New Today: Inklings by Jeffrey Koterba

The debut work of writer, musician and political cartoonist Jeffrey Koterba is published today. Inklings (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt) tells the author’s own story in graphic novel form, without the maudlin self-pity often associated with works of that genesis.

In his bio, Koterba tells us that “during the summer of 1978 [I] was struck by lightning and lived to tell about it.” He makes it sound like an advantage -- a thing to have survived and gained strength from, rather than a horrid obstacle which had to be overcome.

That pretty much describes all of Inklings. Koterba’s inky stylings are luminous, yes. But so is the spirit that drives them. Inklings is an almost rabidly optimistic look at a difficult childhood and coming-of-age from the hands of a fiendishly talented artist.

If Inklings is just the beginning, I can hardly wait to see what is yet to come.

Cookbooks: The Foodie Handbook by Pim Techamuanvivit

The very first paragraph of The Foodie Handbook (Chronicle Books) describes the journey on which you’re about to embark:

Relationships that matter most in our lives are often complicated. Think of the one with your mother or your current love, and perhaps the most perplexing, food. These liaisons can be fraught with love, hate, joy, fear, trust, suspicion, and a whole lot of other emotions. Sometimes it is nearly enough to make us wish we were orphans, turn us celibate or, worse yet, vegan.

Many foodies have met Techamuanvivit through her food blog, Chez Pim, where the Silicon Valley dropout brings foodie stuff to many thousands of visitors every week. The Foodie Handbook is better. And why? Because it is the physical embodiment of Techamuanvivit’s passionate, knowledgeable spirit. Foodie lore, recipes, advice from Techamuanvivit and other, more famous, chefs: it’s all here, just as on Chez Pim. But the book stuffs the blog into the shade. You can hold the book in your hands, flip through it, bury yourself in it and learn. And enjoy. The (Almost) Definitive Guide to Gastronomy is what the book is subtitled. And it’s that -- sure it is. But, oh, so much more.

New Today: The Great War and Modern Memory by Paul Fussell

The is a brand new and greatly improved edition of a modern classic: the National Book Award-winning The Great War and Modern Memory (Sterling). Originally published in 1975, it was named one of the most important non-fiction books of the 20th century by the Modern Library. In his preface, author Paul Fussell explains his book succinctly:

This book is about the British experience on the Western Front from 1914 to 1918 and some of the literary means by which it has been remembered, conventionalized and mythologized. It is also about the literary dimensions of the trench experience itself.

The new Sterling edition is greatly enhanced. Photographs, illustrations, maps and other ephemera from the period illuminate what was already a good and celebrated work. This new edition takes on a very good work and makes it better and, ultimately, more useful.

Art & Culture: Best Music Writing 2009 edited by Greil Marcus

2009 marks the tenth anniversary of the Best Music Writing anthologies edited by music journalist and scholar Daphne Carr and published by Da Capo. As befits an anniversary edition, this anthology is stunning with contributions from some of the very top names in music writing, and letters, as well.

As guest editor Greil Marcus points out, Best Music Writing 2009 is not meant to be an almanac:

It is not a record of the best or worst or most important what-happened-in-music of 2008, the year from which all of the pieces here were drawn …. I distrust the notion that something has to happen in any given year that in the future we will look back upon as a portent of something or as an example of something else.

What we have, instead is, quite simply, the best. The most passionate, the most deeply felt, the most well-crafted and stated and sharply rendered. Over 30 pieces reflect all aspects of the music business and all types of music. You’ll recognize some of their names. Jonathan Lethem. Aidin Vaziri. Carrie Brownstein. David Remnick. Stanley Booth.

If you appreciate reading about music, you’ll enjoy Best Music Writing 2009. It does not get better than this.

Zombie Success Story Tops One Million

The usually elegant Three Rivers Press is quick to point out that their “2003 sleeper hit,” The Zombie Survival Guide by Max Brooks, was at the vanguard of the current zombie movement. From a Three Rivers Press release:

The Zombie Survival Guide has spurred countless other books on zombies, along with its own line of products such as The Zombie Survival Guide Journal that gives people a chance to record their to-do lists and survival strategies, and The Zombie Survival Guide Flashcard Deck, created to provide private citizens with an emergency crash course in basic zombie survival techniques.

The Zombie Survival Guide has sold over 1,000,000 copies and sent author Brooks back to Zombie land for a couple of novels. Brooks has said his inspiration for The Zombie Survival Guide was the Y2K scare. “I wrote The Zombie Survival Guide for me,” says Brooks, “stuck it in a drawer for a while, and never imagined it would be published, let alone be this successful. I think its longevity is due largely to its realistic tone. Take out the zombies and it is still a general disaster survival guide.”

Art & Culture: Page Fright by Harry Bruce

Readers are more interested in process than product we’re told be author Harry Bruce in his vastly entertaining new work, Page Fright: Foibles and Fetishes of Famous Writers (Douglas Gibson Books). Says Bruce:

But process, which is what this book is all about, includes not only tools but the rooms in which writers work; the number of hours, in each day or night, that they imprison themselves in those rooms; and the number of words, in each day or night, that they’ve sworn to write…. Indeed, process is everything that creative writers do to make themselves as receptive as they possibly can to what so many of them see as dictation from a forever-unknowable source.

Bruce’s strong interest in the process of making books has led to him collecting the anecdotes that contribute to Page Fright throughout his 50 year career as an author and journalist. Burce tells us that Susan Sontag wrote in longhand on yellow legal pads as do Nelson DeMille, Jim Harrison, Beverly Cleary, Toni Morrison and Wendell Barry.

Yellow legal pads had not been invented when Alexandre Dumas did his writing, but the poet and author still used yellow, though only for his poetry. Dumas wrote his non-fiction on rose-colored paper and his novels on blue. And as silly as that sounds from this distance, it probably made it easier to find what you were looking for in his office.

“Nabokov and Saul Bellow liked to soak themselves in bathtubs,” writes Bruce. (Though probably not at the same time.) Nor were they the only water babies in this crowd. Bruce includes a quote from Diane Ackerman, who does it up right:

I have a pine plank that I lay across the sides of the tub so that I can stay in a bubble bath for hours and write. In the bath, water displaces much of your weight and you feel light. When the water temperature and the body temperature converge, my mind lifts free and travels by itself.

Since Ackerman is best known as the author of 1990’s A Natural History of the Senses, all of this sort of makes sense.

Page Fright is fantastic. Writers and would-be authors will find inspiration here. And anyone who loves books will find facts worth collecting and smiles that can’t be resisted. It’s a great book.

New Today: Almanac of the Infamous, the Incredible and the Ignored by Juanita Rose Violini

“Sometimes the world’s magic leaks out,” Juanita Rose Violini writes in her introduction to Almanac of the Infamous, the Incredible and the Ignored (Weiser Books). “Mystery does that; it can never be truly contained. Jagged cracks occasionally split the carefully laid constructs of our safe and predictable lives, and the unexplained tumbles forth into our awareness.”
If this is not something that you know for certain, it is something that you’ve always suspected: that the thing you look at isn’t always what you see.

That is the subtext -- always -- of Violini’s wonderful book, a work that is also an almanac in the proper sense of the word. Mysterious crystal skulls of unknown origin. Green children with inexplicable pasts. Phantom hitchhikers grabbing rides on the backs of passing motorcycles. Flakes of flesh that fall from the sky.

With skill, panache and a real sleuth's quest for the unknowable detail, in Almanac of the Infamous, the Incredible and the Ignored, Violini delivers a world most of us can't even begin to imagine. This is something quite beyond strange occurrences. Rather, Violini brings us a whole year’s worth of unexplained mysteries with which to confuse our staid little hearts: a new one, each and every day.

Be afraid! This one could change your life.

Art & Culture: How the Beatles Destroyed Rock ‘N’ Roll by Elijah Wald

It’s important to know going in that How the Beatles Destroyed Rock ‘N’ Roll: An Alternative History of American Popular Music (Oxford University Press), doesn’t really have much to do with the Beatles at all. Or maybe it is more accurate to say that it has everything and nothing to do with them.

What the book really does is take on everything we think we know about popular music because, as author Elijah Wald tells us, “the past keeps looking different as the present changes.”

In many ways, Wald looks at music from a new and surprising place: the various spots where it is seen and felt. From those who make it and those who, individually, groove to it. This passage explains the title -- and in some ways the book itself -- most succinctly:

If you are not aware of the Beatles, you cannot hope to understand any music of the 1960s, because they are ubiquitous and affected all the other music. Even if some musicians remained free of their influence, those musicians were still heard by an audience that was acutely conscious of the Beatles. They were the dominant, inescapable sound of the era.

And though you might disagree with those words -- or, at least, some of them -- the fact that they are worth arguing is... well... inarguable.

Wald is a musician and writer who has authored six previous books on music including Escaping the Delta: Robert Johnson and the Invention of the Blues and Global Minstrels: Voices of World Music. How the Beatles Destroyed Rock ‘N’ Roll is highly readable. Wald adds something new to a field most of us thought had been over planted. The book is lucid, innovative and richly worthwhile.

Art & Culture: Slang: The People’s Poetry by Michael Adams

Michael Adams is that guy. He teaches English language and literature at the university level. He is the editor of a magazine that focuses very tightly on speech. He is the author of a book on the slang of the now defunct hit television show Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Yes, you’ve got it right: Adams is a word geek. So, clearly, if he writes a book called Slang: The People’s Poetry, it’s not going to be the expected compendium of slang that everyone else might do. Especially if said book is published by Oxford University Press.

So take those hints, and construct them into the book you might imagine Slang might be and you’re almost be there. First of all, there is no aspect of compendium to Slang. In some regards, it is an erudite love letter to a verbal form. With footnotes. And joy. Those things might sound separate -- footnotes, that is, and joy -- but Adams pulls it off. Early in the book, the author writes:

We enjoy slang (those of us who do enjoy it) just for its casual, vivid, racy, irreverent, and playful elements, and some combination of those elements is what alerts the ear to lexical trouble: slang rebels against the standard (whether mildly, wildly, or somewhere in between), and each synonym it supplies must add some social meaning to the standard alternative’s lexical meaning.

For me, this paragraph sums up, not only the content of Slang, but the context. Sometimes Adams is playful, sometimes he is verbose (“Whereas the impletive interposing with meaningful infix is a marginal variety of a marginal feature even of slang, let alone English at large, nonpletive infixings and interposings may be trendy.”), sometimes he is insightful (“Saying the wrong thing or saying the right thing in the wrong way, just generally lacking in social finesse, can mean social isolation.”) but there is never a moment when you think he got it wrong.

Slang will not make you laugh from end to end, but I’m quite sure that was not Adams’ intent. This is an intelligent book, executed with passion. Slang offers important comment and documentation on an aspect of our culture that is very often overlooked.

New This Week: The Masonic Myth and Occult America

During this time of economic turmoil, next week Da Vinci Code author, Dan Brown, is expected to pull a J.K. Rowling by single-handedly hauling the publishing industry out of the toilet. And, speaking of toilets, even though lots of reviewers will inevitably heap scorn on Brown’s latest offering, The Lost Symbol (Doubleday), a lot of bookstores are hoping history will repeat itself and that sometimes lazy book buyers will come thundering into their stores ready to buy the newest Brown... and perhaps something else.

It is this “something else” hope that fuels the onslaught of related and kinda-related books every time a new entry by a megaselling author hits the market. Obviously, The Lost Symbol, with its five million (five million!) hardcover first edition printing and massive promotional push will be no exception. A lot of more-or-less-removed-by-one type books are hitting the market even now. For this particular release, the top of these is The Masonic Myth (HarperOne), by inside man Jay Kinney. It’s important to note that Kinney didn’t conceive of The Masonic Myth as an also-ran. As Mokoto Rich pointed out in The New York Times a few days ago, Harper purchased the book two years ago and held it for publication this week, when interest in all things Masonic will reach an all-time high: if everything goes according to plan, that is. It’s kind of a shame, really, because The Masonic Myth ends up coming off looking like one of those cheesy books thrown together to take advantage of a fad and, really, nothing could be further from the truth.

Former Gnosis editor-in-chief Kinney knows his esoteric traditions. In The Masonic Myth he does a great job of sharing a whole lot of never-before-seen inside stuff in an easily understood way. There is a lightness to Kinney’s writing here, despite a topic that seems often to move towards the dark. He keeps things in perspective, even while he helps us do the same.

“Secretive brotherhoods can be excellent devices in suspense thrillers,” Kinney writes near the beginning of The Masonic Myth, “but novels are, by their very nature, fiction …. They say that truth is stranger than fiction. Let’s see if that’s true.”

Along the same lines but with a broader reach and more solid appeal (and -- perhaps not so mysteriously -- the same release date) is Occult America (Bantam) by Tarcher/Penguin editor-in-chief Mitch Horowitz.

As the title implies, Horowitz’ book looks at how the occult has impacted the development of the United States. (Hint: More than a little.) In fact, the book is subtitled The Secret History of How Mysticism Shaped Our Nation.

“Mysteries can be found wherever you look,” Horowitz tells us early on, “especially when you’re not sure what you’re looking for.” There is much in Occult America that is more grounded, less esoteric, but what could be more filled with poetic truth?

Occult America is fantastic: interesting, entertaining, enlightening, sometimes even moving. It’s Horowitz’ first book. I’m guessing it won’t be his last.

Art & Culture: Canada by Shelagh Rogers & Mike Grandmaison

Canada (Key Porter) takes my breath away. This is the book so many others have tried to make without this kind of success. A book that includes all of a vast and beautiful country and attempts to showcase it in a way that will have meaning for those who live in the country and those who admire it from afar.

Canada is a gorgeous book. Mike Grandmaison’s photos are -- without exception -- breathtaking as well as brilliantly reproduced. It’s so sad when the reproduction of a book is not as good as the material being printed. That is not the case here: Canada is a first class production from end to end. CBC personality Shelagh Rogers does justice to Grandmaison’s work:

I am having an affair with Canada. Every place I visit intoxicates in its own way. I form relationships with these places, even if they are not long term. They follow the usual pattern: a casual, if cautious, approach. Then a date for further exploration. Next, I get physical: climb its mountains, walk its paths, swim in its waters, depending on the geography, and at nigh, drink in its bars …. When I fall, I fall hard…until the next place comes along.

A coffee table book in format, for a gift, for sharing with your own family, or just to fill your senses with serene beauty, Canada is spectacular.

Art & Culture: Going Green edited by Laura Pritchett

Laura Pritchett’s bio tells us that, when she isn’t writing, “she’s Dumpster-diving to save what other people throw away.” So right away you know that Going Green: Tales from Gleaners, Scavengers and Dumpster Divers (University of Oklahoma Press) is not going to be an Eco Chic view of environmentalism.

In the preface, Pritchett explains the concept:

Gleaning junk from a beach leads to a discussion of the enormous amount of plastic waste in our oceans. Picking up a pair of pants from a gutter leads to a discussion of this country’s cotton industry. Finding a dead animal from the side of the road to eat leads to, well, raised eyebrows and a chuckle of admiration. Here are essays that not only explore the reusing but explore our culture at large.

I have no trouble admitting that my own ideas about environmentalism are probably closer to Eco Chic than Pritchett’s gleaning and I can’t imagine the set of circumstances that would have me diving into a Dumpster. Still, Pritchett’s collection manages to be thought-provoking. It’s yet another view of the green movement and the 24 voices here often seem raw and even primal: something remembered from wilder times (The 1970s, maybe?) when the world was less ordered and change wasn’t an option, it was a matter of course.

In the wonderful “Bin Diver” Christopher Buckley sums it all up:

Correct or incorrect as that might be, we have nonetheless, it seems clear, at least a responsibility to ourselves if not to those who follow us -- if not some perhaps spiritual obligation -- to recycle what little we can, to avoid wasting even the least bit given to us, in wealth or in relative poverty, to be resourceful stewards of the planet.

Reading to Write

At a writers festival last weekend, I taught a workshop called “Writing Killer Fiction.” During the workshop -- and throughout the weekend, for that matter -- I found myself repeatedly recommending the same three books to aspiring writers. To my way of thinking, this trio of books would be a fantastic addition to any writer’s reading list, not just those who aspire to writing crime fiction. I thought I’d share my chosen three with you here. There are other books on writing but, for my money, this slender trio covers all the bases perfectly.

This Year You Write Your Novel (Little, Brown & Company) by Walter Mosley
“I don’t promise a masterpiece,” Mosley warns in his introduction, “just a durable first novel of a certain length,” and later in the introduction he underlines this point. “I can't promise you worldly success, but I can say that if you follow the path I lay out here, you will experience the personal satisfaction of having written a novel. And from that point, anything is possible.” January published a review when the book first came out in 2007. That’s here.

The First Five Pages: A Writer’s Guide to Staying Out of the Rejection Pile (Fireside) by Noah Lukeman
The first five pages are the most important in your manuscript. If they’re not sharp and ready, who will want to read beyond? But literary agent Lukeman really goes much, much deeper than readers might expect. Those who are currently iffy about self-editing will do very well heeding Lukeman’s advice. And as much as anything, The First Five Pages is a book about editing. Though not just, as the title implies, the beginning of the book. Lukeman’s work seems to bring the currently much maligned Elements of Style to life.

On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft (Pocket Books) by Stephen King
Part memoir, part writing primer, King’s fans will be delighted to discover more about the master’s background, but there are few writers who won’t benefit from the straight-forward advice King’s hard-won experience helps him offer up. “This is a short book,” King says in On Writing, “because most books about writing are filled with bullshit. Fiction writers ... don’t understand very much about what they do -- not why it works when it’s good, not why it doesn’t when it’s bad. I figured the shorter the book, the less the bullshit.” ‘Nuff said.

