I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library

First we have to say how we are continually inspired by this image of the library in Stony Island Art Bank in Chicago which opened this September. The Stony Island Arts Bank is a repository of African American culture and history initiated by Theaster Gates. The project is a new kind of cultural amenity – a hybrid gallery, media archive, library, and community center.

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Below are few of our favorite books from 2015 that would make fantastic holiday gifts. We’ve featured holiday book sales and events in New York and London but also online sales by various publishers. As always we encourage you to support independent distribution and publishing by purchasing directly from the artists, bookstores, and publishers.

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THE BEAUTIFUL NEW BOOK OF AGNES MARTIN:
Agnes Martin: Her Life and Art by Nancy Princenthal

LIVE FROM THE NEW MUSEUM:

The Animated Reader: Poetry of Surround Audience, an anthology of poetry edited by writer Brian Droitcour
Published by New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York and McNally Jackson, New York.

cura magazine
x-tra online

A GIFT FOR EVERY BODY:

Weird Fucks 2015 is published by New Herring Press
A reissue of the first work longer than 10 pages that Lynne Tillman published (originally in 1980). It includes new paintings by Amy Sillman.

THE MUST-HAVE SERIES FROM Publication Studio

Walter Benjamin: Sonnets by Carl Skoggard

Walter Benjamin’s sonnets written to mourn his friend Fritz Heinle constitute an important though little-known part of the German-Jewish philosopher’s literary achievement and a unique contribution to the history of the German sonnet…read more

Walter Benjamin’s “Berlin Chronicle” Notices by Carl Skoggard

This book of new research and commentary by Carl Skoggard brings another volume of Walter Benjamin’s work into a superb new translation. Walter Benjamin (1892-1940) began to ruminate on his Berlin childhood not long before he fled Germany for good, in 1933…read more

Walter Benjamin’s Berlin Childhood circa 1900 by Carl Skoggard

This book of new research and commentary by Carl Skoggard brings philosopher Walter Benjamin’s engaging autobiographical text into a new translation that is faithful to Benjamin’s voice. Berlin Childhood circa 1900, Skoggard writes, “conjures Benjamin’s earliest years in a series of mysterious tableaux. But it also reflects an urgent moment in his adult life—one that posed challenges to everything he had thought and felt previously.”…read more

ALL I WANT FOR CHRISTMAS:

Imponderable: The Archives of Tony Oursler, 2015
Artist Tony Oursler has amassed a vast personal archive of objects and ephemera relating to magic, the paranormal, film, television, phantasmagoria, pseudoscience, and technology. For Oursler, the archive functions as an open visual resource, historical inquiry, and—most intriguingly—a family history. One of the collection’s many digressions is the friendship between the artist’s grandfather Charles Fulton Oursler—a famous early 20th-century author and publisher—and magician and escapologist Harry Houdini, their joint campaign against fraudulent mediums, and a historic interaction with Arthur Conan Doyle, who, beyond his Sherlock Holmes series, was an important advocate for spiritualism and the paranormal.

SHOP HERE:

Karma Book Market
Saturday, December 19th
Karma, 39 Great Jones St., NYC
11–8 PM

Future Library: Publishing Fair
Saturday, December 19th
43 De Beauvoir Rd, London N1 5SQ, UK
2–7 PM

Section 7 Books / bookshop installed in the back space of castillo/corrales, Paris
LAST DAYS for Xmas in Belleville
❆old jokes, new lovers❆
11-12 & 16-20 December 2 to 7 pm

ONLINE:
BOOKWORKS
50% off selected titles!

PARTY TIME:
The Winter Party
Friday, December 18, 2015, 8:00pm
Pioneer Works, 159 Pioneer Street, Brooklyn, NY 11231
BOMB invites you to Red Hook for a night of art, music, and drinks. It’s for a good cause.*

(post title quote by Jorge Luis Borges)