How Buildings Learn

Anyone interested in architecture should read this book by Stewart Brand. Brand won a National Book Award for the Whole Earth Catalog, and is a co-founder of Global Business Network, a futurist research organization fostering "the art of the long view." How Buildings Learn features a lot of illustrations and insights about building and buildings. I especially enjoy the comparison of two structures on the campus of MIT:

The legendary Building 20 (1943) was an artifact of wartime haste. Designed in an afternoon by MIT grad Don Whiston, it was ready for occupancy by radar researchers six months later... In an undertaking similar in scope to the Manhattan Project that created the atomic bomb, the emergency development of radar employed the nation's best physicists in an intense collaboration that changed the nature of science. Unlike Los Alamos, the MIT radar project was not run by the military, and unlike Los Alamos, no secrets got out. The verdict of scientists afterward was, "The atom bomb only ended the war. Radar won it." ... Author Fred Hapgood wrote in 1993 of Building 20, "The edifice is so ugly that it is impossible not to admire it, if that makes sense; it has ten times the righteous nerdly swagger of any other building on campus... Although Building 20 was built with the intention to tear it down after... World War II, it has remained... providing a special function... Not assigned to any one school, department, or center, it seems to always have had space for the beginning project, the graduate student's experiment, the interdisciplinary research center.

In a later chapter, Brand describes famous architect I.M. Pei's third MIT building, known informally as the Media Lab and formally as the Wiesner Building:

It may have been my familiarity with MIT's homely, accommodating Building 20 just across the street that made the $45 million pretentiousness, ill-functionality, and non-adaptability of the Media Lab building so shocking to me... Nowhere in the whole building is there a place for casual meetings, except for a tiny, overused kitchen. Corridors are narrow and barren. Getting new cabling through the interior concrete walls - a necessity in such a laboratory - requires bringing in jackhammers. You can't even move office walls around, thanks to the overhead fluorescent lights being at a Pei-signature 45-degree angle to everything else.

The Media Lab building, I discovered, is not unusually bad. Its badness is the norm in new buildings overdesigned by architects...

Brand finishes How Buildings Learn with a list of good books, writing, "They are the texts I would reach for if I was going to work on a building..."

Atlas Obscura by Joshua Foer, Dylan Thuras, and Ella Morton

Looking for information about Grand Canyon National Park? The Smithsonian Museums? Perhaps the Great Wall of China, or maybe the Eiffel Tower? Then Atlas Obscura is not the travel guide for you. Looking for information on where to go to partake in local delicacies such as eggs boiled in the urine of young boys? Interested in the distinction between the largest ball of twine collected by one person and the largest ball collected by more than one person?

Then you’ve come to exactly the right book.

Written by three writers/editors of the Atlas Obscura website (Joshua Foer, Dylan Thuras, and Ella Morton), Atlas Obscura the book is a massive compendium of weird, remote, and always interesting geographical spots and historical remembrances. If you enjoy the website, you will certainly enjoy this “Explorer’s Guide to the World’s Hidden Wonders.” This is not a book for tourists, and this is not a book for the meek. This is a book for the emboldened, for those who want to see the world’s hidden places.

Structured as a geographical tour through the continents, Atlas Obscura is filled with examples of natural wonders: caves, lakes, deserts, and the like. But more interesting to me, likely because they are also more unknown to me, are the human-made wonders. Throughout the book's survey of the various continents are examples of what one person can accomplish through sheer will. Castles, pyramids, shrines—all built by individuals on their own over a lifetime. And of course there are also the oddities: the ice cream parlor in Venezuela that serves over 900 flavors, including Ham + Cheese and Sardines and Brandy; devices used to give tobacco smoke enemas in the 18th and 19th centuries; books bound in the skin of their authors; the "body farm" in Tennessee, where scientists study decomposition; an anechoic chamber in Minneapolis, where the absence of sound freaks out visitors; the one-mile square desert near the Arctic Circle ringed by snow-topped mountains.

