Vinegar Girl, by Anne Tyler. Hogarth Shakespeare, 2016

In this contemporary retelling of Shakespeare’s “The Taming of the Shrew”, Kate Battista is less shrew than just someone who doesn’t quite fit into everyday society. Twenty-nine years old, she keeps house for her father and brings up her fifteen year old airhead sister, Bunny. Thrown out of college for telling a professor his description of photosynthesis was half-assed, she works as a classroom aid at a preschool, where the kids love her but the parents and teachers not so much. She is forthright with her opinions, never mean but just sort of missing the social niceties.  Her father is a typical absent minded scientist who is near to a big breakthrough on autoimmune diseases, but he has a problem: his brilliant assistant is about at the end of his work visa and will soon have to leave the country. His idea, of course, is for Kate-who he tells bluntly isn’t going to find a husband on her own anyway- to marry the assistant, Pyotr. Needless to say, this doesn’t go over well. Pyotr does his best to ingratiate himself to Kate, but English is a second language for him and despite being here for three years, American society baffles him. Like Kate, he has no filters and tells people what he thinks. Kate, Pyotr, and Dr. Battista all seem a bit Aspergean in their lack of social skills.

Thankfully, this isn’t a rom/com but an examination of men and women, social conventions, and how people are valued by others. It is light in tone but with a hard edge running under the surface. There were a few surprises, but the best one was Bunny, who turns out to be not the airhead she acts like. This was a light, enjoyable read, and I was surprised to find that Tyler not only moved the story to modern day, but changed the tale to fit modern day women. Not Tyler’s best work by far, but nice.

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I received this book free from the Library Thing Early Readers program. 

Neither of these things influenced my review. 

Alphonse Mucha: 1860-1939: The Artist as Visionary, by Tomoko Sato. Taschen

 Alphonse Mucha is, to me, one of the greats of Art Nouveau. His posters have been widely reproduced (especially the one for Job rolling papers!) and his sets of lithographs, like the ones of the seasons and the flower ones, show up a lot. They are all beautiful; both the beautiful women with their hair in curling tendrils, usually with large flowers decorating it, and the backgrounds and frames with all their stars and patterns and jewels and flowers…they have always enchanted me. His work was hugely popular in his time; it was used not just as posters but in magazine illustration and on postcards.

What I was not really aware of was his ‘serious’ work, inspired by his Slavic heritage. Most of this is much darker in both spirit and palette. He honored Slavic history and hoped mightily for Slavic independence and unity. Sadly, he was to die just days after Nazi’s marched into the area and he was arrested and questioned as a Czech patriot.

This book is brief, but gives a good overview of Mucha’s life and work, and is filled with beautiful reproductions of all phases of his work. 

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This did not influence my review.  

Facepaint: The Story of Makeup, by Lisa Eldridge. Abrams Image, 2015

Famous makeup artist Lisa Eldridge brings us a history of makeup. She goes into both the chemistry (what the makeup was made of) and the sociology (how social mores influenced its use) of it to create a rounded view of makeup. It’s been around for thousands of years- the ancient Egyptians made great use of it- and, while for centuries in the western world it wasn’t considered a good thing to do, it was there, being made at home of rose petals and blackberries, flying under the radar.

The first part of the book is a look at the three basic colors of makeup: red, white, and black. Those colors have been used in every century and civilsation. She tells us how each color was obtained and how the uses changed. The rest of the book is basically about Victorian times on, because that is when beauty products came to be more widely available, and, possibly more important, when they became advertised. I’m a history and vintage fan, so I loved seeing the various styles of makeup- different eye brow shapes, different rouge placement, and different eye shadows. (Of course, looking back through the decades at the styles, I had to occasionally think “What the hell were we thinking?!?!”) I also loved that she gives the chemistry behind the products, from soot mixed with petroleum jelly to today’s modern silicones that work like magic. The history of makeup also includes the people behind the products: Elizabeth Arden, Estee Lauder, Charles Revson, Helena Rubenstein, Max Factor, and the Westmores. There are also inserts on Makeup Muses: various beauties like Monroe, Garbo, Josephine Baker, and Bardot and how they did their makeup.

One of the best parts, of course, are all the illustrations. Not just women with makeup on, but vintage ads (love those) and old packaging- I’d love to have Kigu’s Flying Saucer powder compact, with its deep blue lid covered with golden stars! The book is written in a very engaging style and was fun to read, as well as being very informative. 

The above is an affiliate link. If you click through and buy something- anything- from Amazon, they will give me a few cents. 

This in no way influenced my review.