måndag 31 maj 2010

Reading today

The Garden Reading, 1898
Mary Cassatt, 1844-1926

söndag 30 maj 2010

Reading today

Her Comfort, 1889
Albert Chevallier Tayler
1862-1925

lördag 29 maj 2010

A beautiful evening


The Common Swifts returned earlier this week. So here I am, outside the kitchen (dressed in winter coat, mittens, hat and several blankets) watching them playing tag and screaming. It looks like they're having lots of fun — but I guess their lives are pretty tough.
The sun is about to set now at 22:06, and will rise around 4:00 in the morning. It is hard to go to bed when the nights are so beautiful

Reading today

Seated Woman Reading, 1874
Jules Dalou, 1838-1902

torsdag 27 maj 2010

Reading today

A Quiet Read
Walter Langley
1852-1922

onsdag 26 maj 2010

Imagine,

to wade knee-deep in your favorite food!

Reading today

Farmhouse interior, 1875
Mathilde Dietrichson
Norwegian, 1837-1921

tisdag 25 maj 2010

Reading today

Interior with a Young Girl
Reading, 1905-1906
Henri Matisse

måndag 24 maj 2010

Reading today

St Jerome Reading in the Countryside
1480-85
Giovanni Bellini, c. 1430-1516

söndag 23 maj 2010

Reading today

Woman Reading, 1915
Francis Coates Jones
1857-1932

lördag 22 maj 2010

Reading today

Old man in Library
Wolf Kibel, 1903-1938


fredag 21 maj 2010

Reading today

Interrupted Reading, 1870
Jean Baptiste Camille Corot
1796-1875

torsdag 20 maj 2010

Reading today

Lois Reading
Wilson Henry Irvine
1869-1936

onsdag 19 maj 2010

Reading today

Man Reading by Lamplight, 1814
Georg Friedrich Kersting
1785-1847

tisdag 18 maj 2010

Reading today

Kizette in Pink, c. 1926
Tamara de Lempicka
1898-1980

måndag 17 maj 2010

Reading today

Old Woman Reading
Adolph Tidemand
1814-1876

söndag 16 maj 2010

Å, Ä and Ö


Å, Ä and Ö are the three last letters in the Swedish alphabet. If you look for Åke Ögren's phone number in the phone book, you have to look at the end of the book. To us they aren't simply an a or o with circles or dots over — they are three separate letters. The Swe-dish word "laga" means mend, but the word "låga" means flame. Väg means way, but våg means wave (in the water or hair) or a balance (to weigh things on). Lök means onion while a lok is an locomotive. So you have to know where to place the circles and dots, or the sentence might mean something you didn't mean!
How do you pronounce these letters is a common question — and a good one.
Like in most other (if not all) languages, the same letter is pronounced differently, depending on the letters which surround it. So these examples won't cover all the possibilities — not to mention dialects.
Å, is pronounced as the a in law.
Ä as the a in fast — the American way of saying fast, that is.
Ö, is similar to u in fur.

I know that English speaking people some-times refer to these letter as umlaut — which I consider wrong even if it has become pretty common. The German word umlaut means "around/changed"+"sound". And is used when a vowel changes like o in mouse becomes i in plural, mice. So English also has umlaut, just as Swedish and many other languages.

Reading today

Reading Lady II, c. 1965
Joseph Solman, 1909-2008

lördag 15 maj 2010

Reading today

Reading Aloud (Sarah Bernhardt and Christine Nilsson)
Julius LeBlanc Stewart, 1855-1919

fredag 14 maj 2010

Reading today

Fairy Tales, 1880
Mary L. Gow
1851-1929

torsdag 13 maj 2010

Reading today

Mrs John Hazlitt Reading
John Hazlitt
1767-1837

onsdag 12 maj 2010

Reading today

Nude Reading at Studio Fire, 1928
Bernard Hall
1859-1935

tisdag 11 maj 2010

Reading today

Inappropriate Reading Time
Felix Henry Giacomotti
1828-1909

måndag 10 maj 2010

Reading today

A Woman Reading by a Window
Vilhelm Hammershøi
1864 – 1916

söndag 9 maj 2010

Reading today

Library at ThorpePerrow
Karen Armitage

lördag 8 maj 2010

Reading today

Woman Reading
Pieter Janssens
1623-1682

fredag 7 maj 2010

Reading today

Eileen
Anne Redpath
1895-1965

torsdag 6 maj 2010

Reading today

Portrait of May and Violet Craik
William Hippon Gadsby
1844-1924

onsdag 5 maj 2010

Reading today

Woman Reading, 1921
Léon Kamir-Kaufman
1872-1933

tisdag 4 maj 2010

Reading today

A Quiet Read, 1875
Augustus Edward Mulready
1844-1986

måndag 3 maj 2010

Reading today

An Hour at Ower, Hampshire, 1914
August Edwin John 1878-1961

söndag 2 maj 2010

Woman reading on Notting
Hill Gate plattform
John Lidzey

lördag 1 maj 2010

Reading today

Girl in Chair, 1879
Erik Theodor Werenskiold
1855-1936