Between the Kindle, the iPad, and Going Rogue, the book’s been having a pretty rough year. But even if you’re not much for lugging the things around with you, we recommend keeping your collection around for one very simple reason: the bookshelf.
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Now that everyone we know is instantaneously available, the postcard is getting pretty anachronistic. Luckily, it was never that useful to start with.
These cards embrace the retro vibe square on, borrowing the covers of classic 60s-era Penguin books. With a little cleverness, the former tourist staple becomes an ode to the tangible pleasures left behind in the digital age, whether it’s the dusty paperback, the hand-written missive, or the postal service. Now you just have to remember where you put those stamps…
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Millas and Millas: Milla Jovovich pops up for her yearly photoset. [Fashion Gone Rogue]
Life of a Baller: Yet another awesome Salinger story. The man kept busy…kind of. [Washington Post]
Book ‘Em: The literary version of the graphic tee—yes, they’ve got Catcher. [Cool Hunting]
Beardos: The beards of Mad Men, as ranked by Paul Kinsey. [Vulture]
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There are a lot of bags out there, but we’ve always thought less was more. Which means if you’ve got a bundle with you—maybe a few books, a notebook and an iPod—it may be easier to strap them together into an easy-to-carry brick, possibly with this Australian device. It’s a minimal solution, sure…but those are usually the best ones.
Little Black Book: We’re still waiting for someone to use the phrase “sephardic stunner.” [BlackBook]
Can’t Beat It: Our tech overlords recap the top trends of the year that was. Apparently some guy named “Jackson” got famous in a hurry. [Google Zeitgeist]
I Don’t Mind Choppin’ Wood: The L.A. Times convinces us we were a little hasty with the whole “designer ax” craze. Extra points for coining the phrase “axficianado.” [All the Rage]
The Punk and the Godfather: Mod style gets another glossy tome, in case you weren’t sure what to get Pete Townshend for Christmas. [GQ Eye]
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In honor of your busy weekend, here’s five of our favorite new terms for the state of intoxication, as gleaned from Paul Dickson’s Drunk: A Definitive Drinker’s Dictionary.
Whipcat
Fish Eyed
Vulcanized
Nimptopsical
Merle Haggard
Use them in good health.
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Good books get all the press but a good sentence is worth quite a bit on its own, especially if you’re trying to get through it on an elevator ride. And with tweets, status updates, and email signatures popping up just about everywhere, a perfect one can get surprisingly far.
That’s where Words Move Me comes in. Ostensibly a twitter clone, it’s devoted to those perfect turns of phrase that would be read aloud to the living room in simpler times. Nowadays, they’re posted on the internet and—once synergy catches up with things—auto-tweeted, transformed into Facebook quotes and generally set loose into the many-splendored world of social media. Even better, the site was set up by Sony to promote their new Kindle clone, which means you’ll be able to direct the whole affair from a handheld device about the size of…well, a book.
Southern style has been having a pretty good year, so it’s worth seeing a bit of it in person—or at least in firsthand photos. To that end, Michael Loyd Young trekked through the Mississippi River Delta with camera in hand, guided by a love of blues music and outdoor grills. The result is the aptly named Blues, Booze, & BBQ, coming out in late November from Powerhouse.
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Formalwear has a lot of unspoken rules, and as you get into the thorny, European end, they can get downright confusing. For instance, blue suits and brown shoes are now entirely acceptable—provided you’re outside of Germany. Just so you know…
For a guide, we suggest a tome called Gentleman, which recently received a new cover and a revised edition. It’s got a few hefty predecessors, but it’s definitely worth a look. A few other insights contained within: if your tie lifts your collar tips off your shirt, it’s time to change ties, and if you’re wearing a club tie around London high society, you’d better belong to the club.
