Books are life. In my case, it can be literally since I live and breathe books and it is also a huge part of my livelihood. So anything that has to do with books and reading, I’m there. But what if the books are just something you can’t actually read and are for aesthetic purposes only? Well, I’m still there and would still consider purchasing or taking a look at it as any book-related design is something interesting for me. Even if it’s so tiny that it can fit into a can.
A Japanese designer wanted to recreate a library and reading nook inside a can, of all places. The element of surprise is at play here since you wouldn’t expect something like that to exist in an upcycled can of tuna or something. This is actually similar to some of his previous works where he converted an electrical socket into a miniature but hyper-real tiny room. He likes to explore the expect the unexpected when it comes to his designs.
This time around, he created a Book Can where an empty food can details the miniature wonders of the most precious place for bookworms: their reading nook. Everything inside the can is meticulously designed and incredibly detailed, which is what fascinates us a lot about well-designed miniatures like this. There is a wooden parquet floor, a rug so some books can still be placed on the floor, potted plants, a small half-circle desk, a red, comfy-looking chair, and of course all the books.
The books themselves are also pretty detailed, even if no one will be able to read them anyway (maybe tiny elves?). You see a mix of different book cover colors, most of them being hardbound. In true bookworm fashion, they’re not just on the actual shelves but scattered all over the room, on the desk, on the floor, even on top of the tall shelves. There’s also a tiny ladder going into the room, as if inviting you to climb from outside the can and into this magical bookish world.
The designer spent around two weeks creating this Book Can and she shares how he was able to do it in a behind-the-scenes video on YouTube.
To say that I’m a huge reader is an understatement. I am both addicted to collecting books and to actually reading them (although not all that I buy have been read, to be honest). Reading non-fiction books is not a problem for me. The challenge is retaining all the information that I get, organizing them, and getting back to them later on when needed.
This is the problem that the folks at Possibility Design were trying to solve for a startup based in Germany and what they have come up with is a product concept for a digital highlighter called Quo. Basically, it’s a device that you can use to highlight important passages or chapters in a physical book that you’re reading and convert it to a digital file that you can store on your phone or tablet, or laptop. Not only that, but there are also other tools that you can use to further understand and organize what you want to save from that book.
The design for the Quo tries to recreate what an analog highlighter actually looks like and can even be clipped to the book like a bookmark. They wanted to recreate that experience of highlighting something in the book so that the learning curve for using the device will not be steep. Aside from just scanning the sentences that you will highlight, the device and the app that is connected to it will let you save and organize what you need. They also mentioned a dictionary and translator in case what you’re reading is not your first language. There’s also a record function that they did not go into detail but we assume that it can record your personal notes while you’re reading.
To further bridge the physical with the digital, they also came up with a collaborative platform so you can connect with other book readers. It may work like with what Amazon and Goodreads is doing for their Kindle readers where the notes that you choose to make public can also be read by people reading the same book. There are not much details about how the app will actually work but for now what we’re seeing is what it can do on paper.
This is a pretty interesting product for heavy readers like me who would like to keep a database of all the important information that I get from reading mostly non-fiction books. The design of the actual Quo highlighter is more functional but in terms of aesthetics, I might mistake it for my airconditioner remote when it’s lying around my house. But I would rather have a useful device with many tools to choose from rather than a pretty one that doesn’t really do anything.
Paper art can be more appealing especially if done right. In a world where almost everything is transitioning to digital and electronic media, paper may be considered obsolete and that’s not what creatives don’t want to happen.
Paper creations are beautiful. Paper crafting is not yet a lost art but it’s a tradition that must be preserved. We’re not just talking about origami as there are other types of paper art like weaving, pop-up, and quilling. There are plenty of other inventive techniques not many people know but Helen Hiebert has always been generous in sharing her talent.
Hand papermaking is Helen’s passion. This love for paper art is being shared further in her upcoming book “The Art of Paper Craft” published by Storey Publishing. Helen has always believed in the versatility of paper as a material. She also believes there are numerous and diverse ways to transform just one sheet of paper–from a flat form into a colorful masterpiece.
