Jonathan Livingston Seagull

Jonathan Livingston Seagull
wow, this is a stunning book, its perfect. small enough to fit in your pocket, cheap enough to buy if you’re skint (£6), good paper, great formatting, only 87 pages and half of them are full page photos, can be read in under an hour… and… it has the best story ever.

I first grabbed this offa my mate about 16yrs ago… then I was 17 or so, I thought I knew everything, yet hadn’t actually achieved anything, loved skateboarding and wanted to help people in life. Now I’m 34, know I know nothing, achieved a few things, love skateboarding and still want to help people in life…. and this little book hit me in the face like a wet trout. Seriously, its the sort of book that russell grant could have written, because it applies to everyone that has a dream to achieve something in their life… and for those that have a passion that needs constant effort and commitment to continue working towards that dream. This is beautiful fiction imo… click the picture to read the amazon comments. I very often give this book as a gift to my friends. A truely golden book.

Wrong About Japan

Wrong About Japan
short book, 150 odd pages, plus a few full page pictures thrown in. Decent sized font, with good kerning and line spacing, very easy on the eyes. The margins are big to, so the line length is pretty short. A real non-readers book this, tho rubbish smelly paper. I knocked out a chapter in Waterstones, bought it, and read another chapter in Starbucks… and I’m now about quarter of the way through the book. The story is a journal type thing about a dad discovering the hidden messages within Manga and anime history with his obsessed son Charley. Its an alright read, nothing stunning, you may learn something about japanese history, Godzilla being an animated response to the A-Bomb for an example, however Manga fan will probably enjoy this book the most. I felt a bit embarrassed carrying a pink Anime covered book about, luckily it fitted in my pocket tho.

Selecting a good book…

How do I select books?

I stand infront of a section of shelves and quickly scan each book, looking for bright colours, funky fonts and thin books. Once the ‘first pass’ is complete, and assuming I haven’t picked any off the shelf to look at. I scan the entire section again, this time a bit slower, reading the words on the spines. I’m looking for cool titles, catchy words, contemporary words. Once done, if I still haven’t selected a book I move on to the next section. This continues for the entire Fiction section of the bookshop (if I have time) and I can do a decent sized Waterstones in 20mins.

When I find a title that looks interesting. I’ll pick it off the shelf. Immediately feeling the weight of the book, which indicates the quality of the paper, and viewing the cover. If the artwork looks good, nice photography or design etc… I’ll ‘thumb fan’ the pages, looking at the font and formating and paper quality. If the font is small, kerning tight and bad formatting, there’s a very high chance it’ll go back on the shelf without a thought for reading any of the (inside) pages. If the font is a decent readable size, the line-spacing, margins and kerning is good… and a big bonus, being printed on decent white paper… then I’m on to a winner.

Its very rare that I read the back cover or inside the covers, if I don’t like the paper and formating. If the book is well presented throughout, I can stomach any genre or storyline.

Nanotales

Nanotales
For ages, I’ve had in my head that I’ve always wanted a book that could be opened at any page and you wouldn’t be lost. A good coffee table book whereby a story could last for as long as you had time, even if it was only a few minutes. Well Nanotales appears to be just that. Firstly the title grabbed me. Nanotales, sound contemporary, which appealed to me instantly. The cover quote says it all. It instantly drew me into opening it, where I found the paper was great, the font was a decent type and the kerning made each letter and word ‘breathe’ with space. Very refreshing for the eyeballs. Add to this the gorgeous layout of almost double line spacing and you’ve got yourself a very ‘non-reader friendly’ bucket of freshly sliced tree ink.

I read a coupla ‘chapters’ (if you can call them that) … and bought straight away. This is what all books should be like, if I had my way. Read this book if you hate reading, you’ll love reading it.

Shorty Loves Wing Wong

Shorty Loves Wing Wong
Bit of a late find this one, I was almost out of the shop. 90 pages, half of them pictures of odd looking cat figures in modern poses and humanal(?) situations. Read the back cover and it sounded really good, contemporary and relavant to todays world. Easy on the eye. didn’t notice any thing about the paper (so it was probably average) … a little hardback tho if I recall. The only bad point imo was the standard formating of the text (small font, tight kerning, standard linespacing etc) and a complete absence of paragraphs. One could argue that the ‘chapters’ are only paragraphed sized, but c’mon, a little sentence break in the odd place would have helped people (ie: me) a little. That minor detail prevented it getting a full 5stars from me. However, I’m more than happy to give it a generous 4. Turns out it was written by michael smith who also wrote The Giro Playboy which looks equally as readable.

The 5 people you meet in Heaven

The 5 people you meet in Heaven
230 pages, not particularly good paper, and a bit smelly too. Not sure what made me pick this one up, probably didn’t look too thick to read and if I recall the title was a bit odd. Turns out a guy dies and instead of being embraced by everyone at the pearly gates, he’s confronted with 5 key people from his life. Might read this if I get loads of time on my hands.

Snow

Snow
A dinky book, easily readable at 90 pages (ish). I bit like a little hard back with a cover and all that. A nice story too, its about a coming of age story whereby this dude is supposed to become a monk or a warrior, instead he decides to become a poet. I like little books, but I probably won’t buy this. Its a bit lovey for me. Paper was ok, nothing stunning, cheap book, and I don’t recall many paragraphs tho, so a bit fiddly on the formating for my eyes.

Jpod

Jpod
I didn’t realise I like Douglas Coupland until I picked up this book, when I then realised that he’d written Generation X … so it appears I am a fan. However I haven’t read any of his books, which is unsurprising.

Jpod didn’t initially appeal because its a thick book, beyond my default ‘under 300 pages’ limit (550 odd eeek!)… however it had pretty pictures of lego-ish men on the cover so that grabbed my attention. As did the book title of ‘jpod’ too. Good title that. I can see why they used it. I flicked through the pages of jpod without reading anything…. just to smell the pages and check out the font, kerning, paragraphs, whitespace and pictures as usual…. immediately I was hit by the layout… very appealing, if like me, you don’t read much, and are turned off by pages and pages of text. This was full of various font sizes and weights and looked just gorgeous. The subject matter was great too, as its about office life, shit marketing departments with daft ideas and a splattering of web related stuff thrown in for good measure. This book could be my life tbh. Bought it, as yet unread. Might read it if I’m bored on holiday.

Train Man

Train Man
Another daft book. But I’m liking these irregular format things, makes browsing more interesting. This is laid out in messageboard format based on conversations from one of Japans busiest forums. I can’t exactly recall if its all fiction or faction, but its different that’s for sure. Check it out. (if you hate reading)

Written in Chinese with english subtitles

The 3.5 lives of Captain Bluebear

The 3.5 lives of Captain Bluebear
This book is as mad as a box of matches! If Eddie Izzard was a book, it would be this one. There’s a lot of pages, which I didn’t like too much, but the formating (layout and whitespace) was good… pictures too! which I was stoked to see. I won’t buy this, but it was such a good find that I had to mention it. Buy if you’re bonkers and have a childs brain (harry potter fans) … its big, yellow and soft backed, which means it’ll crumple at the corners in my bag when I’m travelling. Not good. Still fun tho.