I love going into bookshops and flicking through those over-sized, heavy and in some ways cumbersome reads studded with photographs - art books, cookery books, anything which can provide a snapshot of something different to peruse.
These visual books are my kind of coffee table read. I don't drink coffee (unless it's laced with a calorific flavoured syrup...or alcohol) but there's something about the image of thumbing through the pages of a hefty tome whilst sipping on a hot cuppa Joe which I love. I doubt real coffee drinkers ever call it 'Joe' but a mug of hot Ribena doesn't have quite the same effect...
I'm hoping to make this into a series of posts and talk about a few different books which fall into this category of picture-filled volumes. First up is my art pick - Art: The Whole Story by Stephen Farthing.
It's an understatement to say this one is a bit of a beast, but that's completely justified once you realise just how much stuff it covers. It really is the whole shebang - from prehistoric art to the present day and every movement in between. It's bursting with photographs, paintings, sculpture and diagrams, but also has a good bit of text to get your teeth into. It highlights key works, those 'I've definitely seen that somewhere before' pieces, and puts them into context which is really good if you are trying to broaden your knowledge a bit. When I bought it, I was convinced I was going to read it cover to cover (no. 25 on the list of unrealistic tasks I set myself...) Obviously that didn't happen, but hey, the nature of a good coffee table book is that you can dip in and out as you please!
So, for those lazy afternoons when you want to escape the glare of the laptop screen, look at some pictures which aren't followed by six thousand hashtags and persuade yourself you'd be right at home hanging out with cultural artistic giants like Neil Buchannan and Mark Francis from MIC, I recommend checking this out.
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