REVIEWS BY DEANNA LARSON

Gift books that celebrate the best in life

The continued popularity of television makeover shows proves that style and lifestyle topics make fascinating, even inspiring entertainment. These lavishly illustrated books are another way to get and give the vicarious pleasure of a well-designed life.

O, so wonderful
Live Your Best Life: A Treasury of Wisdom, Wit, Advice, Interviews and Inspiration from O, the Oprah Magazine is the first annual compilation of articles and essays from O magazine, the print arm of the Oprah Winfrey empowerment empire. A hybrid of thoughtful, even poetic, nonfiction and succinct, quality service pieces emphasizing the beauty of "best self" and the power in personal growth, the magazine raises the bar for women's publications. Live Your Best Life saves readers the trouble of ripping out around 100 keepers on complex topics including dieting and health, dating and relationships, parenthood and family, mature life and giving back, by both famous and familiar (Francine Prose, Ann Patchett, Suze Orman, Dr. Phil) and lesser known but knowing writers. Proving that Oprah walks the walk, 100 percent of the profits from the book will benefit Angel Network, her charitable foundation that helps educate and advance women and children around the world.

Live Your Best Life: A Treasury of Wisdom, Wit, Advice, Interviews and Inspiration from O, the Oprah Magazine
By O Magazine
Oxmoor, $29.95
336 pages
ISBN 0848731050

Passion for fashion
The photographer's lens magnifies both personality and era, the seen and unseen. Richard Avedon, staff photographer for Harper's Bazaar, Vogue and The New Yorker, was one of the most influential photographers of the 20th century, famous for his revealing portraits of women. About 125 tritone and color photographs shot during his decades-long career are compiled in Woman in the Mirror 1945-2004. Avedon redefined the fashion photograph, making clothes another prop in his layered, staged scenarios where even the flare of a tulle skirt acted as punctuation. His photographs of fashion models in the '40s and '50s embody that formal and glamorous sartorial age in highly dramatic scenes mixing high and low, like his picture of a model clad in Balenciaga standing in a brick-lined alley in Le Marais, Paris, as acrobats perform tricks above her well-coiffed head. His portraits during the '60s (Janis Joplin, Brigitte Bardot, Claude and Paloma Picasso), '70s and '80s (fashion editor Polly Mellen in a too-tight skirt, the writer Marguerite Duras shrugging in ankle boots and a lumberjack shirt) continued to capture women ever more candidly at the intersection of fascinating and dangerous. That mood is summed up by a shot of leggy model Stephanie Seymour caught in mid-fall off high heels—and still luminous in a Karl Lagerfeld dress for Chanel—in a moment that surely broke a bone.

Woman in the Mirror 1945-2004
By Richard Avedon
Abrams, $65
248 pages
ISBN 0810959623

Style maven Carolyne Roehm captures readers' attention form the start in Presentations: A Passion for Gift Wrapping with her confession that she's held onto paper, tags, ribbons, cards and ornaments gathered on international travels for 30 years, "knowing that the right time and occasion will come along for me to use them." This illustrated guide is all about finding that perfect moment, then packaging a gift to capture the anticipation and pleasure in the eyes of the receiver. Roehm, author of At Home with Carolyne Roehm, uses nature's palette and a somewhat smug knowledge of art history to embellish boxes and bags with fresh flowers, sugared fruit, postcards of famous masterpieces, sumptuous velvet and taffeta ribbons and gold leaves, even making a moss teddy bear to hold a young friend's birthday gift and using her computer to create a shirting-stripe wrapping paper (brief how-to and sources sections in the back of the book help more hapless crafters). But Roehm isn't above using rubber stamps, stickers, artificial flowers, freezer paper and other inexpensive materials to turn even the simplest gift into an occasion.

Presentations: A Passion for Gift Wrapping
By Carolyne Roehm
Broadway, $29.95
192 pages
ISBN 0767921127

Home and garden
The store that stained the American home espresso now gives its fans even more to drool over in Pottery Barn Home. Basically one long, luxurious PB catalog, this coffee table (in espresso wood, of course) book is a guide to the clean, contemporary look that has made the store and its mix-and-match furniture and accessories a hit. Broken down into typical living areas of the house, more than 600 glossy photographs illustrate a variety of room décor options in the modern to contemporary country vein, with sidebars that dissect the design decisions for easy imitation. New homeowners and amateur decorators can learn the basics in back-of-book sections on selecting furniture, fittings, fabrics and window treatments; determining room layouts; and using color, texture and pattern in interiors. But the book functions best as an aspirational blueprint to modern, yet relaxed and accessible interior design.

Pottery Barn Home
By Clay Ide
Oxmoor, $39.95
368 pages
ISBN 0848727657

If the formal lines of Versailles, Sissinghurst Castle or the gardens of Kyoto fertilize your horticultural aspirations, then the imaginative gardens in The New Garden Paradise: Great Private Gardens of the World will raise the bar for your backyard. Edited by the incomparable Dominique Browning, essayist and editor-in-chief of House & Garden magazine, the book declares that the last decade has produced exceptionally talented and progressive landscape architects and designers and supports that premise with detailed, breathless text and phenomenal photos of 35 personal paradises full of tangible innovation that blooms and sways in the breeze. While pretentious design descriptors like "lush and sensual," "ruthlessly discriminating" and "tour de force" are somewhat distracting, the gardens themselves remain as mysterious and elusive as a good novel or poem. Caught in various moods and seasons and organized into categories including New Classicism, Personal Visions and the Cottage Garden Reinvented, these gardens ultimately surpass words to stir the pure feeling, according to Dutch garden designer Piet Oudolf, "that people long for."

The New Garden Paradise: Great Private Gardens of the World
By Dominique Browning
Norton, $59.95
464 pages
ISBN 0393059391

Deanna Larson writes from Nashville.