Paris Syndrome

Posted on January 8, 2024 by Brian D. Butler

This weekend my wife and I watched a very disappointing film which was primary set in Paris at Christmas time. The only thing that it had going for it was the romance of Paris all aglow with holiday lights. And even though we’ve both been to Paris many times, we oohed and ahhed at the glittering cinematic tourist version of the city and proclaimed a desire to return.

 

This set me thinking about the rarely mentioned Paris Syndrome. First reported in the nedia about 20 years ago, this syndrome primarily strikes first-time visitors and mainly tourists from Japan. Most cases are in visitors in their 20s and 30s. Paris Syndrome sufferers exhibit symptoms including distress, depression, paranoia, anxiety, delusions, and hallucinations.

 

It’s theorized that Paris Syndrome manifests more frequently in Japanese tourists due to an over-idealized view of the city in popular Japanese culture, which does not match the reality of the French capital. Other notions are that the language differences exacerbate communication problems. Or, that the syndrome is triggered by jet-lag due to the long flight time from Japan.

The frequency of Paris Syndrome in Japanese tourists is so significant that the Japanese Embassy in Paris maintains a 24-hour help-line for its affected citizens. Most of those afflicted improve after a few days, although some sufferers are returned to Japan for mental health treatment.

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The future of the book

Posted on January 7, 2024 by Brian D. Butler

 

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Diabolical Maps

Posted on January 6, 2024 by Brian D. Butler

Along with some hilarious cartoons, former NASA scientist Randall Munroe creates some very vexing maps for his website xkcd.com. I’m hoping that he turns his acerbic mapping talents towards Euope next.

 

 

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Venice fights back and I say bravo

Posted on January 5, 2024 by Brian D. Butler

I count myself lucky to have visited Venice for the first time nearly half a century ago. In that distant halcyon era of European travel, Venice was gloriously free of massive cruise ships and mobs of day-tripping bus groups. It was possible to wander back streets without seeing another tourist and to discover tiny local shops and restaurants frequented by actual Venitians. On each of my subsequent vists to La Serenissima the city felt more and more claustrophobic and Disneyfied.

It finally appears that over-tourism is being recognised as an urgent issue for the grand city. In September, Venice approved the trial of a €5 (£4.30; $5.35) fee for daily visitors. Elisabetta Pesce, the official with responsibility for the city’s security, said the latest policies are “aimed at improving the management of groups organised in the historic centre”. The city is just 7.6 sq km (2.7 sq miles) in size but it hosted almost 13 million tourists in 2019, according to the Italian national statistics institute. On busy days, more than 120,000 tourists descend on the city of just 50,000 residents. Due to cruise ships, bus groups, budget airlines, and day-trippers, the numbers of visitors are expected to reach and exceed pre-pandemic levels by 2025.

Venice is now banning groups larger than 25 and the use of loudspeakers in public, with the new rules coming into effect in June. Local activists are also pushing for controls on AirBNB-type rentals, as well as more stringent regulation of day-tripping tour groups. I for one say bravo.

 

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Judging a Book by Its Cover

Posted on January 4, 2024 by Brian D. Butler

One of New York City’s best tourist attractions for book lovers The Grolier Club starts 2024 off with an impressive exhibition detailing the history and aesthetics of fine bookbindings. Judging a Book by Its Cover: Bookbindings from the Collections of The Grolier Club, 1470s-2020 which highlights selections from the Grolier Club’s collection of bindings, largely donated and built by the Club’s members over the course of its 140-year history.

Judging a Book by Its Cover highlights selections from seven centuries of the Grolier Club’s collection of bindings, largely donated and built by the Club’s members over the course of its 140-year history. The exhibition explores the history of decorated bindings, book bindings as three-dimensional art objects, what makes a binding collectible, and the Club’s investment in commissioning fine bindings through the present day. Highlights from the 15th century to the present will be on view, including a silver filigreed and jeweled miniature Book of Hours (1673); a gilt maroon goatskin binding from a Vatican bindery, presented to Cardinal Basadonna (1674); and a bright green silk and floral embroidered binding created by May Morris, daughter of William Morris (ca. 1888). Judging a Book by Its Cover is curated by Grolier Club member H. George Fletcher, the former Astor Director for Special Collections at The New York Public Library and former curator at The Morgan Library & Museum. The accompanying catalogue, written and compiled by Fletcher, will be available from University of Chicago Press in January 2024.

*Photo above from Judging a Book By Its Cover: Officium Beatae Mariae Virginis. Pro quatuor anni temporibus, On: [Book of Hours, Use of Paris. Latin]. A silver filigree miniature binding, Paris, 1673 or later. Paris: Michael Dauplet, 1673. 32mo. 80 ✕ 50 ✕ 20 mm.

On view in the Grolier Club’s ground floor gallery from January 17 through April 13, 2024, the exhibition explores the history of decorated bindings, book bindings as 3D art objects, what makes a binding collectible, and the Club’s investment in commissioning fine bindings through the present day.

More than 100 historic and fine bindings will be on view, ranging from the oldest in the collection, a ca. 1473 pigskin binding with etched brass cornerpieces and central boss on a volume of the works Jewish Antiquities and the Jewish War and Ecclesiastical History, to one of the newest bindings, a 2019 free-drawn gilded design in a polychrome palette by Ulrich Widmann, inspired by the text and illustrations in the work Ich bin nur Flamme: Gedichte des Expressionismus by Svato Zapletal.