Saturday was Obscura Day 2017 on atlasobscura.com, and this book will make you want to take part in the next one. We often forget the vast weirdness of the world, as well as the isolation that still exists in some places. And though the increasing "stripmallification" of travel pushes people to the same spots, pushes people toward comfort rather than curiosity, Atlas Obscura makes childhood wonder return to jaded adult minds.

Atlas Obscura

The book Atlas Obscura is the incredible encyclopedia/adventure guide that developed from the equally impressive website of the same name. Arranged geographically, the book takes readers on a mind blowing tour of the world that includes entries about museums of the odd and strange (and even mummified dead), geographical oddities and all sorts of unexpected art and architecture. It's endlessly fascinating and sometimes downright creepy.

This is the kind of book that is designed to beguile - it draws you in with the full color illustrations, shifting fonts and cool topics and before you know it, you are learning a ton about all kinds of thing you never even thought to look into.

There are also details about visiting all of these places, ranging from whether or not they are dangerous to how to catch a boat or bus or truck to get you there. But even though you might never plan to go to some of these places (which often redefine the words "off the beaten trail"), it doesn't matter. The text is cheeky and fun on its own, even without the round-trip ticket to see it for yourself.

A few of the entries discuss some sexy type destinations (who knew there was a bathroom in the Vatican with paintings of frolicking nymphs?) but nothing seriously explicit or beyond what you would see in any museum. It's perfectly fine for teens and honestly, seems tailor made for that age group (especially those who like the mention of occasionally creepy places.

Check it out - and the website - for something truly special.

500 Great Books for Teens

There are a lot of good guy books here.

Checking the index, I see six entries for author Walter Dean Myers and three for Gary Paulsen. The one listed for Daniel Pinkwater is the anthology Five Novels, so I'll cut editor Anita Silvey a break for that. She actually doesn't limit herself to 500 books -- many more are listed in the section "Beyond the 500: Additional Titles of Interest." Many of the recommendations are books aimed at a more general readership, not just teens. That pleases me -- I think it's too limiting to say a book is for this age group, not that one. And "guy books?" Well, I see she recommends Toni Morrison's Beloved.

Off the Radar Gift Ideas

Some guys - bless 'em - know exactly what they want and can articulate it when it comes to books. I was not one of those guys, and that inability to express my general interests ended up in some, er, interesting book selections when I was a teen. I suppose that year I got a book on identifying rocks and gems came from the haphazard collection of stones I had picked up while camping, but that was an earnest mistake; to this day I have no idea what to make of my getting Jonathan Livingston Seagull when I was 13.

So what follows are a short collection of books that I have found nifty recently that, if not perfect gift selections for some guy you know, may at least provide potential book ideas for that mumbly, mopey dude over there hoping no one asks him what he's into.

Lonely Planet’s Instant Expert:

A Visual Guide to the Skills You’ve Always Wanted

By Nigel Holmes

Lonely Planet 2014

I can’t speak to the idea that I have ever wanted to be an expert in half of the skills listed inside this book, but the teen know-it-all inside me loves this visual compendium of high-end trivia and how-to guides. Just a random page test can yield startling results: how cheese chemically can be as addictive as opiates; what the little pictographs on clothing tags mean in terms of how to wash items (especially when the print is so tiny you can’t read it); things you need to know to be a dog walker… or a gondolier; even how to be a blogger! It’s a rather tongue-in-cheek approach to becoming a jack of all trades but makes an informative jumping off point for conversations about possible careers, or just a jumping off point for conversations in general!

please click for full effect!

Creativity and Austin Kleon and YOU

If you are an artist of any kind - a writer, a poet, a singer, a painter, a filmmaker, anything creative - and Austin Kleon is not already on your radar, please tune in:

In his book Steal Like an Artist: 10 Things Nobody Told You About Being Creative, Kleon encourages people to be confident when approaching their projects, even when that voice in the back of your head is telling you, "But someone's already done something like this. Someone's already written a story about this, or make a similar sculpture, or created a collage like this..." Because guess what? Even if that is true, even if there is something similar out there, your creation won't be the same as what came before, because it's coming from you, and your viewpoint and abilities will make it unique. So don't be scared to tackle something that you think has "already been done" - because it hasn't, if you haven't done it yet. 

