Belgrade Bookshop

Thierry Mugler, Galaxy Glamour: An absolute treat for the fashionista in your life

2011-12-27T11:56:00.010+01:00

Thierry Mugler, Galaxy Glamour

Daniele Bott

[Thames & Hudson Ltd]

Doris Lessing: The Diaries of Jane Somers

2011-12-09T08:28:00.004+01:00

The Diaries of Jane Somers, first published pseudonymously and separately as The Diary of a Good Neighbour and If The Old Could, appear here in one volume for the first time under Doris Lessing's name, together with a new preface by the author. While marking a return to the most realistic subject matter of Doris Lessing's early fiction, they are also a provocative new departure.

At the centre of both novels is attractive, intelligent magazine editor Jane Somers, whose wry perception informs and animates every page. Jane was an ambitious journalist concerned with success, clothes and comfort when her life changed. Her husband died, then her mother. Suddenly understanding her real inadequacy, Jane becomes deeply committed to the very old and deprived, making particular friends with one old woman, Maudie, whose life has been all struggle and poverty.

The Diaries of Jane Somers

Doris May Lessing

[Harper Collins Publishers]

Art, Style and Glamour in the Crazy Years: Paris Between the Wars

2011-11-21T08:55:00.015+01:00

Inspire yourself and others: The Tao of Motivation

2011-11-10T13:29:00.005+01:00

“You cannot motivate someone unless you are able to deliver praise for something which they have done (or for a skill which they have) in an utterly convincing way.

For some reason, most people expect that a statement like “You did that really well” will be followed by “…but here`s how to do it better”. For this and other reasons, many people will not accept the initial statement alone as genuine. At the very best, they`ll feel that you`re holding back some criticism. The table opposite suggests some approaches which you may want to adopt, to counteract this syndrome.

Of course, there are times – especially in the environment of work – where you may also want to suggest ways for the person to improve their performance. *Nevertheless, you should be careful to deliver enough unadulterated praise.

If you are trying to sustain your own motivation (rather than someone else’s), then you will clearly need to find your own ways to convince yourself of your abilities.”

In this bestselling classic Max Landsberg provides practical techniques for making your work and life more rewarding through the habit of Motivation.

Succinct and engaging, this book offers you advice on the under-taught habits that help you to motivate yourself and others, so you can:

Feel and picture the success you want
Tap into your personal energies
Come to relish “taking the plunge”
Look at setbacks and success objectively
Build your confidence, step by step

The Tao of Motivation
Max Landsberg
[Profile Books]

The Sense of an Ending wins The 2011 Man Booker Prize for Fiction

2011-10-19T09:17:00.004+02:00

Julian Barnes is named the winner of this year's Man Booker Prize for Fiction for The Sense of an Ending, published by Jonathan Cape.

Barnes' first novel for six years, The Sense of an Ending went straight into the bestseller list on publication. It is the story of a seemingly ordinary man who, when revisiting his past in later life, discovers that the memories he holds are less than perfect. Laced with trademark precision, dexterity and insight, this is the work of one of the world's most distinguished writers. At the time of the shortlist announcement, 2011 judge Gaby Wood commented: ‘that the tragedy trapped in this mundane life should be so moving, and so keenly felt by the character that he can only confront it half-blindly and in fragments, is the mark of a truly masterful novel.

Masters of Cinema

2011-10-16T11:57:00.011+02:00

An essential introduction to one of the world’s greatest directors...

Federico Fellini, Billy Wilder, Ingmar Bergman, Alfred Hitchcock, Clint Eastwood, David Lynch, Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese, Pedro Almodóvar, Stanley Kubrick, Tim Burton, Woody Allen…

MASTERS OF CINEMA

[Phaidon]

Vasko Popa: Complete Poems 1953-1987

2011-10-03T09:45:00.004+02:00

The she-wolf lies

In heaven’s foothills

Her body a live coal

Is overgrown with grass

And covered with sun-pollen

The mountains in her breast

Rise menacing

And fall forgiving

Through her veins rivers howl

In her eyes lakes flash

In her measureless heart

Metallic ores melt from love

On the sevenfold fire

Wolves play over her back

And live in her crystal womb

To their first and from their final howl

“Popa’s imaginative journey resembles a Universe passing through a Universe. It has been one of the most exciting things in modern poetry, to watch this journey being made.” - Ted Hughes

Vasko Popa: Complete Poems

Anne Pennington, Francis R. Jones

[Anvil]

Encounters with Great Works of Art

2011-09-22T10:39:00.008+02:00

Over the course of history there sometimes emerge works of art of such quality that that transcend boundaries of period and place. In this exploration of the idea of the masterpiece, distinguished artists, critics and art historians write about their personal encounters with the greatest artworks of all time representing cultures from all over the world, and stretching from prehistory and the birth of art to Cezanne at the cusp of Cubism.

