I need to catch up on my reading

I love my printed words

Thomas the Unbelievable has a point

I'm currently reading a book I got as a present for my birthday from Dr Livingstone.
It's called: 'De ongelovige Thomas heeft een punt'.
Translated: Thomas the Unbelievable has a point.
It's a 'manual for critical thinking'.
Actually it goes through the very basics and explains logical fallacies, the tricks the brain plays on us like wishful thinking etc and how people use that to trick people.
Examples like the basketball-gorilla thing, a whole chapter on Randi debunking Geller, Houdini vs Conan Doyle etc.
Most of the stuff I already know through the SGU podcast. I haven't been listening for aaaages due to lack of time.
But some interesting things (so far) and some basic stuff I hadn't heard of like the hot hand fallacy.

They put up a website to illustrate some of the bits in the book. It's quite cool, it has all kinds of youtube movies, bits of lectures and so on grouped per chapter.

I've read 1/3 of the book so far. I'm going to the hairdresser in a bit, I hope to read on in there.

Bookbending the rules

Here's more stupid from one of the other continents in the Western hemisphere!

I ordered a book online. I've had trouble with couriers leaving a parcel at the door without me signing for them. That's not the actual problem, but when I get home it has usually rained half the day and my book is soggy.
Not all shippers wrap the book in some kind of extra plastic for weather proofing.

So: I hung up a sign next to the front door saying 'please leave parcel in car port so contents does not get wet'.
Usually if I'm not home, the courier leaves a note in the letterbox, bla bla, will call again tomorrow...
You know the drill.

Now I had a track & trace number on the parcel and it said 'delivery executed today at 8.17pm'.
But I was home yesterday and I saw no courier and did not have a book, albeit it being pre-paid.

So me, this morning, on the phone to the customer service of the book shop complaining about the missing parcel.
The help desk person sent me the slip of the shipping note, because 'somebody' had signed for it.
I opened up the email attachment and: lo and behold: someone had forged my signature.
Me very angry about this of course. This is not the first time I had trouble with the shipping company before (not FEDEX fyi).
Help desk person said she'd log a complaint with shippers (also not their first complaint either) and refund me for missing book.

Me slightly disappointed at not having book, but relieved at someone sorting problem out.

This afternoon when I got home I decided to ransack the car port in case I missed the parcel before going to the police to file a complaint for identity and property theft.
So after a good 15 second rummage around: Lo and behold: parcel left there by courier. DOH!
Me on the phone again with customer service to plead with them to drop the complaint against shipper.
Book Lady: 'Too late, I've already sent the complaint (where's inefficiency when you need it!). I don't think it is very nice of someone to forge your signature anyway.'

Moral of the story:
1) Me ashamed for tricking a courier into breaking the rules and him/her signing off on a parcel that should have been taken away again.
2) Me worried because said courier will have received a complaint against him/her from the people upstairs and will never ever again leave my parcel in the dry car port of the unthankful people ordering books.
He/she was being altruistic and I jumped to conclusions too easily.

Mea maxima culpa.

But I have my book now, so I'm pleased right now.
If you're wondering which one, it's Architecture of the Night. The illuminated building edited by Dietrich Neumann.

Cemeteries of the Great War by Sir Edwin Luytens

I just can't help myself. I ordered another book just before the Easter weekend and it was here on Tuesday.
In light of the commemorations of the start of the First World War I'm sure I'm going to be doing some guided tours here and there, so to brush up on post-war building I am going to use Cemeteries of the Great War by Sir Edwin Luytens by architect Jeroen Geurst [OIO Publishers].

The book first of all puts Luytens work in the Interbellum context and then deconstructs every aspect of the cemeteries. From the shapes of the headstones to the trees and landscape layout.

The second part of the book is an alphabetical listing of most cemeteries with their most distinguishing features, 2D layouts (hurrah!) and 3D maps.
It has a very neat lay out, the book is decked out with nice pictures and the author's discourse is very clear and straight to the point.
The format is pretty practical to take with you to look something up if on site, albeit it being a good 470 pages.

Dat is architectuur

I've been ill the last couple of days. Another whopping big attack of sinusitis complete with fever, the works.
Typical, two weeks no classes because of the Easter holidays and I'm struggling with a blocked head.
In the mean time I'm trying to do serious reading work, working on a presentation due in three weeks, working on my paper and preparing for my exams at the end of term.

