Friday Update and Links

I've read maybe 10 pages from a book this week. I'm having a lot of trouble concentrating on anything more complicated than Glee or a game of sudoku. My brain has turned to mush. Can I blame being pregnant?

Other people are doing interesting things, though, so I will just share them and hope you will forgive me for being such a poor blogger. Some are architecture, some are books, some are both.

From Archi Dose, I present two cool new blogs: Round Houses and Things Organized Neatly. Both are exactly what the packaging says and are worth checking out.

The Top 10 Bookstores in the US from Flavorwire [Via Bookslut]

I though this article was interesting, even though I'm not Jewish. I do like fantasy, though. Why There is No Jewish Narnia Warning: contains minor spoiler for The Magicians by Lev Grossman.) [Via Nancy Werlin at Whatever]

Author Douglas Coupland helped design a national monument in Ottawa to Canadian firefighters who died in the line of duty. Yes, Douglas Coupland, the author of Generation X, etc. So much for my excuse why I can't finish editing my novel. [Via Bookslut]

Enjoy your weekend, everyone.

What's Going on Here?

I fear that book publishers are in a sinister conspiracy with bookshelf-makers to get us all to buy more furniture. That must be it, or why else would they randomly change the size of a standard paperback? My evidence (sorry for the quality, I took it with my cellphone):



This may be a little hard to tell but the books in the upper right corner (Thomas Haris's Red Dragon) are about a half-inch taller than the other books on the display shelf. And it's not just this title. The last several times I've gone to the bookstore, I've noticed one or two of these larger volumes. They aren't enlarged print, just formatted differently.

Publishers, I do not approve. I can barely fit all the books I own on the shelf, and the only reason I can do so now is that they are all pretty much the same size (the trade paperbacks, at least) which allows me to stack them on their sides and double things up on the shelf. If you start mucking about with the book sizes, I will get annoyed. So let's just nip this in the bud and keep what we've got, mmkay? Thanks!

Hot (Sale) for Teacher

A head's up: On Thursday (December 4) Border's is having an in-store only event: Educator's Savings Day, with 25% off (mostly just off full priced items, though) for all current and retired educators. Bring proof of educator status.

Architecture Books On Sale!

Thanks for a heads-up from Archinect about a sale going on now at YouWorkForThem, an independent architecture/design book store. Enjoy!

Architecture Book Buying

As you can imagine, with my love of books and my love of architecture, I really love architecture books. This is a big genre in of itself and can be broken down into many categories -- there are technical books, glossy picture books, theory books, books for the layman, idea books, etc.

Archinect has a good architecture book listing collection (find it here). Their architecture books categories include education, reference, firms (i.e. monographs), criticism/theory, fiction, history, interiors, landscape, planning/urban design, technology, and web design. They even have an entire collection for Los Angeles.

There are so many architecture books out there, I find it very hard to shop for them online. I always love shopping at bookstores, since I love the tactile nature of a book, but for architecture books, its much more practical than that. With all those books, there is a whole lot of crap and sometimes its hard to tell online the difference between a good looking book and a poorly printed one.

Fortunately for me, there are some really great architecture bookstores in California. When I lived in LA, I shopped at Hennessey + Ingalls. Unfortunately, at the time, I was a student and had no money to be spending on books. They have a fantastic sales, though, which is when I did most of my shopping there. For those of you who prefer buying online, they do have a web store, in addition to their great bricks-and-mortar store.

Now that I'm in the SF Bay Area, I shop at the Berkeley branch of Builder's Booksource (they also have a SF store). When I am on 4th Street, I love stopping by just to see what's new. In addition to their great selection of glossy and "fun" books, they are also the go-to place for building codes (blech) and reference books.

The photo above is a Medieval copy of Vitruvius' Ten Books on Architecture I found here. More recent printings are also available.