Category: Books & Reviews

Literature, culture, fiction, non-fiction, writers, authors and the craft of writing.

Everything Flows

Books & Reviews / Culture / History & Biography / Literature / What I'm Reading NowLeave a comment

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Tonight’s book-with-wine discussion is about Vasily Grossman‘s novel, Everything Flows (New York Review Book, USA, 2009). It was his final work, and left unfinished at the time of his death, in 1964. It’s not a difficult read, only 250 pages, but it isn’t easy. Readers unfamiliar with Soviet history, particularly the Stalin era, will not understand much of it. And it’s hardly a cheerful work. Not that everything Russian is a slit-your-wrist work, but it’s certainly Dostoevsky-like in its darkness. Grossman was a Soviet war correspondent during WWII and travelled with the Red Army through Moscow, Stalingrad, Kursk then into ……… click below for more ↓

Frutiger vs Palatino

Books & Reviews / Fonts & Layout / Typography / What I'm Reading Now2 Comments

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In a recent review of Sarah Hyndman’s book, Why Fonts Matter, I casually commented that, You can no more adequately comment on the relevance and impact on the viewer of, say, Frutiger versus Palatino, without discussing the design and layout in which it is set… The point of which was not to single out those two typefaces as much as to suggest the debate between how readers respond to sans-serif and serif faces (respectively). Fruitiger is a modern, humanist sans-serif type designed by Adrian Frutiger in 1975. Palatino is a serif type designed by Hermann Zapf, in 1948, to simulate ……… click below for more ↓

Reading Letters: Designing for Legibility

Books & Reviews / Language & Grammar / Typography / What I'm Reading NowOne Comment

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The human brain is truly a remarkable machine.* We can see a bunch of lines and in that same brain turn them into an M and know it’s not a V or an N or a K or W. Yet M isn’t a ‘thing’ – it’s an abstract representation of a sound that itself has no concrete meaning outside the Mmmmm of meditation. When you mentally assemble a bunch of other lines and sticks and squiggles, those sounds form a larger abstraction: a word: MOON. Now we have substance. And that can be used to create even larger collections of ……… click below for more ↓

Why Fonts Matter

Arts / Books & Reviews / Fonts & Layout / Language & Grammar / Marketing / Typography / What I'm Reading Now3 Comments

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The first problem I have when receiving a new book on typography is that I spend far too much time looking up the typefaces described or sampled therein, and searching for them online, instead of reading. Then I start looking at (and critiquing) the typefaces chosen for the book itself. It’s a trees-not-the-forest kind of wonderment that comes over me. As I am wont to do, I sit back on my deck in the evening sun, glass of wine in hand, and a large pile of previously-purchased typography books beside me, so I can make the introductions. Probably not necessary, ……… click below for more ↓

Power, ambition, backstabbing

Culture / Language & Grammar / Shakespeare / What I'm Reading NowLeave a comment

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Power grabs. Backstabbing. Lust. Ambition. Conniving. Hypocrisy. A weak but well-meaning ruler. A grasping second in command who viciously usurps power. A bureaucrat jealous of the nobles, jockeying for power and trading favours to get his way. Sleazy nobles selling their loyalty for petty trinkets. A cast of despicable, grasping characters all out for themselves, oblivious of the cost of their machinations on the common people, and willing to tread on anyone who gets in their way. Machiavellian plots and secret meetings. The destruction of state institutions and facilities. Heads rolling. Collingwood Council? No: Shakespeare’s three-part extravaganza, Henry VI. Although you have ……… click below for more ↓

The Postmortal

Books & Reviews / Culture / Manners & Civility / Scifi and fantasy / Social Order & Disorder / What I'm Reading NowLeave a comment

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Mortality. We all get it. It’s the one one incurable ailment all humans succumb to without a chance of succor. Mortality is always 100% fatal. No medicine, no therapy, no diet cure or magic pill. But as you read this, scientists are researching, seeking clues to unlock the mystery and, potentially, cure us of aging,of death by mortality. And they might achieve it. Having officially reached the two-thirds mark in my life this past weekend (based on my family history, my health and my lifestyle…), mortality is more often in my own thoughts these days. Not morbidly so, but certainly more ……… click below for more ↓

More relevant words from Nixonland

Collingwood / Council / Ethics and behaviour / Politics / US Politics / What I'm Reading NowOne Comment

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Once again, as I continue to read through Anthony Summers’ biography of Richard Nixon, The Arrogance of Power (Penguin Books, 2000), I am struck by the uncanny resonance of many comments quoted within it to local politics. It’s like people living in the 1950s had a device through which they could view the politics of today, see the politicians on our own council and were reflecting on them, instead of their contemporaries. Some time viewing device right out of science fiction. Of course, we know they are speaking and writing of Richard Nixon and his activities, but nonetheless… the word ……… click below for more ↓

