Summer Reading

Sure, summer is winding down, but there is still plenty of time for another beach read or two.  Our fantastic west coast sales representative, Patricia Nelson, provides a couple suggestions for your summer reading list:

Summer Noir Recommendation – Henry Bond: Lacan at the Scene  “The photographs themselves are nightmarish. Something terrible has happened in these rooms; strewn newspapers, a phone off the hook, and a beautifully set table are silent witnesses and clues. Bond explores these objects’ meanings, hoping to shed light on the killer’s motivations and psychology… While Bond’s interpretations occasionally strain credulity, his sensibility enthralls. His goal isn’t police work per se, but to reveal how humble objects at the margins of crime scenes become powerfully allusive and lend themselves to a narrative. Like a still-life painter, Bond illuminates the simple things we see every day, and in the process he allows us to discover our rich and various responses to them.”

— Parul Sehgal, Time Out New York

Summer Dada Recommendation – Michel Sanouillet - Dada in Paris "Sanouillet’s Dada in Paris is rigorous history while managing to be simultaneously voluptuous like a bath and thrilling like a tabloid. The enormous research and detailed scholarship of Dada's crucial Paris years unfolds here with a joie-de-vivre possible only by having an artist-in-residence, a feat that Sanouillet accomplishes with grace and verve. Short of having experienced 1921 in Paris at the side of Tristan Tzara, I can't think of better company than this dream-inducing thriller, document, and love fest. Like Dada itself, Sanouillet married incompatibles and created a text that resounds with the urgent concerns of the twenty-first century. Dada's timeless time beats are impossible to ignore now."

—Andrei Codrescu, author of The Posthuman Dada Guide: Tzara and Lenin Play Chess   

Summer Doodle Recommendation – Matthew Frederick – 101 Things I Learned in Architecture School  "How to draw a line, the meaning of figure-ground theory, hand-lettering and the fact that windows look dark in the daytime—each item has resonance beyond architecture. Books like this are brief tutorials in the art of seeing, a skill useful in every aspect of life on the planet." 

— Susan Salter Reynolds, latimes.com

Happy reading!