Monday November 5, 2007

Bookstack.

I’ve been meme-tagged. Via Stephen Anderson’s Poetpainter:

If you’re like me, you may have several books you’re reading at once. Or maybe not reading, but referencing and scanning. Either way, these are the books piled up on your desk or beside your bed or [wherever else you stack books]. These are the 5 or 6 books that you are ‘in the middle of’.

So, what’s in your BookStack?

Exhibit A:

My BookStack

  • The Design of Everyday Things by Don Norman. A must-read for any user experience designer. This is a thick, thick delicious sauce of brilliance with lots of insight into the way human beings think about the things they use.
  • What is a Designer: Things, Places, Messages by Norman Potter. I have to admit that I have to read everything in this book at least twice in order to get the gist of what he’s saying. Definitely not light reading.
  • Grid Systems: Principles of Organizing Type by Kimberly Elam. Haven’t even started this one yet, but it comes highly recommended.
  • Seventy-nine Short Essays on Design by Michael Bierut. If you’ve read Design Observer, you know Michael’s writing style. Witty, charming and insightful, Michael’s essays are both entertaining and educational. From his first meeting with Massimo Vignelli to how much he hates ITC Garamond, Michael tells design stories that are engaging and worthwhile.
  • Designing Interactions by Bill Moggridge. I just started this book and have found it to be a fascinating look at the history of interaction design, written by a man who was there from the beginning.
  • Beautiful Evidence Essential reading for any designer dealing with data representation. The visual style of the book and the ways that the visualization examples are printed in the book are amazing in and of themselves, not to mention Tufte’s writing and ideas on representing data through design.

So there you have it. Hopefully I’ll actually chew my way through this bookstack soon and be able to start another. Got any recommendations for my next round of eyeball exercises? What’s in your bookstack?

Commentary


Matt McInerney » 240 days ago #

I like the idea of the physical bookstack. It’d be an interesting comparison, one’s e-books/audiobook as opposed to hard copies, why one chooses each format. The physical books in front of me right now: The Areas of my Expertise, Hand Job: A Catalog of Type, Sin City, and 1984

Marco » 239 days ago #

I’ve got a couple of those…some good ones indeed – but perhaps you should be eating less…fibre?

Jared Christensen » 238 days ago #

Marco – It’s a pretty serious stack, but my last stack was more fun stuff like Tintin comics. :)

Lorenz » 236 days ago #

ha…that’s funny. i had borrowed grid systems from a teacher of mine for the summer vacations (9 weeks here in austria) and did not take one single look at it…although i’m pretty interested in grid-systems.

but i guess, there is always something, you’re more interested in…

so my bookstack looks like this:
Lord Of The Rings II (half-finished)
Lord Of The Rings III
PHP In A Nutshell (half-finished)

some goodies, that reside on my amazon-wishlists (hopefully not for ever) are:
Sketching User Experiences by Bill Buxton
Essential AS 3
and a buch of other AS, programming, interaction design related books…

Nate Klaiber » 227 days ago #

Though I have posted my book stack as well, you have a few in your stack that are in my Wish List and I hope to pick up in the near future.

I would be interested to hear your thoughts on Designing Interactions. I haven’t had a chance to peek at much of the guts of that book.

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