A story of friendship, mystery and madness, The Antiquarian is prefaced with a cryptic list of real people who were killed for doing mad things: Anne Askew quenched the thirst of her chicks with her own blood and they killed her for it: 1546.The story begins with our unreliable narrator, Gustavo, visiting his friend Daniel in an insane asylum. Daniel, committed for killing his fiancée, wants to explain what really happened that night--but it isn’t as simple as that, and Gustavo must unravel his friend’s veiled clues in order to finally discover the truth.The Antiquarian was an uncommon murder mystery, but still a murder mystery. The narrative is riddled with the awful and macabre: rape, obsession and books made of human flesh. Everyone is flawed or diseased—either bodily or mentally. And that’s what I took from this, we are all susceptible to being consumed by our passions; we are all a little bit mad*Caveat Emptor: There were several breathtaking sentences in this novel—and by breathtaking, I mean they were so long I lost my breath. The imagery was forceful. The prose was beautiful and sophisticated. The narrative was winding and Poe-like. As the story explores madness, passion and mystery, the style really worked in creating a haunting atmosphere. But, wow, some of the sentences were page long doozies. While never a slog, I didn’t take to this book easily. I had to put it down and come back to it several times before I hit on the right mood. This is not a book for everyone, but I’m glad I didn’t give up.

ILLUSTRATION O'clock: Virginia Frances Sterrett (1900–1931) "Old French Fairy Tales". She managed to illustrate 3 books before dying of tuberculosis.

Download the free book, here: http://archive.org/details/oldfrenchfairyta00sg

And see a gallery, here:
http://50watts.com/2293101/Old-French-Fairy-Tales

 

From 50watts: "Missouri-born illustrator Virginia Frances Sterrett (1900–1931) managed to complete just three books in her short life, all of them commissioned by the Penn Publishing Company: Old French Fairy Tales (1920), Tanglewood Tales (1921), and Arabian Nights (1928). She was diagnosed with tuberculosis at the age of 19, around the time she received that first commission. David Apatoff wrote a lovely appreciation of her work and life at his Illustration Art."

Free Download: Lewis A. Sayre’s 1877 publication, "Spinal Disease and Spinal Curvature: their treatment by use of suspension and plaster of paris bandage". Antiquated medical text but fascinating medical photography (and yes, rather fetishistic). Unfortunately, the free download at archive.org has photos that have been (helpfully??) Photoshop-filtered by the scanner. Glass plate photography has very high resolution and is the most precise vintage photography to be gifted to us, so it's a real shame seeing it muddied up by I'm not sure what intention. :-/

 

download: http://archive.org/details/spinaldiseasespi00sayr

 

Dr. Sayre's photos can be found here and there on the net, but there are very good examples at Verity Holloway's blog: http://verityholloway.com/?p=3228

 

I enjoyed this second entry a little less than the first, but not too much. I suspect the absence of Barnabas, the protagonist's father, had a great deal to do with my feelings. This entry lacked some of the urgency and excitement of the first book, a pacing problem I suspect. The mystery while solid intrigued me only to a point, I suspect Dido's half-hearted interest in the murders robbed me of some need to know. I look forward to reading the next entry and hope for a prominent return of Barnabas and a little more of Dido's possibly maybe love interest.