New This Month: The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work by Alain de Botton

Alain de Botton is, first and foremost, a philosopher. Just a few months shy of his 40th birthday, de Botton is perhaps one of the most important philosophers alive today. Arguably, of course. But then, that’s part of the point of philosophy, is it not? Everything we see isn’t always what it seems and where we look is not necessarily where what is searched for will be found. Things like that. Philosophy is intended to help us not only answer questions, but -- perhaps more importantly -- to help us work up the right answers. It’s a field that is too often ignored or overlooked in our busy world.

Case in point: the word “philosophy” comes up not once in de Botton’s bio for his new book, The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work. He’s called “a bestselling author.” This is, of course, not inaccurate: de Botton’s books sell very, very well. But it is interesting that the word at the core of his work -- the word that drives it, if you will -- has been, as much as possible, struck from conversations about his writing. This can’t be unintentional. For some reason I still can’t comprehend, the word “philosophy” strikes terror into the hearts of many people. And it should not, which is why I belabor it here. Once again. (The first time I did so in this space was in a review of an earlier de Botton work, The Consolations of Philosophy, way back in 2000.)

The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work is another enjoyable foray into serious thought with a witty, knowledgeable and considerate guide. As much as anything, de Botton is a keen and practiced observer and through his eyes we see what is delightful and horrible and defeating and satisfying about how we put bread on our tables.

More than any of his previous books, The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work is as much art project as powerful social statement. In many ways, it is a deeply personal book, one that I suspect will be interpreted differently -- personally -- by each reader. As he journeys, de Botton asks and leads us to answer: why do we work? What makes work joyous? Is it meaningful? In the larger picture for our planet, is work worth it?

Art & Culture: The Artist’s Mother, introduction by Judith Thurman

Like exhibitions loosely grouped around a theme, books with a themed core seem to come in one of two categories. They’re either lame excuses to connect that which probably shouldn’t have been connected in the first place, or wonderful triumphs that have us looking at the topic in a new way.

In almost every regard, The Artist’s Mother (Overlook) falls into the latter camp. “Maternal love takes many forms,” author and journalist Judith Thurman writes in her introduction, “not all of them benign, but one of the most essential is to provide an experience of attunement.”

We don’t experience that attunement in all of the work collected here, but one does get a glimmer of what Thurman means as well, in some cases, the connections some painters maintain with where they’ve been as well as how they’re getting where they’re going.

The book opens on a fantastic portrait of Albrecht Dürer’s mother, Barbara. Painted when the artist was just 19, it is a masterwork that clearly lays the groundwork for the genius still being developed. For a later glimpse of that genius, a charcoal sketch of Dürer’s mother done just months before her death captures the woman as she was, not idealized as was dictated by the fashions of the time. Both works are remarkable, but it’s terrific to see them almost side-by-side.

Delivered chronologically, the book ends on Andy Warhol’s 1974 portrait of his mother, Julia Warhola. In between is a history of art in maternal form: John Constable, Rossetti, Paul Cézanne, Mary Cassatt, Frida Kahlo and that most famous mother-painter of all James Abbott MacNeill Whistler whose “Portrait in Gray and Black” has come to be known as “Whistler’s Mother.”

The Artist’s Mother is a wonderful short course in art history as well a terrific tribute to one of humankind’s most lasting bond.

Now in Paperback: Keep Going: The Art of Perseverance by Joseph Marshall III

Since it was first published in hardcover in 2006, Keep Going: The Art of Perseverance (Sterling Ethos) by Joseph Marshall III has touched many people and, if the stories are to be believed, altered many lives. That being the case, it’s good to see it turn up now in a tiny and elegant paperback volume.

Marshall is the whole package: a historian, educator, motivational speaker and Lakota storyteller. All of these things come into play in Keep Going, a book so slender it could fit into the inside breast pocket of a good suit jacket, yet is so packed with storytelling punch, aspects of this message might stay with you forever.

On first reading, I was put in mind of that 1970s sensation, Jonathan Livingston Seagull. It offers the same winning combination of wisdom and innocence, a sort of knowing unknowing that compels the reader on. Nor does the reader need to be compelled far: just 130 pages in a small format paperback, it’s not beyond thought that Keep Going could be finished in a single sitting. I’m not totally sure why you’d want to do that, though. This is a book that’s about enlightenment, knowledge and strength, all concepts best savored, not inhaled.

Marshall is the author of The Lakota Way and The Journey of Crazy Horse, among other books. His written voice has a soothing quality. I anticipate revisiting Keep Going many times in the future.

New Today: A Day in the Life by Robert Greenfield

Through much of A Day in the Life (Da Capo) I kept getting the same uncomfortable feeling I got while watching Requiem for A Dream (2000), but not in a good way. There was a similar feeling of inevitable sinking and incoming tragedy. A similar feeling of wanting to shake someone and make them see.

Robert Greenfield (STP, Exile on Main Street) relates the tragic story of Tommy Weber and Susan “Puss” Coriat. Beautiful, aristocratic Londoners when they wed in the early 1960s, they are sucked into the vortex that the 60s became for many people and, by story’s end, both have been basically ruined by sex, drugs and rock n’ roll. Puss dies by her own hand in 1971 and Tommy in 2006 after decades of self-abuse.

In between the golden beginning and the ignominious end, the couple have two children -- one of whom would grow to become the actor Jake Weber -- fall in with various nefarious rock n’ rollers and just rip their golden life to shreds.

A Day in the Life reads, at times, like a novel, but like one of those torrid little romances you’d rather no one see you with. And after you finish reading? Well, I just wanted to have a shower.

A Day in the Life is not a bad book, but it’s a sad book. I’m not sorry I read it, but I’d certainly never read it again. Fans of music history and 1960s culture will feel differently, I’m sure. This book is just stuffed full of the kind of juicy tidbits that lot likes best.

New This Week: Either You’re In or You’re In the Way by Logan and Noah Miller

Filmmaking twin brothers Logan and Noah Miller have a single car, mobile phone and computer between them. It’s not that they wouldn’t each like their own but, as they tell us in the opening paragraphs of Either You’re In or You’re In the Way (Collins) “right now money is tight. So, for now, we share. And are blessed to have someone to share it with.”

That’s pretty much the sentiment that floats us through the book. It’s a charming, witty and in some ways fascinating story that’s part memoir and partly the story of how -- against all odds -- the brothers wrote, produced, acted in and directed a feature film -- starring no less than Ed Harris -- in less than a year with little between them besides 17 credit cards.

That would be sufficient story for the book, but then the resulting film, Touching Home, was nominated for 26 Academy Awards and took home 11 of them.

Either You’re In or You’re In the Way is, in some ways, a Cinderella story in perfect Hollywood style with all the bittersweet details and plot twists such a story demand. And, all things considered, it’s no surprise that they can write, too. Those who love movies and/or a touching family story will enjoy this book. It’s a very worthwhile read on so many levels.

New Today: The Whatchmacallit by Danny Danziger and Mark McKrum

You know, you could probably go through your whole life and never know what a tittle is. Or a toorie. Or a caruncula. But with the publication of The Whatchamacallit (Hyperion), you can discover what they are. Those, and a few dozen other common objects with uncommon names you couldn't care less about.

But should you care? Or, more to the point, shouldn't you? That's why authors Danny Danziger and Mark McKrum collected the stories behind a whole mess of things you might never bother to consider. But I think readers of January Magazine’s brother-in-crime, The Rap Sheet, want to to know that a scarpetta is the hunk of bread you use to wipe gravy or sauce from your plate. And I think, as one who eats breakfast, you want to know that fines are the crumbs at the bottom of a cereal box.

And speaking of breakfast, did you know that those little stringy bits between a banana and its peel have their own name?! Yep. They’re phloem bundles. And that bit of punctuation in which a question mark is immediately followed by an exclamation point? It's called an interrobang.

In The Whatchamacallit, you’ll find dozens of treasures such as these, each described with certain degrees of gravitas, albeit with the authors’ tongues shoved deeply into their cheeks. Some of the essays are short and sweet, others venture further, becoming mini-treatises on topics that somehow connect to the word in question. It’s essential reading for anyone who loves words ... and if you're reading this, that means you.

Edible Schoolyard by Alice Waters

Alice Waters’ lush and lovely Edible Schoolyard: A Universal Idea (Chronicle Books) is a coffee table book about change and sustainability. You’ve heard the term grassroots? This is what it looks like, right here.

In the early 1970s, Waters introduced the idea of organic produce at her Berkeley Restaurant, Chez Panisse. While Waters’ star has risen considerably in the last 35-plus years, so has her clout. If Waters has an idea, she has both the resources and the respect to put it in motion. And since Waters’ focus has been green since before the color was chic, it only stands to reason that at least some of her good ideas are also going to be good for the planet.

In 1996, in celebration of the 25th anniversary of Chez Panisse, Waters created the Chez Panisse Foundation. The Foundation’s big project has been the Edible Schoolyard, an acre that Waters and the Martin Luther King Jr. Middle School in Berkeley have transformed from cracked blacktop to lush garden of learning. It is a tool for social lessons as well as a sustainability demonstration garden for over 3000 students and countless visitors since the garden first sank its roots.

Edible Schoolyard documents this transformation as well as Waters’ journey with it as well as the many young lives that have been touched by the garden. It’s an amazing, beautiful story.

While the world looks to Barak Obama, Al Gore and (for crying out loud) Bono to save the planet, foodies know that, for real grassroots change, you don’t have to go much farther Alice Waters. Edible Schoolyard is a gorgeous literary documentary of a good idea.

Less Equal Than You’d Think

Are women writers underrepresented in our literary landscape? Elaine Showalter, Princeton University Professor Emerita and author of A Jury of Her Peers: American Women Writers from Anne Bradstreet to Annie Proulx (Knopf) certainly thinks so. On a recent On Public Radio International broadcast, Showalter explained her thoughts:

Women write a lot of fiction, and are massively read, and if you look at the best-seller list at any point… they will be represented in great numbers, and women are also reading fiction by men; but the opposite is not the case. I mean, men don’t read as much fiction by women; but more important than that, in our schools and in our histories of American literature, and in our sense of a national literary tradition, women don't play the role that they’ve earned.

A partial transcript of the broadcast is here, as is a link to listen to the interview in full.

New This Month: Shut Up, You’re Fine: Poems for Very, Very Bad Children by Andrew Hudgins

Hush now -- don’t cry, my wayward son.
You couldn’t see you were becoming
someone who’d study “Manual Arts” --
rough carpentry, not even plumbing.

Mother smelled, and Father too,
the cigarettes you’ve been bumming.
We searched beneath your bed and found
the dirty books you’ve been thumbing.

The first two stanzas of “Had it Coming,” the first poem in Shut Up, You’re Fine (Overlook Press) do a pretty good job of illustrating the very specific taste required to enjoy this compelling and hilariously offensive little book.

Illustrated by the distinguished artist Barry Moser, Shut Up, You’re Fine is mostly comprised of degenerate nursery rhymes crafted by the talented hands of a writer who has been nominated for both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award.

This is not a book that everyone will enjoy and it would not surprise me if some readers were deeply offended. Put it this way: if you think South Park is the height of humor, you’ll like Shut Up, You’re Fine... and you’ll think again.

New This Week: Variety’s “The Movie That Changed My Life” by Robert Hofler

It seems to me that Robert Hofler’s Variety’s “The Movie That Changed My Life” (Da Capo) is a fairly impossible book not to like in that it offers up something for everyone. Well, everyone who likes movies. And celebrities. It’s a good idea that has been well executed. I couldn’t put it down.

The idea is astonishingly simple: Hofler, who is also the author of The Man Who Invented Rock Hudson, asked 120 celebrities to (from the sub-title) “Pick the Films that Made a difference (for Better or Worse).”

Hofler doesn’t just plunk down their answers, but rather puts together brief profiles that places their choices for life-altering movies in context. Novelist Michael Connelly “calls Chinatown his absolute favorite detective film,” and goes on to say that his own novel, Echo Park, “gives a nod to Chinatown.”

Though he loved both versions of The Manchurian Candidate, Senator John McCain says that “Viva Zapata! influenced him more than any other film” because seeing the movie introduced him to the historical figure and sent the young McCain on a journey of learning.

Jack Nicholson saw On the Waterfront “twelve or fifteen times. [Brando] was the guy of my high school generation.”

Kirsten Dunst, Rosario Dawson, Ben Affleck, Tim Burton, Dr. Phil, Deepak Chopra (who loved Ben Kingsley in Gandhi. Surprise!) and Donald Trump (another surprise: he loved Citizen Kane): Hofler’s book offers up a concise and vivid image of what goes on in the heart of contemporary celebrity. It’s a tremendously enjoyable book.

Art & Culture: Falling in Love Again edited by Stacey Abbott and Deborah Jermyn

For those who insist their Valentine surprises have deeper meaning and perhaps a bit more meat, Falling in Love Again: Romantic Comedy in Contemporary Cinema (I.B. Tauris) is surprisingly fresh, on-target and deeply interesting.

Falling in Love Again points out that while romantic comedy has long been a staple at the movies, they’ve not often been taken seriously. In this anthology, an international list of contributors take that serious look at all aspects of contemporary comedy in film. And yet, that look is not too serious: we’re left with an expert view at an often artically underappreciated medium.

Both editors are senior lecturer in film and television at Roehampton University in the United Kingdom and both have contributed to or edited other film-related books for I.B. Tauris. Stacey Abbott is the author of 2007’s Celluloid Vampires while Deborah Jermyn is the author of Crime Watching: Investigating Real Crime TV, also from 2007.

Falling in Love Again was published in the UK late in 2008 and will be published by Macmillan in the US next month.

New in Paperback: The Book of Dead Philosophers by Simon Critchley

The Book of Dead Philosophers (Vintage) is shockingly lucid, surprisingly good, unexpectedly funny. It’s a book that meets its initial mandate, then passes it by a country mile. Clearly, I liked it a lot. I find it difficult to imagine anyone with even a passing interest in philosophy who would not enjoy it.

Author Simon Critchley looks chronologically at those who dedicated their lives to thinking about intellectual matters of life and death and how they themselves exited the material world. “Very simply stated,” writes the author, “this is a book about how philosophers have died and what we can learn from philosophy about death and dying.”

But it’s more than that, too. Critchley points out that we, as a society, are almost ridiculously frightened of death. And what can we do about that? Critchley has the answer: philosophy.

It was a commonplace in antiquity that philosophy provides the wisdom necessary to confront death. That is, the philosopher looks death in the face and has the strength to say that it is nothing.

That’s in theory. In practice... well, Critchley gives us short profiles of close to 200 philosophers, a little about how they lived and -- more importantly in the context of this book -- how they died. On that journey, we encounter all that life has to offer: wit and wisdom, tragedy and comedy. There are bizarre ends and others that are pathetically unexceptional. In short, he gives us the tools we need to begin to “learn to have death in your mouth, in the words you speak, the food you eat and the drink that you imbibe.”

It’s a remarkable book.

New Yesterday: What Obama Means by Jabari Asim

If timing is everything, Jabari Asim, formerly an editor at The Washington Post and currently editor-in-chief of The Crisis -- the magazine of the NAACP -- has it all figured out.

The author of 2007’s The N Word: Who Say It, Who Shouldn’t and Why approaches Barack Obama’s new presidency from a cultural perspective in What Obama Means: For Our Culture, Our Politics, and Our Future (William Morrow). Asim uses his talent, his training and his observations about his own culture to help understand how we came to this point and where we might expect to go from here. It’s a thoughtful and enjoyable ride. You might not agree with everything that Asim posits, but he states his various cases eloquently and he writes so well, it’s enjoyable to follow him on this journey of thought:

With the heyday of Parisian exile long gone and journeys back to Africa exposed as mostly implausible, race men and women have nowhere else to go. There are too many bodies in the earth, and you can’t, as Toni Morrison once wrote, just up and leave a body. Those bones belong to the land, the land belongs to us, and we don’t need to wear lapel pins to prove it.

Asim is a wonderful writer, sure. But he’s also something of a philosopher and, on moving with him through his thoughts on how this moment in history became possible, it’s enjoyable to follow his mental calisthenics.

Did Michael Jordan’s success in the NBA contribute to Obama’s successful run at the White House? How about Sidney Poitier’s Academy Award and Michael Jackson’s Thriller? Now me, I would not have made those connections and, having read What Obama Means, I’m still not sure I’m convinced. But these are engaging mental exercises for this moment in time. Asim has written an entertaining, enlightening and thought-provoking book. Students of contemporary culture will want to put it near the top of their lists.

Art & Culture: Dreambook by Mark di Suvero

“Each human saves himself or herself, and no other being can do anything but give insight, show a way, or block. Will, acting across parameters of necessity that are in delicate equilibrium, can change things. History shows this. Those who have changed the course of human history have always believed themselves capable of it. Sadly though, most of the time most humans act from necessity.”

What makes Dreambook (University of California Press) special is that it’s so much more than it might have been. So much, in a way, more than it appears.

Dreambook is said to be “the definitive volume on American sculptor Mark di Suvero” and in some ways it is. Over 200 images track the deep course of his work; the changes it has made; the sharp turns of direction it has taken over the years. But there is very little about di Suvero included which -- taken within the context of the book -- is absolutely right. This is di Suvero’s book. His book of dreams. And so we see his work but, in his own words, we hear his heart. Admired works by other writers are included as well: Walt Whitman, Marianne Moore, Rainer Maria Rilke, many others.

di Suvero was born in China to Italian parents and raised in the United States. Without question, he is one of the most important living sculptors. His work can be found in museums and collections the world over. And though there is a very good biographical section on di Suvero by Francois Barré late in the book, it is only a very small portion of Dreambook.

This is probably not the most definitive book on di Suvero that will ever be. It is, however, purely Mark di Suvero’s book. We get to experience his art, albeit from the distance of photography. Perhaps more importantly, though, through his personal essays and his editorial choices about what other writing should be included in this, his book of dreams, we get to experience his heart.

