iReview

I bought this book recently in a book sale with the intention to learn more about dry media. I am teaching my son to do coloring with a few types of media such as colored pencils, chalk, pastels and crayons. Since I never have formal art education, I thought I can learn a thing or two from the art book.

Here is the description of the book taken from bookadda.com:

Books in this popular series instruct experienced amateurs as well as more advanced art students who have already mastered basic art techniques. Combining comprehensive textual advice with many highly detailed illustrations, these books teach students how to create complete, highly finished artwork of professional quality. This volume instructs on the uses of charcoal sticks and pencils, sanguine, pastels, chalk, crayons, and colored pencils. It also provides helpful information on uses of different types of paper and art tools. Training emphasizes blending, mixing, and contrasting colors, as well as creating chiaroscuro effects when working in black and white or with a single color. Illustrative examples include portraits, still lifes, landscapes, animal illustrations, and human figure studies. Hundreds of color illustrations.

Taken from goodreads.com:

Raped then murdered in Japanese-occupied Hong Kong, 1942, Lin Shui’s ‘Hungry Ghost’ clings tenaciously to life. Holing up in a hospital morgue, destined to become a school, just in time she finds a host off whom to feed. It is 12-year-old Alice Safford, the deeply-troubled daughter of a leading figure in government. The parasitic ghost follows her to her home on the Peak.

There, the lethal mix of the two, embroiled in the family’s web of dark secrets and desperate lies, unleashes chaos. All this unfolds against a background of colonial unrest, riots, extremes of weather and the countdown to the return of Hong Kong to China. As successive tragedies engulf Alice, her ghostly entourage swells alarmingly. She flees to England, then France, in a bid to escape the past, only to find her portable ‘Hungry Ghosts’ have accompanied her. It seems the peace she longs for is to prove far more elusive than she could ever have imagined.

First of all, I bought this book because of the title and secondly because it was shortlisted for the 2010 Commonwealth Writers’ First Novel Prize (South Asia and Europe). But personally I didn’t really enjoy reading it because it’s so depressing.

But I did manage to finish the book. Give it a try, maybe you’ll have a different opinion that mine..heh!

Taken from goodreads.com:

Historical expertise marries page-turning fiction in Alison Weir’s enthralling debut novel, breathing new life into one of the most significant and tumultuous periods of the English monarchy. It is the story of Lady Jane Grey– “the Nine Days’ Queen” – a fifteen-year-old girl who unwittingly finds herself at the center of the religious and civil unrest that nearly toppled the fabled House of Tudor during the sixteenth century.

The child of a scheming father and a ruthless mother, for whom she is merely a pawn in a dynastic game with the highest stakes, Jane Grey was born during the harrowingly turbulent period between Anne Boleyn’s beheading and the demise of Jane’s infamous great-uncle, King Henry VIII. With the premature passing of Jane’s adolescent cousin, and Henry’s successor, King Edward VI, comes a struggle for supremacy fueled by political machinations and lethal religious fervor.

Unabashedly honest and exceptionally intelligent, Jane possesses a sound strength of character beyond her years that equips her to weather the vicious storm. And though she has no ambitions to rule, preferring to immerse herself in books and religious studies, she is forced to accept the crown, and by so doing sets off a firestorm of intrigue, betrayal, and tragedy.

Alison Weir uses her unmatched skills as a historian to enliven the many dynamic characters of this majestic drama. Along with Lady Jane Grey, Weir vividly renders her devious parents; her much-loved nanny; the benevolent Queen Katherine Parr; Jane’s ambitious cousins; the Catholic “Bloody” Mary, who will stop at nothing to seize the throne; and the protestant and future queen Elizabeth.

Readers venture inside royal drawing rooms and bedchambers to witness the power-grabbing that swirls around Lady Jane Grey from the day of her birth to her unbearably poignant death. Innocent Traitor paints a complete and compelling portrait of this captivating young woman, a faithful servant of God whose short reign and brief life would make her a legend.
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I never thought I could love such historical fiction like this. Yes, I’ve watched the movie – The Other Boleyn Girl but I’ve never tried to read the original novel. Now that I have read Alison Weir novel, I can’t wait to read The Lady Elizabeth. Give it a try..who knows you might love history even more!