What Makes a Masterpiece? begins with the forms of animal inscribed on the walls of Chauvet Cave in France, and travels through the worlds of the ancient Egyptians, Assyrians, Greeks and Romans, embodied by images of royal or martial potency and mysterious religious rites. Medieval representations of Christ are celebrated alongside images of Vishnu, the Buddha and his priests, and the royal figures of South American and African civilizations. The jewels of the Quattrocento are on show beside the lesser-known triumphs of Aztec and Japanese court artists, while the masters of the European Renaissance and Baroque mingle with Mughal, Arab and Chinese virtuosos. The journey ends with the 19th century, depicted as an age of revolution, introspection and modernization.

This collection of famous works is more than the sum of its parts: it presents a remarkable cultural chronicle showing how artist throughout history have seen their world and chosen to represent it. Here are seventy answers to the question “What makes a masterpiece?”

What Makes a Masterpiece?

Edited by Christopher Dell

[Thames and Hudson]

Wordsworth Classics: The Jungle Book & The Second Jungle Book

2011-09-19T09:47:00.009+02:00

The Jungle Book introduces Mowgli, the human foundling adopted by a family of wolves. It tells of the enmity between him and the tiger Shere Khan, who killed Mowgli's parents, and of the friendship between the man-cub and Bagheera, the black panther, and Baloo, the sleepy brown bear, who instructs Mowgli in the Laws of the Jungle. The Second Jungle Book contains some of the most thrilling of the Mowgli stories. It includes Red Dog, in which Mowgli forms an unlikely alliance with the python Kaa, How Fear Came and Letting in the Jungle as well as The Spring Running, which brings Mowgli to manhood and the realisation that he must leave Bagheera, Baloo and his other friends for the world of man.

"Kaa was not a poison-snake – in fact he rather despised the poison-snakes as cowards – but his strength lay in his hug, and when he had once lapped his huge coils round anybody there was no more to be said. “Good hunting!” cried Baloo, sitting up on his haunches. Like all snakes of his breed, Kaa was rather deaf, and did not hear the call at first. Then he curled up ready for any accident, his head lowered. "

The Jungle Book & The Second Jungle Book

Rudyard Kipling

[Wordsworth]

Kurt Vonnegut on the Shapes of Stories

2011-09-14T15:10:00.003+02:00

More about Kurt Vonnegut...

The Cambridge Companion to Harold Pinter

2011-09-12T11:26:00.004+02:00

Harold Pinter was one of the world's leading and most controversial writers, and his impact and influence continues to grow. This Companion examines the wide range of Pinter's work - his writing for theatre, radio, television and screen, and also his highly successful work as a director and actor. Substantially updated and revised, this second edition covers the many developments in Pinter's career since the publication of the first edition, including his Nobel Prize for Literature win in 2005, his appearance in Samuel Beckett's play Krapp's Last Tape and recent productions of his plays. Containing essays written by both academics and leading practitioners, the volume places Pinter's writing within the critical and theatrical context of his time and considers its reception worldwide. Including three new essays, new production photographs, five updated and revised chapters and an extended chronology, the Companion provides fresh perspectives on Pinter's work.

Harold Pinter's The Caretaker "Aston's Monologue"

The Cambridge Companion to Harold Pinter

Peter Raby

[Cambridge University Press]

W. H. Auden, Poems selected by John Fuller

2011-09-07T08:48:00.006+02:00

No, Plato, No

I can’t imagine anything

that I would less like to be

than a disincarnate Spirit,

unable to chew or sip

or make contact with surfaces

or breathe the scents of summer

or comprehend speech and music

or gaze at what lies beyond.

No, God has placed me exactly

Where I’d have chosen to be:

the sub-lunar world is such fun,

where Man is male or female

and gives Proper Names to all things.

I can, however, conceive

That the organs Nature gave Me,

my ductless glands, for instance,

slaving twenty-four hours a day

with no show of resentment

to gratify Me, their Master,

and keep Me in decent shape,

(not that I give them their orders,

I wouldn’t know what to yell),

dream of another existence

than that they have known so far:

yes, it well could be that my Flesh

is praying for ‘Him’ to die,

so setting Her free to become

irresponsible Matter.

W. H. Auden

Poems selected by John Fuller

[Faber and Faber]

Ancient Light: I have loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night

2011-08-31T14:19:00.008+02:00

..unique collection of fine images of star clusters, galaxies, nebulae and other such spectacular phenomena captured on glass plates by some of the world’s finest optical telescopes.

M83, a spiral galaxy in Hydra

Hydra, the water snake, is largest constellation in the sky and it shares a long border with Centaurus, which is almost as big. Straddling the boundary we find a beautiful nearby spiral galaxy, M83. It is a galaxy of stars, gas and dust like the Milky Way…

The Horsehead nebula, dust and gas adrift in Orion

…While this image appears to have substance as well as style, there is little here that is solid, Most of what is dark, including the horse’s head itself, is little more than a cosmic smoke – screen made of tiny grains of dust. The wispy nebulosity that fills the field is tenuous gas, excited into a glowing plasma by surrounding stars.

