book

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Cory Doctorow and his daughter, Posey, have a regular sushi date. “Every week or two, we visit a different sushi restaurant, usually near our place in Burbank, and have a (usually) fantastic meal. We bring along a little notebook and take notes and keep scores on everything we try, and then (usually) we give the restaurant an overall rating.” They call it the Sushi Chronicles. What a cute idea.

The David Bowie Book Club

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Back in 2013, David Bowie released a list of his top 100 must-read books. It is no secret that the late music icon had an insatiable appetite for learning and enlightenment through reading. As a result, there are some real gems on his list. Duncan Jones, David Bowie’s son, announced on Twitter that he’d like to start up an impromptu book club focused on the list. The first choice is Hawksmoor by Peter Ackroyd


For those of you playing along at home, a deadline of February 1st means you had better get crackin’. You’ll be hard-pressed to find an English copy of Hawksmoore on Amazon for less than $200. Reviews of the book are VERY mixed. It will be interesting to see what the David Bowie Book Club thinks of it. You can follow along on Duncan Jones’ twitter page.


#BowieBookClub

The Moon 1968–1972

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Project Apollo Archive 41

During all six of NASA’s manned lunar landings, astronauts were armed and trained to use modified Hasselblads. During the Apollo missions, NASA’s astronauts took photos of moon landings, moon walks, the lunar surface, the horizon, and the Earth with these cameras. The results included over 20,000 photographs by 13 astronauts over six lunar landing missions. This huge trove of photographs are cataloged at The Project Apollo Archive. NASA also released a large number of these photos on Flickr back in 2015. The photo above is one of my favorites from this collection.

Though shot originally for scientific purposes, many of the photos have an extraordinary aesthetic value that encompasses an inadvertently artful composition. The fine folks at T. Alder Books have sorted through the nearly 15,000 of these photos and came up with 45 images that consist of “unintended artful compositions” and a “beautiful, deft outtake quality,”. The collection will be released in a book entitled The Moon 1968–1972 that will be released later this month.

At a time when archival images are often hastily assembled into digital galleries that get passed around briefly on social media, it’s especially satisfying to sit with an affordable ($18), carefully edited, designed and printed archive of photographs of historical significance and esthetic value. Texts include excerpts from a speech President John F. Kennedy made about the Apollo program, and from an E.B. White story for The New Yorker recalling the first moon landing.

Introducing The Quentin Blake Typeface

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If you have ever read a children’s book illustrated by Sir Quentin Blake, you are probably familiar with Blake’s playful and original handwriting style. The folks at Monotype were tasked with creating a typeface that replicated the unique form of Blake’s writing in an authentic and natural way.

Monotype’s solution included using four subtly different variants of each letter that was selected from a large collection of writing samples. The variants allow for the typeface to seem to have random alterations and diversity among the letters, making it appear more like handwriting. The result is a typeface that doesn’t just look like Sir Quentin Blake’s writing, it acts like it too.

Quentin Blake Typeface

via Kottke

First New Dr. Seuss Book In 25 Years

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What Pet Should I GetImage via Random House

The first new Dr. Seuss book in 25 years, was released yesterday! “What Pet Should I Get?”” was discovered in a pile of papers by Audrey Geisel (Dr. Seuss’s wife) shortly after his death in 1991. It is thought that he wrote and illustrated the book sometime between 1958 and 1962. And there are more unpublished books from that posthumously discovered pile of papers to come!

I have read “Hop on Pop” to my son so many times I have it committed to memory. I sure he’ll like this new one too.

Mad Men Reading List

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The New York Public Library (NYPL) has created a Mad Men Reading List, a collection of 25 titles read by the main characters during the course of the series. These titles are a great way to gain insight into the social and cultural eras in which the series takes place.

DON DRAPER’S PICKS

ROGER STERLING’S PICK

JOAN HARRIS’S PICK

BERT COOPER’S PICK

  • Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand
    (Episode 108 “The Hobo Code”)

BETTY DRAPER’S PICKS

PETE CAMPBELL’S PICKS

SALLY DRAPER’S PICKS

LANE PRYCE’S PICK

HENRY FRANCIS’S PICK

Billy Parrott has also written a more comprehensive blogpost that lists books seen on shelves and lying around on tables during the show.

A list Of The 100 All-Time Best Film Noir And Neo-Noir Movies

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In two months Taschen Books will be releasing a photography book called Film Noir. TASCHEN’s 100 All-Time Favorite Movies. The 688 page book is a film-by-film photography book of the 100 greatest Film Noir movies since 1920. It will contain posters, tons of rare stills, cast/crew details, quotes from the films and from critics, and analyses of the films. The list of the 100 greatest film noir movies in the book is below.




