Our Best Bargains This Month

Readings Managing Director Mark Rubbo shares his top picks for bargain lovers this month.


My colleagues know that I love a good bargain, a book bargain that is. Publishers sell off all kinds of wonderful books at low prices for a number of reasons: they printed too many; the paperback has come out; the original price no longer reflects the current market. I spend a fair amount of time pestering my publishing friends and going to book fairs, and it’s very exciting when you find really good books.

This month we have a lovely crop of bargains for you as recently my friends at Thames and Hudson have moved warehouses and have had to clear out some wonderful books. Plus our shipment from the New York Book Fair has arrived. Here’s some of my favourite picks.


The Andy Goldsworthy Project


Special Price $13.95.

Andy Goldsworthys beautiful ephemeral artworks have been rendered timeless in numerous photographic records. But over a period of nearly twenty-five years, he has also produced more than 120 permanent installations all over the world in three continents.

This is the first significant volume devoted to Goldsworthy’s work in nearly twenty years, and the first to underscore the artists permanent output since 1984. The artists sculpture and practice are situated within an ages-long tradition of structures and also trace the development of Roof, his permanent, site-specific sculpture at the National Gallery of Art,Washington.

The combination of documentation of all the permanent installations, in-depth analysis of Roof and contextual essays make this a landmark publication on the artist.


High Heels: Fashion Femininity Seduction


Special price $14.95.

The high-heeled shoe conjures allure and erotic intoxication like no other article of clothing. High Heels explores this distinctive item as a space where art, fashion and fetish converge, swooping down the fashion show runways and city streets everywhere.

Featuring a vivid selection of contemporary fashion photography, this volume is a visual odyssey through ideas of beauty, danger and seduction. Its exciting exploration of the confluence of art, fashion and fetish in the cult of high heels swooping down fashion show runways and city streets everywhere is an enticing mixture whimsy, allure and luxury.


The Poetic Home


Special price $19.95.

Today we notions of style, comfort and atmosphere completely for granted, even designing our own rooms to achieve the right mood. Yet this language, seemingly so current, emerged in the 19th century, when a combination of economic, social and artistic factors first allowed architects, designers and clients to think about home interiors in a completely new way. Their challenge was to create atmosphere and character in ordinary living rooms in short, to aspire to the new ideal of the ‘poetic home’.

This book examines the Western domestic interior from the 1800s to the mid-1890s, but rather than concentrate on individual types of furnishing or on familiar historical styles, it proceeds in a radically different way: it considers the design of the interior as a whole, making use of original 19th century texts and images to reveal what the designers, producers, shops and clients actually thought about the business of conjuring up romanticized interiors.


Re-Use Architecture


Special price $29.95.

Economic and societal transitions have left many buildings redundant and numerous structures are waiting to be put to new uses. Due in part to an increasing awareness of ecological issues, but mainly thanks to the esteem currently enjoyed by any sort of historic building fabric, unused structures are now examined to determine what kind of new use might be suitable.

This volume presents unique projects that see churches transformed into restaurants, barns into houses, apartments into offices and multi-storey car parks into apartments, but also large-scale conversions, such as the remodelling of an entire port into a new city district with a vast functional diversity


The Great Empires of Asia


Special price $14.95.

In this illustrated book, a team of internationally renowned scholars surveys the greatest of Asia’s empires from 800 AD to the mid-20th century, from the Far East to the fringes of Europe. The Great Empires of Asia shows how those seven empires played a key role in forming todays global civilization.

Illuminated by maps showing the growth of each empire and lists of key events, this book will be of interest to students, historians and everybody concerned with understanding the role of Asia in todays world.


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