art family history reading

Seventeen – Another Novel Based on History

I posted a few weeks ago about a novel I read, “The Art Forger,” that was based on a historical event, the theft of numerous works of art from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. Since that time, I have read another novel based on a historical event. This one is called “Seventeen” by Hideo Yokoyama. I found a hardcover copy at a local dollar store and was so taken with the cover art and description…

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Teasing Out the Real History in Historical Fiction

Note: This post contains spoilers for the novel “The Art Forger” by B.A. Shapiro. I finished reading “The Art Forger” by B.A. Shapiro this week. The novel reminded me of the movie “National Treasure.” “The Art Forger” would lend itself well to being turned into a movie because of the action and intrigue. (Though there are other movies about art forgers, I could not find one based on this book.) In it, we are treated…

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Prince – “Sometimes I Stand in Awe of What I Do Myself”

Got a Covid booster yesterday and feeling achy with a mild fever and sore arm today, so a short blog post. I saw this great quote from Minnesota musician Prince’s Twitter account a couple days ago and had to save it. I would never in a billion-and-a-half years ever compare my creative output to the stratosphere of Prince’s creative brilliance, but I actually know what he means by this quote. As a writer and artist,…

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Fiber Artists of the Apocalypse

The inspiration for this post comes from Liz Haywood, a clothing designer in Australia who has been focusing on creating zero-waste patterns. She shares her fashion adventures on The Craft of Clothes [https://lizhaywood.com.au] blog. In her November 1, 2021, post, she wrote about “Fashion in a dystopian world,” inspired by her children’s recent interest in post-apocalyptic fiction. She shared photos she found online showing the current concept of dystopian clothing, which includes a lot of…

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Just the Punctuation

I ran across a cool new tool on Twitter recently. Created by tech writer Clive Thompson (@pomeranian99 on Twitter), the tool strips all the letters from your writing, leaving you only the punctuation. It’s called Just the Punctuation [https://just-the-punctuation.glitch.me]. If you’re a writer, go ahead and give it a try. Paste some of your writing into the box and click the Submit button at the bottom. It helps if you useĀ  a substantial piece of…

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