NEUTRA Survival Through Desgin by Richard Neutra.
(February 03, 2024)
What are you loooking at by Will Compertz.
(February 23, 2023)
The Bookseller of Florence by Ross King.
(Januray 27, 2023)
When Einstein Walked with Goedel - Excursions to the Edge of Thought by Kim Holt.
(March 2, 2022)
The Razor Blade by Somerset Maugham.
(March 2, 2022)
My name is Red by Orhan Pamuk.
(February 28, 2022)
Tun-huang by Uasushi Inoue.
(May 1, 2020)
Stories of your life and others by Ted Chiang.
(May 15, 2021)
Tower of Babylon by Ted Chiang.
(May 20, 2021)
Animation Scriptwriting by Martin Webber is a basic introduction to the animation scriptwriting for TV serices, not for feature filem, which is a good overview of the tasks.
(May 1, 2018)
Survery of Modern Aesthetics by Jin JungKwon, a Korean philosopher is a survery lecture series of the mordern aestheticists, which is a good introduction.
(June 1, 2017)
Killing and Dying is a graphic novel by Adrian Tomine
(June 1, 2017)
Caruso's Caricatures is a collection of caricatures by Enrico Caruso who's regarded as a best male opera singer at the turn of the century.
(January 23, 2018)
Three Men in a Boat is a humorous account by Jerome K. Jerome
(June 23, 2017)
First Person Singular II, Autobiographies by North American scholars in the language sciences edited by E.F.K. Koerner is a collection of autobiographies of linguists which allows me to compare my student days to theirs.
(May 25, 2015)
Symbolic Logic by Lewis Carroll is worth to try out if you have taken mathematical logic class.
(April 8, 2015)
The Story of Art by E. H. Gombrich is an excellent introduction to Wester Art, which I read once in years on regular basis.
(September 20, 2014)
I skimmed through The Analytic Art by Francoise Viete just to have an idea on how Viete introduced new concept in Algetra which became a basis of Descartes' Analytic Geometry.
(September 20, 2014)
A Drifting Life is a graphic novel by Yoshihiro Tatsumi, which is pretty much a auto-biography of a cartoonist in Japan.
(April 24, 2014)
Shortcoming is a graphics novel by Adrian Tomine, which reflects some characteristics of contemporary Japanese-American, or more generally Asian-American in America.
(april 24, 2014)
The Visual Display pf Quantitative Information by Edward R. Tufte is a classic text for business presentation which need massive updates, but is still good for reviewing basics.
(March 15, 2014)
Achilles in the Quantum Universe by Richard Morris
(March 14, 2014)
The Wall Street Jounal Guide to Information Graphics by Dona Wong is a good summary of business graphics, but depending on industries you work for and colleagues you work with, you wouldn't use it as reference.
(March 13, 2014)
The Lives of Artists by Giorgio Vasari is heavily concentrated on Italian Renaissance artists, most of whose works we are not familiar with. But the way contents are presented is a textbook for writing biography of artists.
(January 17, 2014)
The Secret Life of Numbers: 50 Easy Pieces on How Mathematicians Work and Think by George G. Szpiro is good for skimming through to understand how recent mathematical concepts got developed, but lacks diagrams or illustrations which would help understand the concepts.
(September 13, 2013)
The Mathematical Tourist: Snapshots of Modern Mathematics by Ivars Peterson is a good introduction of new mathematical concepts.
(September 13, 2013)
The Dictionary of Imaginary Places by Alberto Manguel is good to have on your bookshelf. The content is great but illustrations are humble.
(September 13, 2013)
The Magic of Mathematics: Discovering the Spell of Mathematics by Theoni Pappas
(September 13, 2013)
The Joy of Mathematics: Discovering Mathematics All Around You by Theoni Pappas
(September 13, 2013)
More Joy of Mathematics: Exploring Mathematics All Around You by Theoni Pappas
(September 13, 2013)
A History of Chinese Philosophy by Fung Yu-lan is an excellent introduction in English to history of Chinese philosophy. Some sections of it should be omitted at the discretion of a reader.
(August 13, 2013)
Thoughts' Footing: A Theme in Wittgenstein's Phiosophical Investigations by Charles Travis investigates Wittgenstein's philogophy against Bertrand Russels's and compare it with Frege's.
(December 13, 2012)
Cybernectics by Norbert Wiener is what I read again in 30 years after my first reading in early 80's when I got interested in Aritificial Intelligence and Communication.
At that iime, although it was difficult but was tremendously motivating for a young mathematics student, and from this reading, I could even comment or critize some of his views.
(October 11, 2012)
Seok Bul, Dol e Sae gin Jeong to ui Ggum is a good introduction of Stone Buddha's in Korea. The texts are less than complete but collection of Stone buddha pictures are excellent.
(April 1, 2012)
Seoul ui si gan ul gu ri da is what I like in terms of format and the way author/illustrator narrated his travelogue. The author illustrates the scenes of city of Seoul, where my memories are attached.
(February 28, 2012)
maumgwa jjaghaimara, jachit guepe sogeuirini was a gift for me, which I would not have found out such excellent book by myself unless it was introduced to me. It's subject, the way it is narrated, pictures and format are perfect.
(April 9, 2012)
Universal Principles of Design is a good introduction and review of anything related to graphics design including UI of web pages.