Comet Halley, 12 March 1986

After a chilly sojourn in the outer solar system, Comet Halley returned to the warmth of the Sun in late 1985 after an absence of 76 years. Comet Halley rounded the Sun in February 1986 and was visible again to Earth-bound telescopes in early March. At this time the comet was at its most active and its dust tail very well developed. This wide angle image was made in blue light with the UK Schmidt camera and special photographic techniques reveal detailed structure in its long blue ion tail. The stars are slightly trailed because the telescope was tracking the comet for this 15-minute exposure, and the bright object at the top of the frame is the globular cluster 75.

Ancient Light

by David Malin

[Phaidon Press Limited]

Allen Ginsberg (1926-1997) - Howl

2011-08-23T10:41:00.002+02:00

"I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked,

dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix,

angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night,

who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat up smoking in the supernatural darkness of cold-water flats floating across the tops of cities contemplating jazz,

who bared their brains to Heaven under the El and saw Mohammedan angels staggering on tenement roofs illuminated,

who passed through universities with radiant eyes hallucinating Arkansas and Blake-light tragedy among the scholars of war,

who were expelled from the academies for crazy & publishing obscene odes on the windows of the skull,

who cowered in unshaven rooms in underwear, burning their money in wastebaskets and listening to the Terror through the wall,

who got busted in their pubic beards returning through Laredo with a belt of marijuana for New York,

who ate fire in paint hotels or drank turpentine in Paradise Alley, death, or purgatoried their torsos night after night

with dreams, with drugs, with waking nightmares, alcohol and cock and endless balls,....."

Daring to do: Lao Tzu - Tao Te Ching

2011-08-23T09:26:00.003+02:00

„The Tao Te Ching is partly in prose, partly in verse; but as we define poetry now, not by rhyme and meter but as a patterned intensity of language, the whole thing is poetry. I wanted to catch that poetry, its terse, strange beauty. Most translations have caught meanings in their net, but prosily, letting the beauty slip through. And in poetry, beauty is no ornament; it is the meaning. It is the truth. We have that on good authority.”

- Ursula K. Le Guin

Ursula K. Le Guin is the winner of the Hugo, Nebula, Gandalf, Kafka and National Book Awards. She is the author of more than fifty books of fiction, poetry, essays and translations including the Earthsea novels, Incredible Good Fortune and Lavinia.

Lao Tzu: Tao Te Ching

Ursula K. Le Guin

Published by Shambhala

Penguin Modern Classics: A little history

2011-08-19T09:15:00.002+02:00

Launched in 1961, and have been shaping the reading habits of generations ever since...

The list began with distinctive grey spines and evocative pictorial covers – a look that, after that, after various incarnations, continues to influence their current design – and with books that are still considered landmark classics today.

Penguin Modern Classics have caused scandal and political change, inspired great films and broken down barriers, whether social, sexual or the most provocative, groundbreaking, exciting and revolutionary works of the last 100 years.

In 2011, on the fiftieth anniversary of the Modern Classics, Penguin is publishing fifty Mini Modern Classics: the very best short fiction by writers ranging from Beckett to Conrad, Nabokov to Saki, Updike to Wodehouse. Though they don’t take long to read, they’ll stay with you long after you turn the final page.

Open and closed minds alike will find much to ponder: Conceiving God

2011-08-16T09:17:00.003+02:00

Recent years have seen a growing tension between religion and science as more and more people have asked themselves a fundamental question: is there a supernatural realm that intervenes in the material world of daily life? To many it certainly feels so – but what if the religious impulse has another, perfectly rational, explanation?

Building on the insights and discoveries of his two earlier books, The Mind in the Cave and Inside the Neolithic Mind, cognitive archaeologist David Lewis – Williams explores how science developed within the coon of religion and then shows how the natural functioning of the human brain creates experiences that can lead to belief in a supernatural realm. Such belief gives rise to creeds, a development examined here in the light of critical episodes in world history, from rivalries between Platonists and Aristotelians, or the conversion of St Paul and Constantine, to the discoveries of Charles Darwin.

David Lewis-Williams is Professor Emeritus and Senior Mentor in the Rock Art Research Institute, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg.

See video of the author talking about his book…

Conceiving God

The Cognitive Origin and Evolution of Religion

David Lewis-Williams
[Thames and Hudson]

Do not fear death so much but rather the inadequate life

2011-08-14T12:05:00.004+02:00

Bertold Brecht [10 February 1898 – 14 August 1956]

One of the most important German writers of drama, theater scholar, film writer and poet of the twentieth century, Bertolt Brecht died in the 58th year of a heart attack in Berlin, 55 years ago…

Made for International Bertolt Brecht Conference in Poznań, 2006.

