No comments about The Burden of Representation: Essays on Photographies and Histories.

1 comments about Riviera Cocktail.

1. This is a very unique, well produced coffee table book / gift. Definitely for someone who enjoys fine arts and nostalgia.

5 comments about Symbols, Signs and Signets (Dover Pictorial Archive Series).

1. This book has over 200 pages of various symbols, ranging from simple drawings to intricate designs. They are arranged in historical order, begin with various gods and end with hobo signs. Each chapter is preceded with a list of references (the signs are identified by number) and the symbols included are grouped like so:

   Symbolic Gods & Deities; Astronomy & Astrology; Alchemy; Magic & Mystic; Church Religion; Heraldry; Monsters & Imaginary Figures; Japanese Crests; Marks & Signets; Watermarks; Printers Marks; Cattle Brands; and Hobo Signs.

   There are over 1350 illustrations contained in this book, and all are crisply printed in black and white. Each section has a short blurb in front of it, but not an extensive history. This book would appeal to history lovers, graphic designers, and other symbol geeks. And for the price, it's worth buying.




2. Dover Publications scores yet again! This book hits a home run with bases loaded for many reasons.

   First, it is jam-packed with thousands of symbols, signs, marks, inscriptions and engravings. All are in black and white, and all are excellent quality.

   Second, the book presents a fascinating range of symbols, organized by subject, including: Symbolic Gods and Dieties (included are Egyptian, Assyrian, Greek/Roman, Nordic and Aztec Gods), Astronomy and Astrology, Alchemy, Magic, Church and Religion, Heraldry, Japanese Crests, Cattle Brands, and a large section containing some of the distinctive marks of the medieval european craftsman/guild marks and signets.

   Third, this is a surprisingly useful reference. For writers, historian, artists, and the incurably curious, here is a book that sets out, for example, all of the alchemical signs for the materials (gold, silver, etc) and alchemical processes, a host of Catholic and other ancient christian religious symbols, nice engravings of all the important Egyptian gods, etc etc.

   Highly Recommended.




3. I am primarily interested in Christian symbolism and this book has quite a few, though not meant as an exhaustive resource on any particular set of symbols. I enjoyed the broad range of symbols this book presents - Mayan, Egyptian, metaphysical, Asian, and even some hobo symbols (plus lots more). This book is truly a good general reference for symbol meanings. It is a bit sparse on the origins of the symbols, but certainly supplies enough information to get my interest piqued in different symbols!



4. This is one of my favorite books on symbols
   only thing is the description or title of the symbol
   is listed at the beginning of each chapter I found it
   annoying always having to flip back but still love this
   book



5. I am currently taking a graphic symbolism class and I found this book to be useless. It does not even have the meaning on the symbol listed on the same page as the drawing which makes it hard to use as reference material. Also, even though the book is a fairly decent size it does not contain a wide range of symbols, signs, or signets. It might be a good reference if this is your first book exploring the subject. I would not recommend to advanced readers on the subject.

No comments about Searching for Sebald.

No comments about Photoshop Elements 7: The Missing Manual.

5 comments about Let Us Now Praise Famous Men: The American Classic, in Words and Photographs, of Three Tenant Families in the Deep South.

1. Excellent editon of this wonderful, classic work. A series of visual and verbal snapshots of the South as a third world country, the South of the 1930's.



2. This book is an amazing work of art. At times it's baffling, and at times almost impertinent--like when the author decides to describe every object in an entire home, and yet in all these things and in all the conflicting emotions it evokes, it creates a mood and a feeling and a setting that will seep into your skin and fog your brain for months.
   The writing is beautiful, the story it tells--of poor, sharecropping, depression-era families--is heartbreaking, and the experience of reading about it all is like a baptism by fire. This book just might re-wire your brain.
   I think this is a much better read than Agee's "A Death in the Family," and that one won the Pulitzer Prize. Read this, for sure.
   I read it on a bus trip across Guatemala, and the way Agee's descriptions of the old southern poverty fit the poor little towns full of Guatemalan coffee pickers was uncanny.
   Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, and let us start with James Agee.
   