The book offers different ways to turn a single sheet of paper into a masterpiece. Different dimensional techniques will be presented whether origami, quilling, folding, weaving, pop-ups, or stretching. (Via Colossal)
There will be 41 unique projects you can try working on. Helen teamed up with other artists from different parts of the globe to show off different techniques and designs. Special projects include pop-up cards, votive lights, envelopes, folded paper gift boxes, and woven paper wall hangings among others.
Crafters, designers, and artists will love this book for it presents new papermaking techniques developed by other people. You will definitely be challenged and learn new things you haven’t known or tried before. In this book, the creative author further proves there is more to paper art than just folding, cutting, or crumpling.
Helen Hiebert’s various experiences make her a worthy artist to follow. She’s been known for paper as her primary medium. She has done notable installations, sculptures, movies, and artists’ works and books with paper. She was once featured on Sesame Street, offering Papermaking Class to the children.
She’s an author who shares her knowledge via how-to books like the upcoming “The Art of Paper Craft”. She’s also a teacher doing papermaking masterclasses and retreats in her Red Cliff, Colorado studio held in September of each year.
According to Hiebert, her imagination is sparked every time she discovers new paper. She quickly sees new creations in her mind. It becomes a magical process as soon as she gets hold of paper and starts cutting, tearing, crumpling, or folding. She says paperwork is fun. It can also be inspirational as it teaches you to be patient and diligent in following in-depth instructions.
In her new book, Helen Hiebert will wow you once more with the different single sheet paper creations you can do on your own. The 320-page book contains dozens of projects that are a mix of easy ones to those with more advanced techniques. If you want to be challenged, you can try the projects and prove that it can be easy.
Because if they can’t hit the broad side of a barn with their blasters, they should at least be good at something; these are the Stormtrooper Bookends made by Nemesis Now and available on Amazon (affiliate link). Congratulations, you two; based on your inability to hit even a single rebel on Endor, you’re on book detail from now on. Try not to screw this up too, or it’s the garbage compactor for you.
The officially licensed bookends are cast in resin, hand-painted, and stand approximately 7.5″ tall. They feature the likeness of two stormtroopers trying their hardest to keep your books upright and avoid the inevitable Force choke from Vader if they fail. That’s a lot of pressure.
I think these stormtroopers will compliment your existing AT-AT bookends nicely. And you do already own a set of those, right? Who doesn’t? Granted, I don’t own any books and use them as napkin holders, but I’ve always been more of an eater than a reader.
Imagine instead of having a self-care app send you a notification that reminds you to read (especially if that is your resolution for the new year), the furniture itself can be a reminder! That is what Slice essentially is, a minimal, compact, elegant bookshelf that looks like an open book so that it can nudge you to read without having any more screens or digital stimulation.
“In amazingly digital era books aren’t easily opened, having this in mind ‘Slice’ is a bookshelf that intends to motivate individuals to read more often,” says Portuguese designer Joao-Teixeira who is known to always understand the assignment and delivers every single time with unique pieces like this.
Slice connects the environment, the activity, and the user very seamlessly through its form and function. Besides its emotional character, the bookshelf also takes on an aesthetic approach based on minimalistic and sleek shapes. Its elegantly formal look allows the product to become modular, enabling dynamic configurations as a means to highlight its presence and therefore its use.
You can access books from both sides (front or back) easily and the shelf was deliberately created with a slim profile to better fit in smaller spaces. It is horizontally stackable if you want to add more colors or create a piece for your home library, but Slice is certainly a slice of heavenly furniture for every book lover out there with big dreams and little floor space!
A quick Google Trends search will show you that the first instance of the term ‘Doomscrolling’ dates back to April 2020. The word was coined at the starting of the global lockdown following the pandemic, intended to mean “the act of consuming a large quantity of negative online news, typically without pause, to the detriment of the mental health of the person consuming it.”