At the same time, remember to give credit when credit is due. That's mentioned in all of his books: if you're doing something directly based on someone else's work, give that person credit. If you choreographed a dance largely influenced by the life of Martha Graham or inspired by the paintings of Degas, say that. If your research was heavily based on someone or something, cite it. Be grateful for those who paved the way, acknowledge those who helped you, respect others and you'll be respected.

Show Your Work! 10 Ways to Share Your Creativity and Get Discovered, Kleon's latest book, offers ideas and ways to share your work with the world. As with Steal Like an Artist, each chapter is motivational, brief, and to-the-point. There are those who feel the need to "network" and those who absolutely hate networking, and any number of folks in-between; Show Your Work focuses talks about using the network to help other people find your work, to share what you've done without feeling like you are self-promoting or self-involved.
Kleon's Newspaper Blackout is a collection of poetry he made by taking a permanent marker to newspaper articles and turning them into something new. My favorite piece in his collection is Underdog, as seen here; I am also fond of Enigma, created by Erica Westcott.

You might be wondering why I'm posting this at a blog targeted to teen readers. It's simple: creativity exists in everyone, in people of all ages. Some creative people are very outgoing and outspoken (hello, that's me!) but others aren't as confident in their abilities, especially when they are younger and/or are trying an artistic pursuit for the first time. Some people need a little nudge to write down the story that's been in the back of their mind for years, just as others need a little nudge to try out for the sports team or the school play.

So what are you waiting for? If you've always wanted to play the tuba, go to the local music store and get a recommendation for a good music teacher in your area. Or, to be more specific to the aforementioned books and methods, if you want to be a poet or a songwriter or a hand-lettering artist or a greeting card designer and don't know where to start, look at the things YOU like, and create something inspired by your favorite poems and songs and illustrations. Start with what moves you, and go from there. In time, you'll find your voice, and make something wholly original that will, in turn, inspire someone else. Creativity is a cycle. Pay it forward!

The Visual Miscellaneum by David McCandless

The Visual Miscellaneum: A Colorful Guide to the World's Most Consequential Trivia by David McCandless

We are tasked with absorbing tremendous amounts of information, statistics, facts, and it's a challenge to just sort this data, let alone use the data in any meaningful way. With this in mind, David McCandless set out to create functional and beautiful graphics to help us sort through the deluge and to show us that information is not only useful, but it can be beautiful as well.

I've been meaning to pick this book up for ages, ever since I had one of those NPR driveway moments when I caught an interview with McCandless. I tend towards the list and chart of the Excel variety myself, so I was eager to get a look at what something with actual design sensibilities could do.

I have to admit that my teacher senses were working overtime when I saw this book -- it would be such a cool way to introduce evaluating data to a composition class -- McCandless presents most of the information without comment, but really, it's just a darn cool book.

You can sample some of the graphics from the book's website Information is Beautiful. My favorite graphics in the book are health related. You should definitely check out the graphic about the odds on what will kill you -- trot out to a nervous seat mate on your next flight that the odds they will die in a plane crash is practically nothing, while the odds that they will die from heart disease is 1 in 3 -- and hope that the pilot isn't up for that 1 in 3. Well, maybe you are not a jerk and won't mention that bit about the pilot.

To give you a sample, here is a chart of Twentieth Century Death (my new band name, btw). It shows you how many people have died from selected major causes.

20th Century Death!

Lest you think it's all doom and gloom, there are also graphics about the lamest Wikipedia edit wars or the peak break-up times on Facebook.

What Went Wrong

In the world of television news the phrase "if it bleeds, it leads" determines which of the days news items are most important. Loss of life and natural calamity are deemed more newsworthy because the human element within the story – these things could have happened to us – draw us into their seductive thrall. Even popular entertainment feeds our attraction to peril with fictitious disasters that echo those we have encountered before.

