Musings on architecture
Jan. 10th, 2006 10:34 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shalannaI'm a Midcentury Modern girl.
Give me a contemporary house anytime. Hubby and I like the modernist vibe, the Eichler houses with large windows and interior atriums or courtyards. I study "The Not So Big House" books and Frank Lloyd Wright's famous work.
We like the streamlined look (though I do have a good number of decorative items and candles sitting around compared to the true minimalist.) I don't really like fussy curtains and lace and that kind of stuff. Sure, the Victorian look is neat when you're in a row house with a bay window looking out on the Golden Gate Bridge; the style is appropriate to the architecture. It's what the people who go into the Painted Ladies expect.
It's just not our style. We can appreciate them when we visit, but we'd rather come home to a somewhat eclectic but Modernist style. We'd love to live in an Eichler house.
But I can appreciate saltbox houses full of antiques. Sometimes I go through historic houses and think that one or two of the antiques would be really neat to have. The idea that others have loved and used these cabinets or armoires for years, polishing them and handing them down through the generations, is appealing.
Several years ago, I used to read "Country Almanac" and its sister magazines regularly. I liked the columnists and their down-to-earth patter about living in the country and the slow pace of life. I loved the recipes. And I even liked looking at their cluttered photos of kitchens decorated with old signs and tins from products long out of production, those "apple farm" rooms and so forth--even the "ducks" period and the "cows" period from the 1980s. The cottage-wicker rooms were appealing, with their picket-fence headboards and denim slipcovers with American flag throws. Although the rooms weren't for me, I appreciated the way they worked for the collectors who loved them. And when I was in the mood, I looked through the magazines and read the columnists.
Would I want these magazines to be "Atomic House" or the Frank Lloyd Wright consortium newsletter? Should I demand that they never show fussy shelves of collections, shelf after shelf of Hummels or dime-store ceramic unicorns? No; that wouldn't work. These are magazines, but they're a different breed of animal from "House Beautiful" or "Architectural Digest." One might argue that they appeal to different people, and are separate but equal. Others may say that folk art and country stuff are for "hicks" and "the lower classes" or what-have-you, but they have to acknowledge that these places aren't trying to be Architectural Digest material. You can't make one into the other. They're both valid means of expression.
the_red_shoes, bless her, writes: "Don't for God's sake criticize [a book you're reviewing] for not being something you want it to be. If you love plain writing and get handed a heavily embroidered piece of prose, or vice versa, do your best not to go overboard on how "over-" or "underwritten" it is. Books and authors deserve to be judged on their own merits (however pisspoor those might be). Nothing annoys me in reviewing more than this, especially the 'If the writer had made character X do Y and changed the plot utterly, it would have been great!'"
*grin* There seem to be a few parallels between what she says and what I was thinking about the decorating styles.
The house we have now we bought from my mom. It's a Texas Rambler/Ranch with a Spanish facade and an entry courtyard. It isn't contemporary, but it isn't really traditional; it's a ranch with some modifications. It's not our dream contemporary, but there are things to love about it (when you've lived in a house on and off for some thirty-odd years, you kind of get attached to it.) We couldn't make it into a contemporary without ruining it, so our plan is to get a summer home (yeah! Right! Real Soon Now!) on the water (this one's on a wooded prairie-hill near a creek, but we want one on the beach) in a small town or resort area, and it'll be a contemporary. It's nice to have dreams.
I may or may not enjoy reading _Prep_, _Bleak House_, or the latest Contemporary Gothic Inspirational Romance. That doesn't mean somebody won't. It's all about the audience. You've got to find your audience for each work, I think.
George Orwell says good prose is like a windowpane; I suppose that's where "transparent prose" started. Others like a more detailed style. Dickens can be fairly ornate himself. Even Hemingway is not really "Hemingwayesque," as claimed.
Chick lit, when it started out, was very digressive and chatty. That's one reason I tried to do one, so I could have lots of thinkin' and broodin' and musin'. (I'm not saying that I don't do too much or not enough of it--just that this is the way these books read, in general.) I read for a tour of a character's mind as well as her life, so I like some chick lit. It's not the same experience as reading other genres. It's character-driven and different from the plot-and-action-driven story. Still, it's either to your taste or it's not.
Chick lit is changing. Who can say what's on the horizon or how soon it will become "last year's fad"?
* * *
![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
docbrite writes: "I remember a big old redneck princess gazing upon an elephant and marveling, 'There's just no intelligence in that eye!' Yeah, honey, that's why her brain weighs more than your hair and your makeup put together."
* * *
Heard on the street corner: "George Washington turned down the chance to make presidents into royalty, but George Dubya is tryin' to make it happen."
