Summer reading

Between running a design business and a family of four, it's a challenge to find vacation time; I mean a real vacation that lasts for a week or more. This summer I'm going to combine work and pleasure - an idea that will buy some down time for me and my family and provide home readers with advice on how to enjoy the summer and learn about decor at the same time.

I am sitting on a beach in Cape Cod, iced tea in hand, surrounded by 5 design-lifestyle books - is this any way to make a living? Here is my review of each volume along with a rating of SPF 3 (book requires very little time to read and enjoy) to SPF 45 (this is a book you will want to spend a good long time with). Enjoy.

Pottery Barn Storage and Display, text by Martha Fay, Carol Endler Sterbenz, Genevieve A. Sterbenz, publisher Oxmoor House
You have to admire the pluck of a decorating book that promises to improve the quality of your life. But, as Pottery Barn Storage and Display so aptly attests, we all function better when our living and working environments are efficiently organized. No one wants to waste time each morning searching for car keys or be disappointed when a favourite dress is not where you think you last put it. The book's basic premise "there is an art to organization" is brilliantly illustrated. Storage and display ideas - ranging from kitchen to baths, stairways to laundry rooms - are smart and attainable. Most importantly the suggestions are offered up within the context of complete room settings. Not surprisingly Pottery Barn's furniture figures prominently but the "Room Resource" guide which lists all the furniture by name also includes suggested paint colours making this much more then self serving advertorial tome.
SPF 45

The Cabin, Dale Mulfinger and Susan E. Davis, publisher The Taunton Press
From rustic woodland retreat to modernist masterpiece, basic elemental structures are celebrated in this homage to the cabin. According to cabinologist (I never heard of one either) Dale Mulfinger, retreating to these tight, safe quarters in the woods, by the water, and in the mountains, gives us the pleasures of an older, slower life-style. The Cabin features 37 unique retreats, lovingly documented with descriptive text, floor plans, and colour photography. If you aspire to a Hampton's beach house or an Aspen chalet this may not be the book for you. If on the other hand you are curious to know how a log cabin is built, what are the basic requirements of cabin living, or how architect Frank Lloyd Wright would design a cabin, this book is the antidote to cabin fever.
SPF 30

Living in Morocco, Barbara and Rene Stoeltie, publisher Taschen
Taschen is a publishing house known for its intimate pictorial portraits and destination décor books. Nearly always at the top of my Christmas wish list, a Taschen book is accompanied by an impressive sticker price - one indication of the quality. Living in Morocco is a truly satisfying coffee table book, beckoning the idle to explore its pages and swaying readers to return again and again. The photography is the main story and breathtaking images of desert, sea, and décor are large (often full-page) and frequently combined with intricate details blown up to an exquisite scale. So enticing is the photography, you can almost imagine the heady scent of roses or the aroma of lamb stew coming from the tagine as you turn the pages. The descriptive text is provided in English, French, and German making this a great gift choice for the jet-setting linguist in your life. One word of caution, if you've never been to Morocco, Living in Morocco will be a dangerous temptation.
SPF 15

Essentially Lilly, a guide to colorful entertaining, Lilly Pulitzer and Jay Mulvaney, published Harper Resource, an imprint of Harper Collins Publishers Laced with memories and anecdotes offering a glimpse into the good life, author Lilly Pulitzer's Essentially Lilly, a guide to colorful entertaining is so much more than its title suggests. Lilly, the fashion icon behind the dress that bears her name has grown up in the rarefied world of the well to do in Palm Beach and New York City and her book is as colorful as the pink and green combination she is famous for. In Essentially Lilly there are recipes - the Baked Banana French Toast with ginger maple syrup is doable and delicious - but more intriguing is the information essential to the "well to do" and the "wishing to do". If you find yourself on a boat for example (it's a boat not a ship - a ship cannot fit on a boat but a boat can fit on a ship) do you know that it's a galley not a kitchen, a head not a bathroom, lines not ropes, a cabin not a bedroom, and a berth not a bed? Lilly knows. Or, when the cook has a day off and you must have breakfast in bed surrounded by glorious views, do you know which inns are the most charming? Lilly knows. Lilly knows which golf courses are for "the girls". Lilly knows how to host a Derby Do (that's Kentucky) with mint juleps, sweet spiced pecans, ham biscuits, and macadamia-coconut derby tarts. Lilly knows and now we know too. Thanks Lilly.
SPF 6

Simple Home Solutions, from the editors of Martha Stewart Living, publisher Clarkson/Potter
How could I resist all the "good things" in Simple Home Solutions? Martha may be down but most of us agree she is not out. Her latest compilation offers clever solutions to common household dilemmas such as how to remove a stubborn lid from a jar when it just won't budge, how to quick peel a tomato, how to re-crisp soggy crackers, and how to keep natural fibre carpets from slipping. Some of the ideas are old favourites - how to create a string dispenser from an upside down flowerpot and some of the ideas are new because you've forgotten them, an open box of baking soda placed in the refrigerator absorbs odors.
SPF 3