You can never know anyone as completely as you want. But that’s okay, love is better.
Debbie Millman reads the philosophical moral of the wonderful Lost Cat: A True Story of Love, Desperation, and GPS Technology, and what it teaches us about love and control in human relationships.
Only the best thing ever: Advice to Little Girls – a playful and mischievous short story penned by young Mark Twain in 1865, encouraging girls to think independently rather than obey social mores, newly illustrated by beloved Russian children’s book artist Vladimir Radunsky.
In his popular emblem book Iconologia (1593) showing classical personifications of the human qualities, the Italian author Cesare Ripa depicted curiosity as a wild, disheveled woman, driving home the message in the caption: ‘Curiosity is the unbridled desire of those who seek to know more than they should.’
A brief history of science vs. scripture and the difference between curiosity and wonder.
Wonderful short film about Natural Histories, which collects 500 years of rare scientific illustrations from the archives of the American Museum of Natural History.
Peek inside this treasure-tome here.
Most Beds are Beds for sleeping and resting, but the best Beds are much more interesting!
The Bed Book – a rare British first edition of Sylvia Plath’s vintage verses for kids, illustrated by the great Quentin Blake.
Charming: houses built of books by Dutch artist Frank Halmans, a fine addition to other outstanding book sculpture concepts.
How far, we must ask ourselves, is a book influenced by its writer’s life — how far is it safe to let the man interpret the writer? How far shall we resist or give way to the sympathies and antipathies that the man himself rouses in us — so sensitive are words, so receptive of the character of the author? These are questions that press upon us when we read lives and letters, and we must answer them for ourselves, for nothing can be more fatal than to be guided by the preferences of others in a matter so personal.
But also we can read such books with another aim, not to throw light on literature, not to become familiar with famous people, but to refresh and exercise our own creative powers.
“Every tiny atom in your body came from a star that exploded long before you were born.”
You Are Stardust teaches kids about the whimsy and interconnectedness of the universe in stunning illustrated dioramas.
Bonus: Amidst the jarring gender gap in science education, this is a project by two women.
Fantastic archive of 185 Lolita covers from 37 countries spanning 56 years.
Bembo’s Zoo - for his daughter’s first Christmas, designer Roberto de Vicq de Cumptich made her a bilingual alphabet book of animals constructed entirely out of the typeface Bembo