   UPDATE: It's years later, and this book has never stopped haunting me. I think of it almost daily. If I were to review it today, I would definitely give it Five Stars.



3. The eloquence of composition surely necessitated infinite use of superlatives and verbs, resulting in a requisite painstaking remostrance to the reader, thus fettering the effusion and disembogulation of the document. In other words, wouldn't it have been better to just leave all of the fluff out of the book and just write as if the reader is someone other than the Queen of England? If you can weed through all of excessive use poems and verbs, it's a halfway decent book



4. Let us Now Praise Famous Men, in all its poetry and prose, reminds me of an epic, like the Hindu Mahabharata or Homer's Iliad and Odyssey. The lyrical narrative reveals just as much, if not more about Agee, than his subjects. His writing style excludes his subjects as readers.
   
   His prose, which tends to be lofty and cerebral, is also beautiful and brilliant. But, I often wondered, who he was
   writing for? The New Yorker audience? The distance in his observations often left me feeling cold. I imagine these hardworking sharecroppers exhibiting some joy, some evidence of warmth, of hope. But I had difficulty finding it in Agee's voice.
   
   The length of Agee's sentences and paragraphs were long, each containing an entire scene, and I labored through them, hoping sleep would not steal me from a passage I might not finish. It was as though Agee too, was afraid sleep would come and steal him from his mission, and so kept hacking away at each sentence, adding commas and colons and semi-colons, lingering his thoughts across the page.
   
   Whatever level of consciousness Agee existed, I could not hang with him for any more than a couple of sentences, as I would fall off the page and have to find my way back into the scene. Where was I? You get the picture...
   
   Agee also uses parenthesis and colons, often not giving his parenthesis a mate: (This struck me as rather unusual and often, cold and detached--more like a voyeur. Did he fabricate his own method of communication using punctuation or was this being done elsewhere at the time? I felt left out of his thoughts when he did this, like when two people are communicating via sign language and you can't make out a word they're saying. Was he doing this in a way to urge us to "think," to stretch beyond the ordinary conventions and try something on that is foreign and unfamiliar, like his subjects and their hardship?



5. James Agee's painstaking and honest masterpiece is an exercise in empathy. It is a beautiful, tortured writing that speaks to both the deplorable conditions of the Depression-era souther sharecropper and the humanity of trying to present them in a favorable light.
   
   Agee's writing style is at times erratic-- which helps to give the book its character. It is often self-doubting, as Agee calls himself a spy and frequently second guesses his role in accurately reporting the families' lives. Beautifully done and a groundbreaking classic in ethnographic fieldwork-- a must read!

1 comments about Touch: Naked girls home alone.

1. The girl-next-door genre is way overdone, and it's probably not the description that Goliath should have used in marketing this new book from New York photographer, Peter Gorman. But despite my problem with the term, girl-next-door, this is a surprisingly good book of nude and erotic photography. And Goliath is to be commended for its extraordinarily high production quality of this 7x10" picture-packed publication.
   
   This is Peter Gorman's fourth book and it follows a similar path outlined in his previous two books, Stripped Naked and Naked Rooms. The central theme here is "everyday" women allowing Gorman entry into their homes, so that he can photograph each of them in the nude and occasionally acting out their sexual fantasies. Masturbation plays a role here and may be what prompted the title, Touch. But although erotica is a quality laced throughout this work, it could more aptly be described as confident women, parading themselves and their sexuality, not so much to titillate as to affirm their own sense of freedom, self worth, and self empowerment. They are beautiful, they are sexual, and they are quite comfortable with that level of self awareness.
   
   All images are color based and appear to be shot in a mixture of natural and flash lighting. There is a pseudo-documentary feel to much of the work, with very little use of background blur or other depth-of-field tricks. Everything in their rooms, in their yards, and on their bodies is sharp and clear - Gorman captures everything. Each photograph is presented in full-page format with the opposite page white and barren, driving full attention to the featured image. So, although there are over two hundred pages, there are 106 photographs of around thirty models.

4 comments about Girls Money & Sexy Snaps: What Really Happens When A Girl Strips Naked For A Photographer?.

