Just finished Paul Tingen’s Miles Beyond, an insightful read on Miles Davis’s electric journey from 1967-1991. Tingen delves not into only Miles’s fearless musical directions, but also his dark personality. Tingen argues, “Miles Davis’s greatness lies in the fact that he achieved some extraordinary things and was a deeply flawed human being at the same time. Fleshing out his human side increases the depth and meaning of his legacy.” Highly recommended for those who seek to explore the electric adventures of Miles Davis.

Need to catch up on on HTML5 quick? Look no further than Jeremy Keith’s concise HTML5 for Web Designers. Keith also does an excellent job of clarifying the confusions of the new markup.

With clear explanations and demonstrations, Keith walks readers through some of the major developments in HTML5: the simplified approach to markup, the native support of rich media, the handling of form without JavaScript and the addition of new elements.

HTML5 is not the future but the present of the web. Even Steve Jobs has jumped on the bandwagon. If you’re a web designer, you should too and HTML5 for Web Designers, published by A Book Apart (the new Visual QuickStart Guide), will help you get started. Keep an eye on Keith’s blog on HTML5 as well.

Richard Williams’s The Blue Moment is not just another study of Miles Davis’s monumental Kind of Blue, but the chapter that delves into each of the album’s masterpiece alone is worth the price of the book. Williams’s meticulous yet comprehensible analysis makes the music easy to understand even to none-jazz fans. His take on “So What” is an illustrative example:

Davis’s solo begins against an apparently inadvertent but superbly appropriate crash from Cobb’s cymbal—perhaps the most famous cymbal crash in all of jazz history—as the drummer switches from brushes to sticks; hanging and decaying over the first two bars of the improvisation, the shimmering sound provides a perfect platform for the trumpeter, who prowls the scale like a cat picking its way between windowsill ornaments, his peerless lyricism in full bloom.

All you have to do is play “So What” and you can hear what exactly he is talking about. But that’s not all. The Blue Moment also shows the success of Davis’s sidemen like John Coltrane, Bill Evans and Cannonball Adderley who had learned and drawn inspiration from Kind of Blue and moved beyond it. From the Velvet Underground to James Brown to the Soft Machine, the Miles Davis’s influence could be heard. The Blue Moment is definitely a joy to read from start to finish, but if you just want to learn about Kind of Blue, the title chapter is a must-read.

Last November, Dana’s brother gave her a copy of Ruth Yaron’s Super Baby Food for her birthday. Dana and I looked at the book and frowned: a baby food book with almost 600-page long and no photos to inspire us to cook. I was not impressed with the cover design and the book layout either so SBF ended up on our bookshelf.

During the holiday break, I took off work to spend time with Duke. While he was sleeping, I cracked the book open and started to read. To my surprise, I kept turning page after page. The first part of the book is packed with so much useful information that I had to start all over, even though I already reached 100 pages, to take notes. From the safety guides on how to buy a high chair to the best time to feed your baby to four-day waiting period to introduce new food, SBF is more than just a book on recipes. I picked up tips that I have not thought of before, like something as simple as cleaning baby teeth with Q-Tips after meals, not to make a disgusted face when changing his diaper, “which may teach him that his private parts are repulsive and lead him to believe that sex is ‘dirty’ when he gets older,” and, most important of all, never force him to eat.

SBF breaks down the advantages of home-cook from the quality of the food to the cost savings. For instance, she compares whole grains versus processed grains to contrast the lost of nutrients during the refinement. This is the book that I should have read before Duke turned 6-month, even though Dana has been doing a fabulous job of preparing healthy solid meals for our boy. I highly recommend SBF to new parents; however, consulting with a pediatrician is necessary when in doubts, like introducing yogurt after 6 months instead of 12 or introducing nuts at the early age.

Despite the not-so-attractive cover, Jason Cranford Teague’s Fluid Web Typography is an informative crash course on designing Web sites with typefaces beyond Arial, Times, Verdana, Trebuchet MS, and Georgia. FWT touches on the fundamental elements of typography, provides the list of cross-OS Web fonts, and breaks down the three methods of using fonts: linking (@font-face), third-party services (Typekit, Kernest.com, Typotheque), and embedding with Javascript (Cufón). The resource section also included my man Tim Brown’s Nice Web Type.

George Law, an exceptional graphic designer and typographer at Vassar College, said that Robert Bringhurst’s The Elements of Typographic Style is a book “to be read once a year.” I am taking his advice because Bringhurst packed so much useful information into this book that I discover something new every time I read it. Bringhurst is such a great writer that he makes words and letters “dance in their seats. Sometimes they rise and dance in the margins and aisles.” The Elements is not just for anyone who appreciates the art of typography, but also for anyone who appreciates the art of music and language. As he puts it: “Good typography is like bread: ready to be admired, appraised and dissected before it is consumed.”

