Rating: 8.8/10. Rockonomics: A Backstage Tour of What the Music Industry Can Teach Us about Economics and Life by Alan B. Krueger Book by an economist describing the financial realities of the music industry. Relative to how much value it provides to our lives, music is extremely cheap. The majority of Americans listen to music…
Category: Arts and Music
The Art Question by Nigel Warburton
Rating: 8.0/10. Philosophical investigation into the question of: “What is art?” This question is often asked when faced with certain postmodern art pieces, such as readymade objects like a urinal displayed in an art gallery. Bell proposes that art must have “significant form” — choices made by a human artist in order to produce an…
Simple and Usable by Giles Colborne
Rating: 8.0/10. Simple and Usable: Web, Mobile, and Interaction Design by Giles Colborne Book about designing products that are simple and easy to use. Often this is achieved by handling a lot of complexity behind the scenes so the mental burden on the user is minimal. Mainstream users generally just want to get a task…
The Design of Everyday Things by Don Norman
Rating: 7.9/10. Book about the principles of design, using examples from everyday objects that we’re familiar with, like doors, clocks, faucets, etc. The first job of the designer is to communicate to the user what actions are possible on the item (affordances) and where should the action be directed (signifiers), for example, a handle signals…
Northwest Coast Indian Art by Bill Holm
Rating: 7.7/10. Northwest Coast Indian Art: An Analysis of Form by Bill Holm An analysis of the formline style of art by the Pacific Northwest Indians including the Haida, Tlingit, and Tsimshian tribes. The ancient art was forgotten until its revival relatively recently, when people studied old works to deduce the patterns so that new…
A Short Course in Digital Photography by London and Stone
Rating: 8.3/10. A good overview of the art and science of photography, suitable for a beginner. Each page is fully colored and has an abundance of photos to serve as exemplars of what good photography looks like. Section 1 talks about basic camera controls including aperture and shutter speed. Both control exposure, but additionally, shutter…
Johann Sebastian Bach: The Learned Musician by Christoph Wolff
Rating: 7.8/10. Biography of baroque-era composer Johann Sebastian Bach, who lived from 1685-1750 and is considered one of the greatest composers of all time. He is well-known for being a master of counterpoint, as exemplified in The Well Tempered Clavier and The Art of Fugue, but also wrote a great deal of lesser-known church cantatas…
Visual Intelligence by Amy Herman
Rating: 8.0/10. This book uses art to teach you to notice your surroundings more, which is very interesting. The basic premise is there’s a lot of things that we miss, but can be quite important. The two biggest ideas in this book for me: Train yourself to be more visually perceptive by looking at art,…