1. Holmes' work is a creditable first effort with some amusing anecdotes and worthwhile advice, but it is more of a collection of anecdotes rather than a "how-to" book. The writing style is simple and direct making it easy and accessible reading. It suffers from a high number of typographical errors which reflects poorly on the editing and proofing.



2. Nigel tells it all. From making money from scratch (as he did)to being at the top (as he is). Clear and precise, not without looking at himself, he tells stories of models and photoghaphers and their interaction. As sometimes is and how it should be. In very readable language Nigel grants us a view into the fashion and glamourworld, as being not all joy and fun, but also not entirely without it. The Jekyll and Hyde character of the profession of model or photographer, the tension, the pressure, it's all in this book. Beauty photographer should read this. It's good reading for models too....



3. Like many potential readers of this book I'd never heard of Nigel Holmes. That being the case, I find it difficult to know just how much authority to give the author/photographer credit for. A photographer writing about photography should always include enough samples of his or her work to allow their readers to judge the quality of their advice. After reading the volume I did find it amusing in many parts and the photographer/author seems to know what he is talking about. One of the tip-offs to his knowledge of his subject is that any photographer who has done much work with nude models does discover that it no longer turns him on. He is so busy concentrating on the details of his nude or erotic photography that he doesn't have time to play voyeur. Like most types of photography, it takes constant and careful attention to the task at hand to achieve the desired photographs. There isn't time to act like a dirty old man or even younger pervert. The photographer is simply too busy trying to get his model to relax and direct her expressions and body language to bring out the pre-visualized photograph. He also has to pay attention to the minor details in the entire photograph's composition or he may spend untold hours trying to correct the image through PhotoShop.
   However, anyone who has studied photography in art school learns quickly that people who are the most articulate about the many meanings of their images are often only defending poorly done and lousy photos. With such photographers it's almost a fact that the less successful the photograph, the better the verbal arguments of denial. Too many people, critics and even museum curators, can talk a great picture but can't really produce or sometimes even recognize them. While this book did include a cover photograph which wasn't too bad "a snap" as the author calls his work, and some postage stamp-sized pictures on the back cover of the book, they are too small to really tell how good they are. For some reason, instead of photographs the book is illustrated with black and white cartoons that are intended to be amusing. Too bad. They reminded me of the movie "Roger Rabbit." Photographs would have worked better in the same space. And the book is printed on high quality paper that would have allowed good photo reproduction. The book is also written in Australian and reminds the reader of "Crocodile Dundee" talking, which isn't all that bad, mate, for conveying the author's "down under" humor. That's only an observation about the book and not a criticism of its readability or understandability. One should read the book but take the advice with a grain of salt until they find out more about the skill of the photographer/author. The book also cries out for a photograph of the author at work. Is he simply so handsome and good looking that would-be models find it impossible to turn down his requests for nude photos? What does he look like? Without some sample photographs the reader has to wonder if they are learning from a real expert on the subject or just reading a bunch of Crock from some bloke on the other side of the world. This reader is going to see if I can locate any of his pictures on the Internet. Then I'll have a much better idea of how good the "how to" advice in this book really is.
   Maybe that rule should be forever inscribed on a stone tablet in the great marble photography temples on Mt. Olympus, Mt. Nikon, Mt. Canon, etc.? "Thou shalt not write or publish a 'how to' book on photography without including some samples of Thy own photographs."



4. Girls Money & Sexy Snaps: What Really Happens When A Girl Strips Naked For A Photographer?
   
   This is a useless piece of "I wish" fantasy by Nigel Holmes. It has nothing to do with photography or glamour. Mr Holmes should have named it Girls, Money & Sexy Snaps: What Nigel Holmes Wish Had Happened. The author also explains how Hollywood Cinematographers are incompetent and British Film Industry Cinematographers are brilliant. Hey, Nigel. What British Film Industry? The publisher could also only afford the Sexy Snap on the cover.

5 comments about California's Central Coast: The Ultimate Winery Guide: From Santa Barbara to Paso Robles.

