Friday, October 21, 2011

Bali Style [Architecture Book]



This Book have More than 200 full-page color photos about essence of the Indonesian island's architectural and interior design style, which ranges from relatively primitive bamboo dwellings to classy contemporary homes. Bali art forms are also included in a beautiful, detailed coverage of the Indonesian island's culture, history, and art.
Bali's culture is a blend of ancient traditions and influences from the outside world, with the Balinese sense of art expressed in their art and design, architecture and music. In this book, illustrations present a view of the architecture, interiors and objects that are the essence of Bali's style. From bamboo dwellings to contemporary Bali homes, from panoramic vistas to pictures of the elaborate stonework in Hindu temples - various aspects of this distinctive culture are examined.
Excellent photos of the best houses, bali villas building materials, garden, swimming pools,  fabric, crafts, and architectural villa pulu details in Bali. Very beautiful as a coffee table book, quite useful as a style reference book.

The text is very nicely written, without repetition or fluff; it serves mainly to illuminate the huge variety of photographs. In other words, the reader will learn a little about Balinese geography, sensibility and culture from Walker, but not in intricate detail or with scholarly authority. I read it cover to cover in a couple of days, and felt it was a decent grounding in Bali  style.
Author, editor and photographer should be praised for finding examples of all kinds of Bali style: garish, sublime, fancy, plain, funky, sophisticated, folksy, casual, formal, sacred.
A solid overview, useful to decorators, architects, mere Bali fans.

Wednesday, September 21, 2011

25 Best Books 2011

This is my list 25 Best Book in 2011

1.The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
by Rebecca Skloot
Crown
February 2, 2010
Hardcover
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Amazon Best Books of the Month, February 2010: From a single, abbreviated life grew a seemingly immortal line of cells that made some of the most crucial innovations in modern science possible. And from that same life, and those cells, Rebecca Skloot has fashioned in The Immortal Life of ...

2.     Faithful Place: A Novel
by Tana French
Viking Adult
July 13, 2010
Hardcover
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Amazon Best Books of the Month, July 2010: The past haunts in Tana French novels. That which was buried is brought to light and wreaks hell--on no one moreso than Frank Mackey, beloved undercover guru and burly hero first mentioned in French's second book about the Undercover Squad, The ...

3.     Matterhorn: A Novel of the Vietnam War
by Karl Marlantes

Atlantic Monthly Press
March 23, 2010
Hardcover
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Price:    $13.65
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Amazon Best Books of the Month, March 2010: Matterhorn is a marvel--a living, breathing book with Lieutenant Waino Mellas and the men of Bravo Company at its raw and battered heart. Karl Marlantes doesn't introduce you to Vietnam in his brilliant war epic--he unceremoniously drops you into the jungle, ...

4.     Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption
by Laura Hillenbrand
Random House
November 16, 2010
Hardcover
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Amazon Best Books of the Month, November 2010: From Laura Hillenbrand, the bestselling author of Seabiscuit, comes Unbroken, the inspiring true story of a man who lived through a series of catastrophes almost too incredible to be believed. In evocative, immediate descriptions, Hillenbrand unfurls the story of Louie Zamperini--a ...

5.     The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration
by Isabel Wilkerson
Random House
September 7, 2010
Hardcover


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A Look Inside The Warmth of Other Suns The author's father as a Tuskegee Airman ...
6.     Freedom: A Novel
by Jonathan Franzen
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
August 31, 2010
Hardcover

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Amazon Best of the Month, August 2010: "The awful thing about life is this:" says Octave to the Marquis in Renoir's Rules of the Game. "Everyone has his reasons." That could be a motto for novelists as well, few more so than Jonathan Franzen, who seems less concerned with ...

7.     The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest
by Stieg Larsson
Knopf
May 25, 2010
Hardcover

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Amazon Best Books of the Month, May 2010 As the finale to Stieg Larsson's Millennium Trilogy, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest is not content to merely match the adrenaline-charged pace that made international bestsellers out of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and The Girl Who Played ...
8.     To the End of the Land
by David Grossman
Knopf
September 21, 2010
Hardcover

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Amazon Best of the Month, September 2010: To the End of the Land is a book of mourning for those not dead, a mother's lament for life during a wartime that has no end in sight. At the same time, it's joyously and almost painfully alive, full to the ...


9.     Just Kids
by Patti Smith
Ecco
November 2, 2010
Paperback
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Amazon Best Books of the Month, January 2010: Patti Smith and Robert Mapplethorpe weren't always famous, but they always thought they would be. They found each other, adrift but determined, on the streets of New York City in the late '60s and made a pact to keep each other ...
10.     The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine
by Michael Lewis
W. W. Norton & Company
March 15, 2010
Hardcover
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Price:    $16.77
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From Publishers Weekly
Although Lewis is perhaps best known for his sports-related nonfiction (including ...


11.     The Imperfectionists: A Novel
    The Imperfectionists: A Novel
by Tom Rachman
The Dial Press
April 6, 2010
Hardcover
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Amazon Best Books of the Month, April 2010 Printing presses whirr, ashtrays smolder, and the endearing complexity of humanity plays out in Tom Rachman's debut novel, The Imperfectionists. Set against the backdrop of a fictional English-language newspaper based in Rome, it begins as a celebration of the ...


