Sander van der Heide

Without reading one word, this book had an enormous impact on me. Literally without a word, because Shaun Tan only uses his drawings to tell the story. Not as you see with graphic novels, where there is no room for interpretation, but with little masterpieces, which take you by the hand through the story, the longer you look at them. It's an universal story, an ode to all immigrants and refugees of all ages and places. The images first caught me off guard, I felt the same confusion of the main character and only then I realized this is how it must feel when someone moves to a strange country with a different culture. The beauty of not using any words is that it's readable by almost anyone, discarding your age or language you are speaking (although it's not a children's book). The only text you will find is the prologue and after word. That's why you'll see a different title on all international versions, like this Dutch one. The rest is the same craftful, intense pieces of art, mister Tan worked on for over 5 years. It's a an art book with a story inside.

It's not perfect (as with any encyclopedia), but very helpful when reading marvel comics or watching their movies.

Just as I always find ‘the making of' fascinating, this is to feast on. It is a miracle that the lord of the rings films have ever been made.

After taken 2 million photos over a period of 8 years, here we are presented with ‘only' 300 of them. Every single one of them nailing it, composition, the timing, the colours, the moment itself, but what stands out the most: Every single person in front (and probably also behind) of the camera is having fun, a good time or in appreciation of the moment. No one is posing, nothing is staged, it gives you the opportunity to really know a person in ‘just' 300 pictures. Or as photographer Pete Souza puts it himself ‘I hope the photos will show you the true character of the man, and the essence of his Presidency, as seen through my eyes and felt through my heart'

I like vinyl records, I like coffee table books. Mix them together and you still can get disappointed. I'm scraping this one of my list. It's very superficial, it's full of usual suspects, the photography isn't impressive and most of them are about lounge cafés or trendy bars with some record players on display. It also feels the author is a bit frustrated with visual artists being asked to design the artwork instead of graphic designers. Something I believe is the perfect match for this medium. For the rest, the layout is messy and the text is dual lingual, which annoys me even more. There are better candidates for this subject.