When kids are left to their own devices the results can be chaotic. They don’t, however, normally include death and wide-spread destruction as they do in Kick-Ass, the eagerly anticipated superhero film, directed by Matthew Vaughn and starring Aaron Johnson. Now, the graphic novel on which it is based has been reissued, and like the film, it’s not for the faint-hearted. (more…)
March 11th, 2010
Fresh from illustrating our State of Man survey this month, Esquire contributor David McCandless has gone and published his first book, Information is Beautiful. (more…)
February 11th, 2010
A quick visit to any bookshop (if you can find any left) will quickly tell you the world does not need another tome on the work of Spanish Modernist architect Antoni Gaudi. Chances are you’ve visited his Sagrada Familia or the Casa Mila on a school trip or as the cultural conscience salve in-between all night binges in the Gothic quarter. However, Modernista: Gaudi And His Contemporaries by Michael Jones is a worthwhile addition to the creaking shelves. (more…)
January 20th, 2010
I first read this sentence a couple of years ago - ”The brute covers himself, the rich man and the fop adorn themselves, the elegant man dresses.” It’s taken from Treatise On Elegant Living by Honoré de Balzac, which, next month, is to be published in English for the first time. I’ve already placed a pre-order; it seems likely to be required reading for men with an over-developed interest in their appearance. www.artbook.com
January 8th, 2010
Books, Entertainment, Gaming, Technology
Mr T plays them, Ozzy Osbourne grudgingly admits that he’s not as scary as some of them, and Ant & Dec fall out over them. No longer the preserve of socially inept adolescents, computer games are now possibly the world’s biggest industry. Fun Inc, the new book by Tom Chatfield, has some interesting theories on how this came to be, and what we can expect in the future. (more…)
January 7th, 2010
Until now the work of British designer David Pearson has usually graced the covers of the kind of books we haven’t dipped into since Uni – most recently Chekhov’s A Russian Affair, Kierkegaard’s Seducer’s Diary, Thomas More’s Utopia and Proust’s Days Of Reading. (more…)
January 7th, 2010
We’ve featured this novel before on our website, so without wanting to bang on about its virtues, it’s up there in our books of the year and makes a solid quick win for that awkward male relative in your life. Maybe not your Dad though – it’s based on the author’s own childhood experiences, exploring the relationship with his volatile gun-obsessed father. £7.99, www.waterstones.com
December 11th, 2009
Books, Christmas, Entertainment
It being the first day of December, we’ll be running a regular run of present suggestions from now until Christmas – both to buy other people, and to put on your own wishlist as well. Like a practical advent calendar but without the chocolate. (more…)
December 1st, 2009
