In “The Presence Is Always the Point,” which included in Considering Genius, a collection of Stanley Crouch’s writings on jazz, he argues “[t]hat jazz is a music built on adult emotion while rock is focused on adolescent passion created another problem for jazz musicians who tried fusion.” I share his view on rock (not as sophisticated as jazz), but I disagree with his position against Miles Davis’s fusion direction. Davis never lost the complex emotion in jazz when he combined the two styles. Listens to Bitches Brew, one can still hear Davis’s deep expression that came out of his trumpet. Although we both have different views on jazz-rock and hip-hop, I still have respect for Crouch as a jazz critic who speaks his mind with an intellectual voice.

What makes Crouch’s essays intriguing to read is that he does not use heavy technical terms (something I avoid to do myself), yet he could let us hear the sound of jazz through his eloquent pen. If one would like to learn about several important jazz figures—such as Miles Davis, Charlie Parker, Thelonious Monk, Ahmad Jamal, Charles Mingus, Ornette Coleman, John Coltrane, and Duke Ellington—“The Makers” section is perfect for that, especially the piece on Bird. Crouch started out castigating Clint Eastwood’s Bird (film) and Chan Parker’s To Bird With Love (a book filled with photos), and then told the story of legendary Parker through his own research.

Even though the “Battle Royal” section, which featured eight short pieces Crouch wrote for JazzTimes, is brief, the writings are filled with controversial topics. One comes to mind is the dismissal of John Coltrane. McCoy Tyner, Coltrane’s pianist, left the band because he was “unable to deal with many squeakers, howlers, shriekers, and honkers his boss was invited onto the bandstand.” Yet, one important detail that fascinated me the most in this book is when Crouch’s father made a comment about Billie Holiday: “You should have heard her singing one to a woman. That was when she was really singing. I saw her romancing a girl with her voice just a couple of blocks from here at an after-hours joint up near Adams Boulevard on Central Avenue. She was fine and mellow all right but she was in her element when she was trying to pull a girl up next to her.” Holy shit!

Criticism plays a significant role in jazz. The critics not only helped spread the aesthetic qualities of the music, but also pushed the color line and challenged the racial equality in America. As someone who has been obsessed with jazz over a year ago, I spend innumerable amount of time catching up with jazz recordings, read the history of jazz, and digest doses of jazz-related essays. Yet, my knowledge is nothing compares to the level of details and researches John Gennari, an assistant professor of English at the University of Vermont, pour into his stellar Blowin’ Hot and Cool: Jazz and Its Critics.

With thorough documentation (57 pages of notes), gripping narration, and open-minded observation, Gennari captured one of the fascinating and engaging aspects of jazz: it’s writing. Blowin’ Hot and Cool sets off in 1935 with John Hammond and Leonard Feather—two white critics who started the jazz criticism movement—then progresses all the way up to Gary Giddins, Stanley Crouch, and my main man Greg Tate who is a brilliant, contemporary writer. What intrigues me the most about this book is that whatever the controversial issues were—critics vs. critics, white vs. black, musicians vs. writers, traditional vs. modern, politic vs. racism, underground vs. commercial—Gennari provides readers both side of the story and backs up his analysis with quotes and excerpts.

Again, as a jazz enthusiast as well as my interest in music criticism, Blowin’ Hot and Cool is an invaluable gem. It is more enriching than the nineteen-hour documentary of Ken Burns’s Jazz and much better represented than The Smithsonian Collection of Classic Jazz. And I strongly agree with Gennari that: “Somehow this jazz writing seemed more important, more necessary than the writing about rock and pop music. Many rock musicians were well-known celebrities; we saw them on television. We love their music because it was accessible. Those of us who were musical dabblers played rock and funk because they felt like native languages. If we ventured into jazz, it was as a second language, and it came with no guarantee of an audience.”

Who Do You Love is a compilation of Jean Thompson’s marvelous short stories that appeared on major publications including The New Yorker, Mid-American Review, and Ontario Review. The book featured fifteen skillfully-crafted fictions ranging from shocking to reminiscing to disturbing to shattering to enlightening experiences. Thompson’s ingenious pen created engaging characters, amusing moments as well as heart-touching narrations. Each of her pieces—“The Widower” in particular—strikes like lightening: sharp, powerful, and unpredictable. A second reading is required for further appreciation of the splendid details.