Music: K. K.
Video: Bertolt Brecht Archives
VJ: M.C.

London Calling - major and definitive history of the counterculture

2011-08-09T08:28:00.008+02:00

London has long been a magnet for aspiring artist and writers, musicians and fashion designers seeking inspiration and success in this great city. In "London Calling", Barry Miles explores the counter culture that sprang up in the decades following the Second World War, focusing on the West End and Soho, where the presence of so many artists has established a unique atmosphere, creative, avant garde, permissive, anarchic - the throbbing heart of London.

Heaven is for Real: A Little Boy's Astounding Story of His Trip to Heaven and Back

2011-08-05T10:10:00.002+02:00

... Sometimes laughter is the only way to process tough times, so as we passed the turnoff, I decided to rib Colton a little.

“Hey, Colton, if we turn here, we can go back to the hospital, “I said. “Do you wanna go back to the hospital?”

Our preschooler giggled in the dark. “No, Daddy, don’t send me! Send Cassie…Cassie can go to the hospital!”

Sitting next to him, his sister laughed. “Nuh-uh! I don’t wanna go either!”

In the passenger seat, Sonja turned so that she could see our son, whose car seat was parked behind mine. I pictured his blond crew cut and his sky-blue eyes shining in the dark. “Do you remember the hospital, Colton?” Sonja said.

“Yes, Mommy, I remember,” he said. “That’s where the angels sang to me.”...

Heaven Is for Real is the true story of the four-year old son of a small town Nebraska pastor who during emergency surgery slips from consciousness and enters heaven. He survives and begins talking about being able to look down and see the doctor operating and his dad praying in the waiting room. The family didn't know what to believe but soon the evidence was clear.

Heaven is for Real

Todd Burpo, Lynn Vincent, Sonja Burpo

Published by Thomas Nelson

Auto Focus, The Self-Portrait in Contemporary Photography

2011-08-01T09:48:00.010+02:00

‘An intriguing new survey … a feast of elaborate photographic reinvention’ – The Observer

See the complete list of photographers.

Auto Focus

The Self-Portrait in Contemporary Photography

by Susan Bright

[Thames and Hudson]

Man Booker Prize 2011 longlist announced

2011-07-27T19:02:00.005+02:00

Previous Booker Prize winner Alan Hollinghurst (“The Stranger’s Child”) and three-time finalist Julian Barnes ( “The Sense of an Ending”) are again among the contenders for Britain’s most prestigious literary award.

The King of Trash: John Waters

2011-07-25T09:15:00.006+02:00

“Do we secretly idolize our imagined opposites, yearning to become the role models for others we know we could never be for ourselves? When I taught filmmaking at a jail in Maryland in the 1980s, I always got my class to loosen up by doing improve and asking them to play “the exact opposite of yourself.” If Freud described psychotherapy as “transforming hysterical misery into common unhappiness,” I figured this might be a revealing way to rehabilitate. Bikers wound up playing girls, blacks chose characters with wealth and power, whites became docile maids or butlers, and child molesters became tough guys. But did I need my own prison counselor because I kept reliving that Johnny Mathis “opposite” moment?

An excerpt from the book “Role Models” by John Waters

Published by Beautiful Books

Watch the video or read the book review by Tom Carson, NY Times.

Theodore Boone is back in a new adventure!

2011-07-23T14:47:00.004+02:00

Filled with the page-turning suspense that made John Grisham a #1 international bestseller and the undisputed master of the legal thriller, Theodore Boone's trials and triumphs will keep readers guessing until the very end.

Theodore Boone: The Abduction by John Grisham

Published by Dutton Juvenile

The Heroes, Joe Abercrombie

2011-07-20T08:14:00.004+02:00

"The Heroes follows three principal characters, in a cast of more than 50, embroiled in a bloody conflict between the Northmen and the Union to take strategically worthless land around the village of Osrung. Seen-it-all veteran Curnden Craw is an honest man sickened by warfare; psychopath Bremer dan Gorst was dishonoured in battle and seeks redemption; while treacherous Prince Calder lusts after power and will do anything to gain it. Over three days the battle ebbs and flows, and Abercrombie graphically illustrates the pointlessness of a conflict in which each combatant assumes that right is on his side.The Heroes is an indictment of war and the duplicity that corrupts men striving for total power: bloody and violent, but never gratuitously so, it's imbued with cutting humour, acute characterisation and world-weary wisdom about the weaknesses of the human race. Brilliant."

by Eric Brown, The Guardian

The Heroes

Joe Abercrombie

[Orbit]

The Catcher in the Rye, J. D. Salinger: 60 years since the publication

2011-07-16T23:37:00.004+02:00

Though controversial, the novel appealed to a great number of people. It was a hugely popular bestseller and general critical success. Salinger’s writing seemed to tap into the emotions of readers in an unprecedented way. As counter-cultural revolt began to grow during the 1950s and 1960s, The Catcher in the Rye was frequently read as a tale of an individual’s alienation within a heartless world. Holden seemed to stand for young people everywhere, who felt themselves beset on all sides by pressures to grow up and live their lives according to the rules, to disengage from meaningful human connection, and to restrict their own personalities and conform to a bland cultural norm. Many readers saw Holden Caulfield as a symbol of pure, unfettered individuality in the face of cultural oppression.

