The shelf beside the desk
8 books, sorted the way they actually sit: the ones I reach for, the ones I am reading, and the ones I lent out. Every note is mine, and nothing here is an affiliate link.
Always within reach
The books on the desk itself. Reread, annotated, occasionally argued with out loud.
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The Ordinary Page
A compositor writing for compositors. The chapter on the second proof is the reason it lives beside the keyboard.
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Notes Toward a Quiet Book
Sixty pages, no illustrations, and it settles when to indent a first paragraph better than anything longer.
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Setting Verse
Impossible to apply directly and impossible to forget. Every rule in it costs something, and the book says what.
Reading now
What is open this season. The members’ reading group takes one of these each quarter.
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The Marginal Hand
A history of annotation that takes ordinary readers seriously. I am on chapter six and writing in the margins, obviously.
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On Rereading
Third time through. The book that convinced me to keep a rereading list instead of a reading list.
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Wood Letter
A catalogue of a defunct wood-type foundry. I read it the way other people read seed catalogues.
Lent out and missed
Books that left the house and have not come back. If you have one, you know who you are.
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A Printer at Sixty
Memoir, badly organised, honest about money. The trade as it actually paid. Lent in 2024; please return it, Declan.
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The Grey of the Line
The only book I know about the colour of text, as distinct from the colour of ink. Out of print and worth hunting.
Read along with the members’ reading group
One book a season, discussed in the comments over six weeks. It is part of membership, and the next one starts in October with The Marginal Hand.
See membership