Book Reviews and Commentary

Provenance: How a Con Man and a Forger Rewrote the History of Modern Art, by Laney Salisbury and Aly Sujo, 2009 I've cruised museums and galleries with more than my share of smugness over how knowledgeable, worldly and sophisticated I must be to recognize and enjoy the work of great artists.  Then along comes Provenance, the meticulously detailed true crime story (hey, art forgery is a crime, isn't it?) of John Myatt, a down-and-out, reasonably talented artist who gets caught up in a...Read Full Story

Provenance: How a Con Man and a Forger Rewrote the History of Modern Art, by Laney Salisbury and Aly Sujo, 2009 I've cruised museums and galleries with more than my share of smugness over how knowledgeable, worldly and sophisticated I must be to recognize and enjoy the work of great artists.  Then along comes Provenance, the meticulously detailed true crime story (hey, art forgery is a crime, isn't it?) of John Myatt, a down-and-out, reasonably talented artist who gets caught up in a...Read Full Story

You know how sometimes they make movies based on books so you can just watch the movie and pretend you know what you're talking about when someone mentions the book?  Or you can even show the movie to your kids because it's completely the same as reading the story?  Not that I've ever done that, but I've heard of some careless, neglectful parents who do. Well, back in the days when movie tickets cost a nickel and if you wanted to see the movie again you had to either pay another nickel or...Read Full Story

Marvin Cupcake's latest subject for the online book discussion group was H.G. Wells's War of the Worlds.  I was surprised at the choice of this challenging late-19th Century science fiction novel, since some participants in the group are only nine years old; still, the membership includes students all the way up to high school level so it's the members' choice whether they read any month's selection.  My tentative suggestion that she might want to consider skipping this month's book fell on...Read Full Story

Marvin Cupcake's latest subject for the online book discussion group was H.G. Wells's War of the Worlds.  I was surprised at the choice of this challenging late-19th Century science fiction novel, since some participants in the group are only nine years old; still, the membership includes students all the way up to high school level so it's the members' choice whether they read any month's selection.  My tentative suggestion that she might want to consider skipping this month's book fell on...Read Full Story