Ideal Bookshelf

Ideal Bookshelf 564: Ten Bestselling Books of All Time© Jane...

janemount — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 11:47:39 -0700

Ideal Bookshelf 564: Ten Bestselling Books of All Time
© Jane Mount
2013 / 18”x24” / gouache & ink on paper

The list is a bit debatable due to unclear early records of books sales, but it’s at least very close to correct if not totally, exactly correct.

It looked like fun, so I painted my own ideal bookshelf! Mostly...

commodoreshock — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 11:42:42 -0700

It looked like fun, so I painted my own ideal bookshelf! Mostly water color, a little acrylic.

Ages 10 to 20 of my life. You can literally map my adolescence...

exceptionalitys — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 11:42:21 -0700

Ages 10 to 20 of my life. You can literally map my adolescence across these books.

My Ideal Bookshelf

Mon, 29 Apr 2013 11:42:07 -0700

Strunk and White The Elements of Style

The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald

The AP Stylebook

Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

The Once and Future King

Where the Red Fern Grows by Wilson Rawls

Out of Africa by Isak Dinesen

The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett

The Official Preppy Handbook by Lisa Birnbach

The Hundred Dresses by Eleanor Estes

Little Women by Louisa May Alcott

Living Faith by Jimmy Carter

The Price of Motherhood by Ann Crittenden

The New York Public Library Desk Reference Book

Off the Top of My Head - Because That's Where The Best Books Are

Mon, 29 Apr 2013 11:41:59 -0700

Great Expectations - Charles Dickens

High Fidelity - Nick Hornby

The Catcher in the Rye - J. D. Salinger

To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to The Galaxy - Douglas Adams

Lord of the Flies - William Golding

Almost anything by James Thurber

My Ideal Bookshelf

Mon, 29 Apr 2013 11:41:46 -0700

corrected version

http://pinterest.com/pin/278941770642792138/

The Geography of the Imagination by Guy Davenport

The Way of Chinese Painting by Mai Mai Sze

The I Ching or Book of Changes, Wilhelm/Baynes

Conversations with Antonio Tapies by Barbara Catoir

Cooking for Life by Michael Abehsera

Square Zen Square Moon by Paul Reps

Body of Time by Robert Gibbons

The Book of Tea by Kakuzo Okakura

The Optical Unconscious by Rosalind Krauss

Archaeologist of Morning by Charles Olson

by j.rickert

jmrickert — Fri, 26 Apr 2013 08:39:37 -0700

by j.rickert

My Ideal Bookshelf All Old and Well Used A traveller in 1822...

Fri, 26 Apr 2013 08:39:16 -0700

My Ideal Bookshelf All Old and Well Used

A traveller in 1822 Britain relied on this very copy of Paterson’s Roads for a milestone by milestone guide along any one of England’s roads. It was updated by Edward Mogg whose foreword reads “To His most Gracious Majesty The King, Sire, Permitted to lay at Your Majesty’s feet this humble tribute of grateful respect, I can only regret my inability to render it as deserving Your Majesty’s patronage”.

Unfortunately this traveller would not have been able to identify the butterflies they saw on their route as Morris’ Guide to Butterflies was not available until 1860. Perhaps though, 1820’s England was not yet conducive to the entomologist as it was to the Victorians who used this copy of Morris’ guide.

James Greenwood shares his journeys through London in his book published in 1873 and by 1984 armchair travel could be had around the world courtesy of Rev. Francis E. Clark and his wife Harriet (who is allocated a mere 30 pages for ‘a woman’s view’ at the end of a 600 page tome.

In ‘Other Worlds Than Ours’ in 1898, Richard Procotor B.A. F.R.A.S. speculates, with typical Victorian wordiness, that life on Mars is far more likely than not. He may yet prove to be right. But so exciting to hold a book from an era when the possibility of reaching the moon was not yet entertained and leaving the ground for more than a moment was almost unheard of.

The Handbook of Travel produced by Harvard University Press in 1935 includes advice on aeroplanes and automobiles versus llamas and pack-horses for transport, as well as advice on field surgery and elephant shooting. Hints to Travellers, of the same year, provides detailed gidance on field astronomy and surveying for the amateur planning to map the few remaining unexplored lands.

And by 1941 in the midst of WWII, this Steimazky’s guide helped a traveler plan their trip and find food, accommodation and places of interest in Palestine.

My Ideal Bookshelf is real and evokes a time when travel was a true adventure, lands remained unexplored and reaching the moon was a distant dream for future generations.

janemount: these colors! (at Ideal Bookshelf HQ)

janemount — Tue, 12 Feb 2013 11:44:15 -0800

janemount:

these colors! (at Ideal Bookshelf HQ)

hey! I have work up at The Curiosity Shoppe in San Francisco...

janemount — Tue, 05 Feb 2013 11:37:54 -0800

hey! I have work up at The Curiosity Shoppe in San Francisco until February 15th (the last show in there before they close forever, sad), including prints from the book and some original single Favorite Favorite Book paintings.

AND, I will show some work and sign some books this Friday evening, 2/8, at the Jen Bekman Gallery in Soho, NYC. please come by!

Ideal Bookshelf 517: ZCB© Jane Mount 2012 / 11”x14” / gouache...

janemount — Wed, 16 Jan 2013 10:54:31 -0800

Ideal Bookshelf 517: ZCB
© Jane Mount
2012 / 11”x14” / gouache & ink on paper

The favorites of Zoe.

