Picture Book Yayoi Kusama: Covered Everything in Dots and Wasn't Sorry. by Fausto Gilberti
The Voynich Manuscript edited by Raymond Clemens
Many call the fifteenth-century codex, commonly known as the "Voynich Manuscript," the world's most mysterious book. The vellum on which it is written has been carbon-dated to the early 15th century (1404–1438), and stylistic analysis indicates it may have been composed in Italy during the Italian Renaissance. Written in an unknown script by an unknown author, the manuscript has no clearer purpose now than when it was rediscovered in 1912 by rare books dealer Wilfrid Voynich. The manuscript appears and disappears throughout history, from the library of the Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II to a secret sale of books in 1903 by the Society of Jesus in Rome. The book's language has eluded decipherment, and its elaborate illustrations remain as baffling as they are beautiful. For the first time, this facsimile, complete with elaborate folding sections, allows readers to explore this enigma in all its stunning detail, from its one-of-a-kind "Voynichese" text to its illustrations of otherworldly plants, unfamiliar constellations, and naked women swimming though fantastical tubes and green baths.
The Resurrectionist: The Lost Work of Dr. Spencer Black by E.B. Hudspeth
Extract from a book review:
If you go into this book blindly without reading the blurb, you may very well believe that Dr. Spencer Black was a real person who pushed scientific boundaries in immoral ways during his lifetime. While this book is a work of fiction, the biography of Dr. Black certainly is believable and historically plausible.
The biography of Dr. Spencer Black chronicles his life and career, his projects and ideas. Born in Philadelphia in 1851, he was the son of a resurrectionist–“an exhumer and stealer of corpses”, a.k.a. a grave robber. Spencer Black later became a different sort of resurrectionist from that of his father–he became “one who revives or brings to light again”. Spencer was once a highly respected doctor–a surgeon, an anatomist–who went through the best medical schools. But he was a man obsessed with the notion that humans may have evolved from mythological beasts, and that traces of our ancestry were still present in rare cases. Dr. Black lived an exciting, strange, and ultimately challenging life in which he traveled with carnivals in order to study deformed specimens after his academic peers turned on him, disgusted by his unorthodox methods and pursuits. He became estranged from his brother, and his wife spiraled into her own hell after Dr. Black’s work went irreversibly too far.
Before disappearing seemingly from the face of the Earth in 1908, Dr. Spencer Black published a mere six copies of his magnum opus: The Codex Extinct Animalia. This anatomical reference manual is the true star of the book: it showcases eleven species Dr. Black studied, some of which he very likely created himself…
The siren and harpy are my favourites.
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