The complete works in a luxury edition

2011-07-13T08:38:00.011+02:00

The Iliad & The Odyssey, Homer

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland & Other Stories, Lewis Carroll

The Complete Works of William Shakespeare

The Complete Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe

All published by Barnes&Noble, Inc.

The Stranger’s Child by A.Hollinghurst at our bookshops!

2011-07-11T09:21:00.002+02:00

In the late summer of 1913 the aristocratic young poet Cecil Valance comes to stay at “Two Acres”, the home of his close Cambridge friend George Sawle. The weekend will be one of excitements and confusions for all the Sawles, but it is on George’s sixteen-year-old sister Daphne that it will have the most lasting impact, when Cecil writes her a poem which will become a touchstone for a generation, an evocation of an England about to change for ever.

Linking the Sawle and Valance families irrevocably, the shared intimacies of this weekend become legendary events in a larger story, told and interpreted in different ways over the coming century, and subjected to the scrutiny of critics and biographers with their own agendas and anxieties. In a sequence of widely separated episodes we follow the two families through startling changes in fortune and circumstance.

At the centre of this often richly comic history of sexual mores and literary reputation runs the story of Daphne, from innocent girlhood to wary old age. Around her Hollinghurst draws and absorbing picture of an England constantly in flux. As in The Line of Beauty, his impeccably nuanced exploration of changing taste, class and social etiquette is conveyed in deliciously witty and observant prose. Exposing our secret longings to the shocks and surprises of time, The Stranger’s Child is an enthralling novel from one of the finest writers in the English language.

Read the book review by Keith Miller, The Telegraph.

The Stranger`s Child

Alan Hollinghurst

Published 2011 by Picador

50 years since Papa`s death

2011-07-02T18:21:00.005+02:00

He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf Stream and he had gone eighty-four days now without taking a fish. In the first forty days a boy had been with him. But after forty days without a fish the boy's parents had told him that the old man was now definitely and finally salao, which is the worst form of unlucky, and the boy had gone at their orders in another boat which caught three good fish the first week. It made the boy sad to see the old man come in each day with his skiff empty and he always went down to help him carry either the coiled lines or the gaff and harpoon and the sail that was furled around the mast. The sail was patched with flour sacks and, furled, it looked like the flag of permanent defeat.

an excerpt from The Old Man and the Sea

Ernest Hemingway

Recipes from an Italian Summer

2011-06-30T10:16:00.018+02:00

Italian food is one of the most popular cuisines in the world, and the simplicity and pure flavours of Italian cooking make the best use of the wonderful array of fruit and vegetables that is available during the summer months, such as tomatoes, fresh herbs, peas, beans aubergines and berries. These delicious recipes, which are easy to prepare in any kitchen, will enable all aspiring cooks to create delicious seasonal dishes. With images of the Italian landscape by the renowned photographer Joel Meyerowitz, along with photographs of ingredients and mouthwatering dishes by Andy Sewell, the book brings the taste of Italian summer to your table, wherever you are.

Recipes from an Italian Summer is the ultimate summer cookbook for all lovers of Italian food. From informal picnics to family barbecues and entertaining outdoors, the book presents 380 easy-to-follow and authentic recipes for all occasions, newly collected by the authors of the best-selling Italian cookery bible, The Silver Spoon.

Recipes from an Italian Summer

[Phaidon]

Vintage Classics: To Kill a Mockingbird - Winner of The Pulitzer Prize

2011-06-16T08:26:00.006+02:00

"No one ever forgets this book" - Independent

Atticus Finch gives this advice to his children as he defends the real mockingbird of this classic novel – black man charged with attacking a white girl. Through the eyes of Scout and Jem Finch, Lee explores the issues of race and class in the Deep South of the 1930s with compassion and humor. She also creates one of the great heroes of literature in their father, whose lone struggle for justice pricks the conscience of a town steeped in prejudice and hypocrisy.

To Kill a Mockingbird

Harper Lee

[Vintage, Random House]

Lonely Planet: Europe - choose your destination!

2011-06-13T09:16:00.022+02:00

Lonely Planet is the largest travel guide book and digital media publisher in the world, company owned by BBC Worldwide. It was one of the first series of travel books aimed at backpackers and other low-cost travellers. As of 2010, it publishes about 500 titles in 8 languages, as well as TV programs, a magazine, mobile phone applications and websites.

These guides are written by experts who get to the heart of every destination they visit, packed with accurate, practical and honest advice, designed to give you the information you need to make the most of your trip.

For more info visit Lonely Planet website or buy a copy at our bookshops.

