Adaptive Path shuts down for the last two weeks of the year, and I’m taking a few days off at the end of that, so I have three weeks of reading (and of course writing) ahead of me. I have a stack of books I’ve been neglecting for a long time as I suffer through this strange period of not reading very much. Thus, I’m hoping to tackle the following over break:
- The Victorian Internet
by Tom Standage
- Essential McLuhan
- The Algebraist
- The English Patient
- A Storm of Swords
- and undoubtedly some of the books on my wishlist will make their way into my Christmas stocking this year and crowd these out.
Half the fun of posting (and reading other people’s) book lists is discovering the books you should be reading. So. What else should I be reading?
The Victorian Internet is absolutely great. Read it about 8 years ago and loved it. Some other tips:
A nice short read is The Plenitude by Rich Gold. The artist/researcher who was at Xerox Parc and died just 4 years ago. Nice illustrations talking about different hats (engineer, artist and more)
http://www.amazon.com/Plenitude-Creativity-Innovation-Simplicity-Technology/dp/0262072890
If you really want to delve into some gestural stuff. We had a nice PhD thesis by Caroline Hummels about 7 years ago called Gestural design tools (PDF, 6 Mb)
http://www2.io.tudelft.nl/id-studiolab/research/pdfPool/2000/00Humthesis.pdf
I really would recommend Bill Buxton’s latest book Sketching User Experiences (below link to review on my page), partly because I am in it, but also because it’s just a great, positive, energizing read.
http://forinspirationonly.com/news/2007/05/29/sketching-user-experiences/
If you enjoyed Scott McCloud’s original masterpiece Understanding Comics, you may also want to take a look at his latest book Making Comics, which is a surprisingly good rebound (I didn’t care much for Reinventing comics). Vulnerable, insightful and with plenty of content.
Also, if you have a large table and like comics, you may want to take a look at”Dream of the Rarebit Fiend” . I just received mine and it’s the huge (the size of a coffee table) and contains and introduces a series of fascinating comics written by Winsor McCay (best known for Little Nemo) between 1904 and 1907.
http://www.boingboing.net/2007/11/06/dream-of-the-rarebit.html
That’s it for now, you may also want to take a look at my work wishlist (for inspiration only)… Enjoy!
ttp://www.amazon.com/gp/registry/wishlist/11D64BVSKLRGG
Where I put your wishlist, I meant to put mine… (some fine urls)
http://www.amazon.com/gp/registry/wishlist/1Q98DBGH9COLE
If you haven’t read any of China Mieville’s books, get Perdido Street Station. It’s amazing.