(April 9, 2012)
Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino is a visual description of dialogues between Kublai Khan and Marco Polo which the reader must fill in all the gaps but which are easy to fill in. That's why it's good book which the author does the excellent job of putting in his word to help us visualize it.
(September 8, 2011)
Japanese Society by Chie Nakane is a good introduction written in English on Japanese Society as a whole which really help you understand Japanese as a whole if you ever run into Japanese and wonder on their behaviour.
(February 12, 2011)
Beatrix Potter
(September 28, 2009)
It's the one I would read once in a while to refresh myself with the basics on making comics or drawings in sequence which can be used for any kind of drawing related projects.
(June 2, 2009)
(May 28, 2009)
(May 28, 2009)
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(June 2, 2009)
As the novel based incidents in Tokyo, Japan, it might be a bit exotic in terms of settings for westerners, but incidents itself can be happening anywhere in modern cities.
(May 14, 2009)
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(February 10, 2008)
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(September 29, 2007)
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(June 12, 2007)
I hope Alain expand the book with more examples and depositions to develop his ideas.
(June 29, 2007)
I read this one first as it arrived first out of 5 of Alain's books I ordered. Although I'm tempted to start reading Proust's In Search of Lost Time, I can't make time to read that 7 volume long novel, like most avid Proust readers miss to achieve.
(May 24, 2006)
De Botton helps us to choose what we want to see while travelling. You're the main actor who want to select what you want to see, not seeing what must be seen by you selected by others.
(June 5, 2007)
(April 20, 2007)
(April 20, 2007)
I was amazed at the author's vast and deep knowledge on ant's society and behaviour and read again only the section of description of ant's society (which was more than 1/2 of the book) after the first reading. So it was like reading the book 1.5 times.
I will read the section on ant's society again as necessary to enjoy this novel later on.
(July 26, 2004)
First of all, I didn't expect Dan Brown could write as eloquently as Umberto Eco did, and I guess that proved to be right, although he wrote the book interesting enough to read. I was gonna read this in a week or so, but as the story developed interesting enough that I read it Saturday evening through Sunday afternoon.
As I read Umberto Eco's book in English translation, it's difficult to compare Eco's writing style to Dan Brown's, but Brown wrote very fluently as he narrated the story.
Some friends of mine who read the book complained that the history and his stories were mixed, and I tried to persuade them that the book is a fiction, arbitrary narration of stories which were developed on author's head. Although his story included many historical figures in it, as it was not the history book or report on archaeology, I just recommended them to read through to enjoy the reading itself, not to relate his story to the historical facts as most of know now.
I don't think the book would become a classic at all, and am thinking of selling it as a used book.
(August 8, 2004)
The first time I read it was about 20 years ago in Korean translation of the book, which I ordered after I knew about this title as one of favorite books of Lee Yang Ho, Korean literary critic decades ago. As he studied in Japan in 1930's, he read it Japanese first, then in English, and used the excerpts of the texts as his class material for his English literature classes.
As I found it a reliable source to read this book, I started to read and it didn't take long to immerse in Gissing's writings. Since my first reading, I purchased the book in the English edition to read his original language, and read a couple of times a year. Two other books which I read as often as this are: Saint Exupery's Little Prince and James Hilton's Goodbye Mr Chips.
What I like about this book is, Gissing describes the mind and emotion of an aspiring writer who can't cope well with the harsh real world of making money by working other than writing he hopes to make his profession.
The other reason is his English style of writing which I want to immitate. How often I read the same book, I'm faced with different excitement and expectation from his narration.
(September 4, 2004)
Although I really enjoyed reading this book, I just understood very small portion of it as there were so many new stuffs introduced to me first time. Probably reading this book several times will help me understand some of it and chew as if mine to talk about it.
(October 9, 2004)
Although I'm familiar with many episodes of Don Quixote's journeys and read few excerpts of the book like most readers, I haven't read this as a whole book yet.
(August 3, 2004)
As I read only a few pages of it at a time once in a while, I don't know when I'll fiinsh reading Don Quixote. Reading only once in a while, I'm failing to grasp the whole continuos story line.
(May 26, 2007)
Visiting there and brwosing through titles of book in the library there and following the trails of places appeared on the tale of Genji, I got motivated to know more about the story and once I got back to my home in Los Angeles, I bought the book.
I know it will take quite some time finish reading it as it's a long one and there are many historical details to fill while reading it.
(March 20, 2005)
History is interpreted in many different ways depending on the viewer's point, and after reading several different opinions on the same incident, it frequently to make my own opinion, as there are so many different views. That's why I chose this book to read once in a while to restructure my view on historical subject. This book might be too general and brief, but that helps me refreshing on historical view.
The first time I read this was in early 1979 and I read this dozens of time, sometimes a couple of times a year or once in a couple of years.
(October 14, 2005)
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(Januray 28, 2007)
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(Januray 28, 2007)
As I visited already the half the grottoes introduced in the book, understanding became much easier than expected. I wish there's a book covering more grottoes in China.
(Januray 28, 2007)
(February 25, 2007)
When I visited Silk Road area, my imagination was heavily depended on my fragmentary recollection of this novel which I read some 28 years ago, which helped me to ponder in the area a lot. I should have read it before the trips there.
(March 26, 2007)