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It’s an old rule of the internet that any desire, no matter how strange or unspeakable, already has a site devoted to it. And as you might expect, most of the sites are not work friendly…
Worlds Best Ever put us onto the latest result of the rule: a tumblr dedicated to the unique charms of freckled girls, frequently without the benefit of clothing. It’s a pretty simple concept, but as long as they’re handing out book deals, this is one site that could certainly move a few units.
Provided they can find a like-minded imprint…
Kanye West’s wisdom is vast and diverse enough that it was only a matter of time before it made it into book form.
Thank You and You’re Welcome was handed out to fans on Mr. West’s Glow in the Dark tour, and has been circulating for a while now. But it’s just now making it to bookstores, replete with the same wisdom that got him where he is today. Anyone out there with an insatiable desire to be Kanye just got a new favorite book, and Kanye can add “Dr. Phil-esque Life Coach” to his list of hyphenates.
No word yet on how much of it is all caps.
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No longer satisfied with newsstands, radio, and the scarf business, Monocle is moving into publishing. Their latest one-off is a hard bound book called The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work, and it looks like the latest in a long string of good ideas.
The binding is perfect, the run is limited to 1000 copies (just on the cusp of a guaranteed sellout) and the book itself, from Swiss essayist Alain de Botton, looks both impeccably written and perfectly chosen for Monocle’s office-bound demographic. A few hundred pages of well-thought musings on the nature of the working life might be just the thing to remind them what they liked about books in the first place.
Luckily, the magazine offers the perfect venue for publicizing the book, and they already have a few stores they can place it in—all of which makes Tyler Brule look more like Ted Turner than William Shawn.
At what point do we stop calling them a magazine and start calling them an empire?
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For all our gushing about the Kindle, it’s still sad to see something like this happen, and we thought we’d take the opportunity to go down the list of paper’s many virtues.
There are a lot of them, including an attention to typeface and graphic design that’s unlikely to filter down to the Kindle for a good five years. But most importantly, there’s nothing like holding an object in your hands that’s been passed through dozens of hands before yours. You can’t inscribe an eBook, and as far as sentimental attachments go, objects will always win out.
The tech world is one of the few areas left that still gives visionaries enough room to work, so when we see a sea change coming, we try to call it as early as we can. Amazon’s Kindle is as close as we’re likely to come for this year, so when the fine folks at NotCot got their hands on one, we figured we’d give it a look.
via TsutpenInspiration can come from many places, but it’s usually best in small doses. So while we heartily endorse fedoras, peak lapels, and even the occasional pinstripe, you should resist the powerful temptation to dress like someone on the cover of a dime novel.
For women, of course, this rule does not apply.
By now, we bet you’re looking for a gift or two, so we thought we’d open up our archives for any last minute seekers. A tie may not be breaking much new ground, but a well-kept notebook or a well-bound book is always enough to raise a few eyebrows, especially if you choose the right one.
With that in mind, we present: the Kempt gift guide, a handful of very good ideas for any refined gentleman on your list. And you’ll have just enough time to get them to your door for the main event.
Just don’t sweat the shipping charge.
There are a lot of reasons to troll used-book stores, but whether you find the title you’re after or not, there’s always a few interesting covers.
This gallery of old Pelican covers should be a reminder: they don’t design them like they used to. (Although Chip Kidd might have something to say about that.) And judging a book by its cover isn’t as bad as it’s cracked up to be.
In the worst case, it sits prettily on your end table while you turn to more interesting pursuits. After all, it’s an object too.
Tweed has never been the hottest look, but it may be having its own trendlet. Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to academic-chic.
This “Academia Jacket” from Visim has been making the Japanese retail rounds, and caught the eye of the streetwear tastemakers at High Snobiety and nascent King of all Media Kanye West. It’s a natural step from the accountant fetishism of Thom Browne—who, coincidentally, was just named GQ’s Designer of the Year—but we can’t help but wonder where this leads. Glasses can always get nerdier, but we imagine we’ll see library-themed nightclubs popping up next summer.
Our advice is to start snapping up hardcovers now. After all, you’ll need accessories.