In the early days of these disaster the question on everyone's mind, right after "What just happened?" is "What went wrong?" These questions are as much about our natural curiosities as they are about learning what we can and perhaps avoiding them in the future. Popular Mechanics' What Went Wrong turns the questions into a collection of explanations for some of the worst man-made and natural disasters of the last 100 years.

Books like this have existed for decades – I read a similar book put out by Reader's Digest back in the day – but what I like about this one is its approach to what it calls "disaster forensics," bringing scientific explanations to everything from classic disasters like the 1901 San Francisco earthquake and the 1956 sinking of the Andrea Doria to more modern events like Hurricane Katrina and the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.

The Works: Anatomy of a City by Kate Ascher

I happened to read the November issue of Wired while searching for a book to write about for a recent blogger celebration of city books. I wanted to write about YA nonfiction, but outside of Genius of Common Sense: Jane Jacobs and the Story of The Death and Life of Great American Cities (which I do want to read in the near future, but I haven't been in the mood for biographies lately), nothing caught my attention. Until Wired ran a brief excerpt from Kate Ascher's The Heights: Anatomy of a Skyscraper and mentioned that Ascher had previously written a book about cities.

That earlier book is The Works: Anatomy of a City. Okay, so it's not a YA book like I originally wanted, but it does have YA appeal. This is largely due to the book's format, which mixes short text blocks to introduce subjects, and devoting most of the page to infographics.

The Influencing Machine by Brooke Gladstone

In the interest of reviewing this book I will disclose the following: I do not watch TV news. I hate TV news. I think TV news undermines democracy and makes us dumb. I will, on rare occasion, watch the PBS Newshour, because that show usually does not do this. I do get news, however, from the New York Times (delivered daily), the Chicago Tribune (online), the Washington Post (online), by listening to National Public Radio (NPR), and reading websites (too many). I am a “news junkie,” as they say, but I see that as a good thing. I like to know what is going on. I feel it’s my responsibility to know what’s going on.

So does Brooke Gladstone, who hosts the popular NPR show “On the Media.” Her new graphic non-fiction book, The Influencing Machine, is outstanding. She wrote it and Josh Neufeld drew it (who also wrote and did the art for his terrific graphic non-fiction account of six survivors of Hurricane Katrina, A.D. New Orleans: After the Deluge). This book is about media and journalism: what it is, some history of it, its political controversies, and especially the complexity of it involving issues of truth, objectivity, manipulation, ethics, bias, and purpose. If you want to see your news more critically, gain some insight into the role news and journalism has played (and continues to play) in shaping political and social discourse, and grapple with some questions that do not have single or easy answers, read this book.

According to Hoyle

I'm not a big fan of required summer reading.  I have my reasons, but primary among them is this idea that books on required reading lists rarely allow room for personal exploration in literature.  I know the lists make concessions from the broccoli reading – you know, the classic and "good for you" books – but where's the fun in exploring genres and delving into the empty calorie beach reads if they're on a sanctioned list?

On the other hand, if someone asked me to suggest a single book for summer reading, one that could be casually perused and practically applied, I would go with a solid edition of Hoyle's Rules of Games.  With a copy of this book, a scrounged deck or two of playing cards, perhaps some dice, a reader could spend an entire summer filling in the odd gaps of time at camp, the down time between rain showers, and the shady respites from sweltering afternoon sun.  A commitment to learn one game a week would, by summer's end, yield nearly a dozen opportunities to gain lessons in strategy, gambling, skill, luck and plain old relief from boredom.

Inventory

Inventory is a book of "obsessively specific" lists collected from the The Onion's A.V. Club Website.

