Help! My wish list #29

One more title from my ever-expanding reading wish list.

** The cover image is for illustrative purposes only. If you are a publisher and would kindly like to offer me a copy of this book for review, I will change the cover so as to reflect the edition received. **

Seven Days in the Art World
By Sarah Thornton

Amazon's product description: The art market is booming. Museum attendance is surging. More people than ever call themselves artists. Contemporary art has become a mass entertainment, a luxury good, a job description and a kind of alternative religion for atheists. Art receives the sort of breathless media attention that was once reserved for celebrities and royals. But the art world is still opaque to outsiders. In Seven Days in the Art World, Sarah Thornton takes us on an unusual journey, exploring the most puzzling aspects of buying, selling, creating and exhibiting contemporary art. In a series of beautifully paced, fly-on-the-wall narratives, we witness the drama of a Christie's auction, the high jinks of Takashi Murakami's studios, life in a notorious art school seminar, the elite at the Basel Art Fair, the eccentricities of Artforum magazine, the back rooms of the Turner Prize and the watery wonderland of the Venice Biennale. Thornton's exceptional access never compromises her critical eye, making this book more than just a glancing survey or a simple gossipfest. Instead, she offers a rigorously researched and often funny account of the global marketplace-cum-playground of an ever-expanding number of artists, collectors, dealers, curators, and critics.

Why I want to read this book: I love art and this sounds like a fascinating glimpse behind the scenes...

Help! My wish list #28

One more title from my ever-expanding reading wish list.

** The cover image is for illustrative purposes only. If you are a publisher and would kindly like to offer me a copy of this book for review, I will change the cover so as to reflect the edition received. **

We Are a Muslim, Please
By Zaiba Malik

Amazon's product description: For Zaiba Malik, growing up in Bradford in the ‘70s and ‘80s certainly has its moments – staying up all night during Ramadan with her father; watching mad Mr Aziz searching for his goat during Eid; dancing along to Top of the Pops (so long as no-one’s watching). And, of course, there’s her mother – whether she’s writing another ingratiating letter to the Queen or referring to Tom Jones as ‘Thumb Jone’. But Zaiba’s story is also one of anxiety and seemingly irreconcilable opposites. Growing up she is constantly torn between two identities: ‘British’ and ‘Muslim’. Alienated at school and confused at home, the racism she encounters as a child mirrors the horrors she experiences at the hands of Bangladeshi interrogators as a journalist years later. Five years after the 7/7 attacks galvanized debates about Muslim-British identity, We Are A Muslim, Please is a stirring and enchanting memoir. We see, through Zaiba’s childhood eyes, the poignancy of growing up in a world whose prejudices, contradictions and ambiguities are at once distressing and utterly captivating.

Why I want to read this book: It sounds like a witty and truthful account of what it means to grow up with two apparently opposing identities.

Help! My wish list #27

One more title from my ever-expanding reading wish list.

** The cover image is for illustrative purposes only. If you are a publisher and would kindly like to offer me a copy of this book for review, I will change the cover so as to reflect the edition received. **

The Last Supper: A Summer in Italy
By Rachel Cusk

Amazon's product description: When prize-winning author Rachel Cusk decides to travel to Italy for a summer with her husband and two young children she has no idea of the trials and wonders that lie in store. Their journey leads them to both the expected – the Piero della Francesca trail and queues at the Vatican – and the surprising – an amorous Scottish ex-pat and a longing for home – all seen through Cusk’s sharp and humane perspective. Exploring the desire to travel and to escape, art and its inspirations, beauty and ugliness, and the challenge of balancing domestic life with creativity, The Last Supper is a wonderful travel book about life on the most famous art trail in the world, from one of Britain’s most pre-eminent writers.

Why I want to read this book: I'm always interested in seeing my country through the eyes of foreigners, even in writing.