This has been a week of Art books – books which are not just beautiful to look at, but books which show how beautiful and vibrant the world can be, either by design or by nature.
We’ve been working away at the ‘Art Department’ on our website, and now it’s crammed with thousands of gorgeous books – from great wildlife photography through to building Olympic Stadia, from Tapestry Weaving to Mickey Mouse. Looking out of the window today and it’s overcast and grey, but between the covers of a beautiful book the world is full of colour.
A number of our new art books this week are Coles Signed Editions – broadcaster Lachlan Goudie is our guide through the richness and variety of Scottish Art; we wander the rooms of the art museum with Charles Saumarez-Smith; those who trade in art will be fascinated by the life of Rudolf Zwirner; the life of the artist Barbara Hepworth is explored and explained by Eleanor Clayton; Patrick Baty is the master of colour and paint, his Anatomy of Colour is a joyful exploration of the detail in pigments; there is a disproportionate amount of beauty to be found in the humble pebble; beauty is more than skin deep under the tutelage of Katie Service; the graphic designer Rian Hughes demonstrates remarkable talents in his novel The Black Locomotive; musician Michelle Zauner shares her memoir in Crying in H Mart; the tiny stuff in life is often the most important stuff and in the case of Dave Goulson’s book Silent Earth, it’s the insects we should be mindful of; signed bookplates from Hollywood’s Sally Field are now in the paperback version of her memoir In Pieces; our Pre-Order offers for the Jed Mercurio’s ‘Sleeper’, ‘The Heights’ from Louise Candlish and Eastender Sid Own’s ‘Rags to Ricky’ are all now in stock and shipping, and finally, Ruby Wax, the nation’s official Mistress of Mindfulness has all of the wisdom we need, right there in the pages of her book.
Careless Rambles by John Clare
I love to wander at my idle will,
In summer’s luscious prime, about the fields,
To kneel, when thirsty, at the little reel,
And sip the draught its pebbly bottom yields;
And where the maple bush its foundation shields,
To lie, and rest a sultry hour away,
Cropping the swelling peascod from the land;
Or ‘mid the sheltering woodland-walks to stray,
Where oaks for aye o’re their old shadows stand;
‘Neath whose dark foliage, with a welcome hand,
I pluck the luscious strawberry, ripe and red,
As Beauty‘s lips; – and in my fancy’s dreams,
As ‘mid the velvet moss I musing tread,
Feel Life as lovely as her picture seems.
