WOW!

My website is finally up and live. I'm pretty sure I'm going to have some naggles and snaggles in the first few weeks but at least it's up. It only took 6 months longer than I expected! Now I just have to start my window display to announce it's birth. I'm going to do something demented with post-it notes. I'll post a picture once I get started!

www.ivanhoebooks.com

Rolling Paper Graphics

Rolling Paper Graphics
$24.95

M.Ward

It's kind of hard to see but the front cover of the new M.Ward album is gorgeous. I'm a sucker for a butterfly or a bug.

Interview.

I got my subscription of Interview in the post today. I love the hand-written font they used. Unfortunately I can't make head nor tail of it, but that might be due to my hayfever/allergies.

Zandra Rhodes.

The Art of Zandra Rhodes

$50

Her textile designs are awesome!

M&A

Across the street from the store is an architecture firm called M&A which I think stands for Materials & Applications. Every few months they switch out the installation in the front yard. This one just went up! It looks incredible. Is it made from toilet paper?! I find that hard to believe but it looks like it. I'll try and get some better pictures. Look at the sky too. It's clear and blue. It's SCORRRRCHING here. I'm going to watch Monster Vs Aliens tonight at the pictures: a. because it looks brill and b. there will be air-conditioning. I only wish I could bring Boddington and Dexter the dogs with me, but for some reason the authorities frown upon this.

Trash.

My friend Trashy is getting married next Spring. She already has her dress - it looks a lot like this Chanel column dress. I think we could add the embellishments that this one has. Trashy will look a lot happier on her wedding day than this model looks. She looks proper sad. Cheer up lady! You're wearing Chanel! Maybe Karl asked her to look forlorn.

Modernism Rediscovered: Pierluigi Serraino & Julius Shulman

Modernism Rediscovered: Pierluigig Serraino & Julius Shulman
$60

I love the name Julius. It seems so old and out of time.

The only Julius' I can think of:

1. Caesar
2. My friend Fabiana's childhood friend
3. The Paul Frank monkey

J'adore Dior!

Dior by Francoise Giroud
$90

Graphic Details.

Graphic Details: A Style Guide to Patterns & Applications
$29.95

Andy Warhol by Andy Warhol.

Andy Warhol by Andy Warhol.

$49

I would like one of those cameras please.
(It is my birthday this week, afterall).

Deborah Turbeville: Casa No Name

Deborah Turbeville: Casa No Name
$60

Hawaiian Quilt Masterpieces.

Hawaiian Quilt Masterpieces
$25

Mushroom Magick: A Visionary Field Guide

Mushroom Magick: A Visionary Field Guide
$19.95

"The history of modern use of the magic mushrooms began with the investment banker R. Gordon Wasson and his wife, Valentina, who visited Mazatec shamans in the mountains of Oaxaca, and published an extraordinary account of their discoveries in Life magazine in 1957. Wasson later regretted this deeply. The Life magazine article brought the sacred mushrooms to the attention of "hippies and trippers", including rock stars and their hangers-on, who descended on the little mountain town of Huautla de Jimenez in search of fungal gnosis, over the next decades.

I often ponder on the Wasson's quest, through remote Mexican mountains and obscure etymologies, to discover the lost secrets of teonanacatl, the "wondrous mushroom" of Mesoamerica. The story is a Nabokovian fable, complete with its requisite supporting cast of aged indigenous wisdom-keepers, CIA spooks seeking new tools for mind control, and a Greek chorus of gray-bearded ethnobotanists, archaeologists, and poets. What began as a cook-book-writing project - a hobby for a successful investment banker and his wife - turned into an epic pursuit of revelation and gnosis, transforming their lives, and eventually, the lives of many others, as well"

from the Foreword by Daniel Pinchbeck

I was 18 the last time I took magic mushrooms, it was a bit apocalyptic and demented. I was out of my mind and with my mother (unintentionally). We watched A Room With A View and Helena Bonham Carter kept transforming into a giant-winged beetle. I have problems watching her in anything to this day.

Chair Love Sparkles.

I am in love. With a chair. A gorgeous 1960s white leather chair. It's sooooo comfortable. I don't think I can live without it. Jimmy thinks I can live without it. He is wrong.

Black Sun.

Black Sun: The Brief Transit and Violent Eclipse of Harry Croby by Geoffrey Wolff

The blurb on the back reads:

"Harry Crosby was the godson of J.P. Morgan and a friend of Ernest Hemmingway. Living in Paris in the Twenties and directing the Black Sun Press, which published James Joyce among others, Crosby was at the center of the wild life of the Lost Generation. Drugs, drink, sex, gambling, the deliberate derangement of the senses in the pursuit of transcendent revelation: these were Crosby's pastimes until 1929, when he shot his girlfriend, the recent bride of another man, and then himself."

It's brill. I am loving it tremendously.

Black Friday.

I've been working soooo hard on getting my website for the bookstore up and running and this morning my web-builder in India discovered he'd wiped the website and all that's left is a version from 2 months ago. I've done so much mundane data-entry - hours and hours  of  it and now it's all gone and has to be re-done. I feel like Eeyore. 

:(

Diana. The People's Princess.

I got my first 3 sets of film back from the Diana F+ camera experiment. I'm made-up with the results. They're exactly what I wanted from the perspective of colour saturation. I haven't quite worked out the view-finder yet which is why Jimmy is headless. I quite like this one even though.

The Houses of Greenwich Village.

Garden shot from "The Houses of Greenwich Village" book that I just got in. This is how I would like my garden to look. Instead my garden looks a bit shrivel-ly and dry. I've had the garden for 4 years and I haven't quite grasped just how desert-like the climate is in L.A. Much more desert-like than MCR that's for sure.

David Nash.