A planet named Urras is host to a habitable moon known as Anarres. Some seven generations ago, a group of anarchist settlers left Urras to build a colony on the moon, after which the communication between the colonists and the planet all but ceased.
A criticism of technology that puts the needs of humans ahead of the needs of technology.
A human envoy arrives on a planet known as “Winter.” His solitary mission is to welcome the people of Winter to a collection of planets, but to do so he must first find welcome himself.
Drones, haptics, ocular implants, virtual reality, climate change, nanotechnology, celebrity: like all of Gibson’s novels, The Peripheral is a novel of the future that’s entirely about the present.
“I never set out to write this book,” Mary Ruefle begins. And yet, she did write it, and that contradiction is the first of many.
This collection of novels begins with a woman named Lilith, who survives a disastrous war on Earth only to find the planet invaded by aliens, themselves refugees from a world they can no longer remember.
This short book, a collaboration between literary critic Katherine Hayles and designer Anne Burdick, has a lot not to like. But even ten years after publication, the book’s exploration of the material nature of writing is interesting and as yet incomplete.
Bringhurst’s short essay meanders through the history of scripts and their varied forms, touching on the origins of their physical shapes as well as the political and social forces that impacted them along the way.
Almost certainly the greatest novel ever written, and an early precursor to postmodernism.
A series of essays from the author of A History of Reading that explores the reader’s perspective.
The original subtitle of this book defined it as “Imagination and the Erotic Life of Property,” which hints at the real message better than the revision: that real art, no matter the price, is always a gift from the artist to the audience.
“The editor, not the author, best understands the readership,” Plotnik says. “Authors know their subject. Editors specialize in knowing the audience.”
Personal musings on the life of the writer. Lamott is primarily a novelist, but I find her writing advice to be just as relevant to nonfiction.
A collection of essays written between 1949 and 1974, the year of Tschichold’s death.
Perhaps the only book I’ve discovered that carefully and thoroughly addresses the differences between oral and literate cultures.
Schumacher brilliantly interrogates modern economics and proposes an alternative: a Buddhist economics that takes as its imperative the quality of human life, not the quantity of profit.
A fabulous little book, written by a lifelong worker.
Eisenstein’s tome about the history of the advent of printing has one central argument: that the printing press enabled a stability of text which in turn drove rapid advances in science and learning.
Manguel’s lifelong dedication to reading plays itself out in a work that follows reading from clay tablets to present day.
Short, surreal little tales that experiment with the form of the story and often take the library as their subject.