Blog Posts for Gina Collia-Suzuki

An aching bum... but it's worth it

Gina Collia-Suzuki — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 18:33:15 -0800

I spent this evening at Waterstone's in Weston-super-Mare, signing books as part of the launch of late night shopping at the Sovereign Centre. I like book signings. They're tiring and they make my bum, jaw, teeth and ankles ache, but I get to meet the people who are reading my books... I get feedback. At first it was a tad frightening. After all, I could have been descended upon by a mob bearing ...

The Complete Woodblock Prints of Kitagawa Utamaro - A Descriptive Catalogue

Gina Collia-Suzuki — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 11:15:44 -0800

My third book has just been released; all 612 pages of it. 'The Complete Woodblock Prints of Kitagawa Utamaro: A Descriptive Catalogue' is a big doorstop of a book (very useful if you want to whack someone over the head), and the first of its kind on this specific subject. The catalogue started out as a very personal project. When I first began studying Utamaro's prints in 1986, I kept a ...

Seven reasons for divorce

Gina Collia-Suzuki — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 17:46:27 -0800

The 'Treasure Box of Greater Learning for Women' was a short treatise, first published in Japan 1716, and generally accepted as being the work of Kaibara Ekiken (1630-1714). It contained guidelines concerning the proper instruction of women and included a list of behaviours for which a man would be justified in divorcing his wife. I thought I'd share them here. Let's see how many of us would ...

My first bookshop love affair

Gina Collia-Suzuki — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 16:51:41 -0800

I first came across Arthur Probsthain, Oriental & African bookseller, in 1986. I was in London to visit the British Museum for the first time, and I was sixteen years old. It was a rainy day - somehow London always seems more Londony when it rains - and my heart gave a little flutter when I first spotted the bookshop's hanging sign. I was obsessed with Japanese prints, but no local bookstores ...

I am experiencing sudden raptures

Gina Collia-Suzuki — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 09:47:18 -0800

I was quite taken aback by myself today. Ever since my books first came out, I've been so busy working on other projects that I haven't really had much time to sit back and take in what's been going on around me. The books have had great reviews, and I've been very happy about that, in the few seconds before falling asleep when I had a quiet moment to think about something other than my next ...

Doom and gloom, go zoom to the moon!

Gina Collia-Suzuki — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 15:36:40 -0700

Anyone who's read any of my previous blog posts knows that I am not a floaty, fluffy, 'it's all sunshine and moonbeams' kinda gal when it comes to this writing malarkey... I'm a realist. I'm all for realism. What I'm not a great fan of is scaremongering codswallop. So, the publishing industry's going through changes... has that never happened before? Book sales are down and, apparently, the end ...

New Variety of Turnip Causes Controversy

Gina Collia-Suzuki — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 09:29:46 -0700

The Rare and Unusual Varieties department of the Sea View Fruit and Vegetable Growers Association has today announced that a new variety of turnip has finally been grown that is fit to carry the Benjamin Arnold Guppy name - the Brassica Benjamina Guppicus. The new variety is slightly larger than other turnips, with incredibly dense foliage, and it boasts the unusual ability to throw itself over ...

Great expectations

Gina Collia-Suzuki — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 15:10:24 -0700

"Are your books doing as well as you hoped they would?" I have been asked this question so many times, and I haven't once been able to answer it. I have no answer. In order for my books to do as well as I hoped, I'd have had to hope in the first place. I was told by a very dear friend, when I was sixteen years old, that there's no money to be made in writing about art. He'd been doing ...

I still think of Cedric

Gina Collia-Suzuki — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 14:42:52 -0700

On the subject of food again, I don't often talk about the fact that I'm a vegetarian. When the subject does come up, I'm usually asked how I came to be a veggie, and my answer is always the same... 'I once murdered a chicken.'The roots of my vegetarianism lie in the year 1972, in a village in southern Italy. I am half Italian (Calabrese to be exact), and my grandmother had a farm (like Old ...

Food doesn't kill me anymore!

Gina Collia-Suzuki — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 12:56:57 -0700

The illness that resulted in my brush with death in 2007, being somewhat mysterious (as I couldn't possibly fall prey to a boring and predictable one), resulted in me developing various unusual food allergies, cutting down the number of foods I was able to eat without breaking out or choking to death to about three. It's amazing just how boring, not to mention frustrating, mealtimes can become ...