Not a film book in sight while we have a rest from the Melbourne Film Festival:

At the piano: interviews with 21st-century pianists by Caroline Benser

With the Sydney International Piano Competition finally over, there are no doubt some pianophiliacs out there who will find this book of interviews with eight major league concert pianists of particular interest. Some of the more established players such as Marc Andre Hamelin, Leif Ove Andsnes and Stephen Hough are here as well as more recent phenomena such as Yuja Wang and Jonathan Biss.

Howard Pyle : American master rediscovered edited by Heather Campbell Coyle

You know that I can’t resist books on the great illustrators, and Howard Pyle was one of the very greatest. Mentor to remarkable artists such as N.C.Wyeth and Frank Schoonover, he almost singlehandedly created a style of book illustration that remains as fresh today as when it was first created. Pictorial storytelling at its finest.

A dress for Diana by David Emanuel & Elizabeth Emanuel

Royal weddings come and royal weddings go, but that dress simply refuses to be outdone. This is the inside story by the people who designed it, and had their lives unexpectedly transformed as a result of the sensation it created. Life inside the maelstrom of one of the most celebrated weddings of the century, and how a dress pretty well managed to steal the show.

Car fetish : I drive therefore I am:  Roland Wetzel: Museum Tinguely

“I think that cars today are almost the exact equivalent of the great Gothic cathedrals; I mean the supreme creation of an era, conceived with passion by unknown artists, and consumed in image if not in usage by a whole population which appropriates them as a purely magical object.” This quote from Roland Barthes sets the scene for this catalogue to an exhibition held at the Museum Tinguely in Basel in 2011, and while I still can’t claim to be a petrol-head I am certainly looking at my little Nissan Pulsar with newfound respect.

A slightly more sedate wedding party from our Picture Collection