Wednesday, April 18, 2012
Monday, April 16, 2012
While Mortals Sleep by Kurt Vonnegut
An excellent, but sadly posthumous, collection of previously unpublished Vonnegut short stories. The tales have a refreshing directness that was more common decades ago but is rare nowadays. I quite appreciated the varying human perspectives on the same situation, as well as the couple morality stories.
Recommend for Vonnegut fans (and if you're not a fan, start with Slaughterhouse-Five)
Recommend for Vonnegut fans (and if you're not a fan, start with Slaughterhouse-Five)
Sunday, April 15, 2012
Cultural Connectives by Rana Abou Rjeily
Abou Rjeily has produced an engaging work of design and basic Arabic language instruction. The author is trying to present a clear way for Latin alphabet people to understand written Arabic, and adapt to modern technologies and type by presenting a more streamlined and consistent Arabic alphabet.
Given that I have no plans to learn Arabic, you might wonder why I bothered at all. After reading the great review at Brain Pickings (which is far better than the one you are reading) I requested it from the library and a couple days later it was mine to peruse. I found it very easy to go through (the whole book only took about 45 minutes), informative (as I learned a few little facts), and very interesting from an artistic and typographic perspective.
Highly recommend for those interested in design, typography and, of course, learning Arabic.
(but you might want to just get it from the library)
Given that I have no plans to learn Arabic, you might wonder why I bothered at all. After reading the great review at Brain Pickings (which is far better than the one you are reading) I requested it from the library and a couple days later it was mine to peruse. I found it very easy to go through (the whole book only took about 45 minutes), informative (as I learned a few little facts), and very interesting from an artistic and typographic perspective.
Highly recommend for those interested in design, typography and, of course, learning Arabic.
(but you might want to just get it from the library)