Our number one girl crush Lena Dunham contributed her ideal...

thessaly — Thu, 10 Jan 2013 14:16:49 -0800

Our number one girl crush Lena Dunham contributed her ideal bookshelf. She wrote to us earlier this week:

I chose a mixture of the ‘great’ books that have formed me (Nabokov, Beat writing, notable American poetry) and the fringier ones (my dad’s copy of How to Disappear scared me senseless, and the Clueless book series allowed me to go everywhere with Cher). I love children’s books and graphic novels, especially ones with scrappy girls at the center. Also, I still miss my pet rabbit Chester — my facialist says that rabbit souls vibrate on my frequency.

Here’s a shot of two good friends of Ideal Bookshelf, Mack...

thessaly — Thu, 03 Jan 2013 10:12:00 -0800

Here’s a shot of two good friends of Ideal Bookshelf, Mack Scogin and Merrill Elam. They are two amazing architects, and we loved featuring their ideal bookshelf, which is full of wonderful books about buildings and places and art that I don’t think many of us in our day to day get to read. We wanted to share this photo of Mack and Merrill because it so perfectly captures the spirit of Jane’s paintings and the book!

I loved the process of picking my top 10 - winnowing and...

kebabette — Wed, 02 Jan 2013 13:21:49 -0800

I loved the process of picking my top 10 - winnowing and refining until I had the ideal bookshelf. It sums up the things I love - A slighty spooky, sensuous & sensual selection of art, beauty, and wit.

The Pre-Raphaelites by Christopher Wood
Fornasetti: Designer of dreams by Patrick Mauries
Armour wherein he trusted by Mary Webb
Chatterton by Peter Ackroyd
Anthropology and a hundred other stories by Dan Rhodes
Misadventures by Sylvia Smith
Perfumes: the guide by Luca Turin and Tania Sanchez
Misty annual 1980
Idols of Perversity: Fantasies of Feminine Evil in Fin-de-Siécle Culture by Bram Dijkstra
The Readers Digest book of strange stories, amazing facts

My ideal bookshelf (plus a cheeky couple of extras)

Wed, 02 Jan 2013 09:28:04 -0800

My ideal bookshelf would include:

The curious incident of the dog in the night - MH
The Stranger - AC
Dirt Music - TW
The God of Small Things - AR
Life as Pie - YM
The Glass Menagerie - TW
Animal Farm - GO
The Road - CM
The Moon in the Gutter - DG
Waiting for Godot - SB
Kafka on the Shore - HM
Susan Sontang on Photography
Oh, the Places You’ll Go - Dr S.

nprfreshair: For My Ideal Bookshelf, writer Thessaly La Force...

janemount — Mon, 31 Dec 2012 08:54:24 -0800

nprfreshair:

For My Ideal Bookshelf, writer Thessaly La Force and illustrator Jane Mount have tapped people like Patti Smith, Lemony Snicket, Jonathan Lethem and Christoph Neimann, and had them narrow down the books that shaped them to a single shelf. It’s a neat peak inside some interesting minds. And of course leads you to wonder what shape your own shelf might take. Me, I’m thinking Slouching Towards Bethlehem, The Boys of My Youth, Without Feathers, Miss Rumphius, Pride and Prejudice, Blood Horses, The Collected Poems of Adam Zagajewski. What about you? What would your ideal bookshelf look like?

-Nell

Via Brain Pickings

An Existentialist's Ideal Bookshelf

philosophia-naturalis — Fri, 28 Dec 2012 07:48:43 -0800

Thomas Hobbes - Leviathan

Arthur Schopenhauer - The World as Will and Idea

Friedrich Nietzsche - The Will to Power

Albert Camus - The Myth of Sisyphus

Muriel Barbery - The Elegance of the Hedgehog

My Ideal Bookshelf

daydreamdelusion — Fri, 28 Dec 2012 07:48:24 -0800

Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh
The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett
Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami
Blankets by Craig Thompson
Love is a Mixtape: Life & Loss, One Song at a Time by Rob Sheffield
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides
Arcadia by Tom Stoppard
The Bronze Horseman by Paullina Simons
The History of Love by Nicole Krauss

Wow!! I just discovered your blog/website…love it! Here is my Ideal Bookshelf list for the...

Fri, 28 Dec 2012 07:47:11 -0800

Wow!! I just discovered your blog/website…love it!

Here is my Ideal Bookshelf list for the contest… It’s hard to limit it!!

Gone With The Wind by Margaret Mitchell

Charlotte’s Web by E.B. White

Where Are The Children? by Mary Higgins Clark

The Firm by John Grisham

The Very Quiet Cricket by Eric Carle

Where The Red Fern Grows by Wilson Rawls

The Berenstain Bears by Stan & Jan Berenstain

The Hidden Staircase by Carolyn Keene

Same Kind of Different As Me by Ron Hall & Denver Moore

In Cold Blood by Truman Capote

Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood by Rebecca Wells

Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett

The Help by Kathryn Stockett

The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini

The Boxcar Children by Gertrude Chandler Warner

Thank you!

My Ideal Bookshelf

janemount — Fri, 28 Dec 2012 07:47:00 -0800

Books that shaped my life:

The Memory of Running by Ron McLarty
Botchan by Natsume Soseki
The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova
I Capture The Castle by Dodie Smith
Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami
Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton
Harry Potter & the Philosopher’s Stone
The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
Life of Pi by Yann Martel
Forrest Gump by Winston Churchill
The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro
The Vampire Lestat by Anne Rice