Booknotes 5.3

101 Things I Learned in Architecture School, by Matthew Frederick, published 2007, nonfiction, 101 pages. Liked it, especially the process-oriented design angle, and in what should not have been a surprise to me, reading about that process of designing architecture stirred up a bit of nostalgia for days long past when I was a UX designer.

The Pigeon Tunnel: Stories from My Life, by John le Carré, published 2016, nonfiction, 377 pages. Interesting enough, though it probably would have been better if I’d read some of le Carré’s books first, given that it’s mostly stories from later in his life with notes on how some of them served as inspiration for various characters or scenes in his novels.

A Short Autobiography of Countess Sophie Andreyevna Tolstoy, by Sophie Andreyevna Tolstoy (translated by S. S. Koteliansky and Leonard Woolf), published 1922, nonfiction, 105 pages. Enjoyed the parts about Tolstoy writing War and Peace (which I finished reading yesterday!) and Anna Karenina. I didn’t know much about the Tolstoys’ lives beforehand, so color me sad when I got to the end and read (both from Sophie’s side in the main text and from Tolstoy’s side in the footnotes) about their marriage falling apart and all the strife about the will and Tolstoy’s determination to put all of his works into the public domain.

The Ideal Book: Essays and Lectures on the Arts of the Book, by William Morris (edited by William S. Peterson), published 1982, nonfiction, 117 pages. An interesting bit of book history by and about William Morris and Kelmscott Press. I’m far more minimalist than Morris and I don’t hate Bodoni like he does, but I do quite like his editions, and he remains an inspiration to me — particularly the part where he designed his own type. Someday!