Views from Windows Find Their Way Into Two Books

If you like interesting or attractive scenery, but particularly if you enjoy looking at it through windows, 2009 is going to be a red letter year for you, given that there are two new books available that provide just that. First up is Matteo Pericoli‘s The City Out My Window: 63 Views on New York, where the artist asked well-known New Yorkers to let him come in and recreate the view from the windows they look out of everyday, be that at home or at their offices. The participants include Nora Ephron, David Byrne, Stephen Colbert, and a whole host of others (New York‘s Daily Intel has a nice slideshow of a few — you can also take a peek at a few more pieces at Google Books, though some of the image scans are a bit wonky). Second is a bound edition of images from political writer/blogger Andrew Sullivan, taken from the regular series on his The Daily Dish, “The View from Your Window” (the book, appropriately, will take the same name, along with the caption “The world as seen by the readers of one blog.”) Instead of heading to a publisher, Sullivan decided to ask his readers if they would want such a book. Because the response was good, he decided to go the self-publishing route, getting on board with Blurb.com to help put it out, all the while asking his readers for pledges to buy the book to try and drive the costs down and be able to print extra copies. It has ultimately arrived at $16.25 and is set to ship on December 3rd.

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