SEARCH

As tech-savvy people, we love our digital media. But as designers, math savants, artists, writers, and general thinkers we often find inspiration in those old-fashioned information-conveyers called books. Remember those? Reading rates are declining alarmingly in the U.S., but we refuse to believe that’s happening here in our office.

To prove it, we thought we’d spend a little end-of-the-week energy discussing the books that engage us. We like to call it the Plexipixel reading room. Come inside, pour yourself a cup of hot tea, and peek at what has us snuggled up under our afghans in the mid-February cold.

Here’s our “in process” or just-completed list:

• Crooked Little Vein by Warren Ellis – “Funny and dark and crude … by the end I was like, ‘Enough already!’ but it cracked me up,” says Kiva P.
• White Teeth by Zadie Smith – “Smith is sharp and incisive. It’s a great book on diversity that doesn’t bang you over the head,” says Amie S.
• The Worst Years of Your Life: Stories for the Geeked-Out, Angst-Ridden, Lust-Addled, and Deeply Misunderstood Adolescent in All of Us - “Four out of five stars,” raves Ryan W. about this collection of short stories about junior high.
• One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
• If I Die in a Combat Zone (Box Me Up and Ship Me Home) by Tim O’Brien
• The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros
• Chicken with Plums by Marjane Satrapi
• The Road by Cormac McCarthy – “Very dark and post-apocalyptic, but touching and hopeful in its own way,” says Ian R.
• Al Jaffe’s Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions #5
• Magilla Gorilla: A Big Golden Book
• Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
• Blade Runner: The Inside Story by Don Shay
• Endurance: Shackleton’s Incredible Voyage by Alfred Lansing
• Salt: A World History by Mark Kurlansky – “All those other white powders have nothing on salt,” says Tizzy A. “Just try to pickle a herring in Splenda!”
• The Writings of Austin Osman Spare: Automatic Drawings, Anathema of Zos, The Book of Pleasure, and The Focus of Life by Austin Osman Spare
• Imperial Life in the Emerald City by Rajiv Chandrasekaran
• The daily Seattle Post-Intelligencer – says John T. “It’s all I ever read.” (He’s not lying. -.ed)

And like most readers, we’ve got a long list of books we’re going to get to… someday. (Except Joshua S., who always finds time for his book list. “I’ve never missed out on a book. if I want to read something I read it,” he says. “There are probably some really good books that I don’t know about that I haven’t read, but would like to read, because they’re good, right?”.) Maybe so, Joshua S. Here’s what’s on our shelves to finish in the next few years:

• Moby Dick
• Ulysses and Finnegans Wake by James Joyce
• Photoshop CS2 for Dummies
• Necronomicon by H.P. Lovecraft
• First Edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Fiend Folio
• Birds and Words by Charley Harper – says Drake B. “He was incredible. He just passed away last year, right as his giant anthology book got published.”
• The Art of Project Management by Scott Berkun
• My Life by Bill Clinton – “The one book I’ve had since it came out, but I just cannot get any traction on finishing,” says Allen C.

How about you? What’s in your Reading Room?