Body-text fonts, pt. 25: Berthold Baskerville

This is useful:

“Irish Names You’re Probably Saying Wrong and How to Pronounce Them” (CNN).

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This morning I was lured to a clickbait essay about Microsoft Office’s new default font, Aptos. The thesis: Aptos isn’t bad. The argument: (1) Aptos is wider than Calibri, and (2) the “l” has a curved bottom.

Gratuitous insults were hurled at Papyrus and Comic Sans.

The author, a breezy ignoramus, deserves no greater remuneration for this “analysis” than the cost of one McDonald’s double-cheeseburger.

I’d like to think that my own amateurish font discussions are better. But they, too, probably scrape the depths of witlessness. So I apologize.

Not all amateurs are hacks. John Baskerville was no seasoned pro in 1757 when he printed a book with his new typeface. The work was so good, Cambridge University commissioned more printing by him.

Alas, rival printers denigrated him, and he charged high fees, so his designs fell into disuse. But in the twentieth century, they became ubiquitous. Many variations were developed.

Here is a sample of Güntar Gerhard Lange’s 1961 version for the Berthold company.

The top-heavy “C” distinguishes Berthold’s from other “Baskervilles,” as does the less conspicuous “R” with its beautiful, flowing tail (compare with this later “Baskerville” by Lange).

See also Lange’s version of Garamond, discussed previously as URW Garamond (it was issued first by Berthold).

P.S. The above passage is from Lois Duncan’s Stranger with My Face, the creepiest young-adult novel I’ve read. One could do worse than to work through Duncan’s oeuvre. Beware, Hachette editions from the 2010s have been modernized; the protagonists use e-devices. Not cool.

Still waiting

Our little son, whose name will be Hamish Macbeth (not really), refuses to come out of his mother.

The doctor says that if he hasn’t been born by Monday, we’ll make a “birthing plan.”

There’s little else to report. I finished reading Down a Dark Hall by Lois Duncan:

It was a slow burn, but the last pages were – as kids these days like to say – fire.

(Its cinematic adaptation, released in 2018, isn’t well regarded.)

Next, to read another boarding school classic: Joan Lindsay’s Picnic at Hanging Rock. Copies have become readily available due to the popularity of the new miniseries. I’ve only seen the movie of 1975. It’s one of my favorites.

My niece, etc.

Ana shares this photo of David and little Ada.

What a sweetie!

Tomorrow, Karin & I will spend some time with my high school friend, Dan, and his wife and three young children. They recently moved from Vermont to southwestern Michigan.

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My current reading:

(1) Suetonius, The Twelve Caesars, translated by Robert Graves (1957), revised by some other dude (2007).

(2) Michael Grant, The Twelve Caesars.

“Robert Graves’ Penguin version … is entertaining, but has to be used with caution.”

Yes, I expect that Graves sneaks in a few extra poisonings.

(3) Terri Jentz, Strange Piece of Paradise.

True crime.

Vacationing from Yale, the author camps out in the Oregon desert and is mutilated by a mysterious axeman. Decades later, she returns to the scene to seek out the axeman, his motive, and cosmic meaning.

The book is highly introspective: was the author’s trauma due to herself, or to the axeman? The author writes 100+ pages before even considering the latter possibility.

Still, it isn’t bad.

(4) Lois Duncan, Down a Dark Hall, original 1974 version.

This classic gothic school novel is by the author of I Know What You Did Last Summer and Stranger with My Face.

(The 2011 update incorporates new technology – email, cell phones, etc. – NO GOOD.)

To be continued. …

Harry Potter

Our apartment is now overpopulated with cardboard boxes, for which Ziva and Jasper are extremely grateful. Karin brings home boxes; Karin’s mom brings boxes; Karin’s dad brings boxes. Collapsed, the boxes take up most of our space. Filled, they would cause the apartment to be unlivable.

It’s some relief that our landlord is allowing us to store the filled boxes elsewhere on his property.

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Evenings, when not filling the boxes, Karin has been playing a lot of Harry Potter for the PS One. I hear the TV exclaim:

“Concentrate, Potter!” (Madam Hooch teaching Harry to fly on his broomstick).

“Flippendo!”

“Wingardium Leviosa!”

And now, whenever I do chores in the apartment, I catch myself muttering: “It’s LeviOsa, not LeviosA.”

Not because it’s in the game, but because it’s the only line I can remember from the movie.

I’m thinking of buying this shirt:

Mary plays a lot of Zelda. I think she would like this Harry Potter game, too.

I suppose that one day I should read the series. How soon? As soon as I finish reading the complete works of Lois Duncan. I’m about to finish Stranger with My Face (downright terrifying).

Rosaura; born in blood and fire; monsters’ offspring; Leibniz; I know what you did last summer; down a dark hall

I haven’t had much time for blogging, but during the last few weeks I’ve managed to read good-sized portions of several books. They haven’t been difficult books (not even Leibniz’s Political Writings have been very difficult; for one thing, Leibniz digresses at key moments to promote the use and development of microscopes). Nor have they been lengthy books. But they’ve all been “top quality.”

Some more titles:

(1) Born in Blood and Fire: A Concise History of Latin America, by John Charles Chasteen. My Spanish “beginning” students will be tasked, after Thanksgiving, with reading this. It’s the liveliest general history of Latin America that I know of.

(2) Rosaura a las diez, by Marco Denevi, with notes and cuestionarios by Donald A. Yates. This is an Argentinian mystery novel, in the fashion of Wilkie Collins. (Yates’s introduction goes so far as to say that Denevi’s only literary influence was Wilkie Collins.) Rosaura was recommended to me by my Uncle Tim, who read it in high school. Right now I’m forcing my Spanish “intermediate” students to read it. How they struggle.

(3) I Know What You Did Last Summer, by Lois Duncan. Until recently, I only knew this as the lousy slasher movie that came out when I was a youth – the movie with the hook-handed killer known as the “Fisherman.” Lo and behold, the tale began as an early-’70s novel. The novel has no “Fisherman.” It does have narcissistic teenagers in a hell of their own making, a hell of regret, of jealousy, and of fear. This is not a merciless book, but it is a deeply unsettling one.

Duncan was quite prolific, quite expert at writing this sort of thing. I’ve started reading another of her grim offerings, Down a Dark Hall.

(4) Children of Monsters: An Inquiry into the Sons and Daughters of Dictators, by Jay Nordlinger. Each chapter treats a different dictator and his offspring. Hitler – did he have children? Mussolini. Stalin. Mao. The Ceausescus. Castro. Gaddafi. Saddam Hussein. Mobutu. Bokassa. Amin. Pol Pot. It reads a little like Kings and Chronicles, especially when it covers the dynastic dictatorships (the Kims, the Duvaliers, the Assads). Though it’s wryly written, it’s still a bit of a chore to get through. The chapters are nevertheless worth reading in the given order, because they set the stage for one of the most compelling characters: Idi Amin’s son, Jaffar, who manages to be both a peace advocate and a “chip off the old block” (many dictators’ children have tended to be one or the other, but not both). With Jaffar it’s as if the psychological pieces almost fit together, and it’s poignant. (If only the dictators had been more like Jaffar, instead of, you know, murderers.)

Nordlinger has written a book which is “on the other side of the looking-glass” to this one. It’s about the recipients of the Nobel Peace Prize. I intend to read it soon.