Reading

Introduction

Reading Notes.

Formerly I attempted to provide links to online versions of several texts. These proved to be difficult to maintain. Many texts are online. For a large index to them, see The Online Books Page at the University of Pennsylvania Library. For printed books, please support your independent bookseller.

Fiction about Mechanical Things

Hawthorne†

I was fortunate to read Nathaniel Hawthorne's Twice Told Tales and Mosses from an Old Manse before I was old enough to separate a the real and the imagined; they have since had a permanent lodging in the back of my mind as frightening and beautiful stories. American folklore starts here. In "The Artist of the Beautiful" (1844), from Mosses from an Old Manse (1846, 1854), Hawthorne has told a story about the watch and automaton maker Owen Warland the ending of which I have not yet been able to entirely accept.

Kurzweil

Allen Kurzweil's 1992 novel A Case of Curiosities centers around a fictitious 18th century automaton maker. Its sequel, The Grand Complication, combines watchmaking and bibliography (deep joy).

Melville†

Some of Herman Melville's Piazza Tales (1856) are as unsettling as the tales of Hawthorne. "The Bell Tower" is both a work of gothic horror and an unacknowledged early piece of science fiction.

Millhauser

The work of contemporary writer Sephen Millhauser is extraordinary. Automata form one of his recurrent themes. See especially:

• "The New Automaton Theater" in The Knife Thrower and Other Stories (1998)
• "August Eschenburg" in In the Penny Arcade (1985)

Many of Millhauser's other stories display a sensitive treatment of matters related to automata and mechanisms in general.

Shute†

Nevil Shute's Trustee from the Toolroom is perhaps the only mainstream novel about model engineering. No Highway is also relevant, and Round the Bend, and his autobiography (his full name was Nevil Shute Norway): Slide Rule. He was the chief computer, when a "computer" was a person, on the R100 airship project.

Wahl†

Jan Wahl. The Furious Flycycle. I still keep my childhood copy on my desk, and my whole life has been the process of trying to build Professor Mickimecki's laboratory for my own.

Nonfiction about Mechanical Things

Holtzappfel†

Turning and Mechanical Manipulation by Charles Holtzapffel and John Jacob Holtzapffel II. Read all five volumes - even the first three! Read repeatedly.

Moxon†

All English writing about the workshop begins with Joseph Moxon's Mechanick Exercises and Mechanick Exercises on the Whole Art of Printing. Also read repeatedly.

Journals

These organizations produce worthwhile journals:

• The Antiquarian Horological Society (AHS)
• The Artist-Blacksmith Association of North America (ABANA)
• The British Horological Institute (BHI)
• The Broad Gauge Society (BGS)
• The International Stationary Steam Engine Society (ISSES)
• The National Association of Watch and Clock Collectors (NAWCC)
• The NAWCC Horological Science Chapter
• The Society of Ornamental Turners (SOT)
• The Trevithick Society

I also like the following commercial periodicals:

• Australian Model Engineering
• Home Shop Machinist
• Home Power
• Irony: The Sketchbook of an Apprentice Blacksmith
• Live Steam
• Machinist's Workshop
• Model Engineer
• View Camera & Camera Arts

Others

In addition to the writers noted above, I tend to keep an eye out for works by these folks. Regrettably, some of them are dead† and no longer writing at quite the rate they once did.

Architecture

Reyner Banham† * Francis D. K. Ching * Robert Harbison * Donlyn Lyndon * Witold Rybczynski

Fiction

Jorge Luis Borges† * Italo Calvino† * Umberto Eco * Neil Gaiman * William Gibson * Edward Gorey† * Terry Pratchett * Antoine de Saint-Exupéry† * Neal Stephenson * George Rippey Stewart† * J. R. R. Tolkien†

When reading Calvino, I'd start with Invisible Cities, then If on a Winter's Night a Traveler, and then Six Memos for the Next Millennium.

If you're reading Pratchett's "Discworld"^® series in order, and you're not yet sure if you'll like it, start with Mort. If you're reading it out of order, start with Hogfather. For best results, however, get a comfy chair, start at the beginning, and remember to breathe.

I'd point out in particular Stewart's Storm and Sheep Rock.

Natural History & Ecology

Aldo Leopold†

Philosophy

Isaiah Berlin†

Photography & Optics

Alfred A. Blaker * Rudolf Kingslake† * James P. C. Southall†

Berenice Abbott† * Eugène Atget† * Margaret Bourke-White† * Andreas Feininger†

Typography & Printing

Robert Bringhurst * Allen V. Hershey * Donald Knuth * Jan Tschichold†

Workshop

Bill Jones

Other / Specific Works

Rowland Emett†. Emett's Domain.
Michael Flanagan. Stations: An Imagined Journey.
Kenneth Grahame†. The Wind in the Willows.
Hermann Hesse†. The Glass Bead Game. (Magister Ludi.)
Douglas Hofstadter. Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid.
Robert Pirsig. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.
Arthur Quinn. Figures of Speech: 60 Ways to Turn a Phrase.

Notebooks