1. While this book has excellent reviews of some of the larger wineries in this area, I was surprised to see the omission of some smaller, very notable wineries on the Central Coast. For example, Per Pacco Cellars in San Luis Obispo isn't mentioned, and they have one of the finest Pinot Noirs on this strip of coastline. Aron Hill Vineyards is another small, family owned winery with a Cabernet Sauvignon that's outstanding, and Cayucos Cellars has a Syrah that's a powerful contender for the perfect wine with a holiday Prime Rib roast.
   
   That said, the reviews given in this book are very informative and extremely well-written. I loved the section about local foods and how that plays a role in your Central Coast wine country tour. The book gives many tips on where to eat, where to find picnic supplies, and lists various events at the wineries highlighted. For those elements alone, I'd love to give this book a higher rating.
   
   My concern is someone planning a trip here will overlook some outstanding, smaller wineries... all of which have tasting rooms, very friendly staffs and remarkable wines. If I may be so bold, buy this book for a list of the bigger wineries, but try to stop all along the way during your stay on the Central Coast to scout out others, and be sure to ask the locals for tips on where to uncover hidden gems.



2. If you are planning a trip to the Central Coast and hungry for information, this is one of the first books to consider. The text is friendly, fun, and easy to read, as author Mira Advani Honeycutt does a wonderful job of teaching without preaching and devoid of pretense. What I find particularly helpful is the way the information is organized and the order it is presented -- breathtaking color photography is the perfect complement to Mira's literary style. A great gift for the Holidays!



3. Mira Advani Honeycutt describes the central coast, its wineries and the people that live there in a personal and endearing way. Her book makes me want to get off the fast track, take time and relax in the beautiful and lush area that is the central coast and learn more about wine.



4. Received the book quickly, and the product looked brand new. Highly recommend this vendor.



5. This book was great! Amazing pictures, insightful, informative narratives about various wineries from Santa Barbara up through Paso Robles. Yes, it hits only a fraction of the vineyards in these wine regions, but it gave a wonderful starting place in knowing a little about some of them! We ended up making a point to hit 6 or 7 of these vineyards because of the write ups about the history or uniqueness of them. This book is fairly accurate--Beckman, Clautierre, Eberle, Rideau, etc...all great wineries. Don't take this book for an end-all guide to the only must see wineries, but it's a great starting point!

5 comments about Temples of Sound: Inside the Great Recording Studios.

1. Great book, especially after recently seeing the movie, "Standing in the Shadows of Motown." A must-read for any musicologist, especially one who grew up with all of these tunes blasting from the car radio on WKNR, WXYZ and CKLW back in the 60's. And I was AMAZED by the Rudy Van Gelder story, being a fan of traditional jazz (Coltrane, et al.)

   Even you fans who weren't yet born when some of these stars had already begun passing away will appreciate the "inside stories" behind much of the music you still hear today.




2. I just can't muster the enthusiasm of other reviewers for this book. Perhaps most interesting and informative are the stories of how some of the best recordings of the golden days of analog were made on a shoe string, over garages on third hand equipment. There are some insights into what made some of the studios sound unique.

   The early chapters dwell lovingly on some details of the lives of the produces, engineers and some of the artists. But by the end the facts are marshaled and rushed past, leaving the reader with the distinct impression that they were included so as not to offend some egos or just to drop some names. In some cases the fact that the producers were flat out ignorant of music, rather unlikable individuals and driven by the Wall-Street motives of fear and greed are all too clear, but left between the lines.

   All in all the book it left me with more questions than answers about the recording process. A decent compendium of facts about who did what when and where with a smattering of favorite artists and a few pictures to keep pop audiences happy. The authors are weakest when the crass business of the music industry intrudes into their picture of the studio as a crucible of pop art. I'd rather have more detail (even if it hurts) about a few studios or a focus on just a few top engineers and specific recording sessions.




