The Red Book

This fresh-off-the-press book surely wets the appetite.  The Red Book, or Liber Novus, is Carl Jung's magnum opus which has remained unpublished for 80 years.

In his late 30s, Jung started writing a book called The Red Book. The Red Book is part journal, part mythological novel that takes the reader through Jung’s fantasies — hallucinations he self-induced to try and get to the core of his unconscious. … The book detailed an unabashedly psychedelic voyage through his own mind, a vaguely Homeric progression of encounters with strange people taking place in a curious, shifting dreamscape. Writing in German, he filled 205 oversize pages with elaborate calligraphy and with richly hued, staggeringly detailed paintings. More

With over 400 pages of full-colour at a big size, 18 x 12 x 2 inches (9.6 pounds in weight), this book does not come cheap. The price at £120 or USD195 obviously is not a casual purchase. Time to start petitioning rich relatives for Christmas?  Well, too bad. Don't have any from my side.

Upon careful calculation, it is comparatively cheaper for me to buy the book from Amazon US. Total cost is USD124.05 = SGD173.42  [USD114.07 (after 42% discount) plus shipping charge USD9.98].  Not so bad after all.  I'll need to fork out SGD67 more if getting it from the UK site.












Tempted ?

Forms of Paper

Have just ordered a beautiful old book, Forms of paper by Hiroshi Ogawa, thru abebooks.com. 

This book dated 1971, quarto, with 114 pages of paper sculpture and step by step guides of sculpting technique, showing how paper could be rolled, folded and cut into variety of shapes and styles. Very good condition in slightly worn dust jacket.

Reader

"Reader" by Los Angeles-based artist Geoff McFetridge. Buying the art piece is definitely out of my reach, but thot of getting this book Geoff McFetridge - Bend the Void which has this very same image as cover from GoldenAge, a concept shop in Chicago that sells publications, music, apparel and other editioned works created by artists.  The book makes me USD20 plus USD25 (international shipping chg) poorer.  -_-|||  

Well, let me consider ......

"looky-lou's" & "tire-kicker"

Learned two new funny "names" on book fair attendees from Chris of The Fine Books Blog.

"looky-lou's" refers to the person who looks at the books and perhaps comments that they're lovely but doesn't buy any of them.

"tire-kicker" usually refers to a book lover who browses the books for sale, takes one off the shelf and then handles the book, often rather exuberantly that at times make booksellers twitch, perhaps opening it too far or bending pages when turning them. Such a customer usually has little or no experience handling old books.

I admit, I'm more of a "looky-lou's". Haha!

Moldover CD

I've finally received the long-anticipated Moldover CD (Awesome Ed.) that I ordered 6 weeks ago.

The delay was due to the overwhelming large number of orders received in the first month of the CD release. All packages were being assembled by Matthew and his apprentice, one at a time, by hand. For these reasons, it took such a long time for my copy to arrive. You can imagine how excited when I found the package lying in my mailbox.

To my dismay, I later discovered the light-operated theremin was not working. Instead of giving out a high-pitch buzz when the button was pressed, I just get those weird static cracking noise. Nothing happened as I waved my hand in the air over the thing. The same when I tried bringing it even much closer to light source. Too bad.

But come back to the beautiful CD design, I'll still give it a plus. Just look at the maze of artwork on front and the track listing on back of the circuit board. They are truly awesome.

None the less, I've let Matthew know about the malfunction.  I'm half-heartedly expecting he may be kind enough to send me a replacement.  Will he ? (Fingers crossed)

---

Thanks to Moldover. I've received the replacement CD and the theremin is working fine. The package should have reached Singapore quite a while ago. Unluckily, the new homeowners were out of town, thus I only get the key to open the mailbox 2 days ago. I'm a happy customer.\^_^/
- 29.01.2010

2nd Hand French Books ?

There is a new bookstore The French Bookshop at Boon Tat Street 1, which to what I know, is the only bookstore in Singapore that buy and sell 2nd hand French books.  I wanted to visit the store early this morning but unfortunately it was closed.

The opening hours are pretty short, mostly half day except Sat :

Tue - Thu (mardi/mercredi/jeudi) 09:45 - 14:15

Fri (vendredi) 13:00 - 18:15

Sat (samedi) 09:45 - 13:00 / 15:00 - 18:30

Sun (dimanche) 09:45 - 13:00

Will try again.

Animation Nation 09

Solely by chance, my incredible and I watched a series of animated short films at Gallery Theatre, National Museum of Singapore last night.  

After a sumptuous lunch-cum-dinner around 5pm at The Central, we took a stroll from Clarke Quay to enjoy the relaxing evening and well, to shed off some extra weight. ^-^  While passing-by the Museum, we thought of taking a break and hence we went in, and there I happened to see the poster about the festival near the entrance.  Since we get no where else to go, we decided to watch the films and bought tickets on the spot, without any idea what would be shown except clearly aware that the films are PG rated.

It turned out to be worthwhile. The short films (total 3 of them - Varmints, JoJo in the stars, and Lost & Found) and numerous TV commercials are by London-based Studio AKA, a BAFTA-winning animation production house known internationally for its idiosyncratic and innovative work.  I favor Varmints the most.  Directed by Marc Craste, it is based on the book by celebrated children's author Helen Ward.  It's a story of a possible near future when our Earth is swamped by a mindless civilisation with huge slab-like dark buildings reminiscent of Metropolis, one little creature's struggle to preserve the only nature he managed to salvage- a small plant ...... I especially love the last scenes when the mysterious glowing jellyfish-like "terrariums" floating high in the sky and sprinkling endless dandelions on the ruins. So soothingly beautiful.

JoJo in the stars is a sad love story set in a black and white nightmarish world. The characters are also kind of scary. Lost & Found is about friendship between a boy and a cute penguin.

Besides the films, we have a good laugh with these 2 episodes of Love Sport series : 

• Paintballing
  
• Ping Pong

Love Sport is an animated series (total 10 episodes) created by Grant Orchard and commissioned by Qoob.  It tells you how fun it is to play sports .....  when they get out of control. Haha. All that, by using small and colourful pixels.  Clever.

The film's trailers can be viewed at their official site :  www.studioaka.co.uk

For other 8 epiodes of Love Sport Series : it.qoob.tv/users/show_page.asp?id=19404

Herd Animals | Ward Zwart

After a much anticipated wait, this oversized (38 x 27 cm ) book was eventually released. I quickly placed my order at www.bries.be and get it few days ago. Ward's wonderfully stylized pencil portraits are superb. All individuals (animals?) are mashed against one another creating big mountains of people covering full spreads. Of course, there is a loner too. A guy having a smoke at a corner and somewhat looking at the crowds with "skeptical" eyes.  Amazing!

Books ....

I've yet to update these 2 illustrated books received on last week to my list. 

• Russian Fairy Tales, Gunterman, Norbert ( translator) Alexeieff, A. ( illustrator), date circa 1950
  
• Indonesischen Märchen, Jaroslav Šerých (illustrator)

Will post some more of these amazing illustrations soon.

More images are now available here. ~ 18/10/09

Mini Erasers

Thanks to { prologue }. Now I become obsessed with these tiny mini, yet very detailed in design Japanese erasers. Oh Gosh! Get me started a new collection. A check on www.iwako.com, the manufacturer's website, reveals even more of these collectible erasers in various series - food, desert, fruit, beverage, animal, automobile, kitchen appliances, and many many others.  I will be broke if I want them all. Haha!