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Art & Culture

Culture and art is many things and at Tales you find a wide selection of art and culture books. If you enjoy a trip to the museum or an evening at the theatre this is the place for you. If you are more into architecture or a well written song, fear not you also find books about that. Lastly design and fashion is also part of our art and culture selection, so what are you waiting for? Set your inner creativity free and get inspired by some of the world’s best artists, musicians, designers or architects.
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  • Save 14%
    by Stefan Fischer
    £128.49

    Hieronymus Bosch created fantastical painterly schemes populated by monsters and morals, earthly experience and premonitions of the afterlife. On the 500th anniversary of his death, this large-scale monograph explores his genius imagination with full-page reproductions, copious details, a fold-out spread from The Last Judgement, and expert...

  • Save 23%
    - Women's Self-Portraits
    by Frances Borzello
    £15.49

    With an exploration of female artists and self-portraits, this is a demonstration of originality in works of haunting variety.

  • Save 21%
    - Around the World in 92 Minutes
    by Chris Hadfield
    £13.49

    The international bestseller: a visually stunning photographic tour of Earth, from the astronaut who made us fall in love with our planet all over again.

  • Save 24%
    by Francois Truffaut
    £18.99

    Based on the famous series of dialogues between Francois Truffaut and Alfred Hitchcock from the 1960s, this book moves chronologically through Hitchcock's films to discuss his career, techniques, and effects he achieved. It changed the way Hitchcock was perceived, as a popular director of suspense films - such as Psycho and The Birds.

  • Save 15%
    - The Life of Aretha Franklin
    by David Ritz
    £14.49

    The definitive biography of the Queen of Soul from acclaimed music writer David Ritz.

  • Save 22%
    by Hettie Judah & Caroline Kinneberg
    £30.99

    The perfect A-Z guide to the creators of today's fashion world.

  • Save 14%
    by Grace Jones
    £9.49

    The hotly anticipated no-holds-barred memoir from muse, model and music legend MISS GRACE JONES

  • by Claire Loder
    £20.99

  • Save 17%
    - Sound, Affect, and the Ecology of Fear
    by Steve Goodman
    £22.49

    An exploration of the production, transmission, and mutation of affective tonality-when sound helps produce a bad vibe.

  • Save 23%
    by Mark Stevens & Annalyn Swan
    £15.49

    Pulitzer Prize winning authors, Mark Stevens and Annalyn Swan, deliver an expertly written and fascinating biography of one of the most extraordinary artists of the twentieth century.

  • by Dr. Seuss
    £6.99 - 7.99

    A riotous trip with Mr. Knox and a fox in socks, packed full of Dr. Seuss's famous zany rhymes. Read along with the audio CD performed by the wonderful Adrian Edmondson, complete with extra music and sound effects. Can you get your tongue around tongue-twisters like "Who sews crow's clothes?" and "It's a tweetle beetle puddle battle"?!

  • Save 29%
    - Mechanics of Passion
    by Jack Forster
    £35.49

    From their forms to their movements, Cartier watches are unique. They are an enduring combination of the unexpected and the classical. This book chronicles Cartier's constant quest for excellence in the manufacture of complicated watches.

  • Save 11%
    by Francis D. K. Ching & Corky Binggeli
    £45.99

    "This book introduces complex concepts of interior design -- from defining interior space, elements and vocabulary of interior design to explaining interior environmental systems -- through his inimitable approach using words and drawings"--

  • Save 19%
    by Professor of Architecture, University of Ulster) Curl, James Stevens (Professor of Architecture & et al.
    £12.99 - 62.49

    With over 6,000 entries from Aalto to Zwinger, this is the most authoritative dictionary of architectural history available. Beautifully illustrated and including an extensive and fully up to date bibliography, it is an invaluable work of reference for students of architecture, landscape architecture, professional architects, and art historians.

  • Save 11%
    - A Probe into the Realities That Are Hiding Inside 'The Greatest Country in the World'
    by Corey Taylor
    £12.49

    A skewering of the American underbelly by the New York Times bestselling author of Seven Deadly Sins and You're Making Me Hate You

  • Save 10%
    by Wendy Jelbert, David Hyde & Carole Massey
    £8.99

    In-depth expert teaching makes this a comprehensive guide to acrylic painting, drawing on the expertise of three respected and well-loved artists. There is a wide variety of styles and subjects shown and step by step photographs show how to paint 10 beautiful paintings.

  • Save 22%
    - A Manifesto
    by David Shrigley
    £13.99

    A manifesto from the Turner Prize-nominated artist, with over 400 new works

  • Save 20%
    by Lesley Ellis Miller
    £23.99

    More than three decades after his death, the Spanish couturier Cristobal Balenciaga (1895-1972) has become a legendary figure in the history of 20th century fashion. This book examines Balenciaga's design and business practice, placing him in the context of the time and country in which he learnt his trade and the international fashion scene.

