He ate it
He saw it, he loved it, he ate it.
It’s been a while, hasn't it? At some point I'll settle into a routine with this newslettering lark. I've been busy designing books, figuring out how best to present books on instagram, and contemplating my pile of notebooks. It’s all books books books around here.
Making its way onto my bookshelf and into my brain this week: Kenneth Lacovara’s Why Dinosaurs Matter, expanded from his 2016 TED talk. Every page is littered with paleontological anecdotes (paleontodotes?) and mind-blowing facts, a long-overdue correction to the wildly incorrect dinosaur books of my childhood. Did you know that T-Rex and Stegosaurus were separated by more time than separates you and T-Rex.? Or that penguins are dinosaurs? Even the little fluffy ones. Penguins are dinosaurs.
One book I'm particularly looking forward to is Maria Popova and Claudia Bedrick's A Velocity of Being: Letters to a Young Reader. It features 121 illustrated letters to children about the power of books. Writers include Rebecca Solnit, Neil Gaiman, Debbie Millman, Ursula K Le Guin and David Byrne. And the best bit: 100% of the proceeds from the book are being donated to the New York public library system.
Bethany Heck's Font Review Journal continues to be one of the finest corners of the designweb. Content, design, research, and imagery all pulled together with great care. For her latest piece, she looks at the history and use of that odd duckling Windsor ("designers will put up with a lot of grief for a distinctive lowercase a”).
Watch a 147-year-old paper mill produce a Black Licorice roll.
I've had this anecdotelet from Where The Wild Things Are author Maurice Sendak open in my tabs for weeks:
“Once a little boy sent me a charming card with a little drawing on it. I loved it. I answer all my children’s letters—sometimes very hastily—but this one I lingered over. I sent him a card and I drew a picture of a Wild Thing on it. I wrote, ‘Dear Jim: I loved your card.’ Then I got a letter back from his mother and she said, ‘Jim loved your card so much he ate it.’ That to me was one of the highest compliments I've ever received. He didn't care that it was an original Maurice Sendak drawing or anything. He saw it, he loved it, he ate it.”
That is all.
