BOOKS

Which genres do you especially enjoy reading, Nick, and which do you avoid?

I’m a devotee of coffee-table books with letterpress typography and photos printed by gravure. I rarely read fiction. Most of the books in the Shinnstitute library are well illustrated, bought at thrift stores, acquired for what they show of the world and its history, and for the pleasure and study of their graphic design, printing and typography. It’s a reference library.

I’ll browse a shelf of titles in a store and if piqued will read a few lines from one. I can tell immediately whether I like the author’s style—which is rare. If I’m going to read something that’s mainly text, it has to have interesting turns of phrase I’ve not come across before, and odd words that require investigation. Such style and virtuosity can pop up irrespective of genre. I also note how the pictures are reproduced: there’s nothing worse than single-colour halftones printed offset. Except perhaps body copy set in 8 pt Helvetica Extra Light on a 36 pica measure.

What’s on your night stand?

I’ve got a couple on the go at the moment. On top is Volume Four in a Canadian history series, published in 1960. I picked up all five thrifting (of course). I’m particularly interested in this one’s description of the Responsible Government movement in Upper Canada immediately before Confederation, for comparison with other treatments, such as John Ralston Saul’s Louis-Hippolyte LaFontaine & Robert Baldwin (Penguin, 2010) or John Sewell’s Mackenzie (Lorimer, 2002). I hop between the neatly divided chapters in this and Unacknowledged Legislation: Writers in the Public Sphere, a collection of essays by Christopher Hitchens; I like the breadth of his vocabulary, and the subject—novelists, poets and playwrights who were politically engaged.

Man Must Measure, by Lancelot Hogben, Rathbone Books, London, 1955. 9½” x 12½”. Body: Times; Captions: Gill Sans Italic.

What book has had the greatest influence on you?

On the basis that one’s mind is most impressionable at an early age, something from my childhood: Man Must Measure, by Lancelot Hogben. Ostensibly the story of mathematics, it’s just as much a history of civilization around the world, told with a beautiful combination of text, diagram and illustration. No, I didn’t become a mathematician or historian, but I did develop intellectual curiosity, a taste for big histories, and a fascination with how ideas may be expressed through graphic design. The book was designed by Germano Facetti, who also did the covers of the Penguin Modern Poets series, which I collected dutifully, as a teenage poet.

Also worth mentioning: The Penguin English Dictionary and Roget’s Thesaurus were a strong influence on my writing—I well recall tracking back and forth through the thesaurus and the dictionary, closing in on the right word, refining meaning, setting tone, observing metre.

Describe your ideal reading experience.

I’m at our family cottage by the lake in Muskoka, sitting at a table on the lawn with a gin and tonic at hand, smoking a reefer. It’s a sunny afternoon in September, and the air is still and quiet.

Cancer Ward, by Alexander Solzhenitsyn. Farrar, Strauss & Giroux, New York, 1968, 6”x 8½”. Typeface: Bookman. The Emperor of All Maladies, Siddhartha Mukherjee, Scribner, New York, 2010. 6”x 9”. Typeface: Filosofia.

Are there any classic novels that you only recently read for the first time?

When Karey and I were visiting Newmarket once a week for her cancer treatment, I would wait for her, perusing thrift stores, where I found Solzhenitsyn’s Cancer Ward, waiting for me. It made a good companion to The Emperor of All Maladies, which I also read during that time.

Why do you write a blog titled FontLife that rarely mentions type?

The name was my daughter Zoë’s idea. I just wanted to write about what interests me, as a means of delving more deeply, but Shinntype’s socials guru was adamant I stay on brand. So FontLife it is, blog posts in the life of a font person.

Our Everest Adventure, by John Hunt. Brockhampton Press, Leicester, 1952. Fonts: Baskerville

What’s the last great book you read?

Our Everest Adventure, by John Hunt. Now there was a chap who got things done!—and this is the tale of how his expedition was the first to conquer Everest, a documentary told with logistical clarity—maps, supplies, equipment, personnel—and lots of magnificent mountain photography, in gravure of course. And I do like the letterspaced Baskerville Italic all-caps, with that font’s peculiar allotment of swash characters.

Who deserves a biography?

Carl Dair. He was an interesting fellow—graphic designer, type designer (when that was a rarity) author, theorist, teacher.

You’re organizing a literary dinner party, which three writers would you invite, living or dead?

Edna St. Vincent Millay, age 20. Her poetry recordings were made past her prime and surely don’t do her justice. I know she loved to recite at parties—and she was a redhead. Charles Dickens, a great raconteur, to be sure, and I’d prevail upon him to do a few characters from David Copperfield or Great Expectations, to observe the accents. And Cory Doctorow. We might all discuss the monetization of content. ●

With apologies to The New York Times Book Review, from which I swiped these questions, in an interview with US Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson. That accounts for the literary bias, the main focus of book journalism being about new novels rather than “non-fiction,” book collecting, or the appreciation of books as designed artefacts.