You don’t have to be Hugh Hefner to get excited about Hunt Slonem’s bunnies. Each day, the artist warms up by painting rabbits even Beatrix Potter would envy. Now, just in time for Easter, there’s a whole coffee-table book of them: glitterati’s “Bunnies,” with a foreword by John Berendt. Why his fascination with hares? “In the Chinese zodiac, my sign is the rabbit, so I am a rabbit,” says the artist. Having kept pets while growing up in Kittery, Maine, he’s learned to love all creatures great and small. (His biggest painted rabbit is 30 feet across.) He shares his homes in Manhattan and Louisiana with 60 parrots, many of them rescues, and says it’s the rare charity that doesn’t have a Slonem rabbit painting.
Here’s what this rabbit lover reads:
Lost Splendor
by Prince Felix Youssoupoff
This is by the man who killed Rasputin, and, yes, it took forever! Youssoupoff came from one of the richest families in tsarist Russia — his mother’s jewels were legendary. He married a niece to the tsar, so he was right in the thick of it, and he had a macaw that traveled with him. So, I bonded with that.
Cinderella and the Carpetbagger
by Grace Robbins
My friend Grace was married to [“Carpetbagger” novelist] Harold Robbins. She came from rather humble origins and was an extraordinary beauty in her youth. She was married to an alcoholic painter, and then Robbins found her. This is about his writing and their travel, parties and lifestyle in Hollywood and the South of France. It would make a great movie.
Night Sanctuary
by Monique van Vooren
She was the star of Andy Warhol’s movie “Frankenstein” and was a famous international singer. She was also very close friends with Rudolf Nureyev. This is a novel, but you can leave it to your imagination as to who the characters really are. It’s about everything I heard about the jet set of the 1970s.
Rabbit, Run
by John Updike
This is exquisitely written. It’s about dysfunction and struggle, and the early success of a young man — nicknamed Rabbit, in his high-school basketball heyday — who marries his high-school sweetheart and who is basically running away from life. It’s hard to pin yourself down when you know there’s something else in you.