I finally got hold of the book that is compulsory reading for my Architectural Theory class Dat is Architectuur!
I ordered a second hand version of it last february (it was half the price of a new edition) but the delivery service (TNT) couldn't find my house and subsequently lost the entire shipment.
Luckily I got a refund. I'm not going to order anything anymore through the bookshop's webshop if it can only be delivered through via courier.
So I went to the shop and bought a new book.

More lives than one

Today, a new book was delivered by the postman, who, very annoyingly, drove his moped all the way up to our front door!
It's More Lives Than One(1938) by Claude Bragdon, best known for being the architect who designed the New York Central Station, Rochester, N.Y. (alas, demolished).
I came across Mr Bragdon while doing research for my paper on electrical lighting in churches and he seems to have dabbled in church and lighting design.
Bragdon is a very interesting, but strange character. He was a theosophist, following the writings of Madame Blavatsky.

On a different note, there is a very interesting book I recommend, alas it has not to my knowledge been translated yet.
It is De geheime wereld van James Ensor [The Secret World of James Ensor] by John Gheeraert.
I think it should be translated because it recounts a very interesting period in Ensor's life while Blavatsky was in Ostend writing her Secret Docrine (published in 1888) and, according to Gheeraert, he was fascinated with her and her ideas.

The author Gheeraart says: 'The key to Ensor's secret lies in his Brussels period. There he got into contact with the famous freethinker Ernest Rousseaux. I further discovered that the co-founder of the Theosophical Society, Helena Blavatsky, between 1886 and 1887 a year in Ostend and lived there her "secret doctrine" wrote the bible of the theosophists. My research showed that Ensor, in his most creative period, much of the esoteric works were derived from Blavatsky. But Ensor was also friends with famous Asia-traveler, Alexandra David-Neel. She also spent some time in Ostend. I discovered such totally unexpected sources that provided insights about a painter whose life is usually seen as 'boring'. "

The book does teeter on the edge of fiction as it is not a full-blown biography, but still some interesting stuff.

History of Modern Design

I'm puzzled at the postman. Apparently he was at the front door, I was home, but he never knocked and just left the parcel in the carport.

He was bringing a book I ordered, which is additional reading for the Art & Design class I'm taking this semester.
It's the second edition of History of Modern Design by David Raizman.

I'm still expecting another book, up until yesterday. I had ordered it on the 17th of February and it still hadn't arrived. I phoned up the book store, I looked at the shipping status and it said 'unknown address, parcel has been returned'.
Great.
So much for the stupid parcel courier who failed to use his brains and turned into Mr Lazybones.

I just asked the kind lady from the customer service to ship it to their nearest book branch, I'd rather pick the book up myself.
That would save me: a) time b) a lot of frustration.
My guess is they would have re-shipped it again and the same dipstick would have failed to find the house for a second time.
I need this book for my Architecture Theory course and I'm growing impatient...

Reading assignment

I got a small reading assignment for my class on Conservation of Monuments.
It's Meer dan hout en Steen. Handboek voor sluiting en herbestemming van kerkgebouwen by Harry Bisseling, Henk de Roest & Peet Valstar (eds.). It's a recent publication (2011) published by the protestant Uitgeverij Boekencentrum.

The closure of churches is a higly topical subject and the book looks like it has a well thought about structure, but I'm a bit worried the anecdotal/religiously inspired side of the book will overpower the researched part.
Nothing wrong with that, but not an angle law-makers or estate agents will be interested in.
I'm preparing a presentation for my fellow students (all of them architect-engineers) on this book, it's due within a couple of weeks.

Small book gems

I managed to contain myself and put most of the books back I had picked up.
I walked away with just two!
One of the books is a guide to the South Kensington Museum. It is a catalog printed in 1897 and sold in the museum in that same and the following year.
It is in pristine condition and lardered with funny ads, nice crisp ground floor plans of the Science and Art museums. A true gem at only 3€.

And then another surprise as I unearthed a catalogue of the Salon d'Anvers of 1855. I worked on the Salon on 1843, I bought this as a little memento. It feels like I stole it from the archive and now treasure it like some art thief who steals for pleasure.
A stamp on the inside does tell me it once belonged to the collection of the Antwerp city library. I should wrap it in some protective paper, the back is half torn and it is an annoted page. This rare thing set me back just 10€, so I stayed below the 20€ threshold I had agreed with myself.
And I managed to save on a train fare this morning, as the conductor failed to show up. So I have permitted myself to spend an extra 3,90 + 7€, if I have some more time to spend idle amongst volumes of knowlegde.