1920-1959

1920

  • The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari

1927

  • The Lodger

1931

  • M<

1938

  • Port of Shadows

1940

  • Rebecca

1941

  • High Sierra
  • The Maltese Falcon

1943

  • Shadow of a Doubt
  • Ossessione

1944

  • Phantom Lady
  • Double Indemnity
  • Gaslight
  • Laura
  • The Woman in the Window
  • Murder, My Sweet

1945

  • Hangover Square
  • Mildred Pierce
  • Detour
  • The Lost Weekend
  • The Spiral Staircase
  • Leave Her to Heaven

1946

  • Gilda
  • The Postman Always Rings Twice
  • Notorious
  • The Big Sleep
  • The Killers

1947

  • Body and Soul
  • Nightmare Alley
  • Out of the Past
  • T-Men
  • The Lady from Shanghai

1948

  • The Treasure of the Sierra Madre
  • Call Northside 777
  • They Live by Night
  • Force of Evil

1949

  • Champion
  • The Third Man
  • White Heat

1950

  • Gun Crazy
  • Night and the City
  • In a Lonely Place
  • The Asphalt Jungle
  • Sunset Boulevard

1952

  • The Thief

1953

  • Poison Ivy
  • Pickup on South Street

1954

  • Rear Window

1955

  • Diabolique
  • The Big Combo
  • Rififi 366
  • Kiss Me Deadly
  • The Night of the Hunter

1956

  • The Killing
  • Foreign Intrigue

1957

  • Sweet Smell of Success

1958

  • Elevator to the Scaffold
  • Touch of Evil
  • Vertigo
  • It Happened in Broad Daylight
  • Murder by Contract

1959

  • Odds Against Tomorrow

1960-2011

1960

  • Purple Noon
  • Peeping Tom
  • Psycho
  • Shoot the Piano Player

1962

  • Cape Fear

1963

  • High and Low

1966

  • Blow-Up

1967

  • Point Blank
  • Le Samouraï

1971

  • Get Carter

1972

  • The Getaway

1974

  • The Conversation
  • Chinatown

1975

  • The Passenger

1976

  • Taxi Driver

1978

  • The Driver

1981

  • Diva
  • Blow Out
  • Prince of the City
  • Body Heat
  • Clean Slate

1982

  • Blade Runner

1985

  • To Live and Die in L.A.

1986

  • Blue Velvet

1987

  • House of Games

1992

  • Basic Instinct
  • Bad Lieutenant

1994

  • Pulp Fiction

1995

  • Se7en
  • Heat

1997

  • L.A. Confidential
  • Hana-Bi

1999

  • The Limey

2000

  • Memento

2005

  • Sin City

2007

  • No Country for Old Men

2008

  • The Dark Knight

2010

  • Black Swan

2011

  • Drive

Some Say The World Will End In Fire, Some Say In Ice

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This comic by Stuart McMillen is an adaptation from Neil Postman’s book Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business. It compares Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World” with George Orwell’s “1984”. With the recent revelations of NSA surveillance, I think the jury is still out on which vision is more correct. I think both Huxley and Orwell were right – the iron fist of government and the attention-sapping distractions of technology are dangers to modern society. The whole thing resonates quite loudly in today’s internet landscape.

Amusing Ourselves To Death

David Bowie’s Top 100 Must Read Books

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Earlier this year, before the “David Bowie Is” retrospective opened in Toronto, David Bowie revealed his top 100 must read books. The list provides a captivating look into the mind behind Ziggy Stardust and Major Tom. I like that Bowie’s list is expansive and diverse – including comics, autobiography, history, counter-culture, travel writing, poetry and lots of fiction. I also like that the books are relatively new, with only two selections being written before he was born. Bowie is known as “a voracious reader” who is reputed to read as much as “a book a day”. Here they are in reverse chronological order.