Moses Revealed

Books & Reviews / Faith / Legends & Myths / ReligionLeave a comment

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He was a murderer, a sorcerer, a slave owner. He betrayed his adopted family and led a rebellion against them. He was a charismatic firebrand, an oracle, and a misfit. He fluctuated between fits of rage and periods of meekness. He led his forces to commit what today we’d call war crimes and acts of genocide. He gave out laws and yet he ruled autocratically. He was disfigured and wore a mask to cover his face for the latter part of his life. He brought down biological warfare on his enemies, and battled among them in a duel of magic. ……… click below for more ↓

Alger Hiss, Richard Nixon and Collingwood

Collingwood / Council / History & Biography / Politics / US Politics / What I'm Reading NowOne Comment

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Remember the case of Alger Hiss? I didn’t think so. It was before your time. Mine too. But let me jog your memory, just in case you’re older than I am. Or perhaps just well read in recent history. Hiss was a US government employee, a diplomat at the centre of a House Un-American Advisory Committee (HUAC) investigation in 1950. He was accused of being a Soviet spy and eventually sent to jail (coincidentally on the same day George Orwell died…). Ring a bell? How about the Pumpkin Papers? Remember HUAC? You know, the committee investigating Communism in America, the one that ……… click below for more ↓

Demagogues and dictators

Books & Reviews / History & Biography / International politics / Politics / US Politics / War & Military / What I'm Reading NowLeave a comment

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I’m not sure why they fascinate me, but I’ve been reading about demagogues and dictators for many decades now and still can’t seem to get enough of them. Of course, it’s in part because I like to read about politics in all its forms and fashions, but there’s something more than just celebrity watching with these. There’s the psychology of propaganda and mass movements, the inoculation of widespread ideologies, the use of technology and mass culture. The period between the two World Wars in particular intrigues me because it was an era of great social change. Upheaval, really. The rise of the ……… click below for more ↓

Dear Amazon…

Books & Reviews / Humour & Satire / Personal ReminiscencesOne Comment

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Dear Amazon: Hello, it’s me, Ian. Yes, that’s right, the crazy guy who orders all those books. Yeah, the history books, the science books, the philosophy books, the ones on leadership and politics… you know, the guy who spends at least $100 a month buying books from you. Plus don’t forget the pasta maker, the PC games, the laptop battery, the kitchenware, the ukulele tuners, the gaming mice, drawing tablet, Kindle and other stuff, I’ve bought from you… 26 orders from you in the last six months alone. Yeah, that Ian. Well, I’m at it again. I just can’t get enough. ……… click below for more ↓

The gems of Salomé

Books & Reviews / Language & Grammar / Personal Reminiscences / Poetry & LyricsLeave a comment

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I was perhaps 11 or 12 when I first encountered Oscar Wilde’s play, Salomé. Some of it, at least. At the time, I knew nothing of Wilde, his writing, or even much about theatre in general. After all, I was in grade seven or eight. It would be a few years before I encountered (and developed a passion for) Shakespeare and other playwrights. But Wilde I actually discovered first. Faced with the dramatic challenges of their own – my mother was either still in hospital or had only recently been released and was struggling with the paralyzing results of her stroke – my parents ……… click below for more ↓

The Leadership Crisis

Books & Reviews / Collingwood / Council / Ethics and behaviour / Municipal Politics / What I'm Reading NowLeave a comment

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In his latest book, The Leadership Crisis, Gord Hume defines seven characteristics – the Seven Cs – of great political leadership*. See how many you can recognize as attributes within our own council: Competencies, including people, organizational, business and strategic. Character, and its traits, values and virtues; integrity. Commitment, including aspiration, engagement, perseverance and sacrifice. Charisma, that unquantifiable attribute that political leaders either have or don’t. Communication, through effective messaging that inspires, informs and influences. Context, an understanding of what’s going on around them. Culture, and how to develop, create, change and advance that culture I think you can see ……… click below for more ↓

The Purple Thread

Critical Thinking / Philosophy / What I'm Reading NowLeave a comment

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Roman men wore togas for formal occasions. The basic toga – toga alba or toga pura – was a simple garment of plain white wool. It was undyed and unadorned. White was the colour required by Roman sumptuary law for citizens’ togas. This basic toga was also the garment draped on a boy when he went through his ceremony to manhood – called the toga virilis during that ceremony. A dark brown or grey toga pulla or toga sordida was reserved for periods of mourning. A fancier, bleached toga was worn by candidates for political office – the toga candida. ……… click below for more ↓

The Myth of Persecution

Books & Reviews / Christianity / Critical Thinking / Faith / Religious intolerance / What I'm Reading NowLeave a comment

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I just finished reading The Myth of Persecution by theology professor Candida Moss (Harper One, New York, 2013). I picked it up because of my general interest in theology, but also my more specific interest in early church history. I didn’t realize when I started to read it that this book was at the centre of a huge kerfuffle in the Christian community over its message and its accuracy. In short, Ms. Moss argues that while the early Christians in the first four centuries were often the victims of violence, and even some persecution, they were not the targets of ……… click below for more ↓

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