Tea Obreht wins 2011 Orange Prize for Fiction

2011-06-09T11:56:00.003+02:00

Tea Obreht won the Orange Prize for Fiction on Wednesday for her debut novel, “The Tiger’s Wife,” making her at 25 the youngest person to win the award. The winner, chosen by a panel of five judges, was announced in London.

Bettany Hughes, the chairwoman of the judges, said in a statement: “Obreht’s powers of observation and her understanding of the world are remarkable. By skilfully spinning a series of magical tales she has managed to bring the tragedy of chronic Balkan conflict thumping into our front rooms with a bittersweet vivacity.” The other finalists were Emma Donoghue, Aminatta Forna, Emma Henderson, Nicole Krauss and Kathleen Winter.

Article by Julie Bosman, The New York Times

To read an excerpt from this novel click here or visit our bookshops to buy a copy.

What would you create given complete freedom?

2011-06-09T08:13:00.005+02:00

What would you do or make if you had an unlimited budget, a visionary client, and complete control? We all dream of high-paying, high-profile jobs and crave fore more creativity in our work. Lust is a peek into what is possible when designers are allowed to pursue this dream.

Lust is a collection of unrealized projects and a traveling journal of creativity from around the world; a handmade sketchbook zigzagging across six continents, gathering steam, and collecting documents. In it are designers, dreams, and a peek into their processes.

LUST

A Traveling Art Journal of Graphic Designers

Edited by James Victore

Leonard Cohen wins Prince of Asturias award

2011-06-07T14:39:00.002+02:00

Leonard Cohen, one of the world’s most influential writers, has been awarded the prestigious Prince of Asturias award for a body of work of “immutable merit”! This top Spanish literary prize is only awarded to the most influential writers worldwide. The ceremony will be taking place in Oviedo, Spain - read all about this exciting news here!

In 2008, Leonard Cohen’s first tour in 15 years sold out globally, and his song “Hallelujah” is one of the most famous and beloved songs worldwide. Explore Leonard Cohen’s provocative and inspiring body of work with these two fantastic titles: THE FAVOURITE GAME, and BEAUTIFUL LOSERS.

Crazy Diamond: Syd Barrett & the Dawn of Pink Floyd

2011-06-02T08:33:00.013+02:00

The best-selling biography of Syd Barrett, the legendary founder of Pink Floyd whose all too brief flash of erratic brilliance became one of rock’s greatest enigmas.

Originally Pink Floyd’s singer, guitarist and principal composer, Barrett left he group in 1968 amid wild tales of acid induced madness. He made two solo albums which became cult classics and then disappeared, only to become the subject of countless `Where is Syd?` investigations.

Crazy Diamond: Syd Barrett & the Dawn of Pink Floyd

Mike Watkinson & Pete Anderson

[Omnibus Press]

The Eternity in a Moment: Instant Light, Tarkovsky Polaroids

2011-05-23T09:23:00.011+02:00

Composed of sixty luminous polaroids taken by Anrdrey Tarkovsky in Russia and Italy between 1979 and 1984, this beautifully produced series of cameos from the director’s life reveals him to be a master of the still as much as of the moving image. The photos in the first section, taken in Russia, have the radiant melancholy of lengthening shadows and trees looming through misty dawns near Tarkovsky`s county dacha, together with portraits of his wife, son and dog, loaded with nostalgia by quotations from his later diaries. Those taken in Italy portray exquisite still lifes and glimmering ruins. The book concludes with photographs from Tarkovsky`s personal collection.

Instant Light, Tarkovsky Polaroids

[Thames&Hudson]

The Book of Songs: The Ancient Chinese Classic of Poetry

2011-05-20T12:57:00.009+02:00

Many aspects of these poems will always seem strange to us: unfamiliar place names and vanished folkways. Very few readers indeed have ever ridden in a chariot, nor do we wear belts with carved stones dangling from them (Waley`s ”girdles”). But in many of the songs something basic is still transmitted, even across the barriers of translation, a different culture, and over two and a half millennia of history. And when we catch that basic human note, we may recognize that it is we who have become strange and alien, not the songs. We find in them words we can feel but no longer say, such as the following words of a woman to a lover who has abandoned her:

If along the highroad

I caught hold of your sleeve,

Do not hate me:

Old ways take time to overcome.

The Book of Songs,The Ancient Chinese Classic of Poetry

Arthur Waley

Grove Press

Graphic design for fashion: global selection of the best graphic design studios` work

2011-05-18T12:16:00.011+02:00

Ted Hughes, Poems selected by Simon Armitage

2011-05-16T08:58:00.007+02:00

Right from the beginning, Ted Hughes (1930-98) wrote in a way that set him apart from his contemporaries, as Simon Armitage puts it in his introduction. By the time he published his final collection, Birthday Letters, in 1998, he had become a colossus on the literary landscape.