Best Books of 2008: Art & Culture

Amazing Baby by Desmond Morris (Firefly) 192 pages
After this, the joke that children don’t come with an owner’s manual might have to be put on hold. Celebrated zoologist Desmond Morris’ Amazing Baby fills that long empty hole: and so much more. This is the complete baby, a coffee table book so beautiful and perfect, in future no baby shower will ever be complete without a copy. Amazing Baby covers all the topics, handles all the questions, raises all the issues. From practical advice (nursing, weaning, waste control) to systems evaluations (the skeleton, the feet, the senses), it seems as though nothing has been overlooked. In his foreword, Morris tells us that “babies are more than just babies. They also happen to be our only certain form of immortality, in the sense that they carry on our genetic line, ensuring that our genes do not die out when we ourselves come to the end of our own lives.” With gorgeous photos, exquisite reproduction and fascinating text, the importance of babies both to our lives and to our well-being seems never to have been forgotten. -- Monica Stark


The Complete Quincy Jones: My Journey & Passions by Quincy Jones (Insight Editions)
The life and times of media giant Quincy Jones isn’t new territory. For anyone interested in the man, there have been a couple of film documentaries and his autobiography, published just a few years ago. The thing is, what makes Quincy such a god in show business is also the what makes him so fascinating to read about and hear about, again and again. There’s always something new to see and hear, some new story, some fresh insight. The Complete Quincy Jones is different from other books -- even his own -- because it’s fully illustrated with photos and reproductions of items from his life. Other books have done this, and they’re always interesting. But here, something about the text and the selection of items transcends. Quickly moving through Quincy’s life, the stories sort of hop, skip, and jump through time, hitting the high notes: his childhood, his work in the music business, his barrier-breaking work scoring films and television series, and the mentoring and branching out to other media that have filled his later life. Quincy’s life is one that we imagine we can understand by listening to his music. After all, someone who’s been at it this long and this relentlessly must leave breadcrumbs of his life in his work -- but as I said, this book’s breadcrumbs, if you will, are tangible. Meaningful articles, a family photo album, a report card, handwritten notes, personal calendar pages, concert handbills, sheet music, and scores of archival photographs. All of this material brings the stories to life in a new way that’s nothing less than hypnotic. And peppered throughout are tributes from many of the people Quincy has worked with: four of the biggest guns -- Maya Angelou, Clint Eastwood, Bono and Sidney Poitier -- are all mentioned on the front cover, and they only scratch the surface. But beyond all the marquee names, the one that matters here is Quincy’s. He’s the real attraction. While biographical material about him abounds elsewhere, this beautiful book stands alone as a testament to the man’s work and life. -- Tony Buchsbaum

Fruit: Edible, Inedible, Incredible by Wolfgang Stuppy and Rob Kesseler (Firefly) 264 pages
One look is all that’s required to understand that this sterling journey is very like one that we’ve been on before. The work is arresting, distinctive, familiar, yet it covers entirely new ground. Rob Kesseler is a professor at Saint Martins College of Art and Design. And he’s also the co-author of two previous books, also published by Firefly in North America: Pollen and Seeds. Like those previous works, Fruit is little short of astonishing. If the book never gets further than your coffee table, it’s still likely to blow the stuffing out of anything else laid near it. Physically, it’s a very large book. But though size is what makes it possible to really appreciate what we’re seeing here, it isn’t everything. And what we’re seeing is, of course, fruit. But it is depicted here in such magnificent ways that almost any one of the scores of images included would do well to be hung on a gallery wall. This isn’t art, though. At least, not in the usual sense. In this context, they are illustrations for a fantastic book, one that offers up a journey quite unlike any you’ve been on before: “As this book will reveal,” we are told in the very first chapter, “fruits are part of an elaborate plot. Their true nature is revealed by what is buried in their core: their seeds. Seeds are the most complex and precious organs plants ever produce, as it is the seeds that carry the next generation.” Like a seed, this is the barest sliver of the knowledge available. Reading all of Fruit is like a fantastic mini education. Don’t feel like reading? Just look at the pictures. They’ll take you away. -- David Middleton

Notes on a Life by Eleanor Coppola (Nan A. Talese) 306 pages
An artist’s view of life. A filmmaker’s view of a life spent in film. A mother’s comment, joy and lament. Notes on a Life could easily have been just another celebrity bio but it is so, so much more. In fact, it’s never that at all. Many lives are rich and hold deep wells of experience and emotion to mine, and often it’s enough. However Eleanor Coppola’s Notes on a Life adds another layer. This is Eleanor Coppola -- yes, that Coppola -- and thus her internal mining is studded with encounters with people and faces we already know. Marlon said this. Frank said that. Wasn’t Sofia darling when she did that? All of these things add to the book. Take it to another even richer place. -- Monica Stark

The Surface of Meaning by Robert Bringhurst (Simon Fraser University) 240 pages
I feel as though I waited for The Surface of Meaning for a long time. Of course, like many designers, I knew that Bringhurst was working on another book. It was expected to be an important one, even in the course of a long and important professional history. The Surface of Meaning does not disappoint. In the acknowledgements, Bringhurst tells us that putting the book together was “in some respects more like curating an exhibition of sculpture or painting than like anything in the normal round of editing and publishing.” Considering the nature of this particular work, this isn’t surprising since, as the subtitle indicates, the book is about Books and Book Design in Canada. Bringhurst delivers the goods. The Surface of Meaning is the history, the encyclopedia and -- yes -- celebration of the book. And though the focus is on Canada, designers and typographers everywhere will want this one for their library. I’m quite certain The Surface of Meaning is one of the most important books about books published thus far in this millennium. -- David Middleton

The Water Garden by Leslie Geddes-Brown (Merrell) 192 pages
Leslie Geddes-Brown’s The Water Garden explores the use of water in the landscape in every way conceivable. In large, art coffee table book style, The Water Garden looks closely at the idea of water in the garden through a series of really great photographs as well as Geddes-Brown’s expert text. An accomplished journalist who has contributed to some of the leading magazines and newspapers in the world on the topic of houses and gardens, Geddes-Brown is the author of several books including The Walled Garden, The Floral Home and Waterside Living. The water garden in history, the Oriental water garden, the Islamic water garden, the formal water garden, the romantic water garden and many other aspects are explored through text and photos in some detail. It’s a stunning book, one meant alternately to inspire and to soothe. I would love to create a garden like any of those included in the book. However, I lack the space and -- to be perfectly honest -- I likely lack the wherewithal, as well. The Water Garden, though, is a wonderful journey for the armchair gardener as well as those who might be in a position to act on their inspiration. -- Aaron Blanton

Holiday Gift Guide: Birdscapes: A Pop-Up Celebration of Bird Songs in Stereo Sound by Miyoko Chu with the Cornell Lab of Ornithology

There’s something deliciously crazy about Birdscapes (Chronicle Books). Cunningly engineered and beautifully designed and executed, to open the book is to initiate a wildlife symphony so convincing, the whole time I played with the book, my dog thought something illicit was happening on my desk. (And, from her perspective, what could be more illicit than colonies of birds taking root in the studio?)

The sounds would be impressive enough, but they’re not alone. Open, for instance, to the two-page spread showing a Pacific Seabird Colony. A rocky seascape rises right out of the book. A paragraph of text explains that “Common Murres court and fight on rocky outcrops, trumpeting to one another. Red-legged Kittiwakes exchange rapid nasal calls from the cliffs,” and so on, but you almost don’t need to be told: so strong are the visuals -- right there in 3-D! -- and so convincing are the sounds, not a snippet of imagination is required in order to partake.

A section at the back of the book explains all seven of the dioramas included in some detail. Birdscapes is breathtaking: flawlessly put together, no bird lover will fail to feel their jaw drop.

Holiday Gift Guide: The U.S. of Eh? How Canada Secretly Controls the United States by Kerry Colburn and Rob Sorensen

“Canadians are peaceable, friendly, unassuming, and adorable. They’re also secretly in control of nearly every aspect of life in the southernmost Canadian territory known as the United States.” So at least we’re told by the back cover of The U.S. of Eh? (Chronicle), which is clearly a very silly book, intended for a chuckle and -- certainly -- meant to be given as a gift, if only because it’s difficult to imagine anyone actually buying this book for themselves. “Once we began to realize that Canada is in control of everything,” write the authors, “we wondered how this could be.”

The premise is that Canadians have gotten their overly polite (and no doubt well groomed) mitts on everything. The U.S. of Eh? includes lists of many Canadian things -- hotties, music, actors, inventions -- as well as lots of general silliness about the “maple leaf conspiracy.” And I can’t imagine the reader who will not learn at least some small (and perhaps interesting) thing here. For instance, did you know that chocolate bars, garbage bags, light bulbs, pabulum, paint rollers and zippers were all Canadian inventions? Less surprising: car heaters, snow mobiles, snow plows and snow blowers all started out in the cold blue north. And what else? Much more. You’ll have to give it -- or get it -- to find out for yourself.

Holiday Gift Guide: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button: A Graphic Novel

Just in time for the holidays, a sort of weird movie tie-in that stands entirely on its own merits, the graphic novel of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (Quirk Books) is only slightly short of wonderful, and only then so because I don’t like to rave.

The original story was, of course, by F. Scott Fitzgerald. In a delicious afterword to the graphic novel, Fitzgerald himself explains his muse in this instance:

This story was inspired by a remark of Mark Twain’s to the effect that it was a pity that the best part of life came at the beginning and the worst part at the end. By trying the experiment upon only one man in a perfectly normal world I have scarcely given his idea a fair trial.

Even so, 86 years after the fact, a feature film starring Cate Blanchette and Brad Pitt is doing well at the box office.

In my opinion, the graphic novel adapted by Nunzio DeFilippis and Christina Weir and illustrated by Kevin Cornell deserves to do even better. This is a complete package: Cornell’s illos are nothing short of stunning and -- clearly -- his work deserves an even wider following. The story has been skillfully adapted by DeFilippis and Weir. One just can’t imagine a better job. If you liked the movie, you’ll love the graphic novel; it’s nothing short of brilliant.

Holiday Gift Guide: To the Dogs by Peter Culley

Poet Peter Culley’s To the Dogs (Arsenal Pulp Press) is both stunning and fatally flawed. Which of those things weighs the most heavily will most likely depend on where you stand.

Culley explores the canine/human connection with an artist’s eye. That is to say that while books that collect historic and contemporary photographs and tie them together -- even lightly -- with editorial are generally spurred by some passion for the future well-being of all canines. One doesn’t get any of that from Culley. In fact, I’m fairly certain -- though not absolutely sure -- that Culley is not a dog owner at all. His essays are careful, clever and sometimes even insightful, but they never zoom to the place where dogs and humans connect. I suspect this is a place of which Culley is not even aware.

The “faithfulness” of the dog is both cliché and description, and it encompasses not only the dogs loyalty to humans but also its equally reliable connection with their older ways of being. The OED’s historical mosaic speaks to a connection with dogs that transcends both language and circumstance; in photographs and paintings, the postures of the humans can render them barely recognizable in present terms, but the dog is always contemporary.

Part of this distance might stem from the fact that To the Dogs began life as an exhibition at Presentation House Gallery back in the summer of 2007. The book reflects this heritage in every spill of ink. The photographs include the work of Lee Friedlander, Pieter Hugo, Bruce Davidson, William Wegman, Paul Kane, Shari Hatt, Amy Stein and others. The subjects include Yves St. Laurent, General Custer, Peggy Guggenheim and Andy Warhol, plus many more whose attached names would not impress you, yet whose inclusion is intended to underscore the place dogs have held in the history of humankind. It’s an exhibit I would have liked to have seen.

To the Dogs is a worthwhile book. Beautifully produced and presented, in some ways what it lacks in passion and understanding it makes up for in execution. Is that enough? Almost.

Holiday Gift Guide: Jetpack Dreams by Mac Montandon

According to author Mac Montandon, the desire for flight without the aid of a fuselage is probably as old as mankind itself. “Adam and Eve, after all, didn’t bicycle from grace or swim from grace, they fell, and had they had jet engines strapped to their backs everything might have been different.”

It’s this sort of tongue-in-cheek but inarguable logic that makes Jetpack Dreams (Da Capo) such a delight and which sustains us through 261 hardcover pages of Montandon’s quest to strap said jet engine to his own back.

In the course of his quest, Montandon takes us along as he explores the history and even the development of this astonishing -- and oddly tough to nail down -- piece of technology. It’s a great ride and since you’re unlikely to find an actual jetpack under your tree, Jetpack Dreams may well be the next best thing.

Reasons to be Cheerful Even When the Bubble Burst

I had a surreal experience recently meeting up with Mark Sanderson, who writes the “Literary Life” column for The Telegraph and who has written a novel called Snow Hill that will be published by HarperCollins in 2009. The surreal angle is that, when we met at the HarperCollins crime dinner recently, we discovered in a surreal twist of fate that Sanderson and I both attended the same primary school in a village in Cheshire in the 1970s.

During that excellent dinner, I also discovered that HarperCollins editor Julia Wisdom’s first rock concert was seeing the British Heavy Metal band Hawkwind, who also happened to be one of my all time favorite bands, as well as that of Ian Rankin. Over the meal, Wisdom and I discussed the merits of Heavy Metal and Hawkwind’s psychedelic brand of space opera, especially their ground-breaking 1973 concept double album, Space Ritual, which was recorded live in London and Liverpool in December 1972. This album is an astounding mesh of science fiction, drugs and heavy rock and features writing from British SF writer Micheal Moorcock, as well as poet Robert Calvert and the whole Hawkwind entourage, including Lemmy who was a.k.a. Ian Kilmister who later formed Motorhead.

So with Hawkwind in my mind currently; I am pleased to announce that Reasons to be Cheerful (Adelita) by Paul Gorman is being released next month in the UK. It celebrates the short life of graphic artist Barney Bubbles who helped design the covers and imagery of many Hawkwind albums including Space Ritual and the definitive In Search of Space. Bubbles also designed graphics that Hawkwind used in their concerts. But Bubbles worked with many other British acts, and the title of Gorman’s book relates to the iconic Ian Drury and the Blockheads single of the same name.

It seems Bubbles made the transition from Hawkwind’s brand of SF Heavy Metal to the raw pulse of the emerging British Punk rock scene, reports The Sunday Times:

Soon Bubbles was designing record covers for Hawkwind, an explosion of ideas that pushed their freeform space-rock into a new dimension. The 1971 classic X in Search of Space, which unfolded into the shape of a cruciform hawk, was an elaborate triumph of sci-fi nouveau. “It was in the days of LSD, and I think Barney used to take the odd acid tab when he was doing the sleeves," laughs the Hawkwind co-founder Dave Brock. “You can probably see the results of that in his artwork, like Space Ritual.” Indeed, with its sleeve panels of cosmic embryos, nipple planets and sonic waves, Space Ritual combined Bubbles’s ideas on philosophy, theatre and art. Still he refused to sign his work, though his reputation was growing apace.

By the mid-1970s, Bubbles made the transition from hippie to punk, reshaping [New Musical Express] NME’s logo and landing a job as in-house designer at Stiff Records. His graphics gave the fledgling label a sharp, smart new identity. He created sleeves for Nick Lowe, the Damned, Ian Dury, Elvis Costello and more — many of which cleverly subverted art movements such as dada and constructivism. It was a fiercely intelligent streak he carried through to F-Beat, Radar and Go! Discs. “His sleeve work was sensational,” asserts the Stiff photographer Brian Griffin. “And his work rate was phenomenal. I never saw Barney sleep, ever. Hit Me with Your Rhythm Stick is one of the great art pieces of the 20th century. It’s mind-blowing. I think it’s up there with a Picasso painting.”

You can see some of Bubbles’ work from Word Magazine here. However, like many creative people, Barney Bubbles was a troubled soul who tragically ended his life, here reported by Mark Paytrees at the Hawkwind fan site Starfarer:

Barney was struggling. The regular outlets for his work were drying up. He was underpaid for the work he was still doing, and a love affair crumbled around him. "I used to do this magazine with him called Y," recalls Brian Griffin. "And one day we had this argument about the rude words in the text. It was the only argument we ever had. I went round to see him and patch it up, and he'd lacerated his face with a razorblade." Nik Turner also witnessed a more desperate Barney around this time. "I got a call from his girlfriend, who said, 'Come round and help us, Barney's threatening everyone with a knife.' I did and he said, 'Look, I'll kill you too.' Then he threw the knife on the ground. He was having a nervous breakdown. Soon afterwards, he committed himself to a hospital."But Barney never recovered. "He phoned me up on the morning he committed suicide," Griffin remembers. "He said, 'Beej, I really feel terrible.' I recall him being worried about his VAT. I said, 'Don't worry, after I've finished shooting this Echo & The Bunnymen video I'll come straight over.' I finished early, mid-afternoon, and I phoned up. But it was too late. His sister came to the phone and said, 'Barney's killed himself.'"

Holiday Gift Guide: Wacky Packages

I don’t know about you, but I spent far too many of my own tween afternoons pouring over Wacky Packs, those addictive trading cards that fractured ads and product packaging, turning the most inocuous of claims into a hysterical parody that often spoke more truth than the real products taglines did. (I think they played a large role, in fact, in my career choice as as advertising copywriter -- but it’s possible I’m being a tad too honest.)

Now dozens of the best Wacky Packages (Abrams) have been collected in a book of the same name. As it turns out, Art Spiegelman, later of Maus fame, was responsible for a lot of the memorable madness, and there’s an illuminating interview with him here about the world of journeyman artists and art directors of the period, as well as how this series was born.

Best of all, there’s original art for Jail-O dessert mix, Crust toothpaste, Kook-Aid drink mix, Cheapios cereal, Hipton tea, Big Muc burgers, and more than 200 others, from Series 1 through Series 7. This treasure trove is a must-have book for any culture-conscious adult who was a kid about 40 years ago.

