Marvelous day and other things

It's fun to look up and pretend that you are walking in a beutiful forest...

...even though you are in the middle of the city.

 I don't think my nails have ever been this long. Yes, they are real, not fake.

Photo Jani Lauanne, taken in Mikkeli, Finland.

I woke up really early today because i really wanted to see the transit of venus , but it was too cloudy in Helsinki. Oh, well. I just have to wait for the next time, which will be in 2117...

This is a notebook i bought today. The cover is a copy of a "real" book. I haven't found that book yet (i did ones but that one was in really bad condition...) but i'll have to. Since the cover is made by my favourite illustrator Poika Vesanto!

 This is something i saw today, something you don't see very often. A new building that i actually like! It's fun to look at! I have to foínd out who's the architect.

When i finally got home (few hours ago) i felt like listening something sad. I wasn't sad, i just had one of those moments when you feel the need to listen to something really sentimental. This record was just what i needed, Frank Sinatra's no one cares. I got it few weeks ago from my dear friend Jacques.

 Jacques

 Jacques and I having breakfast

And i don't even like yellow... :D

 And i had to go to see a doctor today (just a checkup). If the hospital is as nice as this, i don't mind going there once a year.

Marian sairaala (Maria's hospital). The firts building was built in 1886.

10 Books That Saved Your Life

Compartment C, Car 293 (Edward Hopper, 1938)

I was reading this blog and there were these lists of lifesaving books. The idea came from a website tensongsthatsavedyourlife.com- where artists from different fields can list songs that saved their lives.
The idea sounds like fun, so i made a list of books myself. First i thought that it would be hard to list only 10 books, but actually it was hard to deside which books were really lifesavers.
(It would be cool to say that "yeah, a villain shot me but luckily i had Umberto Ecos The Name of the Rose in my pocket that stopped the bullet and saved me.)
So, this is a list of books that saved my life and/or made a huge impact on me.


-Lähdettyäsi (lovepoems from 6th century China) - Translated into Finnish by Pertti Nieminen
-Matkalla niityn yli - Lassi Nummi (My favourite poet)
-The Master and Margarita - Mikhail Bulgakov
-Good Morning, Midnight - Jean Rhys
-Hullunkurinen lintukirja ("the crazy bird book") - Mauri Kunnas
-Naiv.Super - Erlend Loe
-Hanhiemon satuaarre ( a wonderful book of fairytales, lovely illutrations by Feodor Rojankovski)
-Kun Miinus lähti avaraan maailmaan (Minus and the great wide world) - Sven Nordqvist
-The Winter Queen (original titel Azazel) - Boris Akunin
-The Lady of the Camellias - Alexandre Dumas

To that list i could ad all kinds of travel guides, atlas and everything by Agatha Christie (except 'The Big Four').

Reading is fun!

Dames don't Care?

This is the cover of one of the books i'm reading at the moment, Peter Cheyney - Dame's Don't Care.
(Filmed as Les femmes s'en balancent, France; Bernard Borderie, 1954.)

There are four things i love about this book:

-The cover art is by Poika Vesanto, my favourite illustrator

-It's a detective story from the 30's (1937)

-It's a vintage paper back, printed 1947 (i collect them)

-the translation is brilliant! I have to add an example for my finnish readers...

"Yksi korokkeella seisovista kavereista laulaa kuolevansa rakkaudesta ja murskaa vielä varmasti sydämen joltain naikkoselta. Hänen äänensä on noin niinkuin sitä lajia, joka saa tempperamentikkaan kaunokaisen kaipaamaan luostariin tai johonkin muuhun sopivaan eriöön."

Advent Calendar day 23, Have a Chilling Christmas

Shared by Miss DixieBelle in facebook.

Day 20, Merry x-mas from Neil Gaiman!

Neil Gaiman gave his fans a very nice gift. Five free short stories and one of them is a audio book file too! Thanks mr.Gaiman!

Fashion from 1938 and other stuff

Few flea market finds...

Fashion from Paris and Helsinki, Kotiliesi magazine august 1938.

The coat on the right is by Sciaparelli.

I love old photos. Here's few i found today.

Guys looking smart 1938

Gals out and about.

As you may know, i love old paperbacks. This one is from the fifties.

Death on the Nile, 1937.

Here's another nice paperback. This was not a flea market find, but a treasure i found while dumpster diving.

The Deadly Truth, 1941. This one is from 1943 and the authors name is written wrong! It should be McCloy, not McGloy. Cover art by Eeli Jaatinen.

Day 9

Day 9 in my advent calendar is all about Eijo "Poika" Vesanto(1908-1950) who is one of my favourite finnish illustrators. He also did comics. I'm on a quest to find paperbacks with his covers. It can be tricky, because in many cases the artist is not mentioned.

Here's my first paperback with his cover! This one was printed in 1947. I love it! It's probably my favourite cover of all time!

Peter Cheyney, "Dames Don't Care"(1937).

sick in bed, inspiration

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec "In bed" 1893

More about bedrooms.

Dumpster diving

Yes, that's right. Dumpster diving. Some people may think that it's not cool or not very lady like.

I think it's very uncool to throw away perfectly useful stuff! Like books! Goddammit, people! Don't throw away books!

Yes, i do it wearing high heels.

I LOVE 30's and 40's paperback covers. I found several books to add to my collection!

I also found 50's handbag, an old suitcase, and poems someone wrote in the 30's and 4o's.

Pulp!

I really like Pulp magazine cover art. Pulp covers, printed in color on higher-quality paper, were famous for their half-dressed damsels in distress, usually awaiting a rescuing hero. Cover art played a major part in the marketing of pulp magazines, and a number of the most successful cover artists became as popular as the authors.

The first "pulp" is considered to beFrank Munsey's revampedArgozy Magazine of 1896.

Although they were cheap, the stories are not all bad. There are many well known authors who wrote for pulps, like Raymond Chandler, Philip K. Dick, Dashiell Hammett and H. P. Lovecraft.

Though pulps fell out of fashion in the late 50's, some independent publishers still publish magazines with short fiction, either short stories or novel-length presentations, in the tradition of the pulp magazines.

The term pulp fiction can also refer to mass market paperbacks since the 1950s.

Here's some cool cover art! (not from my collection...)

(She is obviously no 'Damsel in distress'!)

(I like her dress!)

Read more

Black Mask Magazine

Few blogs you might find interesting:

Atomic Pulp & Other Meltdowns

Paperback Covers of Robert McGinnis

Just what i've been up to lately...

Few books i gotta have...

I really like that jacket. Yes, these are pictures taken by me, with my iPhone, in the ladies room... I was a wearing a vintage blueberry summer dress. I could not wait for summer to wear that.

I saw Michael Jackson at the post office one day!

I love this photo of Lenita Airisto! "Lenita ja luuta"(1960) by Caj Bremer. He has an exhibition in Ateneum right now!

Work, work, work. With Bettie B, Dubrovnik.

Hot chocolate in MBar.

My dear friend Juha Arvid Helminen <3