"During the seventies and eighties, however, to speak up on behalf of Hughes, whether as a reader or writer, was to take a position. To support Hughes poetry was to support the man himself, a man whose ideologies could have been described as unfashionable, and whose poetic style was seen by some as stubborn and entrenched. Hughes himself had become increasingly private and his poetry seemed to be in hiding with him. The criticism over his role in the death of his first wife, Sylvia Plath , had reached fever pitch, especially in the United States, and even those with little or no knowledge of his poetry were quick to offer an opinion of it. For many, he represented the antithesis of contemporary ideology and modern political thought. His acceptance of the Laureateship in 1984 and his well-documented interest in hunting, shooting and fishing were easily caricatured. In that era, to be seen promoting the work of the man could have been construed as an act of defiance almost, rather than the act of celebration it is today. How quickly and how strangely situations turn about." From the Introduction

Ted Hughes

Poems selected by Simon Armitage

[Faber&Faber]

Marina Abramovic: the "grandmother" of performance art

2011-05-10T08:43:00.005+02:00

She is the creator of pioneering performance art which transcends the form’s provocative origins. Her visceral and extreme performances have tested the limits of both body and mind, communicating with audiences worldwide on a personal and political level.

“In energy sense, performing is like publishing. If you put an article in a newspaper, you concentrate an enormous amount of mental energy into it, if you invite people to come to a performance, practically you do the same… during the performance you exchange your energy of the audience and together the artist and the audience are all subject to the same idea.“ (quote by M. Abramovic)

Marina Abramovic by Mary Richards

Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group

The Tiger`s Wife: A marvel of beauty and imagination by Tea Obreht

2011-05-04T10:04:00.008+02:00

Weaving a brilliant latticework of family legend, loss, and love, Tea Obreht, the youngest of The New Yorker`s twenty best American fiction writers under forty, has spun a timeless novel that will establish her as one of the most vibrant, original authors of her generation.

"The car was pitching up and down through the ruts on the shoulder, and I could hear the glass vials in the cooler shivering. Thirty kilometers out of Brejevina, we started to see more signs for pensions and restaurants, tourist places that were slowly beginning to rely on the offshore islands for business again. We started seeing fruit and specialty food stands, signs for home-made pepper cookies and grape-leaf rakija, local honey, sour cherry and fig preserves. I had three missed pages from my grandmother, but Zora had the mobile, and there was no way to call my grandma back with Zora in the car. We pulled over at the next rest-stop with a pay phone, a roadside barbecue stand with a blue awning and an outhouse in the adjacent field."

From the book "The Tiger`s Wife", published by Random House, Inc.

More about the author...

The role of beauty in modern culture via Vogue

2011-04-20T08:05:00.010+02:00

Annie Leibovitz, Irving Penn, Richard Avedon, Steven Klein, Helmut Newton, Phyllis Posnick, Steven Meisel works on pages of the American Vogue...

Extreme Beauty in Vogue

[Skira]

Blunt truth

2011-04-18T09:41:00.003+02:00

"my 6 foot goddess
makes me laugh
the laughter of the mutilated
who still need
love...

she has saved me
from everything that is
not here"
- Charles Bukowski (Love is a Dog From Hell: Poems, 1974-1977)

(photo: JessyLou D'Aprile)

Lilacs

2011-04-12T10:10:00.006+02:00

APRIL is the cruellest month, breeding

Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing

Memory and desire, stirring

Dull roots with spring rain.

The Waste Land

Selected Poems of T. S. Eliot

[Faber&Faber]

[photo: neil krug/invisible pyramid]

The Prince: the principles as true today as when they were first written...

2011-04-12T09:49:00.006+02:00

"In his 1513 work, The Prince, Machiavelli created a monster that has haunted politics ever since... The Prince is not a practical - advice manual aimed at any specific individual - rather it creates a fantastic creature, a kind of armoured colossus bestriding (and in Machiavelli`s precocious dream, uniting) Italy." - The Guardian

Terrible Beauty

2011-04-07T13:23:00.005+02:00

In celebration of the centenary of Bacon’s birth, Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane organised the first exhibition to concentrate on the methods, materials and processes through which this major artist achieved his paintings. The exhibition draws on the vast archive of material archaeologically retrieved from Bacon’s studio and housed in Dublin.

The accompanying catalogue will present new scholarship and insights, with texts by Rebecca Daniels, Barbara Dawson, Marcel Finke, Martin Harrison, Jessica O’Donnell, Joanna Shepard and Logan Sisley.

from the www.steidlville.com

The Spontaneous Prose of Jack Kerouac

2011-04-05T10:38:00.007+02:00

On the Road swings to the rhythms of 1950s underground America, jazz, sex, generosity, chill dawns and drugs, with Sal Paradise and his hero Dean Moriarty, traveler and mystic, the living epitome of Beat. Now recognized as a modern classic, Kerouac’s American Dream is nearer that of Walt Whitman than F.Scott Fitzgerald’s, and the narrative goes racing towards the sunset with unforgettable exuberance, poignancy and passion.