Holiday Gift Guide: Tall Tales by Al Jaffee

For anyone who ever read Mad magazine, the name Al Jaffee is seared into memory. But before he was Mad, he was syndicated in newspapers nationwide with a strip called “Tall Tales.” Turning up his nose at the standard horizontal format, Jaffee created something, well, taller, one column wide and several inches tall. Now 120 of the best have been gathered into a book, also called Tall Tales (Abrams). Without a single word, each cartoon deftly tells a single joke, and they’re often incredibly funny.

Using the simplest of lines and nothing but black ink -- a starkness that reminds me of the theatre drawings of Al Hirschfeld -- Jaffee manages to tell tales that are almost painfully insightful (painful thanks to the cramps they induce). One of the things that make them so funny is the absolute lack of pretense; they simply show us as we are, which makes them as eye-opening as they are gut-busting.

Finally, like Jaffee’s tales themselves, the book is tall -- but at just $14.95 retail, it’s also low enough to be the comedy bargain of the year.

Holiday Gift Guide: The Letters of Allen Ginsberg edited by Bill Morgan

“If you are in any ennui or doldrums, lift up your heart, there IS something new under the sun.” This line opened a letter Allen Ginsberg wrote to Jack Kerouac in July of 1950. The newness he was writing about was a relationship. “Ah, Jack,” he continues later in the missive, “I always said that I would be a great lover some day. I am, I am at last.”

Most everyone is familiar with the work of poet Allen Ginsberg, but few had reason to know that he was also a fabulous -- and prolific -- correspondent. Editor Bill Morgan -- Ginsberg’s archivist and biographer -- reports that he sifted through nearly 4000 Ginsberg letters to come up with the 165 reproduced in The Letters of Allen Ginsberg (Da Capo). “Strictly speaking,” Morgan tells us, “a man of letters is not someone who has written a lot of letters but rather someone who is actively engaged in the literary and intellectual world. Allen Ginsberg was both.”

Morgan has -- once again -- done a terrific job with Ginsberg’s words. In many ways, what we have here is the very heart of the Beat Generation. A wonderful book.

Dancing With the Devil

In terms of traffic and readership, January Magazine is one of the top book-related sites on the Internet. As a result, an almost unimaginable number of books find their way to our doors, a healthy percentage of them uninvited. We try to review as many of them as we can, but there are no guarantees. Here is one guarantee, however: I’m about to tell you about a book we will not be reviewing. But the book is just so bizarre, I couldn’t let it slither away without mention.

From the press release for The Lennon Prophecy (New Chapter Press):

Did John Lennon sell his soul to the devil in exchange for his worldly musical success with The Beatles and beyond? That’s the theory set forth by Joseph Niezgoda in his soon-to-be released book The Lennon Prophecy, A New Examination of the Death Clues of the Beatles.

Now, obviously, right away there are some problems with this theory. For instance -- and just for starters -- the book presupposes a heaven and hell and, of course, a devil with whom to make a deal. But wait, it gets worse:

The Lennon Prophecy puts forth the theory that a 20-year-old Lennon, so disillusioned with a life of sadness and disappointment where he was abandoned by his father and stricken with the death of his mother, entered into a deal with the devil to achieve fame and fortune. Niezgoda alleges that a 20-year pact began in December of 1960, shortly before a night when Beatlemania first struck audiences on December 27, 1960, when the Fab Four played at Town Hall Ballroom in Litherland, England. During that performance, as Niezgoda writes, "The Beatles evoked a response noticeably different from anything in their past." From there, The Beatles inexplicably and immediately shot to global fame at a level never seen before or since. The 20-year pact came to its tragic conclusion on December 8, 1980, when Mark David Chapman, who testified he was possessed by demons, fulfilled the end of the contract by murdering Lennon outside of his apartment at The Dakota in New York City.

Now, let’s be clear: I have not read The Lennon Prophecy and I don’t intend to, nor will I ask anyone on my team to do so. Life is short and there are a lot of books at there waiting to be read, some of them pretty great. From where I’m sitting, this one is... not. This is fruitcake-worthy stuff. And I’m not suggesting you read the book, either. But it did seem like a book to know about, if you follow my thinking.

Imagine a world where people actually believe this stuff.

Holiday Gift Guide: Garfield: 30 Years of Laughs and Lasagna

Who says nothing good came out of the 1970s? Jim Davis’ sardonic comicbook kitty, Garfield, turned 30 this year. And though he was born in the 1970s, as Davis points out in an introduction, “Garfield morphed from a grumpy lump of wisecracking clay into the iconic ‘spokescat’ for the ‘80s generation: the ‘Me Generation.’ What perfect timing!”

Garfield: 30 Years of Laughs and Lasagna (Ballantine) offers up a generous sampling of Garfield over the decades. The over 400 strips include 30 that Davis calls his favorites. A wonderful remembrance or a great introduction, and an anniversary celebration befitting “the world’s most famous feline.”

Not quite enough Garfield? Or maybe a little too much? Garfield Minus Garfield (Ballantine) is a ridiculous idea that works eerily well. Based on a viral Internet joke, this little book looks exactly like the Garfield books of yore: except there’s no Garfield. Garfield’s owner, Jon, is left speaking into a void, looking like a lonely kook when he should be speaking to a kitty. Good fun!

Holiday Gift Guide: 101 Things Canadians Should Know About Canada

101 Things Canadians Should Know About Canada (Key Porter Books) is a weird little book. It reads like an anthology of Canadian stuff as described by a handful of Canada’s top contemporary writers. Contributions by Camilla Gibb, Christopher Moore, Todd Babiak, Michelle Berry and others reflect a view of Canada that is distinctly east of the Rockies in a package that looks and feels more like a children’s book than perhaps it really should. The topics are not childish, however. The contributors tackle health care, the Canadian flag, peacekeeping, hydroelectricity, the St. Lawrence Seaway and oil.

101 Things Canadians Should Know About Canada is the ultimate result of an Ipso-Reid Survey Canada’s Dominion Institute did that asked Canadians -- about 3000 of them -- what things they considered quintessentially Canadian.

“In the final analysis,” writes editor Rudyard Griffiths, 101 Things Canadians Should Know About Canada shows that we are not, as we are often told, a disparate nation made up of ornery regions, cloistered ethnic groups, and aggrieved linguistic communities. Instead, we are a people who enjoy and benefit from a set of widely shared understandings about the fundamentals of a common Canadian identity.” As well as the Stanley Cup, Queen Elizabeth. And moose. Quite a mix, eh?

Considering the contributing talent and the topics covered, the book is not as sharp as it could be. Still. It’s a slender little volume that will fit handily into a size-large stocking, making it the perfect gift for the Canuck (or Canuck-lover) on your list.

Holiday Gift Guide: I Live Here

I Live Here (Pantheon) is stunning, heartbreaking, riveting. True.

Actually four books held together in an artful portfolio, each documents the stories of some of the displaced women and children in four locations: survivors of ethnic cleansing in Burma, war in Chechnya, globalization in Mexico and AIDS in Malawi.

Some of the voices we encounter belong to those very women and children, other stories come to us through noted artists and writers -- Ann-Marie MacDonald, Joe Sacco and Karen Connelly among them.

The book is part of a project put in motion by actor Mia Kirshner, who was initially looking to fill a hole in a seemingly rich and comfortable life and possibly ended up with more than she bargained for, but certainly not more than she could chew. In a recent interview, Kirshner said that, on her travels, she “mostly met people who weren’t that different from you and me. Sure, they were desperately poor, but they were even more desperate to be heard. This project is about making that happen.”

The I Live Here Foundation can be reached online.

New Last Week: The 12-Step Bush Recovery Program by Gene Stone

Sometimes you just have to laugh in order to avoid crying. Alternately, one could say: it would be funny, if it weren’t also true.

From Step 3. Deal With Embarrassment:

Maybe these last few years have been tough, but they could have been worse. After all, my lawn is still green, I can drink my tap water, and the enormous oil derrick spewing vile crap outside my ocean-view window has become very attractive to me. Do I really have a problem?

Each person’s definition of a problem is different. Some people grasp their problem quickly, others don’t. Also, what is a problem to some is not a problem to others. Maintaining objectivity is difficult in this area. Skilled parishioners must always be careful not to judge. However, you have a problem.

The reality is this: no matter the outcome of next week’s election, this part of the problem will be removed. The 12-Step Bush Recovery Program: A Lifesaving Guide to Shaking Off the Horrors of the Last Eight Years, with Practical Advice on Relapse, Remission and Recounts (Villard) is clearly satire. It tweaks the classic 12-step recovery program into a direction never quite before seen. Trenchant essays by talented contributors (Nathan Richardson, John Hartmann, Tony Hendra, others) fill the book out beyond the merely spoofy. This is hard-hitting political satire done up in a way we hope we won’t need to see again for a long, long time. It’s paperback original. It’s slender and it’s cheap. Get it while it’s hot. Because -- may the force be willing -- we won’t need to be laughing at this stuff much longer. And Gene Stone, also the author of The Bush Survival Bible and Duck! The Dick Cheney Survival Bible, will be looking for a new job. Thank God, yes? We’ve been in limbo long enough.

Art & Culture: We Will Be Heard by Bud and Ruth Schultz

For more than a quarter century, Bud and Ruth Schultz have been collecting American stories, taking people’s pictures, all on a single theme: repression in America. In We Will Be Heard: Voices in the Struggle for Constitutional Rights Past and Present (Merrell) the couple present us with 90 stories -- each one accompanied by a photographic study of the subject.

In the Preface, the work is explained:

It has been more than twenty-five years, now, since we first began to interview and photograph those for whom the promise of American democracy – freedom of expression, freedom of association – has been denied. Seeking people targeted by government for their political beliefs and activities, we, of necessity, focused on those advocating the right to unionize, an end to racial segregation, and an end to war, movements that helped define and transform the twentieth century.

For the most part, you won’t recognize their faces. You won’t know their names. (Ring Lardner Jr. is an obvious -- and deeply interesting -- exception.)

We Will Be Heard will make you wonder; make you think; perhaps even make you cry. It will not, however, leave you untouched.

Non-Fiction: The Muslim Next Door by Sumbul Ali-Karamali

When she was growing up in Los Angeles, Sumbul Ali-Karamali would often be the only Muslim child in a classroom, at a birthday party, or the house of a friend. She found herself constantly dealing with questions and sometimes even shocked disbelief from people who didn’t even know where to begin to understand her religion. And that was before 9/11. Since that time, of course, North American’s misunderstandings around Islam have grown far worse. As Ali-Karamali tells us in The Muslim Next Door (White Cloud Press):

… the common Western perception of Islam has become a contorted, evil caricature of the real thing, like some reversed portrait of Dorian Gray, where the normal reality hides in the attic and the visible portrait becomes increasingly repulsive. Especially since the end of the Cold War, we in the United States have been bombarded with daily, unchecked, untrue, public denigration of Islam to an irresponsibly defamatory degree.

The Muslim Next Door should be required reading in the West at this time. Ali-Karamali clearly knows her subject both on a personal and professional level. Raised a Muslim in a country that didn’t at that time have a lot of Muslims in it, the author has a graduate degree in Islamic law from the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies and has served as a teaching assistant and research associate in Islamic law.

Just as important, Ali-Karamali writes lucidly on every imaginable aspect of her topic. The subtitle’s The Qur’an, the Media, and that Veil Thing is a terrific starting point, sure: but she goes so much deeper than that. The Muslim Next Door is an important book.

Art & Culture: 100 Road Movies by Jason Wood

If I were to compile a list of road movies -- or any other kind, for that matter -- it would be tempting to try and make it a sort of best of. Filmmaker and writer Jason Wood resists that temptation in 100 Road Movies (BFI), something he explains in his introduction:

I would argue that one of the objectives of any kind of “list” or guide style of book is to stimulate debate, conjecture and hopefully, if only very occasionally, agreement.

And so you have the films you would expect -- Wim Wenders Kings of the Road from 1976, for example; The Grapes of Wrath from 1940 and Thelma and Louise from 1991 -- alongside movies you might not have expected or, in fact, would not have thought of or even known about at all. Rob Reiner’s The Sure Thing from 1984 numbered among these for me. If I’d ever heard of this film, I’d forgotten about it, and I’d surely never seen it. “A witty, 1980s teen variation of It Happened One Night,” writes Wood, “the affectionately regarded The Sure Thing was an early success for Capra-loving director Rob Reiner.”

The Sure Thing is notable, also, for the introduction of an 18-year-old John Cusack in the first of what would became a familiar role for him. He plays, as Wood puts it, a sour-faced cynic who still manages to charm and engage his audience.

Though Oliver Stone’s 1994 Natural Born Killers does not immediately jump to mind when you think “road movies,” in so many ways, it really is, and it’s here.

Obviously, I don’t have the space here to comment on any but a very few of Wood’s choices, but though the book is fairly tiny, it’s also quite excellent. And, just as the author desired, at least some of the 100 films he’s chosen to include are sure to spark some debate and conversations with fellow film buffs.

New this Week: The Man Who Made Vermeers by Jonathan Lopez

In one of those odd coincidences of collective unconscious, 2008 saw the publication of two important books on mid-20th century art forger Han van Meergeren. Back in June we got The Forger’s Spell (Harper) by Edward Dolnick, a beautifully researched and illustrated look at the man most often thought to be one of the most successful art forgers of all time. Nor is Dolnick a neophyte to the shores of art crime. A previous work, 2006’s brilliant The Rescue Artist, won the Edgar award for Best Non-Fiction while ArtNews said there had never been “a better book on art crime.”

One would think that, in a year that an author this good had produced a book this terrific, another on the topic would be overkill. But Jonathan Lopez’s newly published The Man Who Made Vermeers (Harcourt) stacks up very well to Dolnick’s book, in fact the New York Sun says Lopez bests Dolnick. Personally, I think it would take an expert on the topic to pick a winner -- both books are terrific and engaging. Perhaps Dolnick’s prose is a little warmer, while Lopez’s seems a bit more in-depth, but I could be clutching at differences here. The color plates in The Forger’s Spell are fantastic and add their own depth to the story, while the many historic black and white photos in The Man Who Made Vermeers enrich the already terrific text.

If you must pick one over the other, do it at your favorite booksellers. Hold the books side by side, read a snippet from here and perhaps from there and then choose the one that seems to speak directly to you. If you choose one and enjoy it, one won’t ever be enough. Fate has made a set of these books, that’s what I think. And what’s to stop you going back and getting the other once your appetite has been properly whet?

Art & Culture: Ary Stillman: from Impressionism to Abstract Expressionism

If you spend any time at all studying his work, you wonder at how completely absent his name is from the lists of important artists of his era. Certainly in his own time, Russian/American artist Ary Stillman was considered influential. These days, if his name comes up at all -- which it seldom does -- he is most often compared to Jackson Pollock, something I’ve never understood. Compare him to Mark Rothko. Compare him -- if comparisons must be made -- to Picasso, who worked in a similar era and whose work over time shows similar seismic upheavals of change, but Pollock? No, not that.

Whatever your impressions of Ary Stillman (1891-1967) a new book from Merrell offers an appropriate overview of the life and work of this remarkable artist. Merrell’s books are always well thought out and beautifully executed and Ary Stillman: from Impressionism to Abstract Expressionism is no exception. Essays by seven important experts on Stillman’s work offer a written view that, accompanied as they are by reproductions of the artist’s work, offer a full color glimpse into the life of an artist whose work you probably don’t know enough about.

New This Month: Shimmering Images by Lisa Dale Norton

You’ve always wanted to write the story of your life, but didn’t know where to begin. Or, you’ve felt the tug to set things down on paper, but thought you were too busy. Or that no one would care. Or both. If any of these things ring true for you, author, teacher and founder of the Santa Fe Writing Institute, Lisa Dale Norton has written the book you didn’t even know you were looking for.

Shimmering Images: A Handy Little Guide to Writing Memoir (St. Martin’s Griffin) is spare, slender and entirely to the point. In her introduction, Norton writes that the book “gives you the steps without a lot of fancy mumbo jumbo about literature and books you haven’t read and never will.”

Despite this grassroots-ish sounding advice, Norton manages to chase through to the beauty and spirit of powerful storytelling. As Norton says:

Story, the essence of narrative, is art. Writing life stories borders on the mystical because you, the writer, become the master of reality. You make sense of chaos. You bring order to life events through narrative; you attach meaning to events. The act is more than reporting facts; it is an act of creation. Art is creation. Memoir is art.

Review: Reading the OED by Ammon Shea

Today in January Magazine’s art & culture section, Diane Leach reviews Reading the OED by Ammon Shea. Says Leach:

I planned to begin by writing that Ammon Shea’s Reading the OED is THE book for word lovers. I ran to look up the word for word lovers (lexiphiles? vocabularians?) but immediately ran into what I always called “the dictionary problem.” That is, if you don’t know the word, or know it but cannot spell it, you’re out of luck. Thanks to Ammon Shea, I now know the technical term for my the dictionary problem is onomonomatia: vexation at having difficulty in finding the right word. If you are true wordarian, or whatever, there is the OED online, which will solve this problem for you via its search engine, provided you are willing to subscribe. Or you may follow Ammon Shea’s example. Wordarian to end all wordarians, Shea read the Oxford English Dictionary cover to cover, the way others might take on Swann’s Way. Caveat Emptor: The Oxford English Dictionary runs 21,730 pages, requiring 20 volumes. The set weighs 137 pounds. Start making shelf space, and working with free weights, now.

The full review is here.

The Indiana Jones Handbook by Denise Kiernan and Joseph D’Agnese

Those for whom the late May release of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull reignited the thirst for all things Indie will be pleased to set their eyes on this book. The Indiana Jones Handbook (Quirk) bills itself at “The Complete Adventurer’s Guide” and, in some ways, it is. How else would you discover what to do if bitten by a tarantula? How to run on top of a moving train? If you have to cross a rope bridge? Or if you have to deal with rats? (“Damp, dark caverns are a paradise for rodentia,” the book warns at one point.)

