What’s on your reading list?
Continuing on last week’s #namastayinbed theme, we’ve reached peak hygge time of year, aka annual book-buying season. December and January are the only months of the year I get time to properly absorb myself in books, so I’m looking forward to getting stuck into Sally Rooney’s Normal People and Michelle Obama’s Becoming. No spoilers please!
The rest of the year, I just accept I don’t have the attention span for deep absorption books. Instead I go for dip-in-able non-fiction stuff, which is probably why I like oral histories and diaries. I’m late to Tina Brown’s The Vanity Fair Diaries but it’s on my Christmas list, as is Uncovered: Revolutionary Magazine Covers – The Inside Stories Told by the People Who Made Them (below). Compiled by Ian Birch, former Editorial Director of Hearst UK and Emap, this oral history is a great insight into the evolution of print media, especially from a design point of view. Oh and if you can ever get hold of Brian Eno’s A Year with Swollen Appencides (Amazon has a few used copies), it’s a killer book. His daily diary from 1996, it will either be hugely inspiring or make you feel like a hopeless underachiever. (It’s also full of juicy gossip. Not that I care for that sort of thing *cough*.)
If you’re into music and youth culture, then 100 Club Stories, about the legendary 100 Club is a brilliant round-up of social history stories with accompanying pics (below). And if your 90s-obsessed kids are into fanzines, football and house music, my mates at Boy’s Own have just rereleased their compendium of every issue ever printed.
Photo books are an ongoing weakness of mine, but I recently had a KonMari clear out so I’m allowed to indulge again. I’ve been in an 80s and 90s nostalgia fug for the best part of a year, so I’m all over Ricochet by Denis O’Regan, a superb photo-diary, following David Bowie on his 1983 Serious Moonlight Tour (below). Not only are photos of 30-something platinum-haired Bowie major eye candy, but the candids also provide a rose-tinted trip down style memory lane.
Meanwhile, I’ve decided to rein in my spending on interiors books, but as it’s Christmas, I’ve just treated myself to Francois Halard’s Visite Privée (below), because it’s really the best book of its kind. Halard does a lot of Vogue’s interiors photography, and this 2010 book lets us snoop around the intimate spaces of some of my favourites artists including Cy Twombly, Richard Avedon and Robert Rauschenberg. On a similar but less polished tip, Apartamento magazine has just celebrated its tenth anniversary with The World of Apartamento (top), a compilation of its best interiors and stories.
Normal People was actually sent to me as part of a very cool gift concept by Reading in Heels. The Curate-Your-Own Christmas Book Boxes (below) let you choose a book plus a few gifty items to make a bespoke package for the discerning bibliophile in your life. You can choose from 16 books (contemporary or classic titles) as well as an array of stationery, beauty products, ethically-produced tea and scented candles for every price point. Last shipping day for Xmas is this Tuesday (so apologies if you’re reading this in my Wednesday email)…
Over to you. What’s on your reading list at the moment?
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WORDS: Disneyrollergirl / Navaz Batliwalla
IMAGES: The World of Apartamento; Uncovered: Revolutionary Magazine Covers – The Inside Stories Told by the People Who Made Them; 100 Club Stories; Ricochet by Denis O’Regan x 2; Visite Privee by Francois Halard x 2; Reading In Heels
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19 December, 2018 @ 8:42 am
Well, after reading this Ricochet. Yes, I went to a Serious Moonlight concert when Bowie toured it in Australia. A few years ago, while in London viewed the wonderful Bowie exhibition at the V&A museum. Total, tragic fangirl. Otherwise, it is summertime here, so trashy fiction all the way. Merry Christmas!
20 December, 2018 @ 9:32 pm
I am SOOOO jealous! The book is fab, that period was when I really discovered him as Let’s Dance was so huge and of course, Merry Christmas Mr Laurence was such a major film. (Years later I got to have dinner with Ryuichi Sakamoto and his wife in New York. They were super good fun!) And then of course I discovered the back catalogue. I would have loved to see Modern Love on the Serious Moonlight tour, I think i might have to find it on Youtube… Merry Christmas!