Awesome Books

With all of the movie fan art and adult parodies of Little Golden Books out there, the kid’s book series decided to make their own book based on a decidedly non-kid-friendly movie. A Is for Alien: An ABC Book offers a lighthearted retelling of Ridley Scott’s sci-fi/horror classic while teaching the alphabet. Pre-orders start shipping 7.2023.

Packed with biographical insight, the graphic novel Miles Davis and the Search for the Sound is also jazz for the eyes. Author/cartoonist Dave Chisholm — a Jazz Trumpet doctorate recipient from the Eastman School of Music — takes readers on a visual journey through Davis’ dynamic evolution from childhood through his mastery of jazz improvisation.

The hardcover book is filled with 100 Star Wars illustrations for you to embellish with crayons, colored pencils, or markers. The images include fanciful scenes inspired by classic movie moments, along with mandalas and other repeating Star Wars patterns to color in.

Insight Editions offers a glimpse inside the mind of filmmaker and adventurer James Cameron. The 392-page coffee table book is packed with exclusive images from Cameron’s personal archives, revealing concepts that led to classics like The Terminator, Aliens, Titanic, Avatar, and other films that were never produced.

Budding artists are often encouraged to draw trees for quick sketching success. Drawing Trees branches out from that lesson with 30 meditative guided drawings of trees, leaves, and other identifiers. Trace the images with a pen or pencil to grow your skills and knowledge of tree species from Black Walnut to White Ash.

Whether you’re a DIYer or a construction pro, understanding math and geometry is critical. DEWALT’s reference guide includes 42 pages of useful equations and rules which will help you measure twice and cut once. Made from durable, toolbox-friendly materials with a spiral-bound edge. Also available for plumbing and wiring.

Carnivores, you need this cookbook in your kitchen. Created by Cook’s Illustrated, the book Meat Illustrated provides a detailed yet understandable guide to working with every kind of cut of meat. The 440-page hardcover book is organized into 72 different cuts and includes more than 300 kitchen-tested recipes for beef, pork, lamb, and veal.

Are you or someone you know a fan of classic TV shows? The book Behind the Screens: Illustrated Floor Plans and Scenes from the Best TV Shows of All Time features artist Iñaki Aliste Lizarralde’s hand-drawn floor plans and architectural renderings of iconic sets from 35 shows, including The Golden Girls, Friends, Seinfeld, and Sesame Street.

Now you’re cooking with candy! This cookbook offers 40 dessert recipes that incorporate Toblerone candy. The unique mix of Swiss milk chocolate, nougat, honey, and almonds takes your sweet treats to another level compared to ordinary chocolate. Toblerone brownies and cupcakes, oh my!

Designers and artists looking for a source of inspiration would do well to add Vault Editions‘ idea books to their library. This two-volume series features nearly 1000 engravings, etchings, and woodblock prints from the 17th through 19th centuries. It’s loaded with skulls, animals, and vintage objects and includes high-res downloads.

Ready to challenge your brain? Created by Google Software Engineering Manager and puzzle fanatic Willa Chen, this book is filled with 135 of the toughest puzzles money can buy. There’s a good variety, too, from cryptograms to word searches to Sudoku, crosswords, and more.

Just because you’re away from your kitchen doesn’t mean you can’t serve up an amazing meal for your family and friends. Emma Frisch’s cookbook for the outdoors includes recipes and menus and shopping and equipment lists to help make dining under the stars a genuinely memorable experience.

Artist Isaac Dushku loves maps so much that he goes by the nickname Lord of Maps. After making a Highest Mountains Print that shows the tallest mountains in each US state, he teamed up with his brothers Gideon and Alex to create a book that captures the same idea using cutout pages. The Highpoints has a lay-flat binding for easy coffee-table viewing.

Video game and console collector Tristan Ibarra follows up his Video Game Field Guide with a four-volume compendium packed with nearly 2400 pages of consoles, handhelds, tabletops, and checklists for thousands of games, both popular and rare. Available in digital or hardcopy editions.

We rarely need to print things these days. But for the first 40+ years of personal computing, printers were commonplace. And they were some of the most frustrating pieces of equipment ever. The book Shitty Printers catalogs and rips apart some of the worst offenders, from cheap home inkjets to menacing tractor-feed machines.

Syracuse University Libraries’ Preservation Department shows us how to save a water-logged book and restore it back to its original condition. All you need is some paper towels, a fan, and some weights. You should also store it in the freezer if you can’t work on it right away.