12.     Will Grayson, Will Grayson
by John Green
Dutton Juvenile
April 6, 2010
Hardcover

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Amazon Best Books of the Month, April 2010: What's in a name? A pretty fantastic book idea, for starters. At heart, Will Grayson, Will Grayson is about a couple of kids figuring out how to be themselves. Two of those kids happen to have the same name, and not ...

13.     Major Pettigrew's Last Stand: A Novel
by Helen Simonson
Random House
March 2, 2010
Hardcover

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Amazon Best Books of the Month, March 2010: In her witty and wise debut novel, newcomer Helen Simonson introduces the unforgettable character of the widower Major Ernest Pettigrew.  The Major epitomizes the Englishman with the "stiff upper lip," who clings to traditional values and has tried (in vain) to ...

14.     Operation Mincemeat: How a Dead Man and a Bizarre Plan Fooled the Nazis and Assured an Allied Victory
by Ben Macintyre
Out of Print--Limited Availability
Crown
May 4, 2010
Hardcover

Amazon Exclusive Essay: When Spycraft Is Not Crafty Enough by Ben Macintyre Click on Thumbnail to Enlarge Soon after Operation Mincemeat was launched, Britain’s spymasters realized they had made a glaring mistake. They tried to correct it and, in the ...


15.     The Memory Chalet
by Tony Judt
Penguin Press HC, The
November 11, 2010
Hardcover
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Amazon Best Books of the Month, November 2010: In 2008 Tony Judt, the historian and essayist whose book Postwar was quickly recognized as one of the landmark works of our time, was diagnosed with Lou Gehrig's disease. He was soon almost fully paralyzed, but before his death in the ...


16.     The Passage
by Justin Cronin
Ballantine Books
June 8, 2010
Hardcover
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Amazon Best Books of the Month, June 2010: You don't have to be a fan of vampire fiction to be enthralled by The Passage, Justin Cronin's blazing new novel. Cronin is a remarkable storyteller (just ask adoring fans of his award-winning Mary and O'Neil), whose gorgeous writing brings depth ...


17.     The Hand That First Held Mine
by Maggie O'Farrell
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
April 12, 2010
Hardcover
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Amazon Best Books of the Month, April 2010: Maggie O'Farrell has a singular knack for sensing the magnetic fields that push and pull people in love, and in The Hand That First Held Mine, she summons those invisible forces to tell two stories. The first is the spirited journey ...

18.     Let's Take the Long Way Home: A Memoir of Friendship
by Gail Caldwell
Random House
August 10, 2010
Hardcover
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Amazon Best Books of the Month, August 2010: "The flaw is the thing we love." Of all the passages worthy of dog-earing (or highlighting) in Let's Take the Long Way Home (and there are many), this one is the most powerful wellspring. It captures the very thing we hope ...

19.     Worth Dying For
by Lee Child
Delacorte Press
October 19, 2010
Hardcover
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Price:    $17.56
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Amazon Best Books of the Month, October 2010: You'd think that after 14 novels featuring hardscrabble hero, Jack Reacher, Lee Child's pulse-pounding series would start showing signs of wear. It is nothing short of remarkable that Child is not only able to continually reinvent his ex-military cop, but that ...

20.     WAR
by Sebastian Junger
Twelve
May 11, 2010
Hardcover

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Evan Thomas and Sebastian Junger: Author One-on-One In this Amazon exclusive, we brought together authors Sebastian Junger and Evan Thomas and asked them to interview each ...

21.     Skippy Dies: A Novel
by Paul Murray
Faber & Faber
August 31, 2010
Hardcover
Amazon Best Books of the Month, September 2010: Seabrook College is an all-boys Catholic prep school in contemporary Dublin, where the founding Fathers flounder under a new administration obsessed with the school's "brand" and teachers vacillate between fear and apathy when faced with rooms full of texting, hyper-tense, hormone-fueled ...

22.     How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe: A Novel
by Charles Yu
3.5
Pantheon
September 7, 2010
Hardcover
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Lev Grossman Reviews How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe Lev Grossman is the author of the New York Times bestselling novel The Magicians. Read his review of How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe: The science-fictional universe in question ...
23.     One Day (Vintage Contemporaries Original)
    One Day (Vintage Contemporaries Original)
by David Nicholls
Vintage
June 15, 2010
Paperback
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Price:    $10.17
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From Publishers Weekly
The Hollywood-ready latest from Nicholls (The Understudy) makes a brief pit stop in book form before its inevitable film adaptation. (It's already in development.) The episodic story takes place during a single day each year for two decades in the lives of Dex and Em. Dexter, the louche public ...

24.     Country Driving: A Journey Through China from Farm to Factory
by Peter Hessler
Harper
February 9, 2010
Hardcover

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Amazon Best Books of the Month, February 2010: There is, as everyone knows, no place in the world changing as fast, and at such scale, as China. Accounts of the upheaval can be breathless and even alarming, but Peter Hessler is the calmest and most companionable of correspondents. In ...

25.     Full Dark, No Stars
by Stephen King

Scribner
November 9, 2010
Hardcover

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Amazon Best Books of the Month, November 2010: When a master of horror and heebie-jeebies like Stephen King calls his book Full Dark, No Stars, you know you’re in for a treat--that is, if your idea of a good time is spent curled up in ...