The Fine Art Of Reading

The Fine Art of Reading was Cecil's inaugural lecture as Goldsmiths' Professor of English Literature at Oxford in 1949; it is also the title of a collection of studies from which the present essay is taken. Like all his other works, the piece combines scholarly attention to detail with accessibility to a general audience. In an engaging manner, Cecil assesses the relative merits of great authors and poets such as Milton, Gray and Shelley, while stressing that the only important distinction is between good and bad art. There are as many different kinds of good book as there are different kinds of good writer. Each has something to give us. We should admire each in so far as he strikes us as good in his particular kind. In order to property appreciate good writing we need to cultivate a point of view from which a work's aesthetic qualities occupy our centre vision. This happens naturally with other art forms such as music, where the appeal is purely aesthetic. Proper reading is an art in itself and David Cecil is the finest of instructors.

“Why do artists love books?” This volume takes this tantalizingly simple question as a starting point to reveal centuries of symbiosis between the visual and literary arts. First looking at the development of printed books and the simultaneous emergence of the modern figure of the artist, The Art of Reading appraises works by the many great masters who took inspiration from the printed word. Authors Jamie Camplin and Maria Ranauro weave together an engaging cultural history that probes the ways in which books and paintings represent a key to understanding ourselves and the past. Paintings contain a world of information about religion, class, gender, and power, but they also reveal details of everyday life often lost in history texts. Such artworks show us not only how books have been valued over time but also how the practice of reading has evolved in Western society. Featuring over one hundred works by artists from across Europe and the United States and all painting genres, The Art of Reading explores the two-thousand-year story of the great painters and the preeminent information-providing, knowledge-endowing, solace-giving, belief-supporting, leisure-enriching, pleasure-delivering medium of all time: the book.

Explores the work fo twelve contemporary illustators of children's books and discusses the techniques and features of effective illustration across a variety of styles and media.

Stone Daye has planned the perfect book club gathering for the last three weeks. But when that the day arrives, he faces a morning snowstorm as he runs a few last-minute errands around town before his book club meets. While out shopping, Stone bumps into Cameron Phillips, an old friend and former lover who now works as an administrator at a local college. The two have a heated and romantic history, and seeing Cameron again brings it all back for Stone. That evening, Cameron makes an unexpected appearance at Stone's book club. Old feelings are stirred up again, but are the fiery embers of their previous relationship strong enough to ignite a new romance together?

Former Police Chief Katherine Sullivan has been called brilliant, brave, compassionate, and quirky, but after decades of crime fighting, this resilient grandmother with an artist's soul is discovering that retirement can be just as deadly as being on the job. When Katherine returned to her hometown, her only thought was to comfort her recently divorced daughter. That was before a young woman was found murdered on the estate of the town's richest family. Now, in order to track down the killer, Katherine must uncover the generations of secrets that at least one person as already killed to protect in this charming and smart series debut, The Fine Art of Murder.

Pretty in Pink meets Anna and the French Kiss in this charming romantic comedy Ella is nearly invisible at the Willing School, and that's just fine by her. She's got her friends - the fabulous Frankie and their sweet cohort Sadie. She's got her art - and her idol, the unappreciated 19th-century painter Edward Willing. Still, it's hard being a nobody and having a crush on the biggest somebody in the school: Alex Bainbridge. Especially when he is your French tutor, and lessons have started becoming, well, certainly more interesting than French ever has been before. But can the invisible girl actually end up with a happily ever after with the golden boy, when no one even knows they're dating? And is Ella going to dare to be that girl?