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3.5🌟 This was good but I think it could have been better. It was lacking structure and purpose. However I still got quite a bit out of it. It had me googling Dutch art for hours and I learned a lot from it. I don‘t think you would enjoy this book if you weren‘t interested in art at some level. 🎨

Good but not great. I can both see why this made the women's prize long list and why it didn't make the short list. Similar to Wifedom I thought there was too much of the author in this book. The time she is choosing to talk about is fascinating and it didn't need personal story embellishments. I feel like authors do this when they cannot find enough source material. The book itself is gorgeous, and I did learn a lot so it is still a pick!

"I cannot get enough Dutch art. You can turn to this other world - and it is a picture world as no other, a whole society visualized through time and place, seasons and generations, moment by moment - and live inside it in your thoughts."

The painting that starts the book.

"We see pictures in time and place. We cannot see them otherwise. They are fragments of our lives, moments of existence that may be as unremarkable as rain or as startling as a clap of thunder."

#readingbracket2024 #April

#popsugar24 #traveldestinationobucketlist (Amsterdam/Delft)
#52bookclub24 #plotsimilartoanotherbook (using The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt as the other one, as they both feature explosions, and The Goldfinch painting by Carel Fabritius)
#aty24 #soundrelatedwordintitle

@BarbaraBB @Kristy_K @LaraReads @KarenUK @Hooked_on_books @BarkingMadRead @brittanyreads @Magpiegem @BookBelle84 @Larkken @julesG @Deblovestoread @MidnightBookListener @Librarybelle

A book of twos; one part is about the The Golden Age of Dutch art focusing mainly on Delft. And I‘ve been to Delft and I love art so I loved this part. Who knew Dutch Art where so available to its citizens and not something for just the royals and nobility? The other part is about her and her parents. Her father was an artist. I found this part interesting. I loved how she used her own experiences to explain the Dutch artists.

Had to google this painting as it isn't printed in the book, and the description fascinated me. Memorial portrait made by siblings Gerard and Gesina Ter Borch after the death of their youngest brother, Moses who fell in battle against the English. Look at that hair! The pose! The pieces of his armour! The time pieces! The snake! The random skull and puppy and huge conch shell. ❤️💔

“Listen” is a Dutch book that has won many literary prizes and I read as an audio. It‘s about a Dutch girl who becomes an au-pair in Paris in the early ‘90s. We also know it‘s a story about 2015, the year Paris was shook up by the Charlie Hebdo attack at the beginning of the year and suicide bombers in November. We know this but not what‘s the connection between them. An engaging read, I hope it will be translated!

This was the masterpiece that drew Marcel Proust out of his cork-lined room in Paris for the last time. He had seen it once before, in a visit to The Hague in 1902. It was to him ‘the most beautiful painting in the world‘. Almost twenty years later, suffering from lung disease, he made a shorter but more arduous pilgrimage from his apartment in boulevard Malesherbes, near the Madeleine, across four streets to the Jeu de Paume,