We're releasing another pair of Jane Mount's Ideal Bookshelves today over at 20x200. One is a shelf of Tina Roth's (aka Swissmiss') daughter's books, the other is of chef George Weld's cookbooks. Both are supergreat and I recommend snapping one or both of them up.

Because Jane is part of the 20x200 family, I was lucky enough to have my kid's bookshelf painted (see below). Makes me happy every time I look at it. You can have your own bookshelf painted if you are a bit lucky (details on the 20x200 newsletter).

Note: Every time I post anything about children's books I get parents asking me for lists of book names. I've named most of the books in previous posts. I've also put most of them up together on an Amazon Heading East Bookstore.

Update: Tina just updated her site with a list/links for all the children's books in her daughter's ideal bookshelf. Many are European favs, obscure here. It's a great list/print Go and be happy.

Hard to believe it's been 5 years since this night.

Alec Soth has a new online treehouse... It's every bit intriguing as his old blog. Start with Glass Jars...

Congratulations to Alejandro Cartagena for being selected as a Hot Shot. I've long been been a fan of Cartagena's Lost Rivers project and of his work in and around Monterrey. The image above is actually from a new project titled Between Borders. It's great to see Cartagena on a roll. Hey! Hot Shot is on roll too. Two former Hot Shots were selected for the Whitney Biennial, a very big deal indeed.

I'm intrigued by Samantha Contis' project Between Rivers and Roads but wish I had a bit more context for it. Then again, I feel that way about most work I look at online and of course viewing work online is a poor substitute for seeing it in person. Bet this series is beautiful as a set of prints.

From something my wife is writing:

"You do know, you should remember Ji-Hyon ah – love flows down. From person to person it only trickles down."
I tell her I’m not sure I understand. I’d never heard this saying before.
"It’s an old Korean saying. This is one of the ways we understand love. It moves downward, from grandmother to mother, from mother to child – this is how we take care of each other. But the one below will never understand the love of his parent so he cannot love as much. Love is always greater on top. And so is the pain."

"We are the people of the book. We love our books. We fill our houses with books. We treasure books we inherit from our parents, and we cherish the idea of passing those books on to our children. Indeed, how many of us started reading with a beloved book that belonged to one of our parents? We force worthy books on our friends, and we insist that they read them. We even feel a weird kinship for the people we see on buses or airplanes reading our books, the books that we claim. If anyone tries to take away our books—some oppressive government, some censor gone off the rails—we would defend them with everything that we have. We know our tribespeople when we visit their homes because every wall is lined with books. There are teetering piles of books beside the bed and on the floor; there are masses of swollen paperbacks in the bathroom. Our books are us. They are our outboard memory banks and they contain the moral, intellectual, and imaginative influences that make us the people we are today."

-Part of a super speech on copyright titled How to Destroy the Book by Cory Doctorow.