* * *
The "Official" Alfred University Honors Program Entrance Exam (Not).
Give me a contemporary house anytime. Hubby and I like the modernist vibe, the Eichler houses with large windows and interior atriums or courtyards. I study "The Not So Big House" books and Frank Lloyd Wright's famous work.
We like the streamlined look (though I do have a good number of decorative items and candles sitting around compared to the true minimalist.) I don't really like fussy curtains and lace and that kind of stuff. Sure, the Victorian look is neat when you're in a row house with a bay window looking out on the Golden Gate Bridge; the style is appropriate to the architecture. It's what the people who go into the Painted Ladies expect.
It's just not our style. We can appreciate them when we visit, but we'd rather come home to a somewhat eclectic but Modernist style. We'd love to live in an Eichler house.
But I can appreciate saltbox houses full of antiques. Sometimes I go through historic houses and think that one or two of the antiques would be really neat to have. The idea that others have loved and used these cabinets or armoires for years, polishing them and handing them down through the generations, is appealing.
Several years ago, I used to read "Country Almanac" and its sister magazines regularly. I liked the columnists and their down-to-earth patter about living in the country and the slow pace of life. I loved the recipes. And I even liked looking at their cluttered photos of kitchens decorated with old signs and tins from products long out of production, those "apple farm" rooms and so forth--even the "ducks" period and the "cows" period from the 1980s. The cottage-wicker rooms were appealing, with their picket-fence headboards and denim slipcovers with American flag throws. Although the rooms weren't for me, I appreciated the way they worked for the collectors who loved them. And when I was in the mood, I looked through the magazines and read the columnists.
Would I want these magazines to be "Atomic House" or the Frank Lloyd Wright consortium newsletter? Should I demand that they never show fussy shelves of collections, shelf after shelf of Hummels or dime-store ceramic unicorns? No; that wouldn't work. These are magazines, but they're a different breed of animal from "House Beautiful" or "Architectural Digest." One might argue that they appeal to different people, and are separate but equal. Others may say that folk art and country stuff are for "hicks" and "the lower classes" or what-have-you, but they have to acknowledge that these places aren't trying to be Architectural Digest material. You can't make one into the other. They're both valid means of expression.
the_red_shoes, bless her, writes: "Don't for God's sake criticize [a book you're reviewing] for not being something you want it to be. If you love plain writing and get handed a heavily embroidered piece of prose, or vice versa, do your best not to go overboard on how "over-" or "underwritten" it is. Books and authors deserve to be judged on their own merits (however pisspoor those might be). Nothing annoys me in reviewing more than this, especially the 'If the writer had made character X do Y and changed the plot utterly, it would have been great!'"
*grin* There seem to be a few parallels between what she says and what I was thinking about the decorating styles.
The house we have now we bought from my mom. It's a Texas Rambler/Ranch with a Spanish facade and an entry courtyard. It isn't contemporary, but it isn't really traditional; it's a ranch with some modifications. It's not our dream contemporary, but there are things to love about it (when you've lived in a house on and off for some thirty-odd years, you kind of get attached to it.) We couldn't make it into a contemporary without ruining it, so our plan is to get a summer home (yeah! Right! Real Soon Now!) on the water (this one's on a wooded prairie-hill near a creek, but we want one on the beach) in a small town or resort area, and it'll be a contemporary. It's nice to have dreams.
I may or may not enjoy reading _Prep_, _Bleak House_, or the latest Contemporary Gothic Inspirational Romance. That doesn't mean somebody won't. It's all about the audience. You've got to find your audience for each work, I think.
George Orwell says good prose is like a windowpane; I suppose that's where "transparent prose" started. Others like a more detailed style. Dickens can be fairly ornate himself. Even Hemingway is not really "Hemingwayesque," as claimed.
Chick lit, when it started out, was very digressive and chatty. That's one reason I tried to do one, so I could have lots of thinkin' and broodin' and musin'. (I'm not saying that I don't do too much or not enough of it--just that this is the way these books read, in general.) I read for a tour of a character's mind as well as her life, so I like some chick lit. It's not the same experience as reading other genres. It's character-driven and different from the plot-and-action-driven story. Still, it's either to your taste or it's not.
Chick lit is changing. Who can say what's on the horizon or how soon it will become "last year's fad"?
docbrite writes: "I remember a big old redneck princess gazing upon an elephant and marveling, 'There's just no intelligence in that eye!' Yeah, honey, that's why her brain weighs more than your hair and your makeup put together."Heard on the street corner: "George Washington turned down the chance to make presidents into royalty, but George Dubya is tryin' to make it happen."
The "Official" Alfred University Honors Program Entrance Exam (Not).
