Books about Books

[Sedayne]

I've been in Bristol this week, and there's a great bookshop on Park Street called The Last Bookshop – new books, but (presumably) remaindered stock because everything is £4.

They have a sizable section labelled Books About Books where I found these two gems.

I thought I had learned all there was to know about semicolons from reading John Irving novels, but apparently there's plenty more about them in 200+ pages!

Does anyone have any other recommendations for books about books?

 

[AgentPete]

We do a (now yearly) writer's reading list, consisting entirely of recommendations from Litopians about books they’ve personally found helpful / life-changing to their writing practice. While this isn’t exactly what you’re describing, there may be some cross-over:

Definitive Litopia Writers’ Reading List – 2024 – Litopia

And btw; I love the semi-colon! It’s still genuinely useful. I do hope it doesn’t go the way of the pilcrow

 

[Sedayne]

We do a (now yearly) writer's reading list, consisting entirely of recommendations from Litopians about books they’ve personally found helpful / life-changing to their writing practice. While this isn’t exactly what you’re describing, there may be some cross-over:

Definitive Litopia Writers’ Reading List – 2024 – Litopia

And btw; I love the semi-colon! It’s still genuinely useful. I do hope it doesn’t go the way of the pilcrow

Thanks – I'll be sure to check this out

I know the paragraph mark, but didn't know it was called the pilcrow.

I'm learning so much after only a few days of Litopia!

 

[Rachael Burnett]

I've been in Bristol this week, and there's a great bookshop on Park Street called The Last Bookshop – new books, but (presumably) remaindered stock because everything is £4.

They have a sizable section labelled Books About Books where I found these two gems.

I thought I had learned all there was to know about semicolons from reading John Irving novels, but apparently there's plenty more about them in 200+ pages!

Does anyone have any other recommendations for books about books?

I loved Blurb Your Enthusiasm. It's written in an amusing style and so is easy to read and there's loads of great examples from different genres. I found it helped so much with writing a blurb for one of my books.

Part of one of my MA Eng Lit modules covered books about books. One tutor loved fonts, which seemed a bit odd until the course which was so interesting that I almost wrote one of my end of module assignments on fonts (Ellen Lupton's Thinking with Type and Sarah Hyndman's Why Fonts Matter are great). I also enjoyed Amaranth Borsuk's The Book, Wonder Works: Literary Invention by Angus Fletcher and The Art of Fiction by David Lodge (the latter two are more about literature).

 

[Sedayne]

I loved Blurb Your Enthusiasm. It's written in an amusing style and so is easy to read and there's loads of great examples from different genres. I found it helped so much with writing a blurb for one of my books.

Part of one of my MA Eng Lit modules covered books about books. One tutor loved fonts, which seemed a bit odd until the course which was so interest that I almost wrote one of my end of module assignments on fonts (Ellen Lupton's Thinking with Type and Sarah Hyndman's Why Fonts Matter are great). I also enjoyed Amaranth Borsuk's The Book, Wonder Works: Literary Invention by Angus Fletcher and The Art of Fiction by David Lodge (the latter two are more about literature).

Way back in the 90s when the internet was young, I did a module on Health Informatics where it was drummed into us to only use sans serif fonts due to accessibility considerations – visual impairment, dyslexia, etc. It's only recently I've rediscovered the classic elegance of Times New Roman, and I'm probably missing out on plenty of others. I can see how endlessly fascinating a rabbit-hole it could be.

 

[Rachael Burnett]

Way back in the 90s when the internet was young, I did a module on Health Informatics where it was drummed into us to only use sans serif fonts due to accessibility considerations – visual impairment, dyslexia, etc. It's only recently I've rediscovered the classic elegance of Times New Roman, and I'm probably missing out on plenty of others. I can see how endlessly fascinating a rabbit-hole it could be.

There's an interesting documentary about fonts, Helvetica (2007). Filmmaker Gary Hustwit explores the proliferation of the typeface and how it affects our lives.