What I Happen to Be Reading At the Moment

"A thirteen-year-old is a kaleidoscope of different personalities, if not in most ways a mere figment of her own imagination. At that age, what and who you are depends largely on what book you happen to be reading at the moment.”

 

While not 13 anymore, the desire to read almost anything and everything in order to read for fun and for experience is still around. I'm currently working on my PhD in a physical science, but I love to read and books are one of my non-science hobbies.

Just My Type: A Book about Fonts

Just My Type: A Book about Fonts - This book is a must read for anyone who is interested in graphic design, or who wondering why one edition of the same book is so much easier to read than another. Or someone who has ever read a piece of type set information anywhere ever.Just My Type covers history of type setting beginning with Gutenberg and ending with Ikea catalogs, Helvetica, and modern type design. The influence of type is emphasized, especially with underground and metro systems, in an accessible and interesting way. One of the very good features of the book is chapters dedicated to one particular font, usually specific fonts that were discussed other places in the book. The mixture of examining general trends in type with specific examples makes this biography of the stuff books are made of interesting and intriguing. The only issue I have with this books is that it was too short. A point in its favor was that it did not become overwrought or too involved in the minutiae of font history, but I would have liked some more detail or more history. One of my favorite chapters was a count down of the worst fonts currently in use, and another considering anachronistic font use in films. Type, fonts, and type design may seem like an obscure topic, but starting to notice carefully chosen fonts in book design and in the modern world makes reading Just My Type more than worth it.

Currently reading

Native Son
Richard Wright
The Great Glass Sea
Josh Weil
The Elder Edda
Andrew Orchard, Anonymous