paper, pages, pavements

Cold weather, credit crunch, Amazon being such an addictive website, Book Mongers second hand bookshop in Brixton, a broken bike wheel … there are many reasons why January is a month of reading. This is what I’ve been checking in January:

Narcissuss and Goldmund by Hermann Hesse.
This has been on the list of ones to read for about 8 years, and I’ve finally reached – wish I’d read it years ago! Narcissuss and Goldmund begin as monks in a German monestary – Narcissuss is something of an intellectual, dedicating his life to academic study and the philosophical world of ideas. Goldmund however, is attracted to the life of beauty, sensory and emotional experience. The two are close but irreconcilable friends. The novel focusses on Goldmund’s coming of age and journey into manhood and self-acceptance. Hesse addresses the interplay between the intellect vs the sensory brilliantly, but ties it in well with a rapid narrative tale, so while the ideas behind the novel are weighty, the story is brisk and highly enjoyable.

Boring Boring Boring Boring Boring
This book was listed on a design blog somewhere as one of the best publications of 2008, so I thought I’d check it out. Turns out it’s one of those novels that has some mad typographical business going on and loads of illustration dotted about the place. The story actually starts on page 30, prior to that there are lots of scribblings of the word ‘boring’. This kind of schtick is sniffed at in literary circles, but I find it all rather enjoyable. There are some exceptional novels out there that mess around with text and the reader. Obviously, The Life And Times of Tristram Shandy is the pioneer, but others such as House Of Leaves, The Raw Shark Texts, The Cheese Monkey’s and even The Corrections (which uses every writing technique imaginable) all use typography as device with great effect .
This is all just a justification for buying the book – I haven’t read it yet!

The Interrogation – J.M.G. Le Clezio
This grabbed me because, in over a decade of selling books, I’ve never heard of this author at all. Worse than not knowing who he is, is that he seems to be writing in the vein of Sartre, De Beauvoir and Camus – writers I am a bit obsessed with, so I basically missed him completely. Turns out most of his books have been long out of print, then he was awarded a Nobel last year, so everything has been re-published.

Designing Design – Kenya Hara
Muji, Japan, Minimalism, Simplicity, Extreme Function, Naoto Fukasawa, Jasper Morrison… elegant, serene and beautiful objects. Perfect.

My copy just landed on my desk – this is a new edition of the bestselling book 20th Century Design, now revamped and updated for the 21st Century. Pages and pages of Design Classics and History here, as advocated by the Design Museum in London. I commissioned the new cover design from Studio Myerscough, so you better like it! The book will be on sale in all decent bookshops next month, and obviously available from here.

Solid new book from Design Museum Director Deyan Sudjic, grab a copy here: http://designmuseumshop.com/whats-new/language-of-things