It’s no secret that smartphones are designed to be addictive and bad for your mental health. Couple this with repeated lockdowns, confinement, and isolation, and you’ve got a pretty bad recipe for tech addiction on your hands… quite literally on your hands! Goodbye Phone, Hello World was published to help take that device from out of your hands and give you back control of your happiness and overall mental health.
The book, which combines beautiful illustrations and bite-sized pieces of text (for an easy transition), is filled with ‘ideas, wit, and wisdom to help you break away from technology and get back to living’. Within its covers lie 60 different exercises to help you find happiness, inner peace, and break away from the addictive activity that is staring at your phone… which ironically enough you’re probably doing right now!
The hardcover book is a perfect gift to yourself and/or a loved one this year. Created to help people be more mindful, the book helps you spot addictive behavior traits and break them using exercises that are much more ‘mentally nourishing’.
Reading: it’s fundamental. Cactuses? Not so much, unless maybe you’re a desert. But combining these two unlikely companions is the Babyletto Cactus Bookcase from West Elm. It’s a bookcase that looks like cactus. Obviously, if you don’t fill the entire thing with western novels about cowboys, you’ve done it all wrong.
The powder-coated steel bookcase is finished in sage green and measures 48″ tall, 31″ wide, and 8″ deep, with eight individual cubbies for storing books and toys. Or, in my case, snacks. As I always say, even a great book without a snack is hardly worth reading.
Don’t already have a western-themed library? What better way to get it started? Personally, I’ve always wanted an old west-inspired reading room and was finally making my dream a reality when my wife caught me trying to lead the horses inside and put an end to that plan real quick. Like even faster than the fastest gunslinger quick.
Let’s just say that if there was a Bible for icon designers, it would probably be this book put together by Michael Flarup. Titled ‘The iOS App Icon Book’, this beautiful hard-bound publication captures years’ worth of digital design, brought about by the advent of the App Store with the launch of the very first iPhone.
“Design changed forever with the introduction of the Smartphone”, says Flarup sitting in front of a white background, in the rather Apple keynote-esque video above. “Entire new disciplines were created and existing ones were transformed”, he mentions, talking about how virtual app icons practically became the packaging that we consumed before the app’s features itself, serving as a powerful link between creator and user, and distilling an entire app’s experience into one tiny little square that was a gateway to the app itself.
“I figured Logo Design had beautiful coffee table books dedicated to them, right? So why not App Icon Design??”, Flarup questioned. That question led to a 4-year journey comprising many sleepless nights, hours spent in front of computers, and over 10,000 emails, finally culminating in The App Icon Book, a compendium of popular app icons, their iterations over the years, their design analyses, and the story behind their creation. Flarup’s labor of love is almost encyclopedic in how beautifully it captures every aspect of something as humble as the App Icon… or as I like to call it, the Welcome Mat that ushers you across a digital threshold into a virtual world.
The book serves multiple purposes… Created not just for designers, but for anyone who finds the concept of the App Icon an interesting topic, The iOS App Icon Book acts as a visual reference, a source of inspiration, and a historic archive that documents all the different visual styles over the years, from the days of skeuomorphic design to the current trend of flat iconography. It starts with a foreword by Flarup, a designer and app icon connoisseur himself, followed by a short history on the iOS App Store platform and a quick primer on the design process behind creating app icons. The purpose of the primer is to give readers the background they need to understand and appreciate icons better. The book is also peppered with artist spotlights, featuring interviews with the creators behind some of the most memorable and interesting app icons, and revealing the stories of the humans behind the icon artworks.
Spanning close to 150 pages of rich, vibrant, hi-resolution artworks in thorough documentation, the book is a practical must-have for designers, creatives, and studios. It’s easily the most definitive anthology on app icons to date, and makes for a perfect book to browse through while sipping on coffee, or having on your table as you pitch your concepts to a client, or just glossing over for your daily visual stimulation! The book’s running for $68 on Kickstarter, and ships in April 2022.
