A List Apart: How to Write a Better Weblog is actually "How to be a better writer." And it gives excellent advice: be precise, don't be timid, be active (I'm a recovering passive voice addict)
Still..
I don't know what it says about me that I prefer the amateur example over the professional example. "New York is magnificent in the spring"
yawn.
Was updating my booklist, and came across this old letter that I had been given permission to post, and yet didn't. doh!
So, without further ado, Steven Magnuson writes:
"Life: A User's Manual, George Perec
The book is apparently organized according to the architecture of the building in which the entire baseline narrative takes place. The furnishings of the building, its inhabitants, and embedded tales of their existence are exhaustively detailed. Features a convention I think many a novel lamentably lacks, an index (a comprehensive on at that, also includes an index of endo-stories, IIRC). Also wrote _A Void_ (La Disparition), a lipogrammatic detective story containing no instances of the letter "E".
Dictionary of the Khazars, Milorad Pavic
An associative narrative according to the structure of a dictionary, necessarily nonlinear, even if read in consecutive pages.
Christina notes: there seems to have been a male and female edition, the female edition is out of print. hmm
Inner Side of the Wind, Pavic
If I remember correctly, two ostensibly unrelated stories placed opposite from each other in the physical book (read one, turn book over, read other from the other direction). In the center of the book, the stories both physically and literally meet.
Landscape Painted with Tea, Pavic
Structured according to an unfinished crossword at the beginning of the book. To read linearly, or as the crossword is organized, each chapter corresponding to a vertical or horizontal index on the puzzle.
You might look at Henry Petroski's books, which center on engineering and a little bit of industrial design, but conceptually are incredibly relevant to IA. As for the linguistic and cognitive basis of IA, Eco's A Theory of Semiotics is essential (I believe Eco, that ridiculously-erudite-and-proud-of-it intellectual, did many of the translations himself!). Really, much of the more practical semiotics texts are untapped in this field. Since IA is inherently interdisciplinary and much of the canon is appropriated, thus also for the canon of semiotics, at least on the more accessible side."
Whew. I think I have my next amazon order figured out....
Thank you, Steven.
Go look for yourself.
GUIOlympics: The International XP Visual Styles skinning competition!
Peter Morville's new Social Network Analysis is a pretty sweet essay on the social network Peter used to learn about social networks. And check out those cool diagrams!
Meanwhile Jesse continues his recon. I'm even more uneasy about this entry, but I want to see how it all plays out before jumping to any conclutions about the essay. Facinating to watch it unroll.
The real mystery is how these people write a book and all these essays. And they've got spouses. It's all I can do to work, write the book and keep my husband feeling like a husband and not a couch-warmer dinner-maker.
Anyhow, my sentence of the week is "Design has consequences"
I can't think of a sentence that is more acknowledged as true and most often acted as if it were false in our industry.
Not at this moment, anyhow.
Who the Kevin Bacon of Marvel superheros is. Find out in Reality check foils Spider-Man
Joey Green shows dozens of new uses for old products. Use alka seltzer to clean your toilet, use yogurt to relieve sunburn pain!