Vladimir Radunsky’s stark illustrations sit beautifully alongside Mark Twain’s subversive advice to little girls on manipulating friends and family. When I do buy it, I don’t think this will make it to The Daughter’s bedtime reading until she turns, you know, 50 years old or something.
Strunk and White’s guide on clear and concise English has been the gold standard for decades. Maira Kalman‘s whimsical and subtle illustrations for this new edition add a layer of slight (dare I say) fun to the iconic original work.
Also worth checking out (if you haven’t already) is The Principles of Uncertainty, a compilation of Maira Kalman’s New York Times columns. She is a great artist and also a very good writer.
Modernist Cuisine: The Art and Science of Cooking is a six volume collection of absolutely stunning food photography and a mind-boggling wealth of cooking information that can be yours for about S$570.
If I bought this, I don’t think I could ever afford another cookbook again.
I remember reading Ray Bradbury‘s short story, The Dragon, as a 14 year old who had just discovered science fiction. It completely blew my mind and became a huge fan, devouring almost everything he wrote. As Edgar Wright said, our imagination will be dimmer without Ray Bradbury.
“The trick is to know which books to read” — golden advice that I must remember and add to the thousand and one things that I want to say to my daughter as she grows up.
Other than the Boekhandel Selexyz Dominicanen, there is a list of breathtaking book stores from around the world.
Bugs in a Blanket is a charming book by Beatrice Alemagna about a a group of bugs who try to venture out of the old blanket which they live in. It was a wonderful gift The Kid got for her last birthday and she absolutely loves it.
I haven’t been posting much because of my customary year-end lackadaisicalness. And I’ve been experimenting with posting on Google+ as well. I’m still trying to figure out a system that doesn’t involve duplicating stuff.
(If you want to pick up the ancient art of exercising with rubber bands, Amazon still stocks this book.)
Harvard University has digitised and catalogued hundreds of Islamic manuscripts, maps and other published texts and has made it all freely available at the Islamic Heritage Project.
“Please go the fuck to sleep” (or any of it’s variants) is what almost every parent says in their heads during their kid’s protracted sleep rituals. Sounds like a great book for any tired mum or dad.
Brilliant idea for a book and an even better idea to get Samuel L Jackson for the audio book. I wish I had thought of this first.
I realized yesterday that Google rather sneakily pushed their Books app into my Android device. I am fairly annoyed at them for chucking an app into my machine without asking me first. I have a fairly large broadband cap on my phone but if I didn’t, I’d have been fuming if this was the app that pushed me off my cap. (How about using push notification first, Google?)
Since it was already there, I played around with the Google eBook reader and I have to grudgingly say it’s a pretty decent app. Even on my relatively small screen, reading was quite comfortable though you have to scroll every 10-12 lines of text. It’s a decent application with an annoying mode of deployment.
Beautiful water colour paintings and a very restrained, gentle tone of voice is probably what makes Lost and Found a firm favourite for me and my two year old during her bedtime. While Oliver Jeffers‘ more famous The Incredible Book-Eating Boy is a fun, interactive and exquisitely packaged book, not many books have the soothing quietness and the understated emotions of Lost and Found.
There was an animated film adaptation of Lost and Found some time back. I only saw a short trailer and while it seems quite endearing, the 3D rendering style doesn’t quite capture the visual magic of the book’s delightful illustration.
Vanity Fair has small sampling of iconic photographs from the set of The Empire Strikes Back in 1980 which can all be found in the recently released and arduously researched hard cover, The Making of Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back.
Harrison Ford looked quite dashing, I must say…
All My Friends Are Dead looks like a hilarious book. From the Tenuously Related News section, Liverpool Football Club Might Be Dead looks like a distinct but rather unfunny possibility, too.