Body-text fonts, pt. 27: JY Alia

Rain … all week, pretty much. Last night was dry. I and the neighbors had the same idea at the same time: mow the grass.

Everyone mowed except the guy who works nights.

The guy who works construction mowed his back yard wearing his high-visibility safety vest. It must feel wrong for him, laboring while not wearing it.

The grass was wet, heavy, and long. I mowed my front and back lawns, the latter to the nub (it has been growing too fast this season). Mowing can take as little as forty-five minutes; this took eighty.

I fell asleep two hours earlier than usual.

It rained again today.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

I’m sorry this entry is … underwhelming. The children kept me busy tonight. They are tricky, voracious little creatures, like their father.

It is fitting, perhaps, that this month’s font sample should be taken from Jay Nordlinger’s fine book Children of Monsters.

The typeface, JY Alia, is interesting for being so uninteresting: a nondescript blending of Bembos, Garamonds, and Jansons (in which manner it’s like the more famous Hoefler Text). I might not have identified JY Alia but for the lowercase italic “y”: look at “Daily Mail” above, and compare it to this professional specimen. I’ve never seen JY Alia in anything else.

Freeriding

There’s good news, for one semester at least: the faculty, staff, and students of my university will be allowed to ride the city bus for free. I plan to ride as often as possible so that this policy will be extended beyond the fall.

I paid my last bus fare today and rode home from downtown, where I’d attended the Friends of the Library Public Book Sale. I’d bought nine books in five volumes for four dollars. Six of these books are inside two omnibuses by Ngaio Marsh. “She Writes Better than Christie!” is the blurb on the front cover of one of the omnibuses. (No, she doesn’t.) The Friends of the Library Public Book Sale is about the only place where I ever find Ngaio Marsh’s books; curiously, no books by Dame Agatha were available today.

I’d been dutifully reading two chapters, daily, of Dame Daphne, but yesterday I lapsed. I did write four dissertation pages, however. (I still should be able to finish reading Rebecca in two weeks.)

I also am reading one chapter, daily, of The Late George Apley. I should get through that book by the end of August.

P.S. I saw at least two copies of Children of Monsters: An Inquiry into the Sons and Daughters of Dictators, by Jay Nordlinger, in the “Politics” section of the book sale. You can get a copy cheap if you go in today before 6:00pm. (Here is what I wrote of the book a couple of years ago.)

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.