The idea is sublime, the execution is excellent and the lists are sometimes great, sometimes good and sometimes skippable.
But that's the nature of a book with lists such as:
"18 Songs about Specific Films"
"16 Film and TV Characters Who Knew Exactly What They'd Like to Eat"
"5 Crazy-Ass Members of the Legion of Superheroes"
"10 Hilarious On-screen Drug Freakouts"
"10 Great Songs Nearly Ruined by Saxophone"

So, you've got a camera...

Perhaps you received a camera recently as a gift and its a fun toy but you're wondering what you can really do with it besides taking the obvious snapshots of friends, family, and your pets for posting online. Or maybe you've had your camera for a while and have sort of run out of ideas for what to do with those pictures. While there are plenty of books and websites that will tell you how to manipulate your digital photos with various software programs, or how to improve your picture taking with new angles and special gear, all you really need is a fresh, playful approach to rethinking what you can do with what you already have.

What you want is photojojo!: insanely great proto projects and DIY ideas by Amit Gupta and Kelly Jensen.

This is exactly the kind of book I wish I had back in the day, and one that should be considered as part of a package when giving a camera to a teen. The book has dozens of quick, cheap, and easy ideas for how to take unique pictures with any kind of camera, including film cameras, and unique ways to display them. Most of the craftier project require simple tools and materials – a cutting blade, tape, markers, paint, materials generally recycled – while a good deal of the tools and projects for taking pictures can be assembled on the fly or made with things lying around the house.

For less that a couple bucks worth of materials from a hardware store you can make a string monopod to help keep your camera steady and a portable tripod that screws onto the top of a soda or water bottle, both of which will fit in your pocket and easily replace a bag full of expensive equipment. And if you can gather a couple dozen clear empty CD cases you can make a photo mural display that actually makes for a pretty cool way to show off your photos.

There are some way-out-there projects as well that require additional skills and materials – like making a photo messenger bag with photo-printed cloth and a bit of sewing, or the photo lamp project that requires some simple wiring – but it's totally accessible and the final projects look awesome.

The book is divided in to two parts, the first half is projects for displaying photos and the second half focuses on taking pictures. One of my favorites is the idea of taking pictures of strangers in exchange for lollipops. The idea is to create a series of portraits (which you can later arrange in an awesome CD mosaic frame, of course) that forces the photographer to try and capture something more than a simple "say cheese" moment.

I think with teens a lot of time they would take more interesting pictures if they had some guidance, but most books on photography tend to either be dry and technical, or don't manage to convey the idea that photography can be fun. This isn't a technical manual, not by a long shot, but it does have enough to give a budding (or bored) photographer something to jump-start their creative juices.

If you know (or are) a teen with a camera who doesn't really know what to do with it, photojojo might just be the next book to read.

photojojo!: insanely great proto projects and DIY ideas
by Amit Gupta and Kelly Jensen
Potter Craft / Random House 2009

They also have a website with cool tips and idea and a store that sells nifty photo-related stuff as well (including the book):
http://photojojo.com/

Some People Can't Surf

Back in the day, when people read newspapers with some regularity, it was said that only something like 7% of the male population didn't read the sports section. I was part of the 7%. It was around the same time that my junior and senior high classmates began schlepping the sports section to homeroom that I began trolling the art and graphic design sections of bookstores and libraries hungry for some visual stimulation. Uneducated and unfamiliar with the art world, and with no finer appreciation for museums, I loved pulling out something that looked interesting and pouring over the glossy pages at images that inspired.

As a result, I became more aware of the graphic design of everyday life: the covers of alternative newspapers, the flyers for punk bands on the telephone poles, the zine piled in the entry ways of music stores. That love of graphics and the photocopier lead me to create zines and design letterpress books, and foundered a lifelong love of both high and low art. It also taught me that there was gold to be discovered in the bookshelves, if you knew where to look.

For my money, one of the best practitioners of 1990s was Art Chantry. While many (many) amateur graphic designers cut their teeth in the trenches of post-Sex Pistols punk rock show posters, Chantry bent and pushed and burned and mutilated the medium to its extremes. To be fair, what the Sex Pistols were doing was little more than aping the detournement of the French Situationists (who in turn were borrowing the Dadaist approach to found collage) so there is a long-standing tradition of image manipulation within art and politics. Nonetheless, Chantry took the low-budget, high concept approach to word and image and put a stamp on it that was at once sophisticated in it's thievery while appearing completely naive.

