I’m not a typography nerd. Got it? Well, OK, perhaps I am. A bit. Nerds and non-nerds alike will enjoy Lupton’s wonderful book. It manages to be entertaining and informative without feeling too didactic. The coverage of the history of typography is so much smoother and easier to follow than just about anything else I’ve read that its worth picking up just for that. Lupton also covers some basic design concepts (grids and such) in a thoroughly non-partisan way. She gives the reader a context and conceptual background allowing her to ask why one might use a typeface as much as which typefaces exist. She even prompted me to learn how to do proper apostrophes in html (’, if you wanna know)!

AK press republished this huge book in 2007. I must say I find revolutionary literature a bit hard to read sometimes. The desire to educate the masses comes across as rather preachy, which is a shame, given that this is a story of an international bank robber, anarchist organizer, terrorist and war leader. Paz's book chronicles the momentous events of the Spanish revolution in detail, always near Durruti but often straying into other characters of the time.

I began the year with a bargain from the sale shelf at Blackwells on Broad Street, Oxford. McGinn's heartfelt essay about all aspects of the cultural phenomenon of mindfucking. Its closely related to bullshitting and to lying but it isn't quite the same. McGinn writes wonderfully although I would have liked to see more time spent on how the phenomenon plays out rather than so much weight being placed on mere definition.