Just looking at the pictures

I hesitate to include picture books in this blog because I've nothing useful to say about them and I can't show you any pictures because photographers and publishers get very prickly about copyright. So just a brief note of Landscape Photographer of the Year Collection 10 and the Lonely Planet's Beautiful World. Both do exactly what they say on the tin as the former are beautifully reproduced mostly British landscapes and the latter more stunning global subjects but less well photographed and reproduced. Both have a role to play but don't bother with the text and don't bother writing or reading a blog about them unless you are prepared to license pictures for non-commercial reuse.

All White

Bear with me as I tell you of Edmund de Waal's Journey Into Obsession along The White Road. On the face of it a book about the history of porcelain is not going to excite anyone outside of a geriatric antiques daytime TV game show but de Waal's obsession is altogether more poetic and, frankly, a little off the wall. What he, and clearly others, have found is the depth of passion that the art and science of the highly prized individually thrown art objects, and equally a lot of mass produced humble domestic utilitarian objects, has inspired.
It starts in China, of course, but in the middle of this road is central Europe (in Germany and France particularly) and he then travels to the mining county of Cornwall via America. Fresh research and the perspective of a minimalist potter make this pretty much his own genre. A suitable sequel to the Hare with Amber Eyes.