Working at Vassar is hard not to learn new skills or not to be inspired when we’re always indulged with design-related resources. Lawrence Zeegen’s Digital Illustration: A Master Class in Creative Image-making is the latest book being passed around the Vassar’s Web-design crew. Although the heart and soul of the book is the jaw-dropping illustrations, the history of image-making is no less interesting, especially with the influences of pop culture such as punk rock, hip-hop, and pornography. With digital tools—Mac computer, digital camera, scanner—being affordable and easy to access, the process of integrating media and techniques is much smoother and faster. An artist can move freely from paper-sketching to digital-crafting or vice versa. Digital Illustration is a wonderful source of inspiration.

With a collection of essays written by music scholars, Bad Music: The Music We Love To Hate edited by Christopher Washburne and Maiken Derno is both refreshing and informing to read. The book delves into various genres—country, pop, world music, smooth jazz, folk, and punk rock—that are often ignored by the academic’s gatekeepers. Discussions such as “Camp vs. Cheese,” “Why Smooth Jazz is Not Part of Historical Narratives,” and “Badness as ‘Aesthetically Unbearable Style'” help readers understand the “musical badness” without being disdainful. As someone whose interests include music writing, I find Bad Music to be helpful and insightful.

I have tremendous respect for Thinh Nhat Hanh and his work as a peace activist. I’ve learned to calm myself and connect with my interbeing (Tiep Hien) through his Being Peace. The book is an eye-opening reading for me, especially when we’re in the world full of temptations, because it taught me to appreciate my presence and to live life one day at a time. I was so impressed with his teaching that I have wanted to learn more. I began to read his other books, but disappointed by the same concepts, only different stories. His simple writing style becomes a drag to read, and his idea gets unreasonable to the point where I begin to doubt his credibility.

On the subject “We Are What We Eat” in his Anger: Wisdom for Cooling the Flames, he talks about the food that we eat contains anger. For instance, cows raised in small barns are filled with anger because they are trapped; therefore, when we eat them, we inherit their angriness. His point is interesting, but I am not sure how realistic it is. As someone who loves his pho (Vietnamese noodle) with a side dish of uncooked beef, I guess I consume kilos of madness on top of mad cow disease. But I doubt that my anger will subside if I stop eating like a cannibal. Let’s assume that he is right on “we are what we eat,” how would he explain the angriness from people who don’t even touch meat? I know quite a few women who eat only the greenest vegetables and the freshest tofu, yet I can’t even believe the words that came out of their mouth or their evil intention. I am sure we all know someone with those two qualities.

Another disappointment with Anger is when Thich Nhat Hanh switches to fictional writing. In the tale of “David and Angelina,” he writes, “[David] was a lonely person. He did not have friends. Often he did not go to the campus cafeteria. Instead, he stayed home and ate instant noodles. You may have already guessed that David is Asian.” Besides the stereotype that only Asian people eat instant noodles, his setting is problematic. David is a college student in America, which is more or less closer to a modern society, yet Thich Nhat Hanh tied it into a fantasy world. I just could not read on when the beautiful Angelina comes to life from a painting that David has been obsessed with ever since he bought it from the market. This is not Weird Science, and I didn’t know Thich Nhat Hanh could write cai luong (Vietnamese opera).

I am in no way attempting to disrespect someone who works hard all his life to bring the world some peace. I guess it’s the evil in me, from eating too much angry food, drinking too much inflamed liquid, and listening to too much evil music like jazz and hip-hop, that fuels the flames instead of cooling them down when reading Anger. I know I am going straight to hell when I die, and it’s not so hard to tell. In fact, the mental life I am living in isn’t better than hell; therefore, I admire Thich Nhat Hanh, and wish I could be as spiritually free as he is.

In a nutshell, 37 Signals’ Getting Real provides advices on building web applications that get the job done and stay the hell out of the way. To accomplish these two goals, an application needs to be simple (with fewer features), should focus only on the main tasks and requires minimal or zero learning from the users.

From “The Starting Line,” “Feature Selection,” “Interface Design,” “Promotion” to “Support,” the book helps the team (manager, designer, programmer) to stay on point by breaking the job down into small chunks and to avoid wasting times like meetings. Meetings are toxic because “they break your work day into small, incoherent pieces that disrupt your natural workflow” and “they often contain at least one moron that inevitably gets his turn to waste everyone’s time with nonsense.” I also hope that companies take 37 Signals’ guidelines on customer support by “tear down the walls between support and development” and about “quick turnaround time on support queries should be a top priority.”

