In a desperate act, an unemployed professional takes a job night-clerking in a weird old bookstore. Customers are rare - most visitors instead stop to borrow from an immense and mysterious not-for-purchase collection shelved in the store. Then Clay's customer-less boredom and his attempt to impress a cute girl-hacker cause him to bumble upon the answer to a puzzle he didn't even know he was solving - and the start of an epic quest.
This book is like Dan Brown's stories ... but replace the religious iconography with book nerds and typography: old-school books versus new-fangled computers, a secret underground library, a shadow sect, and the ultimate search for truth in a coded codex vitae. Intrigue, suspense and a secret book club!
But I'm being unnecessarily flippant about it: this is actually a good book that I enjoyed immensely. Despite the unlikely trajectory of the story, it's not cheesy and the characters are all very true to life. Clay's biggest asset is the same as that of any good librarian: he doesn't have to know everything, he just has to know how (or with whom) to find it. Facilitation as super-strength!
Showing posts with label typography. Show all posts
Showing posts with label typography. Show all posts
Tuesday, April 30, 2013
Tuesday, September 4, 2012
Just My Type: A Book About Fonts by Simon Garfield
Yes, I am that big a font nerd - I not only paid for this book, but also savored it in little bites so as to draw it out almost three months.
If you love typography, then you don't need me to tell you how fascinating this is. For the rest of you - fonts and their good/bad selection affect nearly every part of your life. Imagine if road signs were hard to read - you'd crash trying to read them, or drive past your intended destination and get hopelessly lost and then be eaten by a bear. Either way, you die. And it would all be the font's fault.
The history of type goes back more than 500 years, to woodsmiths carving out EVERY SINGLE LETTER, backwards. Can you imagine: it makes you appreciate the simplification of drop-down menus in Word, now, doesn't it?
This is a really good book about an invisible art. You know, if you're into that kinda thing. :)
If you love typography, then you don't need me to tell you how fascinating this is. For the rest of you - fonts and their good/bad selection affect nearly every part of your life. Imagine if road signs were hard to read - you'd crash trying to read them, or drive past your intended destination and get hopelessly lost and then be eaten by a bear. Either way, you die. And it would all be the font's fault.
The history of type goes back more than 500 years, to woodsmiths carving out EVERY SINGLE LETTER, backwards. Can you imagine: it makes you appreciate the simplification of drop-down menus in Word, now, doesn't it?
This is a really good book about an invisible art. You know, if you're into that kinda thing. :)
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