Last week, on a pleasant but dull sort of afternoon, I wandered into one of my favorite bookstores and saw on display a copy of the book Le Corbusier Le Grand, that massive sized tome (13" x 17" x 3" book along with smaller accompanying book of materials translated from French, both encased in a hard sleeve) on the display racks. Now, this has been on my "to get" list for a while now,but the sheer size of it has prevented me from doing so (asides from being large, it weighs over 14 pounds). I quickly flipped through for a price check (the book retails at 200 dollars, and the best price I saw was half off, but I could not bring myself to carry it home that day and when I returned it was gone) and saw it was going for 75 dollars. My partner in crime (well, my partner) said that it could be my Christmas present, and I thought, no, even better, I would do my usual "clean up clean out" and exchange some of my unloved books for it. So, asking the fellow to put aside the book, I continued on my way and promised to be back the next day to do the trade-off.
It was a little difficult, not exceedingly so, to find some books to get rid of, but the weight (mental, not physical) of books recently has gotten to me, so I got rid of a few more that would have stayed if I was more stable. Fortunately, a friend picked me up so I wouldn't have to lug that bunch of nonsense over to the store. A few minutes later and with a small exchange of small talk, the Corbusier book was in hand (and also the biography of Proust by Tadie, as there was some more store credit in which to use up, and it is infinitely easy to use up store credit at this well curated store)
I was looking through it yesterday on my dining table (it being the only surface besides my bed and the floor large enough to accommodate reading it), and it is a superb book chock full of pictures of the master and his many works. If only Phaidon were able to do a similar version for Mies, that would be masterful.
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