I haven’t used any of 37 Signals’ web applications; therefore, I don’t know how simple and easy they are to use. After reading Getting Real, the application that jumps at me is Apple’s Preview, which comes with Mac OS X. Preview is not only a simple program that gets the job done, but also reveals its strengths the more I use it. Just like its name, the software allows me to preview almost any type of image files from PSD to PNG to JPG and even PDF on the fly. (Try to open 20 PSDs at a time in Photoshop vs. Preview and see the differences). Why do I need Acrobat Reader, which takes forever to launch, when Preview does a smoother job? As I am reading Getting Real in Preview, I discovered a neat feature by accidentally closed down the application. Preview bookmarked the page I was on. I didn’t have to read the manual to find that out. Now that is keeping it real, and smart too.

The flexibility of CSS is both a gift and a curse for Web designers. The learning experience could be nerve-racking for the newcomers. While CSS is not hard to learn, applying the best practice to a specific need is challenging. We could use numerous combinations of CSS to come up with the same solution, yet none would work the way we wanted in every scenario. For instance, what is the best method for using image replacement? If we use “display:none,” screen readers won’t pick up the hidden texts. If we use negative “text-indent” to push text off to the side, image-disabled browsers display a blank box. If we use the empty span tags, the structure is not semantic. Scary isn’t it? Welcome to Web design world!

Although Andy Budd’s CSS Mastery doesn’t have an answer for the image replacement problem either, the book does a great job at breaking down each technique. So that the designers can understand the advantages and disadvantages of the choices they make. With clear language, well-organized contents, and easy-to-follow demonstrations, Budd puts together an invaluable resource that would help designers spend less time searching for reliable methods as well as testing them out on various browsers (Budd notes where the bugs occurred in his explanations). In addition to gathering all the best practices—including tips, techniques, hacks, filters and fixes—CSS Mastery also provides constructive case studies with the contributions from Simon Collison and Cameron Moll.

While everything presented in book could be found online—there isn’t anything new since CSS3 is still in development—having all the important materials in one central location right at our fingertip for easy access is worthwhile. For those who recently switched from table to CSS layout and needed clear concepts on CSS, the first chapter “Setting the Foundations,” is a must read.

Never mind the ill-designed cover (horrendous use of typography and colors), Flyboy in the Buttermilk: Essays on Contemporary America is packed with Greg Tate’s ingenious criticisms ranging from music (jazz, funk, punk-rock and hip-hop) to book to film. No matter what materials he chooses to write about, Tate’s bold approach, thoughtful thinking, and creative writing, take his pieces beyond the aesthetics of the artwork and delve into social, political and racial awareness. Yet, his passion and appreciate for music is what I admire his writing the most. On “Cecil Taylor’s Monster Movie,” Tate writes, “One reason I’m writing about a record 10 years old rather than reviewing Cecil’s new Garden—as I’d originally intended—is that while I’ve heard of Solo’s story so many times I could recite chapter and verse, I realized Garden’s four sides would require years of digging before I could hum a few bars.” And I must admit, I have to read some of his essays twice to full absorbed his points. Now I can’t wait to get my hands on Flyboy in the Buttermilk 2. Hopefully, the cover design will be improve on the new book. Although readers should never judge a book by its cover, a well-designed front enhances his impression, if not his credentials.

Reading other people’s deep secret could be addictive, especially when we come across something we can relate to. I find myself flipping through PostSecret: Extraordinary Confessions From Ordinary Lives compiled by Frank Warren again and again. Not only because of the shocking, disturbing and amusing stories, but also the clever designs that bring out the messages. People get creative and passionate when they try to convey their secrets. If I ever become a design instructor, I would apply the concept of PostSecret to encourage students to explore their creativities. Even as simple as cutting and pasting texts from magazines. They have chosen the appropriate typography to express their emotions. In any rate, pick up PostSecret if you want something interesting to read. Send Warren a postcard if you have a secret to share. Want to see some examples? Drop by PostSecret.com.

So if you’re feeling inspired and would like to design a PostSecret to enlightening your life. D.I.Y. Design It Yourself is a book you might want to look into. I like the way Ellen Lupton, author of Thinking With Type, defines design as, “an instrument for packaging ideas and making them public. People who have access to design tools can make tangible their own knowledge and concepts.” From electronic media (blog, Web sites) to print materials (books, logos, stationary), the faculty and students of Maryland Institute’s Graphic Design MFA program put together a fine book helping you to do your own things. As a web designer, I can always turn to this book for quick solutions if I need to do anything that is not web-related. With gorgeous illustrations and clear instructions, you can’t go wrong with just twenty bucks. In fact, you can check out the accompanied web site to see some samples of the book.