The Irony Elephants are back

I was trying to remember the title of the Agatha Christie novel I am currently reading. It has the word 'elephants' in the title.
So my memory come up with 'Elephants never forget'.
A good title by any standards, but not a novel by written by Agatha.
The book I am really reading is called 'Elephants can remember'.
It is obvious that ze little grey cells are not what they used to be...

Books & Boots

I could not help but linger in front of the disgarded book section in the faculty library.
I picked up yet another book for some public transport reading. This time I found a neatly bounded hard cover volume (all black, no letters on the cover). It is called The Battle for Modernity and neatly groups the social movements and denominations in Europe since 1830. This is volume 10 in the Kadoc-studies series. It should give me some extra background info or some little sparks for new ideas for my big paper I'm writing on and should be due around June.

And I went on a double shopping shoe spree when I headed over to the store to get some copy paper.
I bought two (!) pair of boots (the kind Dr Livingstone likes) and a new wallet.
That'll be enough for the rest of the decennium me thinkst (shoe-wise).

Tomorrow there is a book sale at the University Central Library and I might browse around...

Looking at the title of this little blog post; would that be an idea for a bookshop come shoe shop? A walhalla for the educated woman? You already have these coffee-bookstore things.
Why not shoes and books? I think I have just coined the brand name right here and now. Books & Boots. Oh wait. My google-fu just came up with the Richmond Walking & Book Festival 2011.
Right.

Moar Books

I'm all keyed up for the book sale on the 23rd and 24th. I picked up a leafled as I was leaving my faculty library on Thursday evening.
The Central University Library is selling off their double or irrelevant volumes. Maybe I can unearth a little gem. Who knows. I must however agree with myself on the maximum amount I am willing shall allow myself to spend.
There is no place for new books. And actually no money come to think of it. I think the only ones I am allowed to buy are the ones we can chuck into the fire to keep warm this coming winter. Those stupid petrol prices keep going up. Where's a good recession when you need really need one?

A scolarly day

I had a lovely day today: all my time I had today was spent immersed in books, history, architecture and paper writing.
I feel elated and don't really know why.
The train ride was spent by further reading the Loving Frank novel, the connecting bus ride was the same.
The an architectural theory lecture on a fascinating architect I seem to have a faint memory of having seen some of his work: Juliaan Lampens. His puristic concrete architecture has a very Japanese feel to it when seeing '70's grainy pictures of the house he built in the late sixties/early seventies.

Then I dashed to the next lecture on Costume History. Don't know why but the professor just had to mention he heard a rumour Kate Middleton is pregnant. Makes you wonder what strange pre-occupations these academic scolars have...
Right. I missed professor emeritus Guy Delmarcel's book sale on the 4th floor of the faculty building during lunch hours.
I did manage to buy a book at the library sale (a steal at only 1€!) on Religious experience and aesthetic experience from professor J. J. Aerts' personal library (known for his psychological-anthropological approach toward literature and authors).

Then I spent a couple of agreeable hours finishing up a paper on the Pavilion of Catholic Life at the 1935 World Fair. Fascinating building designed by little know Belgian architect Henri Lacoste.
Will blog on that building in a seperate post.
Then I had to attend another lecture at half eight on Gothic churces in China. Again fascinating stuff.
And to top it all off: I found a book I had ordered on the doorstep. Luckily it hasn't rained today and this time the postman didn't try and stuff it all the way down the letter box. My guess is it was non too flexible and decided it would be best if he just left it out in the open instead of putting it in the car port where it would be safe in case of rain...


The book in question is Ingenieurs en Architecten op de drempel van een nieuwe tijd (1750-1830) by Dirk Van de Vijver. I'm hoping to get some inspiration out of it

Anyway, I'm growing sleepy and just waiting for Dr Livingstone to come home. He's had a decorator in and paint the walls of the workshop all nice and white.

Loving Loving Frank

I'm really loving Loving Frank by Nancy Horan. I was sucked into the book and nearly missed my train stop on the way back home this afternoon. I'm half way through till now.

A man came to measure up the windows and front door. He's making us a quote for new ones, which will save us quite some money in a couple of years. We want to have the whole house isolated so we can cut the costs on heating and so on.
We're doing it in phases as we still haven't won the lottery or found a duffel bag stuffed full of euro's on the doorstep left by an anonymous philantropist...

