Who knew? We put out a call to our contributors to suggest appropriate holiday gift books and what do we get back? Japanese bondage photos, a photo-documentary about phone-sex workers, The Best of Sexology. (the mid-20th century sex “health” mag), The Annotated Dracula, a collection of Patricia Highsmith’s macabre Ripley novels, and a book about “the best restaurant in the world” that is, let’s face it, food porn. Nonetheless, we were able to pull back from the abyss at the last minute: a big book about Lincoln can safely be given to Grandma, a book on Jewish LPs will make zayde smile, and Peter Ackroyd’s “biography” of the Thames will keep your English prof broth-in-law out of your face. Throw in indefatigable film critic David Thomson and a book about Russia’s cultural silver age, and you’re covered. And keep in mind, the catalogue prices for most of these luxury volumes have been seasonally discounted at most brick-and-mortar and Web retailers. Enjoy!
A Day at elBulli: An Insight Into the Ideas, Methods and Creativity of Ferran Adriá
Phaidon | By Ferran Adriá, Albert Adriá, and Juli Stoler | 600 pages | $49.95
If the new Robuchon (Knopf) is food porn, then A Day at elBulli: An Insight into the Ideas, Methods and Creativity of Ferran Adriá is food S&M. You know all those dishy trends that so annoy when they pop up at hip stateside boîtes? Flavors as foam, freeze-dried, and deconstructed dishes? Adriá came up with them, and in this luxuriously photographed document, they almost seem to work. “Pistachios are coated in their own praline paste and submerged in liquid nitrogen to create Pistachios garrapi-nitro,” one caption reads, accompanying an absolutely ecstatic photo essay of a day at the Spanish restaurant. That’s just one of many gorgeous spreads by photographer Maribel Ruiz de Erenchun, and true enough these sensuous displays do make the selection of recipes appear worth the fuss (look for the ones that don’t call for liquid nitrogen). But lest you mistakenly see this as a cookbook, this huge brick — credited to head chef Adriá, restaurant creative director Albert Adriá, and restaurant manager Juli Soler — also maps out the restaurant’s cuisine, tracing graph-style the link between “asian influences” and “a new way of breadcrumbing,” as well as the leap from “deconstruction” to “reconstruction.” Decadence as a doorstop, this book faces down the everpresent epicurean question with its own: why not? Not for the Joy of Cooking crowd.
—Clea Simon
And You Shall Know Us by the Trail of Our Vinyl: The Jewish Past as Told by the Records We Have Loved and Lost
By Roger Bennett & Josh Kun | Crown | 240 pages | $24.95
Bennett and Kun, who came of age musically as ’80s teenagers, here pursue the “lost” history of their ancestors through vinyl collected from the ’50s through the advent of CDs. But it goes back even further than vinyl to the cantorial “pop” stars of the ’20s and ’30s and Al Jolson’s jazz singer — “a history of Jewish life in America not found in newsreels, history books, or organizational archives.” So Bacharach, Manilow, and Streisand are here — but in the context of Met opera star Jan Peerce’s Cantorial Masterpieces, Irving Fields’s Bagels and Bongos, a million filthy comedy albums by Jewish comedians other than Lenny Bruce, and Israeli Prime Minister David Ben Gurion’s somber spoken-word What Is a Jew? For every Jewish folk singer you may have heard of (Theodore Bikel, whose early career established Elektra Records), there’s a name lost to time (folk star Gadi Elon). There’s “Jewish music” sung in Yiddish or Hebrew, or secular music that just happens to be sung by Jews (Bobby Zimmerman, anyone?), or Jewish music sung by Gentiles (Connie Francis Sings Jewish Favorites). And absolutely everyone does Fiddler on the Roof, including Cannonball Adderley. Illustrated with scores of kitschy album covers and commentary from the likes of Neil Sedaka, Sandra Bernhard, and Ann Powers, Bennett and Kun have fashioned a parallel history of post-war American pop culture, as profound as it is quease-inducing.
—Jon Garelick
Araki Gold
Edited by Filippop Maggia | Skira | 239 pages | $55
The Japanese photographer Nobuyoshi Araki may have a notorious reputation — he favors partially undressed young Japanese women in various stages of bondage — but he’s got the soul of a formalist. Nudes and bondage form only part of the new career retrospective collection Araki Gold but they are the most carefully composed work here. The fact that many of his models are dressed (or undressed) in kimonos, that almost all of them meet the camera with their own preternaturally calm gaze (Araki isn’t turned on by distress), and that their gowns have been carefully color-coordinated with the surroundings, give the photos a sense of quiet, deliberate composition. But Araki’s fascination keeps his subjects subjects instead of objects (and the little rubber dinosaurs and lizards he’s fond of putting in the frame strike a note of whimsy).
