December Meme, Day One

[pensnest]

kira_j asked me about favourite non-fiction books.

Well. I've recently finished reading something delightful that I borrowed from a friend: it's called Just My Type, by Simon Garfield, and it is a book about fonts. All kinds of information about how fonts came to be—Comic Sans was designed for a very specific purpose (for which it would have been very well suited) and escaped into the wild; about the history of fonts, what they were used for, which fonts took over which parts of the world, and so forth. Quite fascinating. I recognised quite a lot of them, and it was really cool to learn about where they came from.

A much more long-term favourite has to be Kaffe Fassett's book Glorious Knitting, which is what got me started on knitting, a long time ago. My dad gave me the book, rather to my surprise since I did not, in fact, knit, and when I looked through I was so excited by some of the fabulous colour combinations on the garments that I thought perhaps I should give this arcane art a try. I must have knitted about half of the patterns in the book, some of them more than once. Of course, in Kaffe's inevitable way, there are a handful that I find utterly hideous, but many of them are lovely and some are, indeed, glorious. I've moved on to knitting in a different way, but I still love the colours.

I have quite a lot of science books, mostly about evolution, but it would be hard to pick a favourite. I also have a lot of Bill Bryson's books, and he does have a nice way of taking a big subject and breaking it down into small, digestible, and frequently amusing pieces. Again, though, I'm not sure which I would nominate as a favourite.

So my final offering is How England made the English by Harry Mount. As the blurb says, "From why we drive on the left to why we don't talk to our neighbours". It starts, as the English tend to do, with the weather. Then geology, and geography, and on into sundry bits of history and culture. It's a very interesting look at how we came to be as we are, and also offers a good bit of insight into How To Do World-Building. Fantasy writers could do well to take some tips from this book! And I suspect it would help people from elsewhere to understand us.


There are a few December days left if you want to pick a subject for me.

Comments

[sperrywink]

Good choices! Is that the knitting book I looked through?

[pensnest]

Most probably, yes - it has really gorgeous pictures.

[turlough]

The font book sounds very interesting and so does the England book.

I can never really make up my mind what I think about Kaffe Fassett's works. On the one hand they're almost always gloriously colourful and exuberant which I very much admire, but on the other I can't really imagine anyone actually wearing the clothes or having the pillows in their homes. I think I unconciously think of them as some sort of exotic museum pieces, wonderful to look at but not something that belongs in everyday life?

Maybe I just need to look through some of his books again. It's been decades since I did it after all and my taste has changed quite a lot. My library has some of both his older and newer books I see...

[pensnest]

I wear mine! I made myself a couple of big jackets, and Beast wears his sweater, and his dad used to, though I don't know that he gets much call for it now. I did retire my 'tumblind blocks' sweater into a cat blanket, and have since thrown it away.

The colours are much fun, but the garment shapes are almost always really big and boxy, which is a pity. I have discovered the joys of getting the tension right, these days, and actually using yarn that does the colour changing for me, but I still have tentative plans to do a two-colours-in-a-row seamless raglan sweater, if I can. I have a lot of yarn to use up.

[turlough]

I know! But it's like my subconcious refuses to admit it. Which is why I really must read his books again. I can't let my conciousness be ruled by decades-old prejudices like this :-)

[kira-j.livejournal.com]

i'm quite into non-fiction so that's why i asked these question, thank you for these recommendations!

i like some of bill bryson's writing too, he is so easy to read! he's the kinda guy you could talk over coffee with for ages.

[brandywine28.livejournal.com]

So...why do you guys drive to the left? Just to be contrary? (That's it, isn't it? :)

[pensnest]

Well, the most popularly supposed reason is that in the Middle Ages, you kept your right arm free to wield a weapon at approaching traffic. Not sure about that, but in 1300 the pope "formalized the practice by telling all his pilgrims to stick to the left".

See, we have history on our side. What's your excuse?

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

What an interesting question! Not something I'd ever really thought about. Ponders...

[pensnest]

I have a feeling I might steal some of the interesting questions other people have been asked, to fill in the days that aren't covered.

Long ago, I didn't even think of non-fiction as Real Books.