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Classic novels have had a rough shake lately, but the problem may be with the shabby covers you’re used to seeing at Barnes & Noble. After all, a hardcover is still a hardcover.
This series from Penguin Classics may help things out a bit. Designer Coralie Bickford-Smith came up with these, and they’re just about perfect, from the aristocratic chandeliers of Great Expectations to the vulgar geometry of Crime & Punishment.
Sadly, it’s only available in the UK through Waterstones…but we’re sure there’s a trick or two that can get it to your door.
Now that gift season is upon us, we’re eyeing our bookshelves unhappily. In our opinion, everyone could use a few more hardcovers. After all, a good book is nice, but good binding is fantastic.
This pale calves’ leather edition comes from Penguin Books and Bill Amberg—and Raymond Chandler, if you want to split hairs. Naturally, we recommend The Big Sleep, but the full range includes five of Amberg’s other favorites, including *Brideshead Revisited* and *A Room with a View*.
You can pull it off the shelf when your Kindle goes on the fritz.
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Magazine editors are always scraping the barrel for photoset ideas, but we’d prefer it if they stayed away from universally beloved figures of children’s literature. There are a lot of different reasons to dress a man up in a straw hat and a hideous plaid suit. Leave Roald Dahl alone!
Apparently the temptation was just too great for the folks at UK Vogue. The result is a photoset full of Dahl quotes, incongruous models, strangely unappealing nudity and, for some reason, Tim Burton and Helena Bonham Carter. We wish we could say something to explain it all, but there are simply no words.
As the saying goes, writing about music is a lot like dancing about architecture. When you’re dealing with intensely visual directors, writing about movies isn’t much better. Most of the time, you’d do better telling the story in pictures.
Taschen has been doing just that, telling stories through notes, production stills, and frame englargements. Their most recent edition for Stanley Kubrick takes a tour from his early noir trappings—especially the overlooked *Killer’s Kiss*—through the immersive, dreamlike approach that made him famous.
His frames also make better coffee table fodder than any other Hollywood director we could name, which matters a lot more than you’d think.
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Now that Tom Ford can do whatever he wants, he’s decided to direct a movie. He’s roped in Colin Firth, Julianne Moore, and the sainted production designers from *Mad Men*, so he’s off to a good start, but we’re still a little unsure about Ford’s new incarnation as movie mogul.
The movie is adapted from *A Single Man*, a day-in-the-life novel about a bereaved gay college professor in California in 1962. The novel is a gay touchstone—Elton John named an album after it, to give you some idea—so Ford’s interest isn’t completely out of left field, but it still seems like an odd choice. Ford’s ads and even clothes seem designed to project a guy’s-night-in-Vegas aesthetic. How well will he transition to measured musing about the passage of time? Is this just getting back at Thom Browne for snagging the *Mad Men* wardrobe? We’ll have to wait and see.
At least those goggles are going to a good cause.
There’s a lot of logos out there, especially on shirts. Even if you go the “art tee” route and end up with an engraved Chinese Dragon on your chest, you might have a sneaking suspicion that your shirt is saying more than it should.
We recommend a solitary non-corporate symbol stamped right above your sternum. The ampersand has a few hundred years of typography behind it, so you can choose between the officious “Arial” and the literary “Baskerville,” which you may recognize from the cover of *Wuthering Heights*.
As for what it means, that’s just part of the fun. You & me? Milk & sugar? Us & them?
via t-critic
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While suit-makers look increasingly towards the accountants and ad men of the 50s and 60s, it’s amazing to think they’re overlooking one of the best subcultures of the era. Forget the twenties: the fifties and sixties were the real jazz age.
Miles Davis speaks for himself, but a whole generation of icons stood along with him, ditching the porkpie hats and traditional chord structures in favor of a new kind of music and a new kind of style. Taschen did us a favor rounding up 500 pages worth of album covers for their appropriately named *Jazz Covers*. We can’t think of a better window into the age…other than the albums, that is.
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