  • - The Autobiography of Christian Dior
    by Christian Dior
    £9.49

    An autobiography that gives an insight into the workings of a great fashion house, while revealing the private man behind the high-profile establishment. It is also a portrait of the classic Paris haute couture of the 1950s and offers a glimpse behind the scenes.

  • Save 10%
    - Hellraiser
    by Ginger Baker
    £8.99

    The autobiography of the world's greatest drummer.

  • Save 30%
    by UNKNOWN
    £41.99

    The most comprehensive photographic study of an extraordinary city, Berlin, Portrait of a City offers some 560 pages of aerial views, street scenes, portraits, and more to trace the city from the Roaring Twenties to the ruins of war to its rebirth as political and cultural capital. Quotes from famed Berlin icons and connoisseurs, from Marlene...

  • Save 20%
    - A Treated Victorian Novel
    by Tom Phillips
    £11.99

    Artist Tom Phillips combines fiction, word and image using a Victorian novel he found by chance as a starting point for other possible stories, scenes, poems, erotic incidents and surrealist catastrophes. This limited edition contains over 50 new pages and a print signed by the artist.

  • Save 29%
    - Complete Works
    by Kenneth Frampton
    £33.99

    The quintessential Japanese architect, Kengo Kuma has forged a modern design language that artfully combines the countries traditional building crafts with sophisticated technologies and materials. This title documents a leading light of the global architecture scene and offers insight into interpretations of Japans ancient building traditions.

  • Save 17%
    by Irving Stone
    £9.99

    No artist has been more ruthlessly driven by his creative urge, nor more isolated by it from most ordinary sources of human happiness, than Vincent Van Gogh. The painter is brought to life not only as an artist but as a personality and this account of his violent, vivid and tormented life is a novel of rare compassion and vitality.

  • Save 10%
    - My Life as a Beach Boy
    by Mike Love
    £8.99

    Mike Love is a founding member, lyricist and vocalist of The Beach Boys, considered to be the most popular American band in history, with 13 Gold Albums, 55 top-100 singles, and four #1 hits. Love has been the lead singer of the group one of its principal lyricists since its inception in 1961.In Good Vibrations, Mike Love tells the unique story of his legendary, chaotic, and ultimately triumphant five-decade tenure as the front man of The Beach Boys, from their Californian roots to international fame.Mike Love's credits include such pop classics as "e;Good Vibrations,"e; "e;California Girls,"e; "e;I Get Around,"e; "e;Fun Fun Fun,"e; and "e;Kokomo."e;

  • Save 14%
    by Dave Mustaine
    £9.49

    Former Metallica guitarist and founding member of Megadeth Dave Mustaine talks for the first time about his life in rock 'n' roll, finally telling the inside story of two of the most influential heavy metal bands in the world.Here, for the first time ever, Dave Mustaine tells the tale of two of the biggest metal bands in history; a story yet to be told from the inside. A pioneer of the thrash metal movement, Metallica rose to international fame in the 1980s, selling over 90 million records worldwide, making them the most successful thrash metal band ever. And Megadeth - the second most successful thrash metal band ever - have sold more than 20 million albums worldwide, including six consecutive platinum albums.But despite their enormous success together, Dave and Metallica have had some bad blood. In April of 1983, partly due to alcoholism and partly due to personality clashes with founding members Hetfield and Ulrich, he was fired from the band and unceremoniously dropped off at a Greyhound station in Rochester, NY with a ticket back to LA. Now he will finally tell his side of the story.From the early, crazy days of Metallica, to his split with the band to ruling over Megadeth, Dave has seen and experienced it all. And now he's telling it all in his startlingly candid, in-your-face memoir.

  • Save 24%
    by JOANNA FARROW
    £18.99

    Whether you re planning a party to watch the latest episode, need a showstopping cake that s bigger on the inside, or want a taste of the TARDIS at teatime, this is the ultimate collection of dishes from across space and time.Keep the munchies at bay with a fleet of Atraxi Snax, and serve an Ood Head Bread with your dinner. Create your very own Picnic at Asgard, or invite the Zygon Pie into your house. And say Hello, Sweetie to a deadly-delicious Dalektable Army, a Peek-a-Boo Pandorica cake, or some simple jelly babies.Each easy-to-follow recipe has step-by-step instructions to show how you can make meals, snacks, cakes and sweets that are truly out of this world.

