Hasta La Ideas

Economist Tyler Cowen talks about the sunk cost fallacy and why continuing to read a bad book is unproductive and a waste of time in the article “Closing the book on a bad read” in the July 24 Washington Times:

“People have this innate view — it comes from friendship and marriage — that commitment is good. Which I agree with,” he says. That view shouldn’t, he says, carry over to inanimate objects.

It’s not that he’s not a voracious reader — he finishes more than a book a day, not including the “partials.” He just wants to make the most of his time.

“We should treat books a little more like we treat TV channels,” he argues. No one has trouble flipping away from a boring series.

Do you have a pile of books on your nightstand that have been lingering for months or years because you can’t seem to bring yourself to finish them? Are your bookshelves filled with books that you plan to get to one day but just can’t muster the energy to slog through them? If so, I vote to abandon the books. Say farewell to the bad to make room for the good.

We’re happy to report that the British Library has successfully acquired the Macclesfield Alphabet Book that Patrick blogged about, here, in January. Not only did they raise the necessary funds to obtain the manuscript, but the rare medieval book will also be on show to the public from tomorrow…

The book, which dates from around 1500, had been in the library of the Earl of Macclesfield since 1750 but was only discovered very recently.

It contains 14 different types of alphabets, including a zoomorphic alphabet, a Gothic script and a foliate alphabet, where the individual letters are defined through leaves and foliage. There are also many examples of different border patterns, some of which are illuminated in colour.

With support from the National Heritage Memorial Fund, The Art Fund, Friends of the British Library and other individual donors, the British Library acquired the £600,000 to meet the purchase price for the book, which will now go on display in the Sir John Ritblat Gallery’s Treasures of the British Library collection from 30 July.

It is thought that the manuscript may have been used as ‘pattern book’ for an artist’s workshop, so that visual ideas could be passed from the artist to their assistants. It may also simply have been a sample book, used to show potential customers.

More images of the Alphabet Book can be seen on Patrick’s original post, here, which also contains full details of that old manuscript conundrum – To Wear or Not to Wear Gloves – and some, at times hilarious, image captioning.

More information on viewing the book at the British Library’s Sir John Ritblat Gallery is available here. Opening times for all the British Library’s galleries are here.

If anyone gets down to view the manuscript, let us know what you think below.

Bryan Batt is a man of many talents. When he’s not playing the fabulous, closeted art director Salvatore Romano on AMC’s Mad Men, Batt keeps busy designing contemporary interiors as the co-owner of Hazelnut, a gift and home accessories store in the Big Easy. Three words: New Orleans toile! His latest project is a home decor book. According to Publishers Marketplace, Batt has just inked a deal with Clarkson Potter for a tome that will explore his favorite spaces and “through his own witty commentary and design techniques, show readers how to create their own stylish and enchanting spaces.” While the book isn’t slated for publication until fall 2011, Batt will be back in living rooms in a few short weeks: Mad Men‘s third season premieres on August 16.

Princeton Architectural Press’s new book release The Handy Book of Artistic Printing, by Doug Clouse and Angela Voulangas, showcases the world of artsy pattern and ornament. The book’s subtitle, “A Collection of Letterpress Examples with Specimens of Type, Ornament, Corner Fills, Borders, Twisters, Wrinklers, and other Freaks of Fancy,” pretty much sums it up.

The authors explore the style’s origins in the British Aesthetic Movement and analyze its distinctive features: idiosyncratic color harmonies, eclectic choice of type and ornament, compartmentalized compositional strategies. They also present a landmark portfolio of letterpress printing samples, drawn from some of the most important public and private print archives. More than 150 examples of period ephemera, printers’ own tour de force promotional pieces, and specimens of type and ornament are reproduced, many for the very first time since their initial circulation more than a century ago.

The Handy Book of Artistic Printing celebrates a previously berated and today largely forgotten episode of design history—one of increasing interest in light of the recent embrace of ornament by some leading contemporary designers. This book will be of value to graphic designers, but also to fine artists, visual merchandisers, and collectors of ephemera everywhere.

For more on the new release and other books in Princeton Architectural Press’s collection click here.

In the first of our series of questions penned on the trusty CR whiteboard, we want to know about your reading habits…

Each week we’ll be posing a new question on the CR Blog and, first up, we want to know how you’re using design books in the digital age.

Do you still buy them? If so, what’s caught your eye recently?

If you’ve not shelled out on much this year, how far has the web changed the way you find new creative work, or do research?

What, indeed, is a design book these days? Are there too many out there anyway? An excess of vanity publishing, a glut of monographs? What would you want to see less of?

So – we’d like to know what the last design book you bought was, and what you think about the state of visual arts publishing at the moment.

Question of the Week is produced in partnership with MajorPlayers.