What I have always loved most about good literature is that it only gets better with learning all of the back stories. A story is transformed for me by all of the special little embellishments that writers include in their work. I still remember the first time I was aware of this on my own without Cliff's Notes explaining it for me when I read Wicked by Gregory Maguire, a few years before they made it into a musical. I remember falling in love with the metaphors I found in the story relating to racism. And learning that so many great fictional characters were based on characteristics of real people in their writer's lives just makes them that much richer for me.
And so that is how I felt about this reading. Garfield explains, "Type can tell you much more than words on a page." (p.72) To some people stories are just stories as fonts are just something that we pick from a drop down menu, but for others, the nerdiest of nerds, fonts are actually called type faces or apparently founts and come with all sorts of historical references including the tale of Mr. and Mrs. Eaves and the disturbing pastimes of Eric Gill...and I was going to use Gill Sans on my new website...not sure I want to think about all the context of that every time I update.
Not sure I feel compelled to invest in more books like Just my type, but I am glad I have come across this one and a chance to learn a little more about the fonts that we use everyday.
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