How Do We Look -- Mary Beard

Published in 2018, 210 pages in the main text in the version I read.

It was a quick read with a fair number of glossy pictures.  It is not surprising that it reminds me of a well produced public television series.  She's a good writer, a good presenter and has done a number of BBC shows..  The points flow well, you feel like you're acquiring a bit of cultural learning, and I expect most readers -- most certainly including me -- will have forgotten all but some hazy ideas within a month of putting it down.

That's praise as well as a dismissal.  Praise because it is a well written book, and it does have a number of interesting observations and bits of context.  At the same time, the book feels like a really erudite museum tour guide.  You get some context for the art, you smile, laugh, maybe look thoughtful.  Different people in the group remember different bits later.  It gives good fodder for discussion that night, but I'm not sure the point come across. 

It seems to me that the audience who will pick up the book -- or watch the BBC series -- likely already understands the idea that the context of the viewer changes art.  That Greek statues mean different things to us now as a collection of gleaming white treasures in a museum than they did to the ancient Greeks when painted, spread around in different settings, not highlighted as great treasures of the past, and at times even seen as the surprising new, "modern" art.  That religious art -- Christian, Islamic, Buddhist, whatever -- means different things to believers and non-believes.  Or that a piece is different when viewed in terms of just the pieces that came before it rather than the usual context including everything that has come afterwards.  If you already think along those lines, what's left is the anecdotes.

Why not?

I recently looked at some Google web services and noticed that I had this blogger site.  Cool name.  No posts.  I probably grabbed it a decade ago and never used it.  A couple of people have asked for my thoughts on books in recent years.  More often, my mother and mother-in-law, so I'm not bragging, but I do think it is interesting to think about the books one reads.  So, having found this site, I'll give it a whirl.

The main content will be based on books.  I don't have much to say about coffee except that I like it and I like it black.  You don't have to share my opinions about either.