Taschen Books

The stand is fixed and not adjustable.

 

Thanks very much Mazza. It's a lovely piece of kit, and the kind of solution I need to finally read my copy of Tim Lucas' mammoth Mario Bava tome, All the Colors of the Dark.

 

I own the huge Capitol Records book. It's a beautiful book but it's so large you really need a table to read it on.

 

Taschen put out an oversize volume on Tom of Finland where the slipcase folded into a rough and ready (how appropriate) bookstand.

 

Why so excited over pictures of a set in a film studio?

 

Dudley, somewhat off-topic of sorts but seeing your avatar, I wonder did you pick up the Peter Christopherson Photography book ? I almost pulled the trigger on it earlier today but the asking price is a tad high. But as a life long TG listener, I ought to have this book...

 

I didn't for largely the same reason - the reprint is at least more affordable, but still not cheap. To pull or not to pull the trigger before it's gone too...

 

No one will be curling up with that one for a bedtime read. Unless they want to wind up as the subject of a headline along the lines of "Man meets grisly end in freak accident", which might be fitting given the subject of the book.

 

I hope the will reissue André de Dienes' Marilyn book in coffeetable size. All editions went OOP before I could purchase it. I only have these two so far:

 

I have 6 Taschen books. This little heavy soft cover is quite interesting and inexpensive: Eccentric Style by Deidi von Schaewen

 

This is the only one I have:

 

I have a few of their books. A very interesting and off beat publisher.

I bought a little 3D book of 1950’s and 70’s topless pinups for a Gag gift to take to a White Elephant Party. All the models were quite busty and “glamorous” the guy who got it was really happy and wouldn’t trade it for anything.

 

The Dylan book looks very interesting I must say, and while the chronology doesn't quite dovetail, I'd enjoy leafing thru this to the accompaniment of one of the shows from the Live 66 boxset...

 

An update.....

I just got this book today. I have a lot of big, coffee table sized books about spaceflight and this one easily dwarfs any of them.

 

Not Taschen, but this similar, large-format book of Dylan photographs is a better fit for the 1966 Live box set:

 

Don't have any Taschen books but I have a few I lust after, mostly Crumb collections and a few by Dian Henson.

One of my clients is selling off a bunch of Taschen books via eBay, but he's finding out the truth about eBay - that it's a wonderful way for people to purchase things for the lowest possible price.

 

That looks like a visit to Kennedy Space Center right on your bookshelf. I'll go look for an unboxing video of a book for the first time now. I'm positive my local bookstore will have this sealed, like 99.5% of their coffee table books (the 0.5% are thumbed to the max). The Dutch Taschen website has a few pages ...

 

So the Star Wars book arrived. First impressions...it's a BIG, handsome looking tome. Reproduction quality is very good, but I was surprised that they included numerous photos from the 90s special edition movies (especially given the title of the book). Surprised also to see a lot of promotional photos that have been seen many times before (was expecting it to be more heavily geared towards unpublished stills). And - a minor issue this, but an irritating one - I don't like the way the indexed the stills, by placing the number of the image in the bottom corner of the still rather than under it...it just seemed to spoil the purity of the images to my mind.

Overall, worth having if you are a SW nut, but not one of Taschen's finest efforts. I think they dropped the ball a bit here - not least because I'm confident there are/were enough unpublished photos for them to have done separate books for each of the original trilogy.

I give it a 3/5.

 

Someone once posted here: what's rarer than a rare record; someone willing to pay big bucks for it. Some of these books aren't really rare, just secondhand sellers charging several times the original list price.

 

I've considered buying this one as I really don't have any significant Star Wars books in my collection. The price keeps inching downward and it gets more tempting. Are the 3 Rinzler authored "Making Of" HC books of the original trilogy a better bet, especially in regards to a comprehensive collection of photos in a larger sized book?

 

Certainly in terms of describing the film making process, the Rinzler books are far more comprehensive. And a wealth of rare photos, to boot.

But it depends what you are after. For my money, I would place these titles ahead of even the Rinzlers:-

Star Wars - The Art of Ralph McQuarrie (two volumes, fan-bloody-tastic)
The Star Wars Poster Book - Sansweet/Vilmur (looking at the posters used to advertise the movie, and commercial poster sold off the back of the films)
The Star Wars Vault** - Sansweet/Vilmur (a treasure trove of memorabilia and a look at the films as a pop culture phenomenon)

Hope that helps



** Also includes a CD allowing you to hear Princess Leia's "Life Day" song from the Star Wars TV Holiday Special! Once heard, never forgotten....

 

What I’d like to see: a book collecting the wild posters made for foreign movies in communist-era Poland. I can’t believe that no art-book publisher has done such a volume yet, and Taschen seems a natural for the job.

 

Dudley Morris,
Why don't you e-mail them and suggest it?

 

My bookstore had a non sealed copy, so I carefully checked it out page-by-page. A wonderful document with great historic photographs.

 

Speaking of checking out a book page-by-page before you buy, I had to do this with a new copy of this title 3 times before I got one that didn't have pages with smeared ink. Great book though.