Let’s face it, a good book and a nice cup of coffee or tea go together like peanut butter and bananas. But where do you rest your beverage? Personally, I rest mine on my open laptop because I like to live dangerously. But maybe you’re more cautious; maybe you need these classic novel or punny title wooden book coasters made and sold by Etsy shop Cutting Boredom. Me? I need a new laptop.
Made from reclaimed wood, the coasters are available in 20 different classic literature titles (see above) and 15 different tea/coffee/booze related punny titles (see below). They start at two for $20 and get cheaper the more you buy. I’m going to buy all 35 of them so I can use a different coaster every day of the month like I imagine rich people do.
I love reading. I also love coffee. As a matter of fact a few weeks ago I ordered one of everything at Starbucks and I still haven’t run out of energy. Or slept. Or been able to read because my hands are too jittery to hold a book steady. I’m starting to think the eventual crash is going to be a real doozy.
Having somehow made it through a second year of global pandemic and political unrest, give the loved ones on your holiday shopping list the greatest gift of all: an alternative to doom-scrolling. In Engadget’s 2021 Media Gift Guide you’ll find a diverse selection of books — fiction and nonfiction alike — as well a host of streaming content suggestions that will keep their recipients entertained through the holidays and beyond. If you’ve got a book, show or movie that you think would make the perfect present, tell us all about it in the comments below!
Fiction
Black Sun by Rebecca Roanhorse
Will Lipman Photography for Engadget
NYT bestselling author, Rebecca Roanhorse — the literary force behind Star Wars: Resistance Reborn — has done it again. Her latest fantasy series, Between Earth and Sky, takes readers on an epic journey of trauma, healing, vengeance, and eventual redemption. The first book in the series, 2020’s Black Sun, weaves a masterfully engrossing — and markedly inclusive — tale that eschews the common Arthurian Legend retellings in favor of a unique fantasy world inspired by pre-Columbian America cultures. If you’ve got a fan of fantasy on your holiday shopping list, pick up Black Sun for them before the sequel, Fevered Star, drops next April.
The ending of Game of Thrones was nothing short of a slap in the face to fans. I mean, really, all that and Bran wins? GTFOH. If you’ve got a fan of George “Double R” Martin on your holiday shopping list, do them a favor and turn them on to Joe Abercrombie’s Age of Madness trilogy. Set in a world in which the seeds of industrialization have just taken hold even as the age magic and mysticism stubbornly refuses to be uprooted, AoM tells a tale of mighty nations at war while the powerful elites who rule them vie for control over both their countries’ external fates and their courts’ internal politics. Packed with captivating characters, political intrigue, incredible reversals of fortune and stunning betrayals, Age of Madness is a grimdark masterpiece where everybody, for once, gets exactly what they deserve.
Whether we like it or not, this is Jeff Bezos’ world and the rest of us just live in it. Our current slate of 21st century techno-robber barons have achieved unfathomable wealth and unassailable power; but as Paul Bradley Carr’s latest novel, 1414º, illustrates, you can’t spend that money or wield that influence when you’re dead. If you’ve got a fan of high-tension whodunnits and techno-thrillers on your holiday shopping list, 1414º will be a surefire hit.
Fugitive Telemetry (The Murderbot Diaries) by Martha Wells
Will Lipman Photography for Engadget
Martha Wells can’t stop, won’t stop, dropping Murderbot hits. The reigning queen of hard sci-fi releasedFugitive Telemetry— the sixth book in her Hugo, Nebula, Locus and Alex Award winning series — earlier this year and let me tell you from experience, it is a banger. Our self-aware SecUnit anti-hero is back in another standalone adventure, this time on the trail of a vicious murderer aboard Preservation (space) Station. If the sci-finatic on your holiday shopping lists enjoys space intrigue and robotic mysteries, you can’t go wrong with Fugitive Telemetry.