"It changed my life like it changed everyone else’s" BOB DYLAN

Classic Balkan Fable: Giants, Dragons and Beautiful Princesses

2011-04-01T14:26:00.018+02:00

Delve into the tale of the young Tsar and his brothers and his quest to confront the legendary beast Bash Tchelik... Translated by Timothy John Byford, well-known writer and director of children’s programmes such as Neven, Poletarac, Nedeljni zabavnik and illustrated by Rastko Ćirić. “Bash Tchelik” was rewarded for the best illustrated book at the Belgrade Book Fair 2010 by Association of Applied Artists and Designers of Serbia (ULUPUDS).

It`s the Dickensian Zombie Apocalypse - God Bless us, every one!

2011-03-31T08:11:00.010+02:00

"For a long time Scrooge sat upon the chaise longue, listening to the ghastly, distant howls of the Zombies in the street outside. The light burnt with an uncanny, unwavering brightness. It hung by a narrow thread, and Scrooge could not for the life of him see how enough gas was being piped through such an aperture to maintain its flame. Not that it mattered. "The last human being alive," he said to himself. "I am Scrooge, none other. For there is no other kindred spirit anywhere upon the face of the whole rainy, stony earth." Feeling a great sorrow in his heart, and experiencing that grief as weariness, Scrooge fell asleep."

from the I am Scroodge, by Adam Roberts

GILGONGO! In the language of the planet, that meant “Extinct!”

2011-03-28T12:23:00.007+02:00

"People were glad that the bears were gilgongo, because there were too many species on the planet already, and new ones were coming into being almost every hour. There was no way anybody could prepare for the bewildering diversity of creatures and plants he was likely to encounter.

The People were doing their best to cut down on the number of species, so that life could be more predictable. But Nature was too creative for them. All life on planet was suffocated at last by a living blanket one hundred feet thick. The blanket was composed of passenger pigeons and eagles and Bermuda Erns and whooping cranes."

From the "Breakfast of Champions", by Kurt Vonnegut

"Unique... one of the writers who map our landscapes for us, who give names to the places we know best." - Doris Lessing, The New York Times Book Review

The Original Copy: Photography of Sculpture, 1839 to Today

2011-03-25T12:20:00.018+01:00

...critical examination of the intersections between photography and sculpture, exploring how the one medium has become implicated in the understanding of the other...

A Clockwork Orange by A. Burgess: modern classic of youthful violence and social redemption

2011-03-22T09:13:00.008+01:00

"After that I had lovely Mozart, the Jupiter, and there were new pictures of different litsos to be ground and splashed, and it was after this that I thought I would have just one last disc only before crossing the border, and I wanted something starry and strong and very firm, so it was J.S.Bach I had, the Brandenburg Concerto just for middle and lower strings."

From the TIME Archive:

"Anthony Burgess has written what looks like a nasty little shocker but is really that rare thing in English letters—a philosophical novel"

—TIME Magazine, Feb. 15, 1963 (Read This Review)

Red Plenty by F.Spufford: Inside the Fifties' Soviet Dream

2011-03-18T10:18:00.008+01:00

”This is not a novel… it is a fairy tale,” Spufford claims in his prologue...

Red Plenty is peopled by both real and fictional characters: brilliant young scientists and economists, low-level Party members and factory managers. Each one, even the most corrupt, is drawn with such a generous understanding that I found myself stalling at the end of every chapter, regretting already that I would soon be leaving their company.

By Charlotte Hobson, The Telegraph

For more info visit Red Plenty website.

Noam Chomsky: Free markets are an illusion

2011-03-14T12:58:00.014+01:00

"…the sceptical spectrum is the view that US political evangelism is a grotesque hypocrisy, cunningly deployed to mask imperialistic ambitions. Further still, off the scale entirely, is Noam Chomsky. Hopes and Prospects is the latest barrage in a lifetime's assault on US political vanity by the 81-year-old linguistics professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Chomsky took up a sideline in political writing in opposition to the Vietnam war and has kept anti-Washington cudgels at hand ever since. He has dedicated followers who see him as guru and gadfly, speaking unwanted truth to power. He is the closest thing the intellectual far left has to a rock star.

In that sense, Hopes and Prospects is like one of those live albums that veteran bands release when they've stopped producing new singles; slightly different versions of familiar hits bashed out for an easily pleased audience."

From "The Observer" by Rafael Behr

The Primacy of Drawing, Histories and Theories of Practice by Deanna Petherbridge

2011-03-07T12:52:00.007+01:00

This book is the first of its kind to address emergent ways of drawing within a richly illustrated trans-historical context and to propose ways of looking and constructions of meanings around a huge range of practices, both old and new. It celebrates Leonardo, Michelangelo, Dürer, Rubens, Goya, Matisse....