Though tongues may well be in cheeks, they were neatly tucked away during the writing of The Indiana Jones Handbook. Like all those Worst Case Scenario handbooks so popular at the beginning of the decade, this Indiana Jones-themed book takes all of its questions quite seriously. Is the resulting guide funny? Well, a little bit. But it really helps if you’re already a fan, if for no other reason than to help you get the references to monkey brains and other purely Indie material. Looks of color illustrations -- many from the films -- as well as a solid little format contribute to the fun. And though it seems unlikely that most of us will actually benefit from learning how to survive for several days while clinging to a submarine’s periscope, the possibilities opened just by thinking about it are all a lot of fun.

Cult Watches by Michael Balfour

If you think you know about watches, think again. Internationally respected watch geek Michael Balfour here brings us the watch book to end all watch books. And though the spirit is all things watch-related, the focus is quite different: Balfour takes intimate, elegant, stylish looks at 30 “cult” watches and though he never quite gets around to explaining how the 30 he chose managed to make this particular cut, we can extrapolate -- by what he says about them and by which ones he chose -- that, for his purposes, “cult” is somewhere outside of the mass market. Something special, in many cases handmade and in all cases, highly collectible. And thus we get up close and personal with the Cartier Tank; the Bulova Acutron; the Hamilton Electric; the Rolex Cosmograph Daytona; the Vacheron Constantin Toledo; the Swatch and 24 others.

The chosen 30 get their tea leaves read, in a sense. Balfour profiles each of them in great detail, bringing us history where appropriate, engineering background where called for and throughout provides visual information above and beyond the call.

Cult Watches (Merrell) is beautiful, memorable and deeply interesting. Students of design and those with an interest in modern history will be fascinated. Those who share Balfour’s passion for watches and who love and collect them might just be moved to tears.

New Yesterday: Notes on a Life by Eleanor Coppola

Squint your eyes a bit and this is a book by any talented writer musing on her well-spent life thus far. Connecting characters from her distant past with figures from her near past and drawing them with a steady hand and a poetic heart. It’s all good stuff.

Many lives are rich and hold deep wells of experience and emotion to mine, and often it’s enough. However Eleanor Coppola’s Notes on a Life (Nan A. Talese/Doubleday) adds another layer because, with your eyes out of their squint, you see this isn’t just any ol’ garden variety talented writer. This is Eleanor Coppola -- yes, that Coppola -- and thus her internal mining is studded with encounters with people and faces we already know. Marlon said this. Frank said that. Wasn’t Sofia darling when she did that? All of these things add to the book. Take it to another even richer place.

An artist’s view of life. A filmmaker’s view of a life spent in film. A mother’s comment, joy and lament. Notes on a Life could easily have been just another celebrity bio but it is so, so much more. In fact, it’s never that at all.

New Last Week: Secrets of the Wee Free Men and Discworld by Carrie Pyykkonen and Linda Washington

People who have read more than a single Terry Pratchett novel are not just readers; they are fans. That’s just how it works with this author. And Pratchett fans are more than just fans. They’re passionate fans, prepared to discuss the minutiae of the “Multiverse” Pratchett created with barely any provocation.

A Pratchett quote on the very first page of Secrets of the Wee-Free Men and Discworld: The Myths and Legends of Terry Pratchett’s Multiverse (St. Martin’s Griffin), explains part of the fascination. “You’d have to be a very strange person to get all of the jokes. But I hope you’ll get between 80 and 90 percent, and the ones you don’t get, you won’t actually notice are there!” These joke-getting readers, then, are the ones that will not only want this unauthorized companion, they probably won’t rest until it’s in their hands.

Meanwhile Pratchett, who was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s earlier this year, recently announced he was donating half a million pounds -- about one million dollars -- to be used for Alzheimer’s research. A grassroots fund raising program has been surging through the author’s fanbase. You can read more about that here.

Over the years, January has interviewed the Discworld creator on a couple of occasions. You can see those interviews here and here.

Happy Anniversary: The Big Lebowski

It blows my mind -- that is to say, it is mind-blowing -- that The Big Lebowski turns 10 this year. I mean, what did we even say when we didn’t call each other “dude”? The Coen Brothers’ modern classic, released in 1998, plunked this term into its current context into the modern lexicon. And so much -- so much! -- more. This from the introduction to BFI Film Classics The Big Lebowski by J.M. Tyree and Ben Walters:

Since every last scrap of dialogue from the film is now somebody’s inside joke -- oat sodas! what-have-you! -- The Big Lebowski is now basically a slacker’s bible, to be quoted more or less religiously.

Like the film itself, the book is slender and appears light, yet it is surprisingly powerful, offering up assessments of the movie and its place in modern film -- and cult film -- history, as well as the impact The Big Lebowski has had on the wider world (more than you probably think). It even offers brief comment on other Coen Brothers movies and finds the place where Lebowski fits in the context of the work of these talented and off-beat siblings.

Is it an important book? The depends. Do you think The Big Lebowski is an important film? If the answer is an unhesitating “yes,” run, don’t walk.

Review: New Orleans 1867 by Gary A. Van Zante

Today in January Magazine’s art & culture section, contributing editor Aaron Blanton reviews New Orleans 1867 by Gary A. Van Zante. Says Blanton:

In 1867, two years after the end of the American Civil War, New Orleans photographer Theodore Lilienthal (1829-1894) was given an important assignment. Under orders from the city’s politicians and top business people, and with a desire for boosterism and image-building during the time of Reconstruction -- the German-born Lilienthal was paid 2000 dollars -- an enormous sum in post-war New Orleans -- to undertake a 12 week photographic project. The final portfolio was known as La Nouvelle Orléans et ses environs and included 150 photographs and 50 stereoscopic views of the city, which Lilienthal showed in late May of that year in his Poydras Street studio.

Lilienthal’s portfolio of New Orleans images became the first municipally sponsored photographic survey of an American city. In New Orleans 1867, Gary A. Van Zante, MIT curator of architecture and design, collects the 126 surviving images from the portfolio, studies them and places them within the various historical contexts of the Civil War, civic planning and this important -- often beleaguered -- city itself.

The full review is here.

Review: The Chainbreaker Bike Book by Shelley Lynn Jackson and Ethan Clark

Today, in January Magazine’s art & culture section, contributing editor Aaron Blanton reviews The Chainbreaker Bike Book by Shelley Lynn Jackson and Ethan Clark. Says Blanton:

The first glance brought me nothing but confusion. The cover illustration -- of a bike shop goin’ hard -- reminds one of the soft competence of the very best of Robert Crumb’s work. Here it is reproduced in black and the shade of pink I can never think of as anything besides “bubblegum.”

The title adds another clue: The Chainbreaker Bike Book: A Rough Guide to Bicycle Maintenance. This combination -- title, well and garishly drawn cover plus a certain devil-may-care attitude in the execution put one in mind of another famous book that concerned itself with maintaining a two wheeled conveyance.

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Robert Pirsig’s monumental 1974 work, had little to do with motorcycles, let alone their maintenance, philosophically delving into the metaphysics of quality. Put another way: very few among the millions who bought that book actually made the purchase to help them fix their bike.

The full review is here.

Review: Artists In Their Studios: Where Art Is Born by Robert Amos

Today, in January Magazine’s art and culture section, contributing editor Cherie Thiessen reviews Artists In Their Studios: Where Art Is Born by Robert Amos. Says Thiessen:

Ever wanted to wander into Robert Bateman or Ted Harrison’s studio to see how they work? Ever wondered what Carole Sabiston or Pat Martin Bates’ studios might look like? It is a heady thing to be in the presence of a celebrated and gifted artist, and this book is the closest many of us will ever get to that.

The full review is here.

Best of 2007: Art & Culture

Architectural Inspiration: Styles, Details, Sources by Richard Skinulis and Peter Christopher (The Boston Mills Press) 528 pages
In a world gone mad with home renovations and new construction, Architectural Inspiration is the ultimate design and wish book. This is the go-to-guide for the homeowner facing rethinking their existing home -- or designing a new one -- helping filling in the blanks that would-be designers without an actual design background will encounter. Are you dealing with double hung or casement windows? What about the roof? Will it be shingle, shake or tile? How about a stone floor, or reclaimed wood, or linoleum? What are all the options? How are they the same? How do they differ? And all of this information is aimed at one goal: how will this work for me? Now, clearly, Architectural Inspiration will probably not hold all of the answers but it’s certainly a gorgeous, well executed path to gathering together all the questions. -- David Middleton

The Dinner Party: From Creation to Preservation by Judy Chicago (Merrell) 308 pages
When artist Judy Chicago’s landmark show, The Dinner Party, opened in early 1979, 5000 people stood in line at San Francisco’s Museum of Modern Art to see it. Earlier this year, and nearly three decades later, the exhibit found a permanent home with the opening of the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art at the Brooklyn Museum in New York. This book commemorates and documents this monumental exhibit in a grand and appropriate way. Larger in scale, color and production values than previous books, The Dinner Party: From Creation to Preservation does justice to Chicago’s symbolic history of women in Western civilization. A landmark book worthy of a landmark exhibit. Bravo! -- Monica Stark

Dream Homes: 100 Inspirational Interiors by Andreas von Einsiedel (Merrell)
Like Richard Skinulis and Peter Christopher’s Architectural Inspiration: Styles, Details, Sources, another book I loved this year, Dream Homes provides a sourcebook for classic interior design. And by “classic” in this instance I mean enduring designs representing a wide variety of styles, but just about everything shared here is breathtaking and -- as the title suggests -- inspirational. “Traditional or vernacular architecture and design endures, partly because in most countries it still forms the bulk of the housing stock .... As land becomes scarce and planning restrictions become tighter, the building of new homes is increasingly difficult. Instead, the current focus is on reorientation.” And, as just about anyone could tell you, before you begin with reorientation, you’d best have inspiration or disaster will ensue. Dream Homes has all of that in abundance. It’s a delight and a surprise, one I anticipate consulting often in the coming years. -- David Middleton

Frank Lloyd Wright in New York by Jane King Hession and Debra Pickrel (Gibbs Smith) 159 pages
Though Frank Lloyd Wright in New York concerns itself entirely with the years the architect spent in New York City -- 1955 to 1959 -- the defining moment of the book for me comes when Arthur Miller and Marilyn Monroe -- at the time husband and wife -- ask Wright to design a home for them on piece of property in Connecticut. The 90-year-old Wright mostly napped on the way out to the Miller’s “rundown old farm” but once there he “energetically and without pause” tramped up and down the hilly acreage. “On reaching the summit, Miller explained to Wright that he and Monroe did not want ‘some elaborate house with which to impress the world,’ but rather a home that reflected their desire to live simply. Miller observed: ‘this news had not the slightest interest for him.’” Indeed, the drawings he came up with -- for a house that was never built -- look modern even to the contemporary eye. Rounded wings spread here and there, a huge circular central pod perches at the edge of a reflecting pool: grand only begins to cover it. I like this story because it seems so typical of this architect. (Typical, also, of this couple, when one thinks of it. I mean, if I want to have a simple little place built for me, I would be unlikely to ask for suggestions from the man who called himself “the greatest architect in the world.” What does it say if you do?) Throughout his lifetime, Wright had said he would never live in New York, calling it “the greatest and greediest mouth in the world.” Yet he spent most of the last five years of his life there and, arguably, made the strong impressions that would ensure his place in immortality. Frank Lloyd Wright in New York does a terrific job of documenting these years, managing to say new things in a field that has been so well covered, it’s surprising that there’s anything at all more to say. -- David Middleton

Hammett’s Moral Vision by George J. “Rhino” Thompson (Vince Emery Productions) 246 pages
Reading Dashiell Hammett can change your life. It certainly changed George Thompson’s. He went from being a bright young academic to a man with an interesting career in law enforcement. In the meantime, he wrote a doctoral dissertation which became (in this expanded, updated form) Hammett’s Moral Vision -- a work which itself helped shape the intellectual lives of those who read it in serialized form in The Armchair Detective magazine in the early 1970s. Thompson’s work was the first serious, comprehensive critical examination of Hammett’s five novels, and it remains perhaps the best -- still stimulating and insightful after all these years. The author sees Hammett’s body of work as displaying a darkening social and moral vision, which ends in the chilly alienation of his final book. “To see the novels as I have argued,” he writes, “points, I think, to at least one reason Hammett never again wrote a major novel after The Thin Man; he had no more to say. He had worked out as far as he could the possibilities of the questions he had raised concerning individual man and society.” -- Tom Nolan

The Making of Star Wars by J.W. Rinzler (Ballantine Books) 372 pages
It was bound to happen. What with making-of books de rigeur these days -- almost as commonplace as making-of documentaries on DVDs -- someone was bound to realize that one of the great-greats had yet to see such a tribute. This one clocks in at a staggering 314 pages ... and those are way-oversize pages, not your typical 8-by-10-ish leaves. The word for this is exhaustive. It covers everything from the very earliest itches on creator George Lucas’ neck in the years he was making American Graffiti, all the way up to the original’s box office receipts. Throughout, there are hundreds of images, from film stills to behind-the-scenes shots to Lucas’ handwritten notes and script pages to set design sketches. It’s a really a you-name-it-it’s-here kind of thing. Rinzler’s account reads like a filmmaking War and Peace, complete and replete with every possible detail about early drafts of the screenplay, the frustrating intricacies of dealmaking with the studios, the ups and downs and innovations of production and special effects, and the compromises Lucas was forced to make just get the film produced. There have been zillions of words written about Star Wars (and I’ve read my share), but these several thousand more are perhaps the most valuable, a laser-like examination of every little bit of creative energy that went into the film that has become a true force in filmmaking. Finally, a making-of that’s worth all the trouble. -- Tony Buchsbaum

Photo by Sammy Davis, Jr. by Burt Boyar (Regan Books) 352 pages
Sammy Davis, Jr. was an accomplished photographer. Photo by Sammy Davis, Jr. is the first book to collect hundreds of his images between two covers. It’s a powerful testament to another side of the man’s awesome talent. We think of Davis as an entertainer par excellence, a member of the Rat Pack. But if these images are any indication, his passion was the photograph. The book includes some reminiscences, but the photos are the point here, and they don’t disappoint. Here are Davis’ parents. Here’s Davis headlining at Ciro’s in L.A. Here are Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis on a movie set. Here are Dean and Sinatra in Vegas, just before showtime. Here are shots of a Sinatra recording session, the singer into his work, the photographer there to document. Here are Lauren Bacall, Betty Grable and Marilyn Monroe, backstage on a movie set. It goes on and on. Bob Hope. Jimmy Durante. Early early Sonny and Cher. James Dean. Nat “King” Cole. Phil Silvers. Danny Thomas. Robert Mitchum. Peter Lawford. Martin Luther King, Jr. Bobby and Jackie and Patricia Kennedy. Nixon. Sure, this might look like a book, even a vanity book about a star’s hobby, but it’s much more than that. I wouldn’t even say it’s just a document about Davis’ photographic talent. Rather, it’s an insightful portrait of a period of our history, when black became something other than a four-letter word, when entertainment and politics rocked, when America endured a paradigm shift we’re still feeling today. This is history the way it should be seen: unrehearsed, unaware, as real as it gets. -- Tony Buchsbaum

Shells by Paul Starosta and Jacques Senders (Firefly Books) 379 pages
“Shells have inspired the realm of human imagination, influenced the Surrealist art world, been buried in ancient tombs. Shells have served as geometric and abstract symbols, among ancient civilizations, with spirals and stripes of converging lines having particularly deep significance.” And as lovely and passionate as the words that describe shells in the introduction to this book, nothing will prepare you for the book itself, a majestic coffeetable-sized tribute to the beauty of form and function represented by this “unique and perfect masterpiece of nature.” As the book points out, shells have fascinated humans since the time of Aristotle and most probably before. And it’s possible that this fascination has never been given a more beautiful and complete literary form than in Shells. More than 300 breathtaking photos cover nearly 400 pages. The photos themselves are astonishing, treating each shell like a work of art, which, when considered, perhaps it is: though created by the hand of nature, not of man. Even those who lack a passion for shells will appreciate this book, in itself an impressive, interesting and majestic work of art. -- India Wilson

Sitcoms: The 101 Greatest TV Comedies of All Time by Ken Bloom and Frank Vlastnik (Black Dog & Leventhal) 336 pages
There’s a moment when you know this book will be unlike anything you have ever seen ... and I do mean “ever.” Open the cover, turn two pages, and there it is: a photograph of Laura Petrie, in her signature capri pants, dancing in one of those iconic episodes of The Dick Van Dyke Show. The thing is, the photo is in color! The chair behind Laura is yellow! The sofa: brown. The rug: green! Her shirt: red! It’s unbelievable, really, the instantaneous transformation of world from black-and-white to “living color.” That’s what this book is all about: bringing serious color to the black-and-white memories we have about the shows we all love. There’s a show here for everyone; here are some samples (alphabetically): “The Addams Family,” “Barney Miller,” “Cheers,” “The Donna Reed Show,” “Family Affair,” “Get Smart,” “Julia,” “The Life of Riley,” “I Love Lucy,” “M*A*S*H,” “One Day at a Time,” “Soap.” The text is endlessly insightful, covering history, behind-the-scenes gossip, original casts, up-close profiles of the most memorable character actors, sitcom flops, military sitcoms, radio sitcoms, sitcoms from the movies, sitcoms with movie stars and more. The authors know their stuff, and they know how to make all of this material as entertaining as the shows themselves. But as good as all that is, what drew me in was the photos. Mostly, they’re not unexpected fare: production stills, publicity stills, behind-the-scenes stills. But what you remember are those color images of the shows and characters who live in black-and-white. This book is 24 karat gold all the way through, but those color photos are 100 per cent platinum. -- Tony Buchsbaum