Loving Frank by Nancy Horan

The lecture finished ten minutes early on Monday so I managed to pop into the book shop on my way to the bus. I was looking for a Boudewijn Büch book on Goethe, but they didn't have any.
On my way out I skimmed a row of fiction novels and found a very cheap copy of Loving Frank by Nancy Horan. It's a novel about the love affair between Mamah Borthwick Cheney and architect Frank Lloyd Wright.
It was recommended to me as a little light reading by a professor of architectural theory.
It'll last me a couple of bus rides I guess.
I'm have a hard time concentrating on reading school stuff because of all the pointless banter all around courtesy of all my fellow passengers.

Books! Blogging! Blimey!

Hello everyone!

I've been out of the blogging loop for some time. I've hardly had time to gasp for breath once in a while.
I'm back at university, I've had a spell of heart trouble, we've been doing all sorts around the house, we've been busy at the workshop etc. etc. etc.

Best to start blogging again once in a while.
And my first post in a long time will be about ... BOOKS.
How could it not be?
I had a spare half hour before my next meeting for a talk I'm giving with two fellow students, so I strayed into a bookshop.
I got away with:
1) Barry Pitt, Zeebrugge: Eleven VC's before breakfast. A book on the Raid on Zeebrugge in 1918.
2) a book on Belgians in Somalia during operations in the early nineties
3) a book on an evolving borough from the mid 19th century up till the 70's
3) The bedside book of chemistry by Joel Levy. A book on -er- chemistry. I know, I'm a freak.
4) Michel Peeters, Beelden voor de massa: kunst als wapen in het Derde Rijk. A book on art and how it was used as a propaganda tool by Nazi Germany.


I did manage to update my LibraryThing now and then. Which I also other books too that are compulsory reading this semester.

The Methodologies of Art

Another book arrived in the post last week. I have only read thirtysomething pages of Laurie Schneider Adams The Methodologies of Art and can see plenty of things going awry. This is not a book I'm going to enjoy very much, as I'll get more and more frustrated as I progress.

In her preface she talks about the prolifiration of methodologies, but I am lacking a small side note to this: stressing that not all methodologies are equally 'scientific' or are masquerading as scientific.
She draws an analogy to the interpretation of dreams. 'Works of art, like dreams are multiply detemined'. Ok, I smell parapsychology right round the corner there. I do hope it was poetic license and not to be taken literally.

In the first chapter Adams tells the reader that all methods reinforce one another'. Again, this could very well be the case, but not all could pass the rigours of scientific research.

Anyway, I'm going to delve deeper into this book, and see if I can read on without bias.

The humanities have always teetered on the edge of 'pure' academic (=scientific) research, but it is just that fine line that needs a bit of scrutiny.

I have written on skepticism and art history before, maybe I should do a full length paper about it.

Moar books!

I have been a very naughty girl. I had to console myself after having those appalling exams. Two of my four books have already arrived. They're all architecture and course related. One of them is an obligatory read next semester. But I'm guessing here. None of the courses I take have summer reading.
So, on a quest to broaden my mind (or clutter it with unnecessary details) I surfed teh interwebs and ordered some at my favourite online bookstores. The ones I ordered cheap from Holland have arrived. One being delivered at 8.30 pm. Strange hours for a parcel service. But anyway, two books added to my Librarything.
Architectuur en kritiek van de moderniteit by Hilde Heynen has an endorsement on the sleeve by Kenneth Frampton. I attended Heynen's architectural history of the 20th century classes last semester. Frampton 'Modern Architecture a critical history' was obligatory reading.

The other one is a liber amoricum for Ed Taverne called De Stad edited by Mieke Dings.

Two other books are making their way from the US. I don't expect them for another week or so. They were the cheapest editions I could find anywhere.

Crammed

I have proof our house is not the only place that is crammed with a ridiculous amount of books.
I was on the fifth floor of the faculty library. There is not enough room to navigate the shelves. You have to walk in sideways to get at the book. And then you need to bend through your knees and squat in a very inconvenient manner if you want to reach for a book if it is on the bottom shelf.
I had to take a picture and post it here -for added dramatic effect- because no one would believe me if I just mentioned how small it was. The yellow notebook is A5 format. It leaves just a little space left and right of it. A4 fills up the entire space. That's how small it is.