April 7, 2014 #An excellent library of typographical reading curated by David Reinfurt for his Princeton University Typography class.
October 23, 2013 #Lists of books from designers to inspire, to provide direction, to educate.
May 9, 2012 #Weekly picks for books that "that incorporate elements of magic, fantasy or the surreal ... cross conventional boundary lines of genre, style and historical period." Always happy to find the matrix that includes Rushdie, Rabelais, Helprin, Delany, &c.
April 22, 2011 #"Artificial intelligences will use deep-structure pattern-recognition, predictive modeling, and information theory to ensure each new trance state is popular enough to get upvoted on the hottest content-ranking platforms. "
September 20, 2010 #A New Arrivals list from Philadelphia's Brickbat Books June 2010. I feel this should be my Autumn syllabus: Bolano, George Saunders, Flann O'Brien, Gaddis, Sebald...
August 10, 2010 #On Formless Content, Definitive Content and designing with the options of printed matter or iPad, depending on content and disposability.
August 10, 2010 #On redesigning e-readers or how we read digital text. Of note:
"Show me the overlap of 10,000 readers' highlighted passages in a digital book. This is our ‘Cliff Notes.’ We don’t need Derek Sivers' brilliant summaries[14] anymore (sorry Derek!) — we’re collectively summarizing for each other as we read and mark our digital copies.
Show me a heat map of passages — ‘hottest’ to ‘coldest’. Which chapters in this Obama biography should I absolutely not miss?(Fig 7)
Let Stefan Sagmeister publicly share the passages he’s highlighted in the new Murakami Haruki novel. This is something I want to see. And I bet you do, too.
When I’m considering buying a book, show me how far the average reader gets. Do most readers get through the whole novel or give up halfway? How many notes do they take? How many passages do they highlight?"
July 17, 2005 #NAD C320BEE finally set up in the living room. Still need a phono preamp but CDs and iPod running smoothly through. Sound is suprising more natural as is the claim with NAD. All i need now are some speakers to gently allow these musicians/artists to take up residence in house and make their magic.
Reading Harper's this week, an interesting story about a young artist who eventually turns out to be A.Hitler. The protaganist gives him the chance to get in to art school as her dying powers allow. This changes the course of world events... much for the better.
Before that:
- Ellen Lupton's Thinking With Typography.
- Mark Helprin's short stories.
- Design (originally Psychology) of Everyday Things by Donald A. Norman.
- Call Of The Wild by Jack London (with more of his stories lined up).
- Turn of the Screw by Henry James.