If you’re a bibliophile, you are likely well acquainted with the symptoms of book lust. When confronted with an extraordinarily specimen of book-hood, the pulse quickens, the pupils dilate, beads of sweat form on the brow, admissions of undying love cross the lips. In 2012, there were so many gorgeous books released that I lived in a near constant state of book-lust. Publishers like McSweeney’s and Taschen are proving that even despite the increasing influence of e-readers and tablet computers, there is still plenty of desire for beautifully constructed books. Here are five of my favorite book-lust inspiring titles of 2012:
Building Stories by Chris Ware– Not so much a book as a collection of paper ephemera, Building Stories caused almost universal book-lust among BookPeople staff when it first arrived in its board-game-sized box. Contained within are broad-sheets, pamphlets, single strips, even a bound book modeled after the iconic Little Golden Books that tell the story of the intersecting lives of the denizens of an apartment building. Ware is a master of showing how the seemingly mundane minutiae accumulated over decades shape who we are as people. Lift the lid off of Building Stories and begin anywhere.
Penguin’s Drop Caps series– This series is the perfect example of publishers appealing to those of us that treasure books as objets d’arte. Penguin is publishing a classic work of literature for every letter of the alphabet (A is for Austen, B is for Brontë…). Combining an eye for typography and gorgeous book-making, when the series is complete, it will form a rainbow on your bookshelf. While very affordably priced, collecting the 26 books in the series is quite a commitment… but I’m taking the plunge!
Harmonia Macrocosmica by Andreas Cellarius– Taschen consistently creates some of the most drop-dead gorgeous books on the planet but whoa, nelly… they really out-did themselves with this book. This extra-large format volume contains beautifully reproduced, centuries-old celestial maps by Dutch-German mathematician and cosmographer Andreas Cellarius. For a dyed-in-the-wool antiquarian like myself, this book is a dream come true.
Skulls by Simon Winchester– My love of collecting skulls and bones began 10 years ago when I purchased a little beaver skull at a pow-wow in Montana. Since then I’ve collected all manner of wondrous things of nature, ranging from raven’s claws to butterflies to a mummified gar-fish that I found on a beach. But my collection is nothing compared to Alan Dudley’s. He is known as something of a world-wide expert on the subject of skulls. His collection of skulls, that he has been amassing over five decades, contains over 2000 examples from creatures spanning the entirety of the animal kingdom. Warthogs, monkfish, toucans, even two-headed cows are represented in this beautiful book that presents the most interesting specimens in Dudley’s collection. Leafing through this book, the mind boggles at the vast variety of life on this tiny planet.
The Best of Punk Magazine compiled by John Holmstrom– Most hard-core music nerds tend to have a musical time and place they romanticize. Some people have San Francisco in the late Sixties, for others it’s London in the mid-Sixties or perhaps Austin in the mid-Seventies (viva Armadillo World HQ!). For me, it’s most assuredly New York City in the early to mid-Seventies. It was a dirty, gritty, highly creative time that spawned some of my all-time favorite bands: New York Dolls, Ramones, Television, Suicide, Klaus Nomi, Richard Hell, Patti Smith, James Chance & the Contortions, John Lurie & the Lounge Lizards. In that wild time, Punk Magazine was a veritable Who’s Who of the Downtown scene surrounding a grungy little club called CBGB. This book compiles the best of Punk, generously including interviews, artwork, comic strips and some incredibly entertaining photography. This book has caused all of BookPeople’s resident music nerds to go positively wild-eyed with book-lust since its arrival.
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