Personal Space Book

If you like big home-design coffee-table books with sumptuous photos of chic interiors and gushy but vapid copy, and if you like those reductive but irresistible "personality" tests that show up with regularity in magazines like Cosmopolitan and Mademoiselle, you'll most likely love Personal Space. Here, British lifestyle journalist Worsley declares that there are six basic types of living styles--Pure, Maverick, Wild, Sensuous, Easy, and Urban--and throws in a few self-quizzes to help you determine which is right for you. But this flimsy faux paradigm is really just an excuse for a flashy, splashy interiors viewbook that nonetheless offers up some delicious view of the usual spaces: living room, bedroom, bathroom, hall, and kitchen. Some have luminary lineage, like T.E. Lawrence's book room at Cloud Hill, Vanessa Bell's charmingly stenciled-to-death farmhouse, and the Hearst Castle in San Simeon, California, designed by Julia Morgan--although it's frustrating when Worsley refers to famous interiors without showing us good pictures of them (or any at all), and often it's hard to be sure if the famous interiors mentioned in captions are indeed those featured in the photos the captions are keyed to. Add in Worsley's Britishly tortured syntax ("This book is about how you can develop the ability to hold the style of your home together by the force of your personality"), and this admittedly stylish book ends up feeling like a $30 flip through a glossy shelter rag. --Timothy Murphy Read More