Downtime

I am halfway through my second (of two) weeks off from school. Classes start on Monday, and so I have a few precious days remaining in my break. What have I been doing? As you read yesterday, the Mrs. and I visited Kansas City, but much of my downtime has been filled with catching up on my reading, and I have loved this.




In the past week and a half, I have read eight books. They were of varying lengths - long, short, and in-between. It's odd to see that figure - it seems like a lot, but I don't feel as though my reading has totally dominated my time off. What have I read, specifically? Well, here's the list:

• What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815-1848, by Daniel Walker Howe.


• Scott Barber: Selected Works 1995-2005, by John Pomara And Charissa N. Terranova


• Summer Nights, Walking, by Robert Adams


• The ACME Novelty Library #16, by Chris Ware


• Chris Ware, by Daniel Raeburn


• Louis Kahn: Conversations with Students, Louis I. Kahn


• Thoughts on Landscape: Collected Writings and Interviews, by Frank Gohlke


• Uncle Tungsten: Memories of a Chemical Boyhood, by Oliver Sacks

By far the best out of this bunch have been the Kahn book and the Gohlke book. I am actually working on a post based around the Kahn book, but I do want to share with you a quote from the Gohlke book in a moment. If you love photography, are passionate about or interested in our human interaction with the landscape, I would recommend the book to you. He's a phenomenal photographer, in addition to being one of the best writers about photography I have read in a long while. Without further ado, here is a quote from the Gohlke book mentioned above, from p. 137:

I was clear, however, about one thing: the grain elevators could not be considered in isolation from the landscape; the building and its context were inseparable. At the same time, I was beginning to realize that the landscape is not a collection of fixed objects on a static spatial grid but a fluid and dynamic set of relationships. Its appearance is the result of a multitude of forces acting in time on the land itself and its human accretions.

What have you been reading this August? Anything you might like to share or recommend?