  • The Age of American Unreason, Susan Jacoby, 2008
  • The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Junot Diaz, 2007
  • The Coast of Utopia: Voyage, Shipwreck, Salvage, Tom Stoppard, 2007
  • Teenage: The Creation of Youth 1875-1945, Jon Savage, 2007
  • Fingersmith, Sarah Waters, 2002
  • The Trial of Henry Kissinger, Christopher Hitchens, 2001
  • Mr. Wilson’s Cabinet of Wonder, Lawrence Weschler, 1997
  • A People’s Tragedy: The Russian Revolution 1890-1924, Orlando Figes, 1997
  • The Insult, Rupert Thomson, 1996
  • Wonder Boys, Michael Chabon, 1995
  • The Bird Artist, Howard Norman, 1994
  • Kafka Was The Rage: A Greenwich Village Memoir, Anatole Broyard, 1993
  • Beyond the Brillo Box: The Visual Arts in Post-Historical Perspective, Arthur C. Danto, 1992
  • Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson, Camille Paglia, 1990
  • David Bomberg, Richard Cork, 1988
  • Sweet Soul Music: Rhythm and Blues and the Southern Dream of Freedom, Peter Guralnick, 1986
  • The Songlines, Bruce Chatwin, 1986
  • Hawksmoor, Peter Ackroyd, 1985
  • Nowhere To Run: The Story of Soul Music, Gerri Hirshey, 1984
  • Nights at the Circus, Angela Carter, 1984
  • Money, Martin Amis, 1984
  • White Noise, Don DeLillo, 1984
  • Flaubert’s Parrot, Julian Barnes, 1984
  • The Life and Times of Little Richard, Charles White, 1984
  • A People’s History of the United States, Howard Zinn, 1980
  • A Confederacy of Dunces, John Kennedy Toole, 1980
  • Interviews with Francis Bacon, David Sylvester, 1980
  • Darkness at Noon, Arthur Koestler, 1980
  • Earthly Powers, Anthony Burgess, 1980
  • Raw (a ‘graphix magazine’), 1980-91
  • Viz (magazine), 1979 –
  • The Gnostic Gospels, Elaine Pagels, 1979
  • Metropolitan Life, Fran Lebowitz, 1978
  • In Between the Sheets, Ian McEwan, 1978
  • Writers at Work: The Paris Review Interviews, ed. Malcolm Cowley, 1977
  • The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, Julian Jaynes, 1976
  • Tales of Beatnik Glory, Ed Saunders, 1975
  • Mystery Train, Greil Marcus, 1975
  • Selected Poems, Frank O’Hara, 1974
  • Before the Deluge: A Portrait of Berlin in the 1920s, Otto Friedrich, 1972
  • In Bluebeard’s Castle : Some Notes Towards the Re-definition of Culture, George Steiner, 1971
  • Octobriana and the Russian Underground, Peter Sadecky, 1971
  • The Sound of the City: The Rise of Rock and Roll, Charlie Gillete, 1970
  • The Quest For Christa T, Christa Wolf, 1968
  • Awopbopaloobop Alopbamboom: The Golden Age of Rock, Nik Cohn, 1968
  • The Master and Margarita, Mikhail Bulgakov, 1967
  • Journey into the Whirlwind, Eugenia Ginzburg, 1967
  • Last Exit to Brooklyn, Hubert Selby Jr. , 1966
  • In Cold Blood, Truman Capote, 1965
  • City of Night, John Rechy, 1965
  • Herzog, Saul Bellow, 1964
  • Puckoon, Spike Milligan, 1963
  • The American Way of Death, Jessica Mitford, 1963
  • The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With The Sea, Yukio Mishima, 1963
  • The Fire Next Time, James Baldwin, 1963
  • A Clockwork Orange, Anthony Burgess, 1962
  • Inside the Whale and Other Essays, George Orwell, 1962
  • The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, Muriel Spark, 1961
  • Private Eye (magazine) 1961 –
  • On Having No Head: Zen and the Rediscovery of the Obvious, Douglas Harding, 1961
  • Silence: Lectures and Writing, John Cage, 1961
  • Strange People, Frank Edwards, 1961
  • The Divided Self, R. D. Laing, 1960
  • All The Emperor’s Horses, David Kidd,1960
  • Billy Liar, Keith Waterhouse, 1959
  • The Leopard, Giuseppe Di Lampedusa, 1958
  • On The Road, Jack Kerouac, 1957
  • The Hidden Persuaders, Vance Packard, 1957
  • Room at the Top, John Braine, 1957
  • A Grave for a Dolphin, Alberto Denti di Pirajno, 1956
  • The Outsider, Colin Wilson, 1956
  • Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov, 1955
  • Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell, 1949
  • The Street, Ann Petry, 1946
  • Black Boy, Richard Wright, 1945
  • The Portable Dorothy Parker, Dorothy Parker, 1944
  • The Outsider, Albert Camus, 1942
  • The Day of the Locust, Nathanael West, 1939
  • The Beano, (comic) 1938 –
  • The Road to Wigan Pier, George Orwell, 1937
  • Mr. Norris Changes Trains, Christopher Isherwood, 1935
  • English Journey, J.B. Priestley, 1934
  • Infants of the Spring, Wallace Thurman, 1932
  • The Bridge, Hart Crane, 1930
  • Vile Bodies, Evelyn Waugh, 1930
  • As I lay Dying, William Faulkner, 1930
  • The 42nd Parallel, John Dos Passos, 1930
  • Berlin Alexanderplatz, Alfred Döblin, 1929
  • Passing, Nella Larsen, 1929
  • Lady Chatterley’s Lover, D.H. Lawrence, 1928
  • The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald, 1925
  • The Waste Land, T.S. Eliot, 1922
  • BLAST, ed. Wyndham Lewis, 1914-15
  • McTeague, Frank Norris, 1899
  • Transcendental Magic, Its Doctrine and Ritual, Eliphas Lévi, 1896
  • Les Chants de Maldoror, Lautréamont, 1869
  • Madame Bovary, Gustave Flaubert, 1856
  • Zanoni, Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1842
  • Inferno, from the Divine Comedy, Dante Alighieri, about 1308-1321
  • The Iliad, Homer, about 800 BC
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