Unsnooty Beauty

Robin's Egg Blue

 

all my eggs in one nest, by Tracey

I am an unabashed bird nerd. I adore birds, their nests, their eggs. I'd like them to poop less on my car, true. But everything else they do - singing, mating, laying beautiful eggs, feeding their young, fending off predators, or acting as predators, are incredibly fascinting. Because I loathe categorizing things, I hate the idea of listing the birds that I love. I own a pair of binoculars and regularly use them, but refuse to join birdwatching groups because I don't want to find myself nodding in agreement with some guy who wants to convince me that the bushwhacked orange bluetit is the world's most fascinating example of a bark-clinging needlehopper, or whatever. BORING.

But whenever I see a bird, I freeze as though I have happened upon some rare gem. This is the case regardless of whether I am seeing a wild crane or a pidgeon. I am THAT BIG OF A DORK.

Anyway, so fewer things thrill me as completely as vintage prints of birds and their eggs and nests. (I also love vintage bird cages, although I hate caging birds. Is that odd? I just like the design.)

Robin's eggs are obviously iconic because of their striking color - I also love their shape and size and everything else about them. I honestly can't look at a robin's nest without getting simultaneously really excited and oddly relaxed at the same time.

Unscented soaps

I am madly in love with anything and everything scented. As the owner of a rather prominent and powerful schnozz, I get high off of scented things. Where some people need smack to cope with the pain of everyday life, I merely need rose absolue.

So, it is with a bit of tredipation at I allow myself to love unscented things. This is partly because I had a roommate (back in the days when I lived in Queens) who was horrifically allergic to everything. I had to give away all of my perfumes and switch to unscented everything - deodorant, face creams, body wash. I once cleaned the bathtub with baking soda and lime juice (she wouldn't wash the shower stall and the mold was starting to bug me), and when she arrived at home, she claimed that the smell was burning her skin. She turned all blotchy and horrible and started clawing at her face.

The result was that, when I loved out, I bought a bottle of Poison by Dior and drenched myself in it on a daily basis. NEVER AGAIN, I swore, would I live with unscented products.

But there's something about handmade, handcut, unscented creamy white soap that makes me want to just melt into a puddle of happiness.  Look at these handmade soaps from Amanda Jones:

How badly do you want to eat those? Don't they look like waxy, creamy marshmallows? I want to just dive into them and swim in their whiteness. (I also adore Amanda's simple packaging). So very zen.

Twelve Publishing

There are a number of criticisms that can be launched at modern culture: it's too fast, it's too materialistic, it's artless, it's obese, it's juvenile. I don't disagree with these things, but for me, the problem with modern existence is that it's too damn much.

I'm one of those people who, when faced with a myriad of choices, is struck dumb. If there are more than three items on the menu, I'm dumbfounded. Struck mute with indecision, I trawl helplessly through all of the choices, trying to determine which minute details will make THIS burger better than THAT one. Frankly, that's the only reason that I like In-N-Out burger - it's not that they're fresh or delicious, it's just that I have a total of four choices I can make.

"Too many choices" is not an uncommon complaint lodged at (largely) America - we have so much to choose from that we don't know where to begin, and we tend to accumulate things that we really don't need. To say that bigger is better doesn't quite cover it - in modern America, MORE is better.

That's why companies like Twelve Books are such a revelation. In the same way that artisinal bread and cheese are a mind-blogging, tongue-awakening jolt to someone who was raised on Wonder Bread and Velveeta, a publishing house that publishes only 12 books per year seems like a little gift from heaven. It's so very rare that a company can focus its concentration so wholly on one product, but to only provide 12 versions of that product per year is truly an outrageous idea.

Jonathon Karp, the ridiculously young-looking editor-in-chief of Twelve Books, explained to NPR a few days ago that his experience in the publishing industry (he used to work for Random House), "You have to start with the  impulsive,  ecstatic reaction you have to a book, and if you're not excited at the outset by the prospect of publishing a book, you should not publish a book."

Every year, 291,000 (33 books per hour per day for 365 days per year) are published. Twelve Books, in the other hand, is an imprint that devotes itself to one book per month.

"I think that it's possible to love 12 books a year, without being promiscuous. I think you can be serially monogamous to 12 books a year, and what I have experienced in my career (I was at Random House for about 16 years), and I worked with about 200 authors in that time, and I think that all 200 authors thought that they had written a best-seller that was worthy of many readers, and unfortunately, we weren't always able to put those books across. So what I really wanted to do with this imprint was to make a promise to every writer that we published that we would do everything in our power to make his or her book a best-seller."

Mind you, Twelve Books is not a teeny, independent company - they are part of a pager publishing group, the Hachette Book Group. But I just love their twelve things to remember:

1. Each book will enliven the national conversation.
2. Each book will be singular in voice, authority, or subject matter.
3. Each book will be carefully edited, designed, and produced.
4. Each book will have a month-long launch in which it is the imprint’s sole focus.
5. Each book will be nationally advertised.
6. Each book will have a national publicity campaign.
7. Each book will be published by Jonathan Karp, the editor who discovered Book Sense Book of the Year winners Seabiscuit and Shadow Divers, plus such bestsellers as The Orchid Thief, Franklin and Winston, Thank You For Smoking, What Should I Do With My Life?, The Dante Club, The Last Don, The Godfather Returns, and A Conspiracy of Paper.
8. Each book will be publicized by Director of Publicity Cary Goldstein, who for seven years was the architect of FSG's publicity campaigns for such acclaimed books as The Assassin's Gate, Sweet and Low, Natasha, and Trance, nominee for the National Book Award.
9. Each book will have the potential to sell at least 50,000 copies in its lifetime.
10. Each book will be marketed and distributed by the Hachette Book Group, the company with the best hit ratio in the American publishing business.
11. Each book will be promoted well into its paperback life.
12. Each book will matter.

Special care, special craftsmanship, special attention - these seem to be simple concepts that are more or less lost in today's fast-paced world.  It's nice to see an imprint, however small, doing it's part to dedicate itself to success, without losing site of the passion that sparked the business to begin with.

Also, I love the word "imprint". How beautiful is that?

*Photo by austinevan.

Moment of Zen 1/29/08

Photo by Chris Gladis.

What It All Means

Mission statements are often tired, usually cliched, and by and large, not followed. We'll avoid that. No grandiose statements, no unattainable goals. This is a blog about beauty and the little places that we find it. Not just visual beauty, but beauty for all the senses. Beautiful tastes, smells, sounds, sights, feelings, textures, places, faces, music, peaches, back alleys, gravel roads, three-legged dogs, fashionistas, snow storms, passers-by, perfume, red wine, bird calls, markets, sport, art, prose, gardens, journeys, buildings, well-cut suits, the world both natural and designed. We will share, discuss, admire, and indulge. Bit by bit, little by little, we're bringing you the things that make us go "Aaaaaah".