our little family: good reads of 2007

design and non-fiction

Understanding Adobe Photoshop, by Richard Harrington, is my current favorite book on Adobe Photoshop. Which is my favorite software environment and preferred alternate world. This book has just enough discussion to help you understand a feature, but not so much detail that you lose your place. Perhaps this isn't the best newbie introduction out there, but if you have a bit of experience under your belt you'll appreciate it. This model of clear technical writing is a book that I turn to often.

The Atomic Chef, by Steven Casey, is a collection of stories about Bad Things that happened because of Bad Designs. If designers learned by storytelling around the campfire, the stories would sound something like this. Enjoyably readable in a train-wreck sort of way.

How the Mind Works, by Steven Pinker, touches on big questions of perception in a cheerful romp. This is an agreeable read about how the mind influences our interactions and personalities. Enjoyable for the layman (like me), but probably real neuroscientists read different books.

Information Dashboard Design, by Stephen Few, was a much more interesting and useful book than I expected it to be. It was full of examples of successful and unsuccessful data dashboard interfaces. There were screens filled with photo-realistic dials that didn't make any sense, and screens full of rather plain data that did. I kept wishing I had a project I could use this new knowledge on right away. If you are ever tasked with designing a screen of live data graphs and monitors, you'll want to take a look through this book.

Hard Facts, Dangerous Half-Truths, and Total Nonsense, by Jeffrey Pfeffer and Robert Sutton, is a blinkers-off look at business common-nonsense and what really seems to be happening. They touch on pay-for-performance, mergers, forced-ranking of employees to weed out the weak, and other popular MBA fodder. Readable and invigorating window on business folly.

A Brief Tour of Human Consciousness, by V.S. Ramachandran, touches on some remarkable examples from neuroscience. The science behind these case studies is presented conversationally. This is an easy-to-keep-reading book on deep research and deeper thinking.

Up the Organization, by Robert Townsend, is a book I kept seeing references to, so I checked it out from the library. The author, who led the reversal of fortune at Avis Rent-a-Car, is a real character. His invented title of "Chairman of the Executive Committee" for a former director edged out of power is classic. Funny and sharp-toothed, it's almost short enough to read in one sitting, but you'll need time to absorb it.

Why Buildings Fall Down, by Matthys Levy and Mario Salvadori, covers just that, with many examples, illustrations, and figures. I'm not an architect, but I am interested in design failures, and this book was readable and enjoyable. I understand that it's something of a classic in its field.

Shaping Things, by Bruce Sterling and designer Lorraine Wild, is a surprising short treatise on the future of product design, and is itself a remarkably well-designed product. I've read several of Bruce Sterling's fiction works, but I hadn't realized he was such a keen design observer.

The Elements of Typographic Style, by Robert Bringhurst, is probably the most influential non-fiction work I've read this year. I skimmed through the entire volume over a long evening, unable to put it down, and then returned to it again and again over the next few days to revisit and deepen. I was laying out the stylesheet for a website redesign at the time, and ended up scrapping much of what I had and starting over. This looks to be one of those books that gets worn out before I get tired of it.

fiction

In the Night Garden, by Catherynne Valente, was the best book I've read all year. It's the first of two books actually, the other is In the Cities of Coin and Spice and it's equally strong. These are stories within stories within stories within stories, told at night in the garden of the king by an orphaned girl to the young heir to the throne. Imagine the Arabian Nights written by a contemporary woman of tremendous talent. These books are the first in recent memory where I wished I could purchase a fancy hardcover volume instead of the available paperback. I hope that, if our civilization lasts another few hundred years, students of the classics will be reading these stories.

River of Gods, by Ian McDonald, was my favorite science-fiction novel of the year. The book takes place in a near-future India awash with people and technology, and suffering both natural and manipulated climate effects. The language and culture are vivid; it's like taking a strange vacation.

Perdido Street Station, by China Miéville, is a strange and compelling freak-show of a novel about a city filled with many different races of people. Cactus people. Women with insect heads. Scientists and artists. All swirl together in a season of bizarre peril. This was the first book I read by China Miéville, and his best I think.

The Golden Compass, by Phillip Pullman, is a great book, an ok movie, and a wonderful book-on-CD. All three CDs in the series are terrific. I played them in the car commuting this summer and had many "driveway moments" (as our librarian calls them) where I couldn't stop listening even when I got where I was going. This was one of the finest book/CD productions I've come across.

The Blue Girl, by Charles de Lint, is a young adult novel about a girl who tries to change her ways after moving to a new town. She makes a new friend. Then she meets a ghost, various Little People who live in the dark corners of the high school band room, and has a heck of a time with some blue paint.

The Secret City, by Carol Emshwiller, follows an alien who lives on Earth a generation after a space-travel accident. Intrigued by, but other than, human, he seeks a forgotten city in the mountains where others of his kind are said to dwell. This was a quiet and moving story.

Ink, by Hal Duncan, along with the follow-up Vellum were the most structurally challenging works of fiction I encountered this year. And I mean that in a good way. An exceptionally strange account of an age-long war in the heavens, told from the viewpoints of various conscripts.

manga and graphic novels

xxxHOLIC, by CLAMP, is a very Japanese series that centers on an unusual shop and the lady who runs it. She grants unusual wishes, although of course one needs to pay. A young man works off his wish by attending to chores around the shop. Strange events transpire involving fox spirits, alternate worlds, bowls of noodles, and sake. This is a companion series to the more adventurous Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicles, also by the same authors (an all-female Japanese manga collective). I collect both series, but return to xxxHolic more. Oh, and it's not naughty. I think the letter for that is "H" in Japan.

Love Hina, by Ken Akamatsu, is a frisky manga series about a dorky young fellow who just happens to inherit an all-girls dormitory from his aunt. He moves in and keeps trying to clean the spa at the wrong times. He's got a serious crush on one of the girls, another has one on him, and the chick with the sword keeps trying to make mincemeat of him. The series is full of cheerful silly nonsense. I enjoyed the manga but somehow the anime version didn't do much for me.

The Contract with God Trilogy, by Will Eisner, is old New York at it's best. The three books in this volume cover city-dwellers in a turn-of-the-century Jewish tenement. They love, laugh, fight, struggle to eat, work, die. Very deep work that somehow transcends comics.

Eden: It's an Endless World!, by Hiroki Endo, is beautiful and frightening all at once. Civilization has collapsed strangely, with millions killed by horrible plagues. Countries are run by gangs of thugs augmented with cybernetic hardware. Horrific, violent, mysterious, human. A great series with incredible art and compelling characters.

Berserk, by Kentaro Miura, is full of happy little bunny rabbits who hop hop hop. Not. Actually, this is an extremely violent series about a soldier who fights demons, both the ones in hell and the ones in his own soul. Guts (the soldier) and his comrades endure the unendurable, but you can't look away from the fabulous line art.

Berserk, by Kazuo Koike and Ryoichi Ikegami, is another great series from Dark Horse. Yo is an assassin and martial arts master who weeps when he kills his underworld victims. This is a very dark series with exotic artwork. Some of the characters are heavily tattooed, and their decorations are reproduced with masterful care from every viewpoint during the acrobatic fight scenes.

Looking back over this list, I see quite a few works of distopian fiction. Must be something I'm interested in, or fear the approach of. Good to read about it and get it out of your system, no? Enjoy...