Some People Can't Surf: The Graphic Design of Art Chantry is the first survey of Chantry's work and is the sort of thing a teen might find pretty darn inspirational. Based in the Pacific Northwest, one could argue that he was the graphic face of the grunge movement. His work for Sub Pop and Estrus records, among many other small bands and labels, will be readily familiar to fans of music from that era. Unlike other artists who spring from pop culture, like Shepard Fairey and his Obey industries, Chantry has no single iconic image or style yet there is a unique look to all his work that nonetheless feels part of a whole.

"An art book? That counts as reading?" Yes, I admit, it is tempting to pick up a book like this and simply look at the pictures. But I believe that one of the mysteries of the adult world to teens is in the arts where often we only know what's presented to us (or covered in the tabloids). How an artist lives and creates, what inspires them and influences them, tells a younger reader a lot about what it means to follow that path. Outsiders, often living on the margins, artists have to learn how to improvise not only with their art but with survival. Sometimes all it takes is a book like this to ignite the spark in a reader's mind: Oh, yeah, someone had to create that? And how did they do it? And what were their influences? A book that opens the door to questions and perhaps inspires a reader into action counts by me.
An artists' retrospective, like Some People Can't Surf, reads like a biography with documentation. Instead of photos of the subject posing on vacation abroad we see their growth as an artist visually while reading about their struggles to meet deadlines and working with no budgets. They're like a picture book where the words and pictures compliment each other, and provide a window into the world of a working artist.

Chantry has been exhibited in The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, The Smithsonian, and the Louvre. That's a trifecta in my book.

Some People Can't Surf:
The Graphic Design of Art Chantry
by Julie Lasky
Chronicle Books
2001

Swords: An Artist's Devotion

I have a 17-month-old son, and one of the observations I often hear from other parents is, "Oh, a boy... anything you give them, they turn it into a weapon." This usually accompanies one of two unreconcilable pieces of advice: 1) "so it's even more important that you never give them toy guns and swords!" or 2) "so don't even bother trying to keep them away from toy guns and swords, because it doesn't matter."


I won't pretend to analyze whether that's nature or nurture, or whether it's even true. But I gave my son a big stalk of celery last week, and within about 30 seconds he was chasing the cats, bellowing and swinging it around like a claymore.


Like a lot of my friends growing up--and, frankly, to this day--my reading definitely has included books about swords (and guns, and Civil War battle tactics, and the historical evolution of polearms and tanks and... hmmm, maybe there's a pattern here). So when I got my hands on Swords: An Artist's Devotion, I couldn't put it down. And then I only parted with it because a couple friends who were reading over my shoulder (yes, both guys) kept bugging me for it.





Swords is technically "suitable for ages 9 and up," but Ben Boos (the author and artist behind it) has said he intended the book for all ages--especially gamers and anyone else who thinks that swords are as cool as he does.

Boos quit his job as a video-game artist (working on a few different titles in the Diablo series for Blizzard) to write and illustrate Swords. If you compare the art in, say, Diablo or WoW to the art in the magazine or banner ads promoting those games, you can imagine that working within the tiny, pixel-by-pixel constraints of an actual game can be kind of limiting. So Boos wanted to cut loose with a whole new level of detail--and that's what you get in this, what's essentially a really beautiful art book.



The dozens of almost absurdly detailed sword illustrations (along with tons of sketches) are the star of the show here, but Boos adds a bunch of cool historical details, too--everything from an excerpt from Beowulf (with an accompanying sketch of Hrunting!) to explanations of Damascus steel, Korea's Silla knights, and the favored weapon of the landsknecht mercenaries (that would of course be the Katzbalger, which means both "cat gutter" and "suitable for the fight").