"MONUMENTAL PARIS" by Hervé Champollion and Aude de Tocqueville (218 color photos and six gatefolds, Vendome, $150)
Redesign your coffee table for this extraordinary tribute to the gardens, rooftops, shops, restaurants, churches, waterways and neoclassical architecture of the world's most beautiful city. Opening to more than 3 feet wide with six gatefolds, the book celebrates the moody beauty and grandeur of a city that has retained its human scale into the modern age. Paris is amazingly rich in ornament, statuary and grand vistas, all expertly photographed in perfect light in myriad seasons and times of day. De Tocqueville's excellent captions are wisely grouped at the end, leaving Champollion's pictures free to seduce the heart.
MARY ABBE
"MOBY-DICK IN PICTURES: ONE DRAWING FOR EVERY PAGE" by Matt Kish (Tin House, $39.95)
For the first half of the book, Matt Kish says, he identified with Ahab; for the second half, the whale. He first read "Moby-Dick" in an abridged, illustrated version as a child and it stuck with him; since then he has read the book a dozen times, and in 2009 he took on the monumental task of illustrating it. He chose one passage from each page and produced an accompanying illustration - 552 of them, mostly ink and acrylic on found paper, because the type and diagrams of the found paper bleed through, hinting at "a greater complexity and hidden structure," like the novel itself. The result is a rather fascinating compendium - not literal illustrations, but impressionistic collages and paintings that stir the imagination.
LAURIE HERTZEL
"THE CONFERENCE OF THE BIRDS" by Peter Sís (Penguin Press, $27.95) ...
http://www.startribune.com/entertainment/books/134431138.html
Redesign your coffee table for this extraordinary tribute to the gardens, rooftops, shops, restaurants, churches, waterways and neoclassical architecture of the world's most beautiful city. Opening to more than 3 feet wide with six gatefolds, the book celebrates the moody beauty and grandeur of a city that has retained its human scale into the modern age. Paris is amazingly rich in ornament, statuary and grand vistas, all expertly photographed in perfect light in myriad seasons and times of day. De Tocqueville's excellent captions are wisely grouped at the end, leaving Champollion's pictures free to seduce the heart.
MARY ABBE
"MOBY-DICK IN PICTURES: ONE DRAWING FOR EVERY PAGE" by Matt Kish (Tin House, $39.95)
For the first half of the book, Matt Kish says, he identified with Ahab; for the second half, the whale. He first read "Moby-Dick" in an abridged, illustrated version as a child and it stuck with him; since then he has read the book a dozen times, and in 2009 he took on the monumental task of illustrating it. He chose one passage from each page and produced an accompanying illustration - 552 of them, mostly ink and acrylic on found paper, because the type and diagrams of the found paper bleed through, hinting at "a greater complexity and hidden structure," like the novel itself. The result is a rather fascinating compendium - not literal illustrations, but impressionistic collages and paintings that stir the imagination.
LAURIE HERTZEL
"THE CONFERENCE OF THE BIRDS" by Peter Sís (Penguin Press, $27.95) ...
http://www.startribune.com/entertainment/books/134431138.html
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