Well, I have attempted this project twice now so far -- once in 2012 and again in 2013. My rate of success has only been two books per year so far. Oh, well. I won't be deterred -- this is my year to peruse! (And if it's not, oh well -- are the Perusal Police going to arrest me?)
I covered two last year and I acquired a single additional TBP book, so my number now stands at 13. My newest is 100 Years of Fashion and I should totally plan to peruse that the month I read Tim Gunn's Fashion Bible.
As a refresher... these are art books I own that I haven't made time to peruse so I have created this "To Be Perused" (TBP) list to motivate me to crack these open. I will attempt to peruse one per month and report on it here.
Now that I have done four of these, I know that part of the reason I get bogged down is that I like to post a lot of photos and that takes way more time than a text-only post. Not making any excuses, but I do need to make sure I leave more time for the write ups.
Without further ado, here are my TBP books:
(Click to see that bigger.)
In alphabetical order, they are:
- 100 Years of Fashion by Cally Blackman
- Art for the People: The Rediscovery and Preservation of Progressive and WPA-Era Murals in the Chicago Public Schools, 1904-1943 by Heather Becker
- Art of Modern Rock by Paul Grushkin
- The Audrey Hepburn Treasures by Ellen Erwin
- Decorate: 1,000 Design Ideas for Every Room in Your Home by Holly Becker
- Design*Sponge at Home by Grace Bonney
- East Bay Then and Now by Dennis Evanosky
- Helvetica and the New York City Subway System: The True (Maybe) Story by Paul Shaw
- Lost Detroit: Stories Behind the Motor City's Majestic Ruins by Dan Austin (Author), Sean M. Doerr (Photographer)
- Plymouth in Vintage Postcards by Elizabeth Kelley Kerstens
- Prom by Mary Ellen Mark
- Punk House: Interiors in Anarchy by Abby Banks
- Robert Bechtle: A Retrospective by Janet Bishop
Lucky 13! This is my year, babe! Heh.
love,
kelly
You know, I'm just really envious of your art books. I really don't have that many of them. Maybe because they are such an investment, maybe because we don't have a real coffee table. Books like that end up being mantle books. I was at a big vacation home once and there were coffee table books everywhere and it was *awesome*! It was so fun to just be able to sit there and preuse them. Maybe the trick is to actually put one out on your coffee table each month and then it will be right in front of you? If it's on the shelf, it's easy to forget, you know?
ReplyDeleteAs for the investment... this is basically the same stack I've been chipping away at since 2012. :) I've had most of these for *years* (Pictoplasma, that I *finally* finished writing up today has been on my shelf for at 8-9 years...) Sooo... I probably buy maybe... one a year? And many of these have been gifts (Helvetica was from you, Audrey Hepburn from my grandma.... and technically Punk House and Art of Rock belong to Bill -- I gave them to *him* as gifts! Heh. And... he gave me 100 Years of Fashion, Robert Bechtle and the Plymouth book [which is actually a pretty slender volume].)
ReplyDeleteAll this to say... I'm not dropping thousands of dollars all over the place accumulating mass stores of coffee table books. :)
You are RIGHT, though, that I need to put some of these puppies *on* the coffee table! We actually talked about this in the comments on last year on my 2013 TBP post! After that, I actually did start loading up the coffee table with other books (it's a good place for library books, especially) but haven't put many coffee table books on there... think I need to move some from the bookcases to the coffee table. I'll get on that directly. :)
Funny side note: Just realized that Audrey appears on two of these books (the one about her, as well as 100 Years of Fashion. It's going to be a very Hepburn year! :)
ReplyDeleteI think the thing to do is aggressively "sale" shop for Art books. They make a big splash, but then get discounted.
ReplyDeleteSpeaking of arty books---I'm thinking of getting one of each of these in the letters that make up our last name and making decorative with the books. I also got the J, because duh, James Joyce.
http://www.us.penguingroup.com/static/pages/classics/penguindropcaps.html