Holiday Gift Guide 2017
There are a hundred thousand interests and there are millions of books, but here are a handful that might make those you love realize just how much you care. [masterslider alias=”ms-159-1″]
art & culture
Art & Culture: A Girl Walks Into a Book: What the Brontës Taught Me About Life, Love, and Women’s Work by Miranda K. Pennington
Passionate readers understand that a wonderful book — one that resonates strongly — can leave a lasting impression. Can, in fact, sometimes change your life. That is the premise, and in fact that glue that binds, of A Girl Walks Into A Book (Seal) by writer and essayist Miranda K. Pennington. The author was a voracious reader at 10 when her father gave her a copy of Jane Eyre. It was not love at first […]
The Typewriter as Art
Thinking about throwing out that old typewriter? Think again. Long a topic of careful and considered industrial design, collectors are getting wind of the fact that the seemingly obsolete typewriter is a thing of collectible beauty. From Christie’s blog: The museum community has long recognised their significance. A Roger Tallon retrospective on view at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris earlier this year showed how the French designer worked on jolly-looking Japy typewriters as […]
Art & Culture: Strong Is the New Pretty:
A Celebration of Girls Being Themselves
by Kate T. Parker
From the outset, the premise captivates. Where once women might have been judged by the turn of an ankle or the shape of a cheek, we live in time when what is attractive can have a deeper meaning. And while there are those who would argue that we still have a long way to go to full equality, you can not read and look through Strong is the New Pretty (Workman) without getting this message […]
Art & Culture: Holiday Bonding
It’s inevitable, really. Every 007 movie brings forth new books about the Bond phenomenon. Some are updated versions of older books, some are new. But they appear as part of the vast Bond marketing machine that hasn’t stopped since the early 1960s. This fall’s release of Spectre, the 24th film in the series, saw its share. Here’s a look at three. The best by far is The James Bond Archives (Taschen). Created with the full cooperation […]
Art & Culture: Evolution: The Whole Story
edited by Steve Parker
Whatever picture you are building in your mind about Evolution: The Whole Story (Firefly), rebuild it. This book is bigger, more complete, denser of thought and material and more brilliantly illustrated than anything you are imagining. As the title promises, this <i>is</i> the whole story. Full stop. Editor Steve Parker is a senior scientific fellow of the Zoological Society of London and the author of hundreds of books including The Encyclopedia of Sharks and Planet-Ape. […]
New Today: Pop Sonnets: Shakespearean Spins on Your Favorite Songs by Erik Didriksen
We’re not feeling a review of this one. We will give you facts. You must make up your own mind. Pop Sonnets: Shakespearean Spins on Your Favorite Songs by Erik Didriksen will either grab you. Or it will not. From the flap material: The Bard meets the Backstreet Boys in Pop Sonnets, a collection of 100 classic pop songs remained as Shakespearean sonnets. And so on. And it looks like this: VII. From observation of […]