After being late the last two times, I am so happy that I am finally ahead of the curve, finishing the seventy-fifth book of the year today. I hope to keep this going and finish a few days left in 2016. It would be terrible for the pact to end up like a college assignment that is […]
Category: Books
100 Book Pact — Halfway there
I have been a little late in posting about it but a few weeks ago I read my 50th book of the year, reaching the halfway milestone just a little later than my meticulously planned schedule demanded.
100 Book Pact — 25 down!
When the new year was still only a day or two old, I saw this and decided I was going to read hundred books this year. The last time I attempted this (and finished with ease) was more than ten years ago. I was in school, and the idea of reading a book in 2–3 days […]
Tales from Indian Classics
Since I got back to India a couple of months ago, I’ve spent a lot of time going through boxes in my parent’s house and sorting old books. In these boxes I’ve found a lot of unexpected things (the highlight, a 1893 edition of Chambers’ etymological dictionary) and some old favorites, like this set of […]
Twelve select views of the seat of war
After a lot of nervous brain-racking, I submitted my dissertation proposal late last month. It took me longer than I expected to zero in on a subject for my research. Only a week before the submission was due did I have the epiphany (while reading Graham Shaw’s articles) that lithography in India would be an […]
Afternoon in the Library—Counterpunch
On my second day in the library, I picked up Fred Smeijers’ Counterpunch. This was one of the easiest and most friendly reads in the list, much like Hochuli’s Detail in Typography. Perhaps this is so because the book, it seems, came about to explain typography to engineers. A few years ago, Dan Reynolds had […]
Afternoon in the Library—Letters of Credit
For the last couple of days, I’ve been spending my afternoons in the library. The university campus, brick buildings and the library all remind me of school. Sure, everything is much bigger here but I was much smaller when I first went to school. Thanks to the library in school, I have an image of […]
The Shape of Letters
During my trip to Ahmedabad a couple of weeks ago, I spent an evening with Kalapi and Satya discussing type. We were talking about how we learn to write, and Kalapi complained that the process of teaching children how to write Gujarati in schools is very hurried. They are quickly taught how to write the […]
The Devanagari Alphabet
Last evening, I came across my photocopied and spirally-bound copy of Achyut Palav’s book, Aksharanubhava. I had seen a copy of Aksharanubhava at Callifest about three years ago, and had found out upon inquiring that the book had gone out of print. In fact, Palav himself did not have a copy, and the one at […]
Books
In the four weeks since I quit my job in anticipation of going to study this fall, I have bought and read more books than I had in the last year. The problem of where new books go has been a long-standing one, but when I couldn’t locate (a book as large as) Alan Fletcher’s […]