Judging a Book by Its Cover is curated by Grolier Club member H. George Fletcher, the former Astor Director for Special Collections at The New York Public Library and former Astor Curator of Printed Books and Bindings at The Morgan Library & Museum. The accompanying catalogue, written and compiled by Fletcher, is available from University of Chicago Press in January 2024.

“A principal motivation of the Founders who brought the Grolier Club into existence was to improve the state of fine bookbinding in America,” said Fletcher. “Their practice had been to send their rare books to France for proper treatment, accepting the vagaries of transatlantic shipment as a necessary risk. The development of The Club Bindery and regularly exhibiting bookbindings is a practice that continues at the Grolier Club to the present day.”

The Grolier Club exhibitions are open to the public, free of charge.

Hours:
Monday-Saturday: 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Sunday: CLOSED

Visit the Grolier Club website for information on in person and virtual tours.

 

 

 

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Last list from the last year (I promise)

Posted on January 3, 2024 by Brian D. Butler

Some folks may be suffering from “Best List of the Year” fatigue, so here’s the absolute final list from 2023. This one is from former President Barack Obama who usually has excellent taste in books.

As I usually do during this time of year, I wanted to share my favorite books, movies, and music of 2023. First up, here are the books I’ve enjoyed reading. If you’re looking for a new book over the holidays, give one of them a try. And if you can, shop at an independent bookstore or check them out at your local library. What were some of your favorite books this year?

 

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Think you know your cities ?

Posted on January 2, 2024 by Brian D. Butler

With 4.4 billion people living in cities, it’s more important than ever to stay informed about what is happening in the homes of 56% of the world’s population. Bloomberg news recently published a fascinating quiz that examines “… how are cities adapting, and what’s next? Our 2023 quiz is meant to look at some of the trends shaping urban life this year.” It’s a fun and informative test of current events knowledge. Give it a spin.

 

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we shall have cast our reformation to the winds

Posted on January 1, 2024 by Brian D. Butler

From Mark Twain’s January 1st, 1863 column in the Territorial Enterprise:

Now is the accepted time to make your regular annual good resolutions. Next week you can begin paving hell with them as usual. Yesterday, everybody smoked his last cigar, took his last drink, and swore his last oath. To-day, we are a pious and exemplary community. Thirty days from now, we shall have cast our reformation to the winds and gone to cutting our ancient short comings considerably shorter than ever. We shall also reflect pleasantly upon how we did the same old thing last year about this time. However, go in, community. New Year’s is a harmless annual institution, of no particular use to anybody save as a scapegoat for promiscuous drunks, and friendly calls, and humbug resolutions, and we wish you to enjoy it with a looseness suited to the greatness of the occasion.

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Saved for the very end

Posted on December 31, 2023 by Brian D. Butler

Reading Rhythms is not a book club. It’s a reading party. Read with friends to curated music. “It’s my party and I’ll read if I want to. What a super concept; I hope that it spreads.

Ernest Hemingway only used 59 exclamation points across his entire collection of works.

Oh the horror.  “The Zombie of Great Peru is a transgressive novel written in 1697 by Pierre–Corneille Blessebois…a memoir of occultism, seduction, slapstick, and humiliation, set in the racial and sexual hothouse of colonial Guadeloupe. It contains the first appearance of the word ‘zombie’ in literature.” 

I have long been a fan of the late, great Britsh author Terry Pratchett. So, I thoroughly enjoyed this heartwarming story about two devoted fans who uncovered long lost Pratchett stories.

The clever short,supercut video below may bring back your nostalgia for the clack-clack-clack of typewriters for you oldsters. Referencing dozens of classic films, the expertly edited short has a great pacing set to the perfect piece of music. It was edited by Ariel Avissar, and was set to Leroy Anderson’s “The Typewriter” .

Leonard Cohen // “May you be surrounded by friends and family, and if this is not your lot, may the blessings find you in your solitude.”

 

Have you ever wondered why snails are so often depeicted in the margins of medieval manuscripts?
Sometimes the creatures appear to be hovering, attacking knights in mid-air. Occasionally there is more than one. This is the uniquely medieval phenomenon of the fighting snail – and to this day, why they were depicted remains utterly mysterious…
But for a brief period in the late 13th Century, illuminators – those who decorated books – across Europe embraced a new obsession: fighting snails. For a comprehensive study of these warring gastropods, the art historian Lilian Randall counted 70 examples, in 29 different books – most of which were printed in the two decades between 1290 and 1310. The illustrations are found across Europe, but particularly in France, where there was a thriving manuscript-production industry at the time, says Clarke.
The specific scenarios that warring snails found themselves in varied, but broadly followed the same format of a snail-assailant standing off against a knight. Often, the molluscs have their antenna – technically their upper tentacles, or ommatophores – pointed aggressively forwards, as though they were swords. In one, a snail is shown fighting a nude woman. In a few they’re not depicted as regular molluscs at all, but hybrids between snails and men – who are being ridden by rabbits, naturally.
More information, and many illustrations, at the BBC.
Merriam Webster added 690 new words to their dictionary this year. “Signs of a healthy language include words being created, words being borrowed from other languages, and new meanings being given to existing words. Based on our most recent research, we are pleased to inform you that English is very (very!) healthy.” Here’s is a sample of the 690 recent additions.

 

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but then you read

Posted on December 30, 2023 by Brian D. Butler

“You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read,” James Baldwin 

BOOKS
by Hermann Hesse

All the books of the world
will not bring you happiness,
but build a secret path
toward your heart.

What you need is in you:
the sun, the stars, the moon,
the illumination you were seeking
shines up from within you.

The quest for wisdom
made you comb the libraries.
Now every page speaks the truth
that flashes forth from you.

 

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