Despite attempts to conduct herself according to the modern-day principles of an icy aesthete - Greta Garbo with an iTouch, if you will - Shopping Bag sometimes finds herself subject to unglamorous whoops of excitement.
The latest comes with the discovery of a (late) Czech, called Miroslav Sasek, and his series of children's books which went out of print in the Sixties and have only recently become available again.
M.Sasek, as he signed himself, was a trained architect and painter but, on the side, wrote 18 books in the series 'This is...' . Shopping Bag has 'This is New York', but intends to collect the lot, as they're reissued, which include 'This is Paris', 'This is Venice', 'This is Edinburgh', 'This is Texas'... you get the drift.
A review of 'This is London' when it was published in 1959 summed up the series when it praised the colour as "magnificent and uninhibited", and commented that "the jokes are all pointed." Shopping Bag loves a pointed joke. Which is why these books do very nicely for adults as well as children.
The reissues, by Universe Publishing, are roughly £10, which seems reasonable for a beautifully illustrated hardback. If you happen to be a pedant, think of the collection as a valuable historical resource: all the landmarks aren't exactly up to the minute. But who needs up to the minute? Certainly not an icy aesthete, for whom form takes precedence over function - or Shopping Bag either, for that matter.
ooooh I bought 'This is New York' in 'Anthropologie' on our last trip to said city! It sits proudly, cover facing out, on my mantlepiece, far too beautiful to be hidden nestled between my Tintin book collection (I catalogue my library aaccording to size!) x
Posted by: katepie : ) | Thursday, 22 May 2008 at 11:24 PM