This Monday is Book Lovers Day 2021, to celebrate the wonderful world of storytelling the Hundred Heroines team are sharing the books they’re currently reading.
So if you’re looking to reconnect to your inner wilder self, learn about the glitz of old Hollywood or take a fictional trip to 1960’s Prague then maybe you’ll find your next read below…
Del
Founder and Chair
So why didn’t embroidery make it as a fine art back in the day? The answer to this and so much more…I love the idea of embroidery, but am so useless at it. I think it stems from needlework classes at school, when we had to embroider our names on the aprons that we’d made ready for “Domestic Science” lessons the following term.Onwards …
Vanessa
Learning and Participation
I’ve just started reading Women Who Run With The Wolves and I’m excited about it already. A collection of stories and their readings that remind us how to return to our wildish, intuitive natures, those that have been repressed by centuries of systematic soul-suffocation of the feminine. This thrills me.
Sabine
Work-placement student/photographer
I am about to finish the book The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera. It’s playing in Prague during the late 1960s-1970s and explores the life of the main characters during the period between the Prague spring to the invasion of the Soviet Union. Tereza, one of the characters, is a photographer too at some points during her life – but it’s more about the intellectual society and their relation to the state than about visual culture I’d say.
Tamsin
Illustrator
A book I’ve been reading is an art book called They Drew as They Pleased: The Hidden Art of Disney’s Mid Century Era. The artist I mainly focus on most is Mary Blair who influenced the look of a lot of Disney films from the 50s and 60s and also created the look of a lot of the rides in Disneyland.
Gabrielle
Social Media Manager
I was in a second-hand store recently and was drawn to Lauren Bacall’s memoir, By Myself and Then Some. She was a star during the golden era of Hollywood and after reading other autobiographies and being a fan of cinema I decided to give it a go. It wasn’t until I got to the part where she credit the legendary photographer Louise Dahl-Wolfe as a large factor in launching her career that I realised why I recognised her portraits.
Katherine
Researcher and Content Creator
I’ve just started to read The Letters of Vincent van Gogh, edited by Ronald de Leeuw and translated by Arnold Pomerans. I have loved Vincent’s paintings since I was a child, so I’m excited to gain a deeper understanding of the artist behind them!
