Happy bookish birthdays (18 January) to…

Happy bookish birthdays (18 January) to…

“Rabbit’s clever,” said Pooh thoughtfully.
“Yes,” said Piglet, “Rabbit’s clever.”
“And he has Brain.”
“Yes,” said Piglet, “Rabbit has Brain.”
There was a long silence.
“I suppose,” said Pooh, “that that’s why he never understands anything.”
–A.A. Milne (born 18 January), writing in The House at Pooh Corner
collected in The Mind Boggles: A Unique Book of Quotations by Bufo Calvin

• A.A. Milne (Winnie-the-Pooh)
• Robert Anton Wilson (the Illuminatus! trilogy)
• C.M. Eddy Jr. (Exit Into Eternity)
• Sol Yurick (The Warriors)
• Pamela Dean (the Secret Country trilogy)
• Raymond Briggs (Father Christmas)
• Arno Schmidt (Zettel’s Dream)

Join thousands of readers and try the free ILMK magazine at Flipboard!

All aboard The Measured Circle’s Geek Time Trip at The History Project!

Bufo’s Alexa Skills

* I am linking to the same thing at the regular Amazon site, and at AmazonSmile. When you shop at AmazonSmile, half a percent of your purchase price on eligible items goes to a non-profit you choose. It will feel just like shopping at Amazon: you’ll be using your same account. The one thing for you that is different is that you pick a non-profit the first time you go (which you can change whenever you want)…and the good feeling you’ll get.

Shop ’til you help!

This post by Bufo Calvin originally appeared in the I Love My Kindle blog. To support this or other organizations, begin your Amazon shopping from a link on their sites: Amazon.com

Happy bookish birthdays (18 January) to…

Happy bookish birthdays (18 January) to…

“Rabbit’s clever,” said Pooh thoughtfully.
“Yes,” said Piglet, “Rabbit’s clever.”
“And he has Brain.”
“Yes,” said Piglet, “Rabbit has Brain.”
There was a long silence.
“I suppose,” said Pooh, “that that’s why he never understands anything.”
–A.A. Milne (born 18 January), writing in The House at Pooh Corner
collected in The Mind Boggles: A Unique Book of Quotations by Bufo Calvin

• A.A. Milne (Winnie-the-Pooh)
• Robert Anton Wilson (the Illuminatus! trilogy)
• C.M. Eddy Jr. (Exit Into Eternity)
• Sol Yurick (The Warriors)
• Pamela Dean (the Secret Country trilogy)
• Raymond Briggs (Father Christmas)
• Arno Schmidt (Zettel’s Dream)

Join thousands of readers and try the free ILMK magazine at Flipboard!

All aboard The Measured Circle’s Geek Time Trip at The History Project!

Bufo’s Alexa Skills

* I am linking to the same thing at the regular Amazon site, and at AmazonSmile. When you shop at AmazonSmile, half a percent of your purchase price on eligible items goes to a non-profit you choose. It will feel just like shopping at Amazon: you’ll be using your same account. The one thing for you that is different is that you pick a non-profit the first time you go (which you can change whenever you want)…and the good feeling you’ll get.

Shop ’til you help!

This post by Bufo Calvin originally appeared in the I Love My Kindle blog. To support this or other organizations, begin your Amazon shopping from a link on their sites: Amazon.com

My take on…The Queens of Animation

My take on…The Queens of Animation

The lightest fantasies can have the darkest realities behind them.

In

The Queens of Animation

Nathalia Holt tells us the history of a group of artists in Disney animation, and the challenges they faced.

It’s important to note, that this isn’t a book about victimhood: it’s about resilience, and friendship, and triumph. It’s about artistry, which survives no matter how much it is acknowledged or suppressed.

This book has what I want a history to have:

• Context: we need to know now what everyone knew then. How did the Great Depression, World War II, and the invention of xerography affect creative decisions about Disney classics including Dumbo, Bambi, and 101 Dalmations?
• Transitions: it’s easy to see history as a series of disconnected scenes. To have any idea of what might happen in the future, we need to understand how one thing leads to another. That’s one of the main differences between history and factoids
• Humanity: we are social animals. We understand what happened only when we understand the people who went through it. Who were they before? How did they feel while it was happening? How did it change them?

For the Golden Age period, Holt achieves all three of those goals as well as any history I’ve ever read. That part is so well done that I wished that depth could have continued into the coverage of the more modern era. The creative forces behind the making of Pinocchio are (now) completely clear. It’s not a question of clearing up the reader’s confusion: it’s about them realizing that there are answers to questions that they hadn’t even thought to ask.

I really missed that perspective by the time we get to The Black Cauldron (1985). I would love to understand what led to the production of that PG dark fantasy and how its ultimate artistic vision was shaped by forces both within and without the studio.

My assumption is that Holt didn’t have access to the same sort of unique and rich materials she did for the 1930s and 1940s. I would happily read a ten volume Holt history of Disney, and then look forward to periodic updates.

None of that takes away from how good this book is: it belongs in every movie lover’s library, and has appeal to more general history buffs as well. It would make a great movie, although I find that an unlikely possibility.

Just a final note: I read this in a Kindle edition, which I read as part of my

Kindle Unlimited 

subscription. It was well suited to that format, with photos included.

Feel free to let me know what you think! You can do that here or at

Bufo Calvin on X

Bufo Calvin on Bluesky

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Join thousands of readers and try the free ILMK magazine at Flipboard!

This post by Bufo Calvin originally appeared in the I Love My Kindle blog. To support this or other organizations, begin your Amazon shopping from a link on their sites: Amazon.com