This Year You Write Your Novel by Walter Mosley (Little, Brown & Company) 112 pages
Landfills and library used-book sales are packed to the brim with self-help works, and none seem more insidious at times than books on how to tap your muse and write the Great American Novel/Drama/Screenplay. Many of them are written by either no-name academics who seem to live only within the pages of Poet and Writer and Writer’s Digest, or literary artists who receive glowing reviews but whose books wind up on the remainder tables next to their how-to guides. There are exceptions, of course, including Stephen King’s marvelous On Writing. And in 2007, detective Easy Rawlins’ creator, Walter Mosley, contributed to the pile in a major way with This Year You Write Your Novel. In a tight text that can be devoured in a single sitting (Mosley tells us that it runs fewer than 25,000 words in length), he lays it out for you -- how to show and not tell, the pros and cons of first- versus third-person narrators, research, structure, the distinction between story and plot, the need for multiple drafts and how to know when you’re done. It should be clearly stated that this is not a “how to get published” book. While Mosley briefly touches on markets and agents, this is not a manual on how to crack the bestseller lists or impress the buyers from Barnes & Noble. This is a book about the joy, frustration and ecstasy of writing a novel. Aspiring writers should have this volume near their writing desk. -- Stephen Miller

Why Not Catch-21?: Fifty Book Titles and Their Origins by Gary Dexter (Frances Lincoln) 228 pages
What’s in a name? More than you’ve ever imagined replies author Gary Dexter, who in Why Not Catch-21? answers the questions that some titles ask by their very existence. “Most book titles simply describe the contents of the book they are attached to,” Dexter writes in his foreword. “Crime and Punishment is about crime and punishment, and Brideshead Revisited is about revisiting Brideshead. But a small number of books have a rather odd, separate existence, almost as independent literary artefacts. The stories behind them are quite different from the stories behind the actual books.” Readers of the Sunday Telegraph will know that Dexter’s book has grown out of his column for that paper, “Title Deed” and that it can be deeply interesting to learn of the origins of the title of Harold Pinter’s The Homecoming or that of A Clockwork Orange. (Though Dexter’s thoughts are not conclusive on this latter.) And even if some of the included titles push at the edges of the mandate of the book -- like Frankenstein and Lolita -- it’s still fascinating to learn a bit of history about classics whose stories we thought we knew well. If there is, at times, a faint stuffiness to Dexter’s prose and even a vague superiority, it does not, in the end, detract from the richness of the work. This is a book I imagine I’ll be quoting and telling stories from for years to come. -- Linda L. Richards

Holiday Gift Guide: Art and Culture

24: Ultimate Guide by Michael Goldman (DK Books) 144 pages
24 is one of those television programs that creates addicts. It certainly created one in me. I came late to the party, watching the seasons on DVD before having to endure the seven days between episodes that come when you watch every week on Fox. Seasons one through five were pretty epic most of the time, and season six tanked. Made almost no sense. Still. Now that the writer’s strike has put production of Season 7 on hold, give the 24 fan in your life a little something to hold him (or her) over: this book. It’s the ultimate look at the series, including story arcs, full character bios, weapons and gadgets, conflicts, behind the scenes juiciness, cool-as-heck photos and much more. Best of all, each season (that is, each day) gets an almost minute-by-minute breakdown of what happened, how. It’s great fun to flip through, getting the scoop on everything you might have wondered about as you were watching. The writing here is crisp and fast, no-nonsense -- just like the show. -- Tony Buchsbaum

The Art of Dreamworks Bee Movie by Jerry Beck (Chronicle Books) 160 pages
“What about a movie about bees and call it Bee Movie?” When Jerry Seinfeld said these words to Steven Speilberg -- just to fill a lull in the conversation they were having over dinner -- he had no idea that Spielberg would take him seriously and that the next four years of their lives would involve how to figure out how to bring bees and their world to life in a movie. Jerry Beck’s The Art of Dreamworks Bee Movie takes fans of animation through the stages of what it took to make Sienfeld’s little conversation filler a reality. There is something very insider-ish with a book like this. Sitting down with it is like having a Q&A with the animators: How do you come up with a bee world? Did the characters always look like this? What was going through your mind when you designed the cars, the costumes, the city, the colors? On its own The Art of Bee Movie is a fun and happy and informative insight into the art of the animator, but books like this also make great companions to the movies they celebrate. -- David Middleton

The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2007 edited by Dave Eggers (Houghton Mifflin) 320 pages
So here’s the deal: students at 826 Valencia, the San Francisco writing lab for young people that writer/editor Dave Eggers co-founded, are each assigned various publications. They have to keep tabs on their publications all year, collecting notes for the anthology. Then they meet and they vote and they debate on who should make the cut. And then the chosen few are published in this book. So here we have what Eggers and the students at 826 Valencia think was best in fiction, non-fiction, alternative comics, screenplays, blogs and even, this time out, a poem about bathing Ed Asner. Whatever is “best” is also always subjective. It’s the nature of the beast. But if it isn’t best, it’s certainly interesting with contributions here from Conan O’Brien, Matt Klam, Jonathan Ames and many others. Profits from the anthology go to benefit 826 Valencia.

Canadian Paintings, Prints and Drawings by Anne Newlands (Firefly Books) 368 pages
Canada is a vast and diverse country. It follows that the art the country has produced should be diverse, as well. Yet so much of Canada’s art and so many of her artists are not well known even in Canada, let alone outside the country. Author Anne Newlands would change all of that. Newlands has written extensively about art, including biographies of Emily Carr and Degas. She is also the author of Canadian Art: From its Beginnings to 2000. For this new book, Newlands set herself the seemingly impossible task of selecting just 164 artists to represent the many thousands who have contributed to Canadian art. Just as difficult, Newlands writes, was to then select a single image from each artist not to represent their body of work, Newlands stresses, but “as a glimpse into a lifetime of creative expression.” Within the book, the artists are arranged alphabetically, “which removes them from predictable associations and chronological relationships and frees them from the standard linear narratives of traditional art histories.” Despite the occasional encounter with this droning coolness of artspeak, Canadian Paintings is a wonderful book. It really is special to see a single well reproduced image from so many artists who have little to connect them beyond their Canadian-ness. All time periods are represented, all two dimensional mediums, all styles and types of work. Each painting is accompanied by a thoughtful, knowledgeable short essay, sharing information about the work as well as the artist. The resulting book becomes a sort of short course in Canadian art history taken at the leisure and desire of the reader.

Carve Your Own Totem Pole by Wayne Hill and James McKee (The Boston Mills Press) 131 pages
On the surface of things, it sounds ridiculously complicated. What would be needed to carve a totem pole, after all? A 20-foot log and some serious carving tools. Beyond that... perhaps luck and a tailwind? But Hill and McKee’s lovely book is as much spiritual journey as how-to manual. Sure: the necessary tools are described, as are some techniques. More importantly in the real world, though, they tell us about what all those animals really mean and why they’re situated where they are. (And, while we’re about it, just where the expression “Low man on the totem pole” comes from, exactly.) Here we have described for us the difference between a “Legend” pole and a “Family” pole, what considerations are necessary for design and what each figure means. Practical issues include choosing the right wood, how to seal your work and how to carve and sand. It’s certainly difficult to imagine a better, more clearly explained and illustrated book on this topic.

Dream Gardens: 100 Inspirational Gardens by Tania Compton and Andrew Lawson (Merrell Books) 352 pages
“Most creative endeavours are born of a desire to turn a dream into reality. In gardening the dream that may spur the transformation of a featureless site into a garden never ends.” So begins Dream Gardens, setting up the groundwork for a book on which those gardening dreams that are also creative endeavours can be based. The book is well named. There is no aspect of “how-to” to Dream Gardens. Rather, we are taken on intimate tours of what are arguably 100 of the dreamiest gardens in the world. So here we see the gardens at Tapeley Park in Devon, gleaming royally along the coast. Villa Marzotto’s private oasis in north-eastern Italy. The breathtaking organization of the bamboo garden of Sydney Australia-based landscape architect Vladimir Sitta; the riot of color that is Bingerden in the Netherlands. Cynthia and Edwin Hamowy’s Westhampton garden is nature brought close in a modernist setting. These gardens -- and 96 more -- will provide inspiration and the base of dreams for everyone who looks upon them.

Etched in Stone by Ryan Coonerty (National Geographic) 192 pages
What a wonderful book this is! I love great book ideas, and this is one of them, a look at the best monuments in the United States. Fifty places are covered here, from memorials to parks to gardens to theaters to sculptures and even whole buildings. For each monument, we’re shown beautiful images, some shot at an ideal distance, some shot up close, for telling details. Each one of them is perfect. There are also find brief, wonderfully written essays that cover the history, the reason the monument was created, important quotes, inscriptions and more. This book is an ideal way to see and go behind the scenes of the Lincoln Memorial, the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library, the National D-Day Memorial, the Slavery Monument, the Blacklist Sculpture Garden, the Library of Congress, the Statue of Liberty, the World Trade Center Memorial, even Grauman’s Chinese Theatre. It would cost a fortune to actually travel to all of the places covered in this book -- but having this book on your shelf means you don't have to. Whoever you give a copy to will owe you a huge debt of gratitude. -- Tony Buchsbaum

Fame Us: Celebrity Impersonators and the Cult(ure) of Fame by Brian Howell (Arsenal Pulp Press) 183 pages
In a book filled with strong images, one stands out. It’s an impossible shot and, if you had no idea what was going on, it would hurt the eyes. The frame is filled top to bottom with living human forms, that’s clear. Some of the people seem to be posing. Others seem to be watching something off camera. Some appear to do both. What makes the shot seem impossible are the identities of those photographed. You can see Howard Stern, Bill Clinton, Marilyn Monroe, Benjamin Franklin, Elvis and Patton. Some of the others look vaguely familiar, as well. You feel as though, if you looked closely for just a bit longer, you’d recognize still more famous people; put names to still more faces. That single photo seems to bring focus to all of Fame Us, a book that looks at the culture and lifestyle associated with celebrity impersonators. If you ever thought you knew anything about this topic, think again. Photographer Brian Howell’s strong black and white images and short, sharp biographies of his subjects gives us a sometimes humorous, always compassionate look at celebrity -- and near celebrity. How we view it, wear it, incorporate it into our lifestyle.

The Garden at Night: Private Views of Public Edens photographs by Linda Rutenberg, foreword by William Shatner, introduction by William Dewdney (Chronicle Books) 176 pages
A stanza from Percy Bysshe Shelley’s “The Sensitive Plant” sets the tone in Linda Rutenberg’s The Garden at Night: “A sensitive plant in a garden grew, and the young winds fed it with silver dew, and it opened is fan-like leaves to the light, and closed them beneath the kisses of night.” More tone setting with an introduction by Christopher Dewdney (Acquainted with the Night) and a foreword by William Shatner (who I will not introduce because you already know who he is). And then, with the tone well and truly set, we’re away on an incredible adventure of Rutenberg’s imagination. And, of course, it is not her imagination: these are photographs. And yet. With her choices, with her technique and, of course, with her eye, Rutenberg shows us gardens as they’ve never quite been seen before. The images in the book were taken at 20 of North America’s best know gardens, including the Atlanta Botanical garden; the Brooklyn Botanic Garden; Butchart Gardens near Victoria, British Columbia; the Reford Gardens in Grand-Métis, Quebec; United States National Arboretum in Washington, D.C. and many others. In her artist’s statement, Rutenberg writes, “The resulting photographs unearth an extraordinary secret -- plants and flowers that appear commonplace by day turn into something ethereal by the light of night.” We agree.

The House that Hugh Laurie Built: An Unauthorized Biography and Episode Guide by Paul Challen (ECW) 337 pages
Why is it we love Gregory House so much? And though the two couldn’t be further apart, we also love House’s alter ego, the actor Hugh Laurie. House is the perpetual bad boy, but with a strong moral and ethical center, a combination that has proven irresistible. And Laurie? Well, he’s someone completely different, yet the connections are clear. The House that Hugh Laurie Built will delight fans of either the hit medical television show House or the actor who stars in it, Hugh Laurie. Or both. Though the book bills itself as an unauthorized biography, it’s really more than that: an affectionate, respectful look at both the actor and all aspects of the show, including glimpses of all recurring characters and a blow-by-blow of all episodes through the end of season three. A great gift for House fans.

How I Write edited by Dan Crowe (Rizzoli) 192 pages
Jonathan Franzen uses a squeaky, battered green office chair. Will Self uses Post-it notes. Douglas Coupland uses chocolate. Jay McInerney uses an axe. What for, you ask? To write. That’s right: to write. And that’s what this charming book is all about. Not why these people write, but how. It’s about their habits and, more importantly, their talismans. Where do they get their inspiration? Their ideas? How do they keep those ideas organized? Imagine walking into the office of Joyce Carol Oates or A.S. Byatt, and you’d see portraits in the office of the former, a cabinet of curiosities in the latter. Written in short bursts of chapters by the authors themselves, the book comes across almost as a confessional, a “come in and see what I’m all about” sort of thing. It’s embarrassingly addictive and impossible to put down. Movie stars. TV stars. Sports stars. Just about any early evening entertainment news program will tell you everything you need to know. But authors? Nah. To what they’re really all about, you need this terrific book. Give it to someone you know who is as addicted to Nicholson Baker and Melissa Bank as others are to Brad and Angelina. -- Tony Buchsbaum

I’m A Lewbowski, You’re A Lebowski: Life, the Big Lebowski and What Have You by Bill Green, Ben Peskoe, Will Russell and Scott Shuffitt (Bloomsbury) 234 pages
There is only one sort of person for whom you should buy a copy of I’m A Lewbowski, You’re A Lebowski as a gift: someone you know has watched the Coen brothers movie several times, and perhaps already dreams of attending Lebowski Fest, if only in their mind. As the book itself suggests, to some people The Big Lebowski was a move. To others it was the movie. Obviously, this latter part of the population are the ones who need this book. (And they’re probably also looking forward to the chapter on how to Dude-ify you car, living space and office.) The authors -- all four of them -- are the “founding dudes” of Lebowski Fest (yes it’s a real thing) which will, I suppose, be an even bigger thing in 2008 when the movie hits its 10th anniversary year. But the book. A series of interviews on all things Lebowski, with a foreword by the dude himself, Jeff Bridges. Our authors talk to everyone who had anything to do with the production of the movie. In total, I’m A Lewbowski, You’re A Lebowski is like a big, juicy ad for Lebowski Fest. The thing is, the fans of this cult classic will probably think that’s better than cool. It’s all right.

Inside Game Design by Iain Simmons (Laurence King) 159 pages
“Increasingly,” Iain Simmons writes in his introduction to Inside Game Design, “the gap between mainstream culture and videogame culture is less about levels of consumption, and more about levels of understanding.” Well, OK. But we would also add that, over the last decade, perhaps slightly more, videogame design has been moving from being a realm of pure geekdom to take its place in the arts. Not animation, of course. Not filmmaking. But storytelling, nonetheless, albeit with huge interactive chunks. Still, it’s gone from being something vaguely untouchable to something at least contemplatable by mortals. “Perhaps the most important service this book offers,” Simons adds at one point, “is to question what ‘game design’ even means.” He does it beautifully: in true art book style, with color images, lucid text, the occasional storyboard, interviews with industry leaders, glimpses inside prominent studios and more. This will be an important book within this industry as well as a potentially critical link for those who aspire to take part.

James Bond Encyclopedia by John Cork and Collin Stutz (DK Books) 320 pages
Wow. I mean: Wow! I’m a Bond fan from way, way back, and I thought I knew it all. I’m one of those poor saps who can name all the films in order, tell you who played 007, the villain, the girl, the sidekick, who composed the music, who sang the title song, and on and on. (Disturbing, isn’t it?) So you wouldn’t think I’d even need to crack the spine of this book. Oh, but I do. There’s stuff in here no one knows, facts about every single film, from Dr. No to Casino Royale (the 2006 version, thank you very much). The contents are arranged by categories: villains together, then women, supporting players, vehicles, weapons and equipment, and the movies. There are endlessly fascinating bits of tid throughout, with full chapters on Ian Fleming, Bond Style, and the Role of Bond, which includes bios of the men who have played him (Connery, Lazenby, Moore, Dalton, Brosnan and Craig -- I did that without looking, by the way). Best of all, this book is a treasure trove of photographs, many of them rare, along with poster art, behind-the-scenes images, full lists of cast and crew, and much more. I’m tempted to say this book will leave a lucky someone on your list shaken, not stirred ... but I won’t. -- Tony Buchsbaum

Japanese Style: Designing With Nature’s Beauty by Sunamita Lim (Gibbs Smith) 159 pages
The fact that this title and close variations of it -- Japanese Style and Japan Style -- have been used for books so often tells us something. The style we think of as Japanese has a strong appeal to people of many lands. And there is something in the arrangement of space that speaks to many people. Sunamita Lim, author of Japanese Style, feels this is because, when all is said and done, we need a break today. “Japanese interiors also provide sanctuary from a chaotic world at the end of the day, thus gifting inner renewal to soul and spirit and, consequently, for outer mind and body too.” As you may already be suspecting, the writing here is the weakest link. In fact, it contains one of the worst paragraphs we’ve ever seen: “Many appreciate the simple life. But living a life of simplicity is not enough. Rather, trying to simplify one’s life is a constant challenge...” Ummm... it couldn’t be... simpler? Fortunately, it’s not a novel, and though the crude wordsmithing prevents it from being a great book, it doesn’t mar its usability. Japanese Style is well organized, beautifully illustrated and filled with super design ideas. A great gift.

