books

“Otoko” was published in 1972, a year before Tamotsu Yato's death

"Tamotsu Yato (矢頭保), a photographer working in Japan from the mid-60s to the early 70s, created images of Japanese men that had a currency and evocativeness that were rare for his time.

La Distinction is considered to be one of the ten most important books of the sociology of the 20th century.

I like snobs. They are too funny. You have to be amused by someone who takes invented values and treats them like they are the very meaning of life. A snob's commitment to the vissicitudes of taste, status and social hierarchy is after all, a romantic pursuit, and ultimately an exercise as poetic as it is futile.

Armed with letters of introduction, Derry Moore made the acquaintance of many Indians of cultured and aristocratic backgrounds.

‘The Photograph then becomes a new form of hallucination: false on the level of perception, true on the level of time. A temporal hallucination, so to speak".

Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida (1980).

Nightwood depicts a world in which the boundaries of class, religion, and sexuality are beautifully porous.

“The perfume that her body exhaled was of the quality of that earth-flesh, fungi, which smells of captured dampness and yet is so dry, overcast with the odour of oil of amber, which is an inner malady of the sea, making her seem as if she had invaded a sleep incautious and entire.

The great, bracing spirit of absurdity that informed Blackwood's writing spills over into the tone of Schoenberger's prose.

One odd thing leads to another. That whole hyper-linking thing? It happens to your mind these days.

Taste, as such, was not limited to the realm of the aesthetic, but also encompassed morality, subject to universal order.

It is not an easy book to read but " Critique Of Judgement" is essential groundwork for anyone interested in the 'history of aesthetics". An easier sub-title to help open up the infuriatingly dense subtext of the work is to think of Kant's Critique as his theory of taste.

Steven Meisel and Teri Toye by Tony Viramontes. Teri Toye Illustration: Viramontes

"Draw for yourself, paint for yourself, take photographs for yourself, you will love them so much more."

Viramontes

Bordieu cut his reputation at the Collège de France and at Ecole des hautes e'tudes en sciences sociales

Considered one of the greatest works of Scandinavian literature, Waltari evokes ancient Egypt with amazing sensory detail

Futuretainment is a radical rethink of digital media theory and a brilliant redesign of the traditional business book.