3. "Temples of Sound" is an interesting and inspiring look at some popular American recording studios, mostly from the late 1950s and early 60s, but with a few nods to the later sixties and early 70s. (Sorry, no British studios. Abbey Road, Olympic, and Trident spring to mind - anyone want to write one?) Each chapter picks a particular studio (Sun, Chess, Motown, Western, Columbia, etc.) and gives a brief overview of its history (down to the present day; alas many of the studios no longer exist), its features, and the people who made it special, both artists and engineers. Indeed, the authors have interviewed a number of studio owners and engineers, which adds much to the text. The book certainly succeeds in being evocative - these were the days when echo chambers could be someone's bathroom, when everything was recorded on glorious analog tape, when most basic tracks were done live all in the same room with sonic leakage, and cigarette smoking in the studio was glamorous. Frank Sinatra, Nat King Cole, Ray Charles, Muddy Waters, Elvis Presley, Otis Redding, Aretha Franklin, John Coltrane, the Doors, and other greats make walk-on appearances, and there are good photographs of many of them at work. (Actually, I could have used even more photos.) The book also rescues from relative obscurity one Bill Putnam, who apparently designed many of the sweetest-sounding rooms in the country. Often there are anecdotes about the history of studio owners and their labels, which are interesting, though one might hope for even more anecdotes about the artists and recording sessions. I found myself wishing for a little bit more technical information too, about how each room was set up and what specific gear they had, though some of this is mentioned briefly. And, of course, they can't cram every studio in here - for instance, there is no chapter on Muscle Shoals. However, the book ends with a nice discography of tracks to hunt down and listen to, each associated with one of the studios, and all of which I want to listen to after reading about these places' heydays. I find this book fascinating for what it does tell us, and inspiring in its depiction of an era when artistic talent, engineering skill, and human warmth made sometimes low-tech rooms into hallowed cathedrals of sound. A good gift for anyone interested in recording, or in the 50s-60s period.



4. With all the documentaries out there today, it's sometimes easy to forget the expression "The Joy of Music". Thankfully, Mr. Clark stays away from trying to overanalyze every note and decision, and at times delights in the instantaneous, spur of the moment happenings that create great hits. (ie.,How the song Hold On, I'm Coming by Sam & Dave was written in about 30 minutes by Isaac Hayes! Will never hear that song the same way again.)
   
   Each chapter is devoted to one particular studio, and some of the giants who recorded there, what gave the studio that particular sound, but more often than not, what accidental happening's created the soundtrack to so many of our lives.
   
   With each studio covered in only a chapter, there are probably thousand's of untold stories that go along with each studio, however once again Mr. Clark hits on the highlights, and does a good job of figuring out what the reader really wants to know.
   
   After reading a chapter, found myself pulling out various cd's of the respective studio's and enjoying them all over again.



5. The book's stated theme, "inside the great recording studios," is a tantalizing one. Unfortunately the authors rarely deliver the reader inside the temples themselves. Instead, they spend an inordinate amount of text rehashing introductory material about artists, songs, labels, musical genres and scenes. It's not necessarily uninteresting, but it leaves readers in the lobby, rather than actually taking them into the studio.
   
   Worse, the writing is hugely uneven. The chapter on Atlantic is just that, a chapter on the Atlantic label, with tidbits about the studios they used. The chapter on Columbia, on the other hand, does a nice job of communicating the label's producers' emotional attachment to their studios. The text itself ranges from well-written to hyperbolic ("It is indisputable: there is no one label that had as much impact on the development of rock from the 1950s to the 1970s as Chess.") and overly clever ("Everyone wanted in, and the [Chess] brothers, refashioned as record men, kept adding more pawns to the Chess set.").
   
   What this book does accomplish is a grounding of hit songs at their physical points of creation. It untangles the juxtaposition of Top-40 radio and strips away the music industry's placelessness by re-contextualizing songs with the writers, producers, engineers and musicians who created them. Who knew that Eric Clapton's "Layla" was recorded in Florida, within the same studios that reverberated with Hank Ballard's "The Twist," The Eagles' "Hotel California," and The Bee Gees "How Deep is Your Love?"
   
   The book's photos provide intimate views of studios in use (not to mention, under construction), it's a shame that the accompanying text isn't as fully detailed on the technical and artistic inner-workings of these "temples of sound."