Making Records by Phil Ramone (Hyperion) 320 pages
Streisand. Sinatra. Joel. Charles. Dylan. Gilberto. Jones. Bennett. Simon. Grusin. Lennon. Loggins. I could go on all day and never hit the bottom of the list of music greats that record producer Phil Ramone has worked with. This book is part autobiography, part how-I-did-it manual and an intimate and intricate look at what goes into making records. In movies, it's the director who shapes the project; in records, the Chief Creativity Officer is the producer. The songwriter composes. The performer sings. But the producer determines the sound of the music, the feeling that the music should evoke. Ramone has been around longer than anyone, starting out as an engineer (the guy who actually records the music on tape) and working his way into the producer's chair, creating some of the best-known, most memorable and undisputed classic albums of the last 50 years. His writing is fast and easy, natural the way Sinatra’s singing was natural, and while it’s not exactly brilliant literarily, it needn’t be. What it needs to be is fascinating, and it is. These days, behind-the-scenes books are a dime a dozen; but check out the last names at the top of this review. Rarely, if ever, do we get to go into a recording studio to see them work. This gem of a book is as much a history lesson as an indelible portrait of how music is made. Either way you look at it, it's a chart-topper. -- Tony Buchsbaum

Motion by Design by Spencer Drate, David Robbins and Judith Salavetz (Laurence King Publishing) 159 pages
For anyone on your list who’s into animation, film and television credit sequences and cool television commercials, this is a terrific book. Every spread features a different project, with a dozen or so stills or film frame reproductions, detailed descriptions of the creative and process, production details and software tools. The pages are arranged by production company, which means you can easily track one company’s style. While some of the examples -- OK, several of the examples -- are less than stellar, most of the time the authors have chosen examples that do justice to the mission of the book, which is to showcase the best work of this kind. The volume includes a DVD, although I was far from impressed by it. In fact, I found it frustrating because only some of the work in the book is on the DVD; invariably, the most interesting-looking work wasn’t on it. A pity. But still, the book itself is wonderful. -- Tony Buchsbaum

Obsessed with Hollywood: Test Your Knowledge of the Silver Screen (Chronicle Books) 320 pages
Obsessed with Hollywood is an unassuming little cube of a book. Roughly -- though not precisely -- the size of a good CD box set, this compact little brick of a book potentially crams hours of fun between it’s well designed little covers. Here we have 2500 (2500!) questions about the silver screen, arranged thematically, no less. Though the questions are multiple choice (“What filmmaker made Marty and later All Quiet on the Western Front?” “Yo, what was Adrian’s last name before she married Rocky Balboa?”) on each two-page spread, one question has been given a beefed up presence and an accompanying photo. So question 441, for example, which is from “Classic Films,” tells us a little bit about George Lucas’ American Graffiti from 1973, background that has nothing to do with the question. You “play” the book by activating a cool, attached electronic device that feeds you a question number. You go to it, then enter the letter that correlates to your answer. If you’re right, you get a happy sound; wrong and the sound is less happy. Though this isn’t the first time I’ve seen a book-that-is-game, this one is perhaps the best executed. And never mind that: it’s actually pretty fun!

Prophets of Zoom by Alfredo Marcantonio (Merrell) 112 pages
Prophets of Zoom is a weirdly delicious little book. First weirdness: it explains itself on its tiny cover. The story of itself begins on the front cover, then winds its way to the back. “Seventy years ago,” says the cover, “a group of people created a series of cards that foresaw the future.” And so on. Here’s what really happened: in the 1930s, the world was mad for collecting cards of any kind. Since their product was flat and consumers always wanted more, cigarette boxes were a natural for distributing collector cards. A Scottish cigarette manufacturer cooked up the idea of producing a set of collector’s cards called “The World of Tomorrow.” (Disney didn’t use the phrase until many years later.) They used a series of commissioned illustrations as well as some stills from science fiction films to predict the future. While this was a completely oddball idea, all these years later we can see that -- lo! -- a lot of the time, they were actually right. Prophets of Zoom collects all of these cards and pairs each one with a contemporary image of the predicted thing. A lovely little book, wonderful in its weirdness and potentially the perfect gift for those typically difficult to buy for people who appreciate the off-beat.

The Star Wars Vault by Stephen J. Sansweet and Peter Vilmur (Harper Entertainment) 128 pages, slipcased
Steve Sansweet is one of the luckiest guys in the world. Abject Star Wars fan, the guy somehow corralled himself into the job of a lifetime: as Grand Collector and disseminator of all the coolest Star Wars stuff imaginable. He’s the author of other books on the subject, but this glorious addition to the canon is something else, as much book as treasure chest. There are goodies on every page: posters, programs, stationery, storyboard and production drawings, autographs, behind-the-scenes photographs, comic book covers, ads, handwritten notes by George Lucas ... the list goes on and on. But that’s not even the best part. Oh, no, friends. The best part is the stuff -- the goodies -- you can remove and hold in your hands. Stuff like the blueprints for Luke’s Skyhopper, an early poster reproduction, an actual T-shirt transfer, a program from a London Symphony Orchestra performance of John Williams’ music, a brochure from the original Star Wars press kit, a barf bag from the Star Tours ride at Disneyland ... need I go on? Throughout the book are crisp essays on everything you’d ever want to know (and probably a few things you don’t really care about), trivia galore. And as if all this weren’t enough, there are also two CDs -- one of them filled with radio ads, cast interviews, parts of NPR’s radio drama, a George Lucas commentary, and more. This is like nothing I’ve ever seen-and as a Star Wars fan, I’ve seen a lot. If the Force isn’t yet with you, after one look at all this stuff it will be. -- Tony Buchsbaum

Street Dogs by Traer Scott (Merrell) 128 pages
In 2006, portrait and fashion photographer Traer Scott had a hot seller on her hands with a work straight from her heart: Shelter Dogs. The book included portraits of American dogs in shelters, doing time for no crime other than not having a family of humans to love them. This year Scott follows that book up with the equally moving Street Dogs. The author/photographer traveled to Mexico and Puerto Rico to photograph these homeless canines living either alone or in street packs. In her introduction, Scott writes that she first became aware of the plight of these homeless canines on her honeymoon in Antigua. Back in the states, she read about the large number of stray dogs in many countries visited by American tourists, as well as the efforts to rescue at least some of them. “I kept thinking how remarkable it would be to photograph these dogs and bring their faces and their plight to a larger audience,” writes Scott, who adds that the success of Shelter Dogs finally made that possible. Scott’s introduction is lengthy and interesting, it details her trips and she shares many of her encounters: the stories behind the photos. But it is the photos themselves, of course, that take center stage: soulful headshots, curiosity and fear from a distance, interacting with humans, reacting alone. Over 90 of Scott’s beautiful photographs fill the pages of Street Dogs, by themselves telling a story so eloquent, no words are required. It probably almost goes without saying that a portion of the profiles from Street Dogs will be donated to the World Society for the Protection of Animals, making it an even more lovely gift.

To Infinity and Beyond! The Story of Pixar Animation Studios By Karen Paik (Chronicle Books) 304 pages
How do they do it, really? How do a bunch of people sitting in front of blank paper and empty computer screens create an entire believable world out of nothing but sketches, pixels and a lot of imagination? It’s like magic. Starting with nothing and ending up with characters and sets made entirely out of bits of information but often with more life and heart than some movies peopled by living, breathing humans. Pixar has long been in the forefront of realistic style computer animation. From their very first short film, Luxo Jr., Pixar has gone from commercial advertising work to feature work on films including Cars, The Incredibles, Finding Nemo as well as other types of animated work in live action films. The company has consistantly lead the way in which full length animated features would be told. To Infinity and Beyond! The Story of Pixar Animation Studios lets fans in on the behind-the-scenes stories and secrets of this pioneering studio. Like a cross between a biography and a how-to book, To Infinity is lushly illustrated with everything from animated movie stills to personal childhood photographs of one of Pixar’s principals, John Lassiter. -- David Middleton

Graphic Witness: Four Wordless Graphic Novels edited by George A. Walker

It’s difficult to know quite what to make of Graphic Witness (Firefly Books, 423 pages). As soon as you hold it, you know you have here an impossibly important book. It seems at once seminal and historic, a graphic witness, as the title indicates, of the very roots of the graphic novel.

Here we have four important stories told in woodcut and without words, collected for us by George A. Walker, himself an award-winning engraver, book designer as well as an author, teacher and illustrator. In his introduction to Graphic Witness he explains his passion eloquently:

As a woodcut artist, I’ve always been attracted to black-and-white art. I think it has something to do with the rich contrasts. I love a deep rich black that you can stare into, forever. The effect is like our colorful world torn down to its base so that we can read the underlying message.

Belgian artist Frans Masereel (1899-1972) has been considered the father of the wordless graphic novel. Here we see the first publication of his classic work, The Passion of a Man, since its original publication in Munich in 1918. From American artist Lynn Ward (1905-1985) we have Wild Pilgrimage, first published in the United States in 1932. Giacomo Patri (1898-1978) was Italian-born, though he worked and lived primarily in the United States. From Patri we have 1929’s White Collar, a work that was used as a promotional piece by the labor movement. Finally Canadian Laurence Hyde (1914-1987) in Southern Cross criticizes American bomb testing in the South Pacific.

The messages of the four artists and storytellers represented here are sometimes uneasy. “Wordless novels,” writes Walker, “have often treated controversial themes and been associated with protest movements.” And, as he points out, though the challenges they address were specific to their times, the broader issues are “sadly, still relevant to our contemporary eyes.”

Sadly and yet, it’s difficult to feel anything but triumph to see them collected so carefully, presented so beautifully. Where else could one see the birth of a medium in such a perfectly wordless fashion?

The Big Book of Pop Culture by Hal Niedzviecki

And while we’re on the topic of Hal Niedzviecki’s Big Book of Pop Culture (Were we? Kinda.) the book, which was published by Annick Press earlier this year, is amazing. In some ways, it’s quite beyond the scope of anything I’ve seen done for kids before, by someone who knows this topic about as well as it can be known. From the book:

Creativity is often confused with originality. But when you create, the challenge isn't to think of something that no one has done before; it's to figure out what you want to say and why you want to say it.

Which reminds me of something either Henri Matisse or the designer Paul Rand said. Matisse supposedly told his students “Don’t try to be original. Be simple. Be good technically, and if there is something in you it will come out.” Celebrated graphic designer Paul Rand said, “Don’t try to be original, just try to be good.” Either way, the point is clear and not so very far, I think, from what Niedzviecki is saying here.

Niedzviecki’s book is very good and could be an important one for kids at that delicate age of understanding. At worst The Big Book of Pop Culture will offer a few interesting hours of entertainment, as it explores the development of pop culture and our place in it. At best, the book will provide a key of empowerment for young people poised on the threshold of creativity. I’m betting most parents would be at least fine with either outcome.

Review: Fremantle Impressions by Ron Davidson

Today, in January Magazine’s art & culture section, contributing editor Sue Bursztynski reviews Fremantle Impressions by Ron Davidson. Says Bursztynski:

The port of Fremantle in Western Australia is old. Founded in 1829, it’s actually older than Melbourne, which didn’t begin until 1835. Fremantle has been a center of whaling, of imports and exports, it has had convicts and Aboriginal rebels and union strikes and has seen the foundation of business dynasties. In the 1980s, it was the site of the America’s Cup race. This was the first time in many years that the Cup was won away from the United States and it was won by a millionaire yachtsman who later lost his hero status in Australia when he was caught out in crooked business dealings.

The full review is here.

Review: Uncovered by Thomas Allan

Today, in January Magazine’s art & culture section, Tony Buchsbaum reviews Uncovered by Thomas Allan. Says Buchsbaum:

What Allen has done is to take the covers of mass market paperbacks and carefully cut and fold and combine them. The result is an anthology of sorts, a gathering of intriguing, alluring stories unto themselves -- all without having written a word.

And speaking of words, they’d do these pieces zero justice -- but imagine, if you can, a Shane-like cowboy pushing through the slatted, swinging doors of an Old West-style bar, surrounded by the aged pages of the book he’s featured in.

The full review is here.

Review: Women of Our Time by Frederick S. Voss and Women Who Write by Stefan Bollmann

Today, in January Magazine’s art & culture section, contributing editor Cherie Thiessen reviews two books that celebrate the lives and art of women.

Thiessen finds a lot to like in Women of Our Time by Frederick S. Voss:

Women of Our Time ... gives us a sampling of notable women in the 20th century. In addition, we are privileged to see them through the eyes of great portrait photographers and can often chart how women’s roles have changed throughout the years by studying the women themselves: their clothes, their pose, their expressions and their surroundings. We can also get a sense of history from the style of the images themselves.

Thiessen is overall less impressed with Women Who Write by Stefan Bollmann:

I had expected this book would appeal more to me, but a slightly pedantic and petulant tone is set in the foreword, where well published academic, Francine Prose, explores the times when these women wrote, and their challenge in pursuing their love and passion. It’s perhaps a little more strident than we need. We know it’s been a rough ride for women writers, but hey -- we’re there now.

Thiessen’s review of both books is here.

Review: Heavy Metal Fun Time Activity Book by Aye Jay

Today, in January Magazine’s art & culture section, contributing editor and January art director, David Middleton, reviews Heavy Metal Fun Time Activity Book by Aye Jay. Says Middleton:

You don’t tend to think of heavy metal music as a genre that is filled with an overabundance of jocularity or frivolity, but as I flip through Heavy Metal Fun Time Activity Book I must reconsider my position. Metal can be fun, silly and -- yes -- perhaps even thoughtful and educational. So on page eight, after you have played connect the moles on the face of a prominent member of Motorhead, go to page nine and do a brain teasing heavy metal sudoku -- with all the sixes filled in, of course. Color Glenn Danzig, do the Monsters of Rock Crossword then guide Ozzy Ozborne through a maze in order to get him to Ozzfest.

The full review is here.

Review: This Year Your Write Your Novel by Walter Mosley

Today, in January Magazine’s art & culture section, a review of This Year Your Write Your Novel by Walter Mosley.

If you or someone you know wants to write a novel -- really wants to write a novel -- I’m fairly certain that this book will help them get there. “I don’t promise a masterpiece,” Mosley warns in his introduction, “just a durable first novel of a certain length,” and later in the introduction he underlines this point. “I can’t promise you worldly success, but I can say that if you follow the path I lay out here, you will experience the personal satisfaction of having written a novel. And from that point, anything is possible.”

The full review is here.

Review: The Moon by Michael Carlowicz

Today, in January Magazine’s art & culture section, contributing editor Cherie Thiessen examines The Moon by Michael Carlowicz. Says Thiessen:

The Moon is a hodgepodge of interesting tidbits, with the narrative reflecting the visuals in its variety and scope. Perhaps the only aspect of the moon that he hasn’t covered is that cheeky little human act of defiance and provocation.

The full review is here.

Review: At Large and at Small by Anne Fadiman

Today, in January Magazine’s art & culture section, contributing editor Diane Leach reviews At Large and at Small by Anne Fadiman. Says Leach:

Certain women, myself amongst them, fall for a certain kind of man: irresponsible, plain of face, depressed, tending toward drug and/or alcohol addiction. All too often these types are charismatic and given to poetry. Thus Fadiman’s passion for Charles Lamb and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Lamb, who cared for his sister Mary after she fatally stabbed their mother, penned many an essay while toiling in positively Dickensian conditions at the East India House, where he (poorly) tallied figures. Like his sister, he battled insanity, though somewhat more successfully.

The full review is here.

Review: The Complete Peanuts by Charles M. Schulz

Today, in January Magazine’s art & culture section, contributing editor David Abrams reviews The Complete Peanuts by Charles M. Schulz. Says Abrams:

I can still recall Sunday afternoons -- unimaginably long stretches of time free of the electronic jangle of yet-to-be-invented video games or cell phones -- when I would lay propped on my elbows in our shag-carpeted living room with the bright sheet of comics spread before me. In those moments I became one with Charlie Brown. His world was my world. His dog was my dog. His snatched-away football was mine. His embarrassments turned into my own social failings. On those afternoons, my head indeed felt like an oversized balloon in proportion to the rest of my body.

The full review is here.

Review: Art in America edited by Susan Davidson

Today, in January Magazine’s art & culture section, contributing editor Aaron Blanton examines Art in America: 300 Years of Innovation. Says Blanton:

Unlike many -- most? -- art books of this calibre, written with an educated -- even jaded -- reader in mind, Art in America intends a very different audience: a readership perhaps not without art knowledge, but without direct or certainly full knowledge of American art. Davidson has done an incredible job with this aspect of Art in America, creating, in a way, a full introduction to the history of her country. And she’s right: where we’ve been influences not only who we are (though that’s certainly an important piece) but also how we approach our retelling of who we are. That is, we are what we paint and collect, or something very like that.

The full review is here.

Review: Ibiza Style by Ingrid Rasmussen and Chloe Grimshaw

Today, in January Magazine’s art & culture section, contributing editor Aaron Blanton goes over the moon for Ibiza Style by Ingrid Rasmussen and Chloe Grimshaw. Blanton says:

Rasmussen and Grimshaw have succeeded brilliantly. I may be completely under their spell -- and though I detest a rave as much as a rant -- I simply can’t imagine the person who would not enjoy spending time with Ibiza Style, it so fulfils at every level. Those with a curiosity about Ibiza -- the would-be armchair traveler, for instance, or the reader who thinks they might like to journey there at some point themselves -- will enjoy the Rasmussen and Grimshaw’s casual insider glimpse. This is, after all, no one’s idea of a travel guide. However, brilliant color photos and well-crafted text give us a very solid look into how Ibiza lives now.

The complete review is here.

Review: Where’s My Jetpack? by Daniel H. Wilson

Today, in January Magazine’s art & culture section, contributing editor Andi Shechter reviews Where’s My Jetpack? by Daniel H. Wilson, the book that answers all of our questions about the extremely disappointing 21st century. Says Shechter:

What Wilson does in Where’s My Jetpack? is take a topic that those of us in the Baby Boomer generation saw in comics, movies, read in novels, watched on television, dreamed of and saw at the Smithsonian or the World’s Fair. He explains what exactly it would take for the ideas to become reality and the state of development of about 30 futuristic ideas ranging from underwater cities to space elevators, from teleportation to x-ray specs. He explains that some of these out-of-this-world ideas absolutely do exist.

The full review is here.

