Friday Favorites: December 21
-
- December
- 21
Travel often inspires people to search for specific information and reach for a good book. That was exactly the case for Meg Z. Smith, chief marketing director for the American Booksellers Association, a national trade association for independently owned bookstores based in Tarrytown, when a business conference brought her to Scottsdale, Ariz.
She said she wanted to know more about famed architect Frank Lloyd Wright after visiting the sunny Southwest spot. She heartily recommends “Loving Frank: A Novel,” a fictional account of a love story between Wright and Mamah Cheney. In real life the two were said to have meet in the 1907 when he was building a home for Cheney and her husband in a Chicago suburb. The two created quite a scandal when they ran away together to Europe leaving spouses and children behind.
“I picked it up because I went to Scottsdale and visited Taliesan West. You feel the sensation of him there and I wanted to find out more about him. Anytime I experience something in life I need to read about in a book,” said Smith, who has worked for the association since 1999 and lives in Irvington. We originally were talking about impending sales of two local bookstores, but afterwards she agreed to share her book choice.
Loving Frank is “quite a dramatic story that when you asked for a recommendation it just came to mind. It is a fictional account of real relationship that makes Wright come to life.”
Spots closer to home could have also inspired Smith’s reading interest, too.
Wright designed a cluster of houses in Pleasantville in a neighborhood called Usonia. And there’s more. Earlier this year a Mahopac man completed construction on a house on an 11-acre island in Lake Mahopac that is based on original designs that Wright drew for the lake site while spending time at the Plaza Hotel in New York City. It took nearly 5 years and he said the breathtaking house was a dream project. Read one my stories about the project here.
This entry was posted
on Friday, December 21st, 2007 at 6:44 am by Barbara Nackman.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
Share and Enjoy: 
| 
| 
A municipal reporter for The Journal News since 1997, 