The year is 2052 and Earth finds itself unwillingly annexed into a galactic empire it didn’t even know existed and is presented with a simple choice: provide our new alien overlords with a viable commercial product or face extermination. Thus, Earth’s mercenary legions are born. Armed with alien-made weaponry and a mysterious technology that allows soldiers to be reconstructed after being killed in battle — like reloading from a previous save point but far more gooey — Earth’s legions set out across the stars to fight the wars that the galaxy’s elder races are too self-important to fight themselves. Already 16 books deep, author B.V. Larson continues to lead the genre of military sci-fi from the front, so if you’ve got a fan of Starship Troopers, Aliens-style space marines, or Tom Cruise’s Edge of Tomorrow on your holiday shopping list, congrats! You can cross them off now.
Bright Galaxies, Dark Matter, and Beyond by Ashley Jean Yeager
Far from a household name, astronomer Vera Rubin’s pioneering research helped convince the scientific community of the possibility that dark matter — the mysterious materials that make up a vast majority of the universe but cannot be observed — actually exists. In Bright Galaxies, Dark Matter, and Beyond (not to be confused with Bright Galaxies, Dark Matter, a collection of Rubin’s own essays), author Ashley Jean Yeager takes readers on an inspiring biographical journey through the astronomer’s early year before examining the challenges she faced working in an often hostile, male-dominated field, and her eventual vindication and professional triumphs — looking at you Vera C. Rubin Observatory. If you’ve got a younger someone on your holiday shopping list who’s interested in pursuing STEM, this could well be the book that puts them on a path towards scientific greatness.
During the Zeppelin’s heyday, airships weren't just a means of the well-to-do to slowly get to distant destinations in comfort and luxury, they also offered a new means of (albeit pokey) exploration. N-4 Down by Mark Piesing takes readers on a thrilling, nail-biting adventure of the largest arctic rescue operation in history as famed Norwegian explorer, Roald Amundsen, rushed to save the surviving crew of the airship Italia, which crashed during its attempt to land men at the North Pole in 1928. The history and aeronautical buffs on your holiday shopping list are going to absolutely love it.
For the last 10,000 years, humanity has had an unprecedented and largely destructive impact on the environment around us. But as climate change increasingly wreaks its own havoc on us in return, humanity must now work to reverse or at least mitigate the harm that we have caused. In Under a White Sky: The Nature of the Future, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Elizabeth Kolbert examines just what we can do to make things right with Mother Earth and avoid a catastrophic climate crisis.
Green Bank, West Virginia is, technologically speaking, stuck in the 1950s. And for good reason! This bucolic Appalachian town is home to the ultra-sensitive radio telescope at the Green Bank observatory, which necessitates that basically every device that can emit a radio signal — everything from iPads to microwaves — be heavily restricted. In The Quiet Zone, journalist and author Stephen Kurczy, embeds himself in Green Bank to give readers a firsthand look at what life could be like without our precious digital tech. The Quiet Zone is the perfect gift for the aspiring luddite on your holiday shopping list.
Given the myriad COVID-induced supply chain challenges that retailers are girding for this upcoming holiday season, finding physical copies of these titles could prove to be a bit of a challenge. So, perhaps consider gifting the book worms on your holiday shopping list the Kindle Paperwhite and a subscription to Amazon Kindle Unlimited? Virtually every one of the books listed above are available on the digital service along with millions of others as well as magazines and periodicals.
But there’s only so much one can read during those long winter nights so why not curl up on the couch with a nice cup of hot cocoa and watch some sterling examples of our new Golden Age of Television? If you’ve got a Trekkie on your holiday shopping list, you really can’t go wrong with a subscription to Paramount+. The $5 - $10 a month service unlocks a plethora of Star Trek shows including the Emmy award-winning Picard and the hilarious Lower Decks.
Got someone with small children on your gift list? Throw them a bone with a Disney+ subscription. The service hosts nearly the entirety of Disney’s massive, decades-deep archives along with new family-friendly series and episodes arriving daily.