Complementing Jeffrey Zeldman’s third edition of Designing with Web Standards, John Allsopp’s Developing with Web Standards is a comprehensive guide for web designers and developers who seek to implement latest technologies including HTML5, CSS3 and DOM into their projects. Allsopp’s vast knowledge of web development combined with his clear, simple instructional approaches come through on the pages.

Allsopp takes us all the way back to the basics of markup (HTML) and core concepts of presentation (CSS). For those who come late to the industry, the first part of the book will help you understand the important aspects of web standards. For those who have been in the game for years, part one and two are great for refreshing your knowledge and picking up things that you might have missed. The third part is where Allsopp delves into the principals of HTML5, CSS3, web fonts, and SVG.

Whereas Designing with Web Standards is recommended for directors, clients and the big bosses, Developing with Web Standards is without a doubt is a must-read for designers and developers.

The banning of Ban Mai’s Trinh Cong Son: Vet Chan Da Trang from releasing in Viet Nam piqued my curiosity. Trinh Cong Son is without a doubt one of the greatest songwriters of Viet Nam and many books have written about his life and his music. Why is this one prohibited?

In the biography section, Ban Mai briefly, unintentionally rubbed the sensitive spot in regarding to Trinh Cong Son’s neutral position of the war, which didn’t sit well with a few high-ranked officials. That was enough to cease the distribution of the book.

Vet Chan Da Trang was originally a thesis; therefore, only 66 out of 282 pages are reading materials. The rest is just appendix of song lists and lyrics. The author had done a decent job of keeping the biography part concise, yet she only scratched the surface when delving into his lyrical analysis. She drew mostly from other sources to explain his lyrical craftsmanship instead of providing her own interpretation. As a result, the book is disappointedly thin on contents.

Dan Cederholm is tha CSS man. His two titles, Web Standards Solutions and Bulletproof Web Design, are two invaluable resources I keep at hand for references. While there are many different ways to write CSS, I always prefer Dan’s simple approaches. As a designer himself, Dan knows exactly what issues we go through and he offers the straightforward, bulletproof solutions to solve the problems. When it comes to CSS, Dan is always at the top of his game.

Like his previous books, Handcrafted CSS is very focused. The contents are lean and concise but insightful on topics including image-free rounded corners, RGBA colors, and easy float management. Ethan Marcotte has contributed a very informative chapter on fluid layout, especially his formula for turning pixel unit into percentage unit.

Throughout the book, Dan encourages readers to design with “progressive enrichment.” With fast-advancing browsers like Safari and Firefox, now’s the time to experiment and implement new CSS technologies. He argues, “…by giving visual rewards to the browsers that can handle these advanced CSS properties, you’re creating flexible, easily maintained designs that push the development of these new standards forward.” After learning his case studies, I am convinced.

So if you have to make your web site looks the same in all browsers, including Internet Explore 6, than this book is not for you. But if you want to make your site look good on most browsers and great on a certain ones than Handcrafted CSS is for you.

The DVD comes with the book provides 10 guidelines that serves as a checklist for making bulletproof designs. Most of the tips are from Bulletproof Web Design. If you have the book, you probably don’t need the DVD.

When Kristin Bair O’Keeffe approached me to design a web site for her debut novel, Thirsty, I was excited, but also a bit hesitant. It’s the story of one woman’s journey through an abusive marriage, and I wasn’t sure if I could convey the message. The only way for me to understand the story was to read the book. Although Thirsty is not yet published*, I requested the manuscript. After reading through fifteen pages, the concept jumped right out at me. I wasted no time putting the mockup together, and it was exactly what the author had envisioned.

What helped me to come up with the visual design for the web site also kept me engaged to read the entire book: the cinematic scope and lyrical force that Bair O’Keeffe brings to the novel. Right off in the first few pages, her way with words is illustrated through the description of the woman’s eyes: “They were odd, but beautiful—green like the skin of a grape just before picking. Bright and luscious.” Her writing gets juicier in the scandalous sex details: “She put his hands on her ass and begged him in deep throaty pleadings to bite her nipples, harder, she said. That redhot fire crawled up her thighs and spread through her pussy so hard and so fast that she nearly tipped over taking off the petticoat.” Her ingenious, filmic storytelling comes to life in the dark moments of the book like the battering scenes and the accidents that occur at the steel mill.

Though Thirsty is a dramatic novel, Bair O’Keeffe manages to lighten up the gloomy corners with a sense of hope and humor. I still get a kick out of her very hilarious “Amen” story. Through her poetic pen and literary sensibility, Bair O’Keeffe has penned an art of fiction that taps into human emotion, brutalization, and compassion.

(Thirsty will be published in October 2009 by Swallow Press.)