  • Save 21%
    - The Last Four Hundred Years
    by Carolyn Abbate & Roger Parker
    £14.99

    Opera is in many ways the most extraordinary artistic medium of the last four hundred years. Prohibitively expensive and patently unrealistic, it can nevertheless paint the human passions with astonishing power and drama. This book, the first new, full-length, single-volume history of opera for more than a generation provokes in-depth discussions of many works by the greatest opera composers, from Monteverdi, Handel and Mozart, to Verdi and Wagner, to Strauss, Puccini, Berg, and Britten. There are lively discussions of opera's social, political and literary background, its economic cicumstances and the almost continual polemics that have accompanied its development through the centuries. Central to the book is an exploration of the tensions that have always sustained and enlivened opera. Abbate and Parker examine the problems that opera has faced in the last half century, when new works - which were once opera's life-blood - have shrunk to a tiny minority, have largely failed to find a permanent place in the repertoire. Yet the book's final message is one of celebration. Even if the majority of opera's most popular and enduring works were written in what is now a remote European past, in circumstances very different from our own, and the viability of contemporary opera is ever more in question, opera as an art form remains extraordinarily buoyant and challenging. It continues to transform people physically, emotionally, and intellectually, and to articulate human experience in ways no other art form can match.

  • Save 19%
    - How to Succeed as a Professional Writer in TV
    by Pamela Douglas
    £12.99

    Some of todays top television writers and producers share their insight and explain the unique craft of writing a drama series for television and how the industry really works.

  • Save 15%
    - The Authorised Biography of Philip Lynott
    by Graeme Thomson
    £10.99

    'The truest measure of the man we have thus far' - Mojo'Affectionate, impeccably researched biography' - Mail on Sunday'Head and shoulders above the usual rock hagiography' - Sunday TelegraphThe first biography to be written with the cooperation of the Lynott Estate, Cowboy Song is the definitive authorised account of the extraordinary life and career of Thin Lizzy guiding spirit, Philip Lynott.Leading music writer Graeme Thomson explores the fascinating contradictions between Lynott's unbridled rock star excesses and the shy, sensitive 'orphan' raised in working class Dublin. The mixed-race child of a Catholic teenager and a Guyanese stowaway, Lynott rose above daunting obstacles and wounding abandonments to become Ireland's first rock star. Cowboy Song examines his key musical alliances as well as the unique blend of cultural influences which informed Lynott's writing, connecting Ireland's rich reserves of music, myth and poetry to hard rock, progressive folk, punk, soul and New Wave.Published on the thirtieth anniversary of Lynott's death in January 1986, Thomson draws on scores of exclusive interviews with family, friends, band mates and collaborators. Cowboy Song is both the ultimate depiction of a multi-faceted rock icon, and an intimate portrait of a much-loved father, son and husband.

Culture
What defines culture you might ask? The answer is culture is what defines you. It is what makes us humans human and differentiate us from all other species on the planet. Art and culture is what we share with others, whether it is so called high culture or pop culture. High culture is typically associated with the ‘finer’, classical art forms such as opera, classical music, visual art, ballet and plays. Works that often have a certain age and artistic acknowledgement begin it, but fine culture is also sometimes seen as “high-brow” and not something everyone can understand and that’s sad, because culture and cultural books are for everyone no matter the kind. On the other end of the spectrum we have pop culture that typically is associated with more modern, popular and mainstream forms of culture. It can be pop music, cartoons or big blockbuster movies. We have cultural books from each side of the spectrum, but the best thing is that a change between the two concepts is coming and people are more open about mixing high culture and pop culture, because they are not that different at all. The most important thing about culture is that it connects us and is part of who we are. It can create communities and friendships, but also let us reflect upon ourselves. You can get wiser on that topic in some of our selection’s culture books. 

Art
In our selection you find some of the finest art books featuring some of the greatest artists in history and now. Art is a very important part of our culture. In art you have the possibility of getting engrossed in a wonderful painting, a provocative sculpture, a brilliant play or a beautiful ballet. 
In art you can get lost in the most wonderful stories and themes and identify yourself with someone who doesn’t necessarily look and act like you. By experiencing that you improve your ability of empathy. At the same time you can learn about yourself through art and art books especially when it comes to feelings that can be difficult to describe. In art the themes and problematics are universal and that’s why we feel recognized when experiencing a play, listening to a symphony, studying a great painting or reading a good art book. The art books are best enjoyed in a relaxed setting giving the art room to speak. 
Another beautiful thing about art is that it needs interpretation. When a person meets a well painted painting, a classical sculpture, or a provocative installation it makes us reflect about what it means, and what the art will tell us about society, life or yourself. Everyone can get something different out of a good artwork, because it speaks directly to you and functions as a dialog, where you will have to finish the sentence with your interpretation taking our own life and experiences into the artwork.
We also have a lot of artist books. One of the most talented and popular artists right now are the world famous Dane Vilhelm Hammershøi. Hammershøi has a very significant way of painting giving voice to the melankolic side of the world and of us humans. The painter is famous for his artworks of especially white doors in his apartment in Copenhagen. In the paintings Hammershøi plays with light and shadow in a brilliant way giving room to both sides, which also could be seen as a reflection of life that contains both. The motive also makes the art watcher wonder what is on the other side of the doors or corridors making them compose a continuation of the painting. You can read about Hammershøi in an European context in the artist book Hammershoi and Europe

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