Review: It’s In the Bag by Winifred Gallagher

Today, in January’s art & culture section, Tracy Quan examines It’s In the Bag by Winifred Gallagher:

Does carrying one of these grown-up security blankets make you a slave to fashion, or a more independent, mobile person? Gallagher engages sociologists, historians and, of course, bag designers, and comes up with some remarkable answers. Fashion historian Valerie Steele thinks women with multiple bags are practicing a form of serial monogamy, while a shoe collection is more like “a harem.” Steele sums it up as “affairs versus marriage.” In other words, shoe collectors are sexual tomboys, while handbag lovers embody feminine virtue. If your harem, like mine, consists of handbags, you might, as I did, take exception to these roles.

Quan’s review is here.

Gift Guide: Art & Culture

January Magazine’s Holiday Gift Guide 2006 concludes with selections of books focused on various aspects of art & culture. Suggestions in fiction are here. Children’s books are here. Non-fiction is here and cookbooks can be found here. You can see the lead item to this feature here.

24: Behind the Scenes by Jon Cassar (Insight Editions) 168 pages
I’m an addict. I am a 24 junkie. I have fallen prey to the endless loops of plot and switchbacks and snippets of character development that all add up to riveting television. I know I’m not alone. There are zillions of people like me, and that’s why there’s a book like 24: Behind the Scenes. A sort of making-of-behind-the-scenes photo album, this book was created by the show’s primary director, Jon Cassar. It contains scores of photos snapped by the people who make the show. Structured to follow the five seasons, it’s filled with trivia, images of the always-serious actors out of character -- sometimes even smiling, a facial expression that happens rarely, if ever, on the show. Most of the photos are accompanied by a telling caption -- with spoilers galore -- which is my way of telling that if you’ve yet to watch the show (and plan to), then maybe hold off on reading this until you’ve watched all five seasons. This is a book any 24 fan will lose himself in, and be delighted to do so. It’s the perfect gift for someone who’s hopelessly hooked on 24. -- Tony Buchsbaum

Advertising Now. Print edited by Julius Wiedemann (Taschen) 640 pages
Yes, I work in advertising, as my January bio so proudly states. So I sometimes gravitate toward books about marketing and design. This one is a doozy, filled cover to cover with some of the best print advertising created by anyone, anywhere, in recent years. (No, none of my own work is in here.) Rather than just page after page of images, though, this book is really a look at the state of print (that is, magazine) advertising today, with the ads themselves divvied up into logical sections including Business & Retailers, Food & Beverage, Health & Beauty, Home Care & Hygiene, Media (no ampersand!) and others. Slipped between these sections are illuminating essays by the guys driving the industry today (no, there are no women here; I wonder what that means). Simply a superb book for anyone interested in advertising -- and a meaningful slice of contemporary culture that shows us how creatively we talk to ourselves. -- Tony Buchsbaum

The Art of Bond by Laurent Bouzereau (Harry N. Abrams) 240 pages
No one can deny the allure of James Bond. From a purely cultural standpoint, 007 is a major influence, from cars to clothing to gadgets to other action films. There have been dozens of books about the Bond mystique, but The Art of Bond is the first to look at the phenomenon from the point of view of the people who perpetuate it, film after film. Created as a documentary on paper, this book deconstructs the Bond movies into their distinct pieces: script, locations, production, music, marketing and such. Author Bouzereau, a filmmaker who specializes in the documentaries usually found on DVD, has spoken to dozens of the people involved in making the Bond films. What emerges is a kaleidoscopic, wide-ranging conversation about how the films are made, element by element. It covers the older Bond films as well as the newer ones (including the latest, Casino Royale). Above all, what comes through is the dedication of these people as filmmakers. Argue with a particular film’s story or acting or ratio of drama to comedy ratio, but there’s no argument that the series, as a whole, is the most successful of its kind. This book pulls back the curtain, if you will, to reveal not how one film was made, but how Bond on film was created by author Ian Fleming, producers Albert R. Broccoli and Harry Saltzman, directors Terence Young and Guy Hamilton, composer John Barry and designers Maurice Binder, Robert Brownjohn and Ken Adam -- not using some nefarious plot, but just by the seats of their visionary pants. -- Tony Buchsbaum

Atomic Ranch: Design Ideas for Stylish Ranch Homes by Michelle Gringeri-Brown (Gibbs Smith) 192 pages
Remember the house from The Brady Bunch? Sure the show was hokey and kitschy and the plots were hackneyed and simplistic and the kids’ were overly moral and goody-two-shoes-sacherine-sweet, but the house... it was rocking. Early 60s rancher style, floating staircase, raw rock feature wall, bright cartoony paint coloring the broad flat planes of the kitchen, clerestory windows. Now think of that house as if Mr. Brady had designed it after downing a couple of peyote buttons with a scotch chaser and you’ll have an idea of what’s between the covers of Michelle Gringeri-Brown’s Atomic Ranch. Although strictly speaking it might be difficult to nail down just what quintessentially makes a ranch style home a rancher, if you think floor to ceiling windows, open plans, large slopping expanses of roof and bauhaus simplicity of form then you won’t be far off the mark. Atomic Ranch gives us page after page of glorious examples of the form and a bit of the history of the style thrown in for good measure. Wire frame chairs, velvet paintings, tiki heads, Jetsons-inspired furniture, Rat Pack sensibilities, gleaming vinyl and a load of other stuff that pretty much defined the era of the rancher make all Atomic Ranch not only a architectural history lesson, as America started to define its post-war self, but also a short lesson in pop culture. -- David Middleton

California Country Style by Diane Dorrans Saeks, photographs by David Duncan Livingston (Chronicle Books) 216 pages
Like a lot of books featuring the results of high end interior design, California Country Style is a pretext of connection. OK, sure: the houses are all in the country and they're all in California but, for the most part, the connection ends there. That is, if you thought there was a style evocative of the California country before you read California Country Style, you won't afterwards. It's all here. All of it good. All of it breathtakingly photographed. From starkly beautiful contemporary homes, to cozy but elegant cottages, historic mansions, you name it. What connects them all is near perfection, at least as styled for the book. “In the country,” Saeks writes in her introduction, “self-expression is in the air.” And while this may be true, a bankroll and the skills of a really great decorator don’t hurt much, either. This is a book for those that like to drool and savor and those that like to plan for flavor. The houses included may all be in California, but they’ll inspire your own designs wherever you live. -- Linda L. Richards

Cartoon Modern: Style and Design in Fifties Animation by Amid Amidi (Chronicle Books) 200 pages
In the 1950s, American cartoons went though a kind of Renaissance. “Animation artists conceived of a bold visual style that was derived from the modern arts, assimilating and adapting the principles of Cubism, Surrealism, and Expressionism into the realm of animation and in the process expanding and redefining the notion of the art form.” Cited are such influences as Picasso, Matisse and Miro and these influences and this new style is evident thoughout Cartoon Modern. Just take a look at Hanna-Barbera’s Fred Flintstone and try not to think of a Picasso. The wonky nose, the hair splattered atop his head, the round body... Hey, come to think of it, Fred even looks a bit like Picasso. There is something about the simple line forms, the flat bold colors and the raw, energetic expression of form that made 50s animation feel so new and different than anything seen before. But unlike the Italian Renaissance, where there was a movement in art from the simplistic to the realistic, animation in the 1950s went the other way. Gone, for the most part, was the lush realism that Disney had come to popularise, only to be replaced by a simpler, more abstract form. Cartoon Modern quickly goes through 19 of the major animation studios of the 1950s, profiling their style, storyboards, characters and artists. Many of them not only working to produce animated shows or features but also working in the lucrative field of advertising -- Walt Disney Studios being a prime example. Through such characters as Lippy the Lion, Mr. Magoo, Yogi Bear, Puss ‘N Boots and classic features like Warner Bros. What’s Opera, Doc?, Terrytoons’ Flebus and Disney’s Sleeping Beauty, Cartoon Modern shows how animation from the 1950s has continued to entertain and inspire us right into the 21st century. -- David Middleton

The Complete Chester Gould’s Dick Tracy introduction by Max Allan Collins (IDW Publishing) 2006
In the introduction to The Complete Chester Gould’s Dick Tracy, novelist and pop culture commentator Max Allan Collins writes, “The Dick Tracy strip was one of the most popular, influential comics of the 20th Century. Young boys in particular were attracted to Chester Gould’s crafty mix of violence, humor and melodrama. I know because I was one of them.” This personal touch sets the tone for this beautiful collection of the original strip that ran between 1931 and 1933. Labelled as Volume One -- later volumes will carry still more strips and more Gould ephemera. Also included is an interview with Gould by Collins and Matt Masterson. “Matt is undoubtedly the foremost Dick Tracy fan of all,” writes Collins, “and it was his idea to put a tape recorder in front of Chet and get a record of some of the anecdotes, reflections, and opinions that Tracy's creator had so often shared with us, the two luckiest Tracy fans who ever lived.” This affection contributes a great deal to this fabulous volume but, of course, the strip would stand alone. This is an absolute must-have volume for anyone who considers themselves a fan of the seminal detective. -- Lincoln Cho

Field Guide to Dreams by Kelly Regan (Quirk) 282 pages
You’ve dreamt of mud (Or monsters. Or your mother.) What does it mean? What would Freud say? Not happy with that? How about Jung? What does the dream mean in a cultural context? What images are related to that of the mud? (Or monsters? Or your mother?) Field Guide to Dreams is both deeply complex and strikingly simple. All of these images and interpretations of common dream themes, boiled down into a book that will fit easily in one hand. The book’s small size should make it simple to demystify the dreams you can’t wait until morning to interpret. Best of all this time of year: Field Guide to Dreams would fit nicely in a generous stocking. -- Linda L. Richards

The Golden Section: Nature’s Greatest Secret by Scott Olsen (Walker and Company) 2006
It is in everything that surrounds us, from the art we create to the DNA that acts as blueprint for all living matter, to the structure of the universe itself. It is all at once mathematical, scientific and mystical. It is a principle which nature follows and art imitates. Known as the golden section, the golden mean, the golden cut, the divine ratio or simply phi, it not only builds the world we live in, but acts as a basis for symmetry, proportion and beauty. Small, simple, concise and extremely informative The Golden Section unveils what philosophers, scientists and artists had kept secret for centuries for fear that it would be seen as quackery. Illustrated throughout are examples of the golden section as it relates to just about everything. Beijing's Forbidden City, credit cards, the bicycle, the soda can, a pack of cigarettes, music, the violin, the human body, the arrangement of seeds in the head of a sunflower, ladybugs: all based on the principle of phi. After reading The Golden Section you’ll never look at the world in the same way again. -- David Middleton

An Incomplete Education by Judy Jones and William Wilson (Ballantine) 720 pages
They say you don't know what you don't know, and this book was written to answer "they." The third edition of a book originally published in 1987, An Incomplete Education assumes there's a whole lot of stuff we just don't know, and the authors have set about to answer those questions -- even though we don't know what they are. Their thought, apparently, is that the world has changed in the last few years, and there's a lot to catch up on, or refresh, or relearn. For example, what's the difference between the Balkans and Caucasus? Between fission and fusion? Is postmodernism dead? Truly, this book is just too much fun, and not nearly as esoteric as I've made it seem. The indispensable facts, provided in short essays, are divvied up into a broad range of categories such as American Studies, Economics, Science, Religion, World History, Film, Literature, Music and others. A casual flip-through reveals bios of Andy Warhol and Frank Stella on one page, an article on Citizen Kane on another, a breakdown of Homer's Iliad and The Odyssey, an examination of Italy's geopolitics, an essay about the life and influence of Louis XV ... It goes on and on, pretty much challenging you on every page not to learn something new. I don't know if this book will turn an incomplete education into a complete one, but it'll help. -- Tony Buchsbaum

Individuals: Portraits from the Gap Collection (DK Adult) 256 pages
The Gap has joined the companies pushing for a cure for HIV/AIDS through the Product(red) program. The profits from Individuals: Portraits from the Gap Collection will go directly to that organization. The book is a look at the superb celebrity photography The Gap has used in its advertising. As much as it's a look at these unforgettable faces, it’s also a glimpse at how the world’s best photographers work. We’re talking about actors, musicians, authors, designers, even the photographers themselves. Each image is a stunning work. Equally intriguing are short pieces on the nature of individuality by Tama Janowitz, Willie Nelson, Missy Elliot, Sharon Stone and Veronica Webb. There’s also a revealing foreword by Gap founder Don Fisher. Superb photographs. Insightful essays. Oh, and an exclusive CD of 15 songs used in The Gap’s television ads, performed by the likes of Madonna, the O'Jays, Louis Prima, Bill Withers, Seals & Crofts and John Legend. This holiday season, it’s a great buy -- and it's a great cause. -- Tony Buchsbaum

In Praise of the Needlewoman: Embroiderers, Knitters, Lacemakers, and Weavers in Art by Gail Carolyn Sirna (Merrell) 2006
Art books compiled around a central theme are either terrific or terrible. The deciding factors tend to be based on two things: who is doing the compiling and who is doing the publishing. In Praise of the Needlewoman wins on both counts. Publisher Merrell is no slouch in the art book publishing department. In fact, they are almost certainly one of the world’s leading art publishers. Author Gail Carolyn Sirna is a herself a needleworker of some repute and her CV includes a lifetime achievement award from America’s National Academy of Needlearts. In her introduction to the book, Sirna writes that it was her passion for needlework that led her to art that portrayed it. This twinned passion -- needlework and art -- compelled Sirna to enrol in the honors program at the National Academy of Needlearts. Sirna writes that In Praise of the Needlewoman evolved from her honors research for this program. The collection is wonderful. A tribute, in a way, not just to needleworkers, but to women in general. As Sirna says, “For peasant and princess, cave dweller, and career woman, needlework has been a most gratifying endeavor for the human being, especially women.” What I enjoyed most about this collection were the little known works by well known artists: paintings I would likely have never had occasion otherwise to see. Renoir, for instance, seems to have been fascinated by women sewing and, as we see, he approached the subject often and from many angles. Vermeer, Cassatt, even Dali in a lucid mood. The works by little known artists are equally enjoyable and all are tied together by the author’s expert comments. -- Monica Stark

Inside Ferrari by Maurice Hamilton, photography by Jon Nicholson (Firefly) 2006
Inside Ferrari is a book that seems made for gift giving. An impressive profile -- it’s big and heavy -- filled with pictures of what is arguably the sexiest car ever built (an inordinate amount of them red). There are words in Inside Ferrari, but the focus here is on Jon Nicholson's graphic images. Nicholson is one of the top Formula One photographers in the world, and it shows. These are insider photos: photos taken by someone who not only understands the sport, he has access to all the right places, carte blanche at all the right races. The title is a little misleading: one would expect to see the inside of the Ferrari plant or design HQ, where the cars are dreamed up and then created. Inside Ferrari makes a fast trip there, but mostly concerns itself entirely with the Ferrari racing team. Hamilton writes: “Ferrari’s symbol is a prancing horse; the racers are the rampant stallions, and the showroom stock, the progeny.” -- Lincoln Cho

The Museum of Lost Wonder by Jeff Hoke (Weiser Books) 2006
Flipping through Jeff Hoke’s The Museum of Lost Wonder you are at first confronted by an incongruous series of thoughts, ideas and imagery. Metaphysics, alchemy, science, religion and mysticism all vie for equal attention. But start to read and the picture soon comes -- if not entirely clear -- then at least into focus. A sort of repository for questions and a celebration of human ingenuity, turning the world you know inside-out with some well-outside-the-box thinking, The Museum of Lost Wonder practically sucks you into its vortex of fascinating ideas and bold visuals. Laid out like the a cross between a graphic novel and an alchemist’s notebook and full of interesting art and projects that you can actually cut out of the book and make, The Museum of Lost Wonder is filled to bursting with thought-provoking musings -- Who are we? Why do we do the things we do? -- and activities designed to guide you toward challenging the status quo and independent thinking. Nicely produced, well written and as essential as any book on philosophy, Museum is the perfect book for someone with more questions than they may currently have answers for, and may just answer some of those questions they had long been searching for the answers to. -- David Middleton

An Orgy of Playboy’s Eldon Dedini introduction by Dennis Renault (Fantagraphics) 239 pages
You might not know his name but you know his work, especially if you're a male who ever spent any time at all over the last 45 years in the company of a Playboy magazine. Though he was capable of a wide variety of illustrative styles, the one we were most familiar with was joyous, loose and delicately ribald. In the introduction to An Orgy of Playboy's Eldon Dedini, Dennis Renault shares this quote: "In 2005, in describing Dedini's art, [Playboy cartoon editor Michelle Urry] is quoted as saying, 'The image is basically who Eldon himself is; a font of originality, a cornucopia of fun and probably, overall, the finest cartoon watercolorist in the world. His grasp of mythology, classical art, pop culture and comics in nonpareil." All of these things are apparent in the 100s of reproductions of Dedini's work for Playboy collected in this book. Fans will be delighted: each cartoon is given a full page of this coffee table book, resulting in larger and better reproductions than their original Playboy printing. A bonus DVD, Dedini: A Life of Cartoons a documentary by Anson Musselman, is also included, making this package a real tribute to Dedini, who died in January 2006 at 85. -- Lincoln Cho

Stylepedia: A Guide to Graphic Design Mannerisms, Quirks, and Conceits by Steven Heller and Louise Fili (Chronicle Books) 2006
The title is not perfectly explanatory, describing as it does a book that’s not quite as good as the one under discussion. Let me rephrase that: Stylepedia is an amazing compendium -- encyclopaedic in nature -- on all things to do with graphic design, through history and into the present. It is not exhaustive -- if it were, it would not fit between these two very attractive covers. However, if it were exhaustive, it would not be nearly so engaging a read. And the book is engaging; a sort of rapid-fire tour through the history, development and evolution of contemporary graphic design. A must for the initiated. Everyone with even the remotest interest in the discipline or claim on the title needs a copy of Stylepedia within easy reach on their desk. -- Linda L. Richards