Review: Sanctified Landscape by David Schuyler

Sanctified Landscape was such a fanscinating book.  I love reading anything about NYS, especially upstate and/or western NY.  So this was my cup of tea.  it basically is exactly what the title says.  It chronicals the history of the Hudson River Valley through the eyes of famous writers and artists fromt the early 1800s to the early 1900s.  Through their eyes/words, we see the beauty of it, but also the changes that we as humans are slowly making on the landscape.  Each chapter is pretty much on a different artist or author whose work focused on the Hudson River Valley.

What I loved so much is that these writers and artists are mostly people I had never heard of.  Thomas Cole is one who really stood out to me.  A painter from NY, he made the Hudson River Valley the focal point of most of his artwork, including a series of paintings called "the Course of Empire", in which he paints the valley as it was once with little human impact, and then paints it as humans slowly start making their mark, and then the last painting is a completely civilized Hudson with not very much green left.  He, along with pretty much all of the other people mentioned in the book, were naturalists or environmentals, even if they didn't realize it.

Many of the people, including John Burroughs (a naturalist who lived in a cabin in the valley), tried to convince people to leave the natural beauty around them.  They were concerned that too many trees were being cut down and too many railroads were being put up.  And seeing what the Hudson River is now (polluted.....), they were so right, and people should have listened to them.

There is so much history about the region in the book.  There is also a ton of information on the authors and writers in it.  I wish I had made a list of everyone who had been mentioned throughout the book.  Unfortunately, I got this ebook from netgalley and it has expired, so I can't go back through it.  The two people I mentioned above are the two I was most drawn to while reading though.  Thomas Cole and John Burroughs are two people I definitely want to read more about.  I had never heard of them before reading Sanctified Lanscape.  Now I am intrigued. 

One thing is for sure, I would LOVE to be able to go back in time and see what the Hudson Valley looked like before settlers came along.  I bet it was beautiful, green, and vast.  Here are some of my favorite lines from the book.  I didn't include page numbers because it was an ebook and I wasn't really paying attention to pages. 

-Quote from a work by naturalist and essayist John Burroughs called "A Sharp Lookout":
"One's own landscape comes in time to be a sort of outlying part of himself; he has sowed himself broadcast upon it, and it reflects his own moods and feelings; he is sensitive to the verge of the horizon: cut those trees, and he bleeds; mar those hills, and he suffers."

-Beginning of Chapter 8:
"Many people think of rivers and other natural features as timeless.  Indeed, the very scale of geologic time is so vast that it is difficult to grasp.  In certain ways the Hudson River is timeless: it continues to flow from the Adirondacks to the Atlantic Ocean, as it has for millenia, though its path and its length has changed as a result of glaciers, floods, and other natural phenomena.  Just as these forces have altered the river, so has human intervention.  Even in the middle of the Hudson highlands and the heights of the Catskills the human presence is ubiquitous, and almost four centuries of settlement by European Americans has transformed much of the adjacent landscape even as it has polluted the river and fundamentally altered its ecosystem."


Title: Sanctified Landscape: Writers, Artists, and the Hudson River Valley, 1820-1909
Author: David Schuyler
Date of Publication: May 15, 2012
Number of Pages: 240
Genre: Nonfiction
Source: Ebook from Netgalley



Sad News

Just letting all of my wonderful readers know that I may be posting very sporadically over the next few weeks.  My darling dog and best friend Mocha died early Wednesday morning, and my heart just is not up to doing anything at the moment.

Thank you all for understanding <3

Review: The House I Loved by Tatiana de Rosnay

First, I would just like to give a very heartfelt thank you to everyone who wrote such sweet things about my dog <3  You guys are the best.  She seems to be doing better!  Now, on to the review....

Tatiana de Rosnay's latest book, The House I Loved, tells the story of Rose, an older woman living in Paris in the 1860s, at the height of the renovations being done in Paris by Baron Haussmann.  Whole neighborhoods are being torn down to create the huge boulevards we know and love in today's Paris.  This, though is the story of a woman who is reluctant for the changes to take place, and who will do anything to stay in the house that she and her now deceased husband spent their life together in. 

The House I Loved was a book I wanted to read as soon as I read the description.  It takes place during Haussmann's renovations of Paris in the 1800s.  I took a French class in college on Zola.  We read two of his books, but we also learned a ton about Baron Haussmann.  I learned a lot from a historian's perspective.  This book is from the perspective of someone actually living through all of this in Paris, and worse yet is the fact that her house is going to be demolished to build a big boulevard.  I'm sure many younger Parisians embraced the changes being made, like some of the characters in this book.  Rose, however, is an old woman, a widow, and the renovations greatly affect her.

"Living in Paris under the reign of our Emperor and our Prefect was like living in a beseiged city invaded daily by dirt, rubble, ashes and mud.  Our clothes, shoes and hats were always dusty.  Our eyes always stung, our hair was perpetually thick with a fine gray powder." (page 64)

I loved that the book was told through a long letter that Rose writes to her deceased husband Armand.  Tatiana de Rosnay's portrayal of an older woman was, to me, very spot on.  She reminded me a lot of my grandmother.  Through the letter, I really felt the love Rose felt for her husband, and also the emptiness she now feels without him. 

"Ten years is a long time, is it not, Armand?  Writing this letter to you brings you remarkably close.  I can almost feel you looking over my shoulder as I write this, your breath on my neck." (page 82)

I was warmed inside whenever Rose looked back on memories of an every day thing that she misses about her husband.  Because when you've lost someone, it's the regular, "boring", every day things that you truly miss about that person and when you really feel their absense.  It was touching when Rose wrote about Armand's long illness.  Although it was hard to care for him and watch him forget who she was, she still loved him as much as ever.

My favorite character was Alexandrine, the woman who owns the flower shop below Rose's house.  She was a very strong woman, and she definitely proves to be a true friend to Rose.  It's Alexandrine who helped Rose to continue on after the death of Armand.

What was a bit strange about the book was how I felt like I knew all the characters so well, even though Rose was really just writing about them all in her letter to Armand.  And Armand, I felt I knew him really well. 

This book left me near tears, and I was thinking about it for days after finishing it.  I kept thinking about Rose and her resilience.  She was going to save her house or stay in it even if the city told her to leave.  She didn't want to stay for the house itself.  She wanted to stay because of the love she felt and the memories she made within that house.  That house was her connection to her deceased husband.  And that, to me, is something worth hanging on to.

Some other favorite quotes:

Page 4: "You have been gone for ten years now.  A century to me."

Page 87: "You were a quiet man, yet you took up a vast amount of silent space and that was what I missed."

Page 190: "The house bore the story of our love in its inner structure, in its quaint beauty.  The house was my link to you, forever.  By losing the house, I would again lose you."

Title: The House I Loved

Author: Tatiana de Rosnay

Date of Publication: 2012

Number of Pages: 222

Genre: Fiction

Source: Personal Copy