Michael Lieberman

Bruce Lee’s Reading Life

Who knew that Bruce Lee was known to carry a book with him every where he went and that his spare time was consumed with reading and visiting  bookstores? And that before he went all in with kung fu he even dreamed of owning a used bookstore. The latest installment of The Libraries of Famous Men series at the Art of Manliness is devoted to Bruce Lee and his deep relationship with books and includes this "sampling of Bruce’s favorite authors and most interesting titles." Western Philosophy: Summa Theologica by St. Thomas Aquinas An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding by David Hume Meditations on...

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Cheeseheads Rejoice: American Cheese, 20 Slices, by Ben Denzer

There is a fun piece over at Saveur by Jamie Lausch Vander Broek, the Art & Design Librarian at the University of Michigan, about one of her recent acquisitions, American Cheese, 20 Slices, by Ben Denzer.  Vander Broek curates the Artists Books Collection at UM and talks about how Artist Books are a perfect way to make strong connections between students, faculty and library "because they represent a sweet spot between the things the students and faculty make (art, design) and the things the library has (books, information)." She also muses about how the purchase of the book for the collection stirred...

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The Benefits of a Book-Filled Home Remain Strong

It's no secret that a healthy portion of books in the home leads to more good things happening to the kids that live and grow up there. In his 2010 piece, Home Libraries Provide Huge Educational Advantage, Tom Jacobs of Pacific Standard alerted us to a comprehensive study that made clear that "the presence of book-lined shelves in the home — and the intellectual environment those volumes reflect — gives children an enormous advantage in school." Now, eight years later, Jacobs is back at it with the results of a new study that confirms that not only do books furnish...

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A Font to Remember

It is called Sans Forgetica.  Developed by a  group of psychology and design researchers at RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia Sans Forgetica has one goal in mind - to help you remember what you read. It is "believed to be the world’s first typeface specifically designed to help people retain more information and remember more of typed study notes." The cleverly named font is based on the theory called “desirable difficulty,” which suggests that people remember things better when their brains have to overcome minor obstacles while processing information.  “Sans Forgetica lies at a sweet spot where just enough obstruction has...

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