoy it as much as I enjoyed doing it.