From the look and feel of it, Jessica Kerwin Jenkins’s
Encyclopedia of the Exquisite: An Anecdotal History of Elegant Delights (Doubleday, 336 pages) is both a joyful holiday read and a delightful treasure by itself. As described by
Glamour magazine in its review of the book, it’s a “stylish little index of the facts you never knew you absolutely needed to know about one hundred of the most wonderful things in life—from frilly lingerie and champagne to dining al fresco to trapezes.”
Take a peek at just a few of the many beguiling subjects that
Encyclopedia of the Exquisite sensually explores: hot-air ballooning; picnicking and dining alfresco; collecting cupids, cherubs, and baby angels; wearing an all-black wardrobe to express elegant restraint; drinking champagne as an art; wearing frilly lingerie; accenting a dress with sequins; making origami; playing badminton; and whistling. It is, in the words of Hollywood film star Sarah Jessica Parker, “a delightful ode to everyday elegance.”
“Jenkins’s wittily curated selection emphasizes the rare and not often considered, with a dash of Julie Andrews’s ‘favorite things’ sensibility,” says Lily Koppel in her review of the ingeniously illustrated book in the December 3, 2010 issue of
The New York Times. “Along the way, tales are told about muses of the marvelous, from Madame de Staël to Yoko Ono... There are enough of these fancies in
Encyclopedia of the Exquisite to fill a castle of your own. It is a worthy trove.”
Read an excerpt from Jessica Kerwin Jenkins’s Encyclopedia of the Exquisite now!Read Lily Koppel’s review of Encyclopedia of the Exquisite in The New York Times now!ABOUT THE AUTHOR:Jessica Kerwin Jenkins was formerly the European editor of
W and a senior editor at
Women’s Wear Daily. She currently writes for
Vogue.
ANOTHER HOLIDAY READING:In his new book
Humorists: From Hogarth to Noël Coward (Harper, 228 pages), British historian Paul Johnson presents a highly engaging collection of biographical portraits of the Western world’s greatest wits and humorists, among them Benjamin Franklin, Charles Dickens, Toulouse-Lautrec, G.K. Chesterton, Damon Runyan, W.C. Fields, James Thurber, and the Marx Brothers. The world is cruel, Johnson says, and these comics “who can dry our tears, and force reluctant smiles to trembling lips, are more precious to us, if the truth be told, than all the statesmen and the generals and brainy people, even the great artists.”
Read an excerpt from Paul Johnson’s Humorists: From Hogarth to Noël Coward now!Read Dwight Garner’s “Laughing Matters: Discuss,” a review of Paul Johnson’s Humorists, in The New York Times now!
