More than two decades into the game, Ghostface Killah remains unstoppable. Last year he dropped an excellent concept album detailing his return after being locked up for 36 Seasons. Yesterday he and the BadBadNotGood released Sour Soul. In the live instrumental setting, the BBNG trio lays out the smooth, elegant jazz-hip hop arrangements for Ghost to tear down. “Gunshowers,” for example, begins with the soothing electric guitar strumming. Then the thumping bass kicks in before Ghost rips through with his swag on word: “I bust boundaries son, you just do what you’re taught / My vocab is powerful, spit shit subliminal / Slang therapist, my whole style is criminal.” At times, the laid-back beats could hardly keep up with Ghost’s endless energy. As a result, one of the highlights of the album is “Tone’s Rap,” in which Ghost slows down his flow to the spacious backdrop and muses on his pimping game. Before the instrument takes over, he claims, “Pimping ain’t easy, but it surely is fun.” He could say that about his rapping career as well.

Bruce Ross-Larson’s Edit Yourself is like a little diet manual for writing. Ross-Larson shows you how to trim off all the fats in your writing and to focus on the core message. It’s a book to keep within reach when editing your writing. I’ll use it as a reference for my eating habit as well.

In Grammar for the Soul, Lawrence Weinstein proves that improving your grammar can enhance the quality of your life. Like yoga, mediation and exercise, he believes “Grammar can become a place to get in spiritual shape.” Learning grammar is my goal for personal growth this year; therefore, I find Weinstein’s take on inspirational grammar motivating.

With Grammar Moves, Weinstein and Thomas Finn turn Grammar for the Soul into a textbook that students would be interested in learning about grammar. What makes this book intriguing is that each grammatical element gets a personal trait. For instance, the colon is associated with being assertive and commas are associated with being organized. These connections help figuring out how each punctuation works.

Both books are worth rereading when you have a couple of hours to waste, like flying in a plane.

I now realize that I have a peculiar reading habit. I only read a particular subject until I couldn’t find any more books on it I want to read. In the past three years, I read most books on typography. Every time I go to the library, I stare at the typography section to see if I find anymore books I want to read on that subject. I also keep on eye out for new ones. I think I have exhausted that option.

Before typography I was obsessed with reading jazz. I read many biographies, particularly on Miles Davis. Somehow Miles’s life and music sparked so much interests in music writers. Books about the man and his sound keep coming out. A new one has released in the last month and I am eying on that too.

As a web designer and developer, I continue to read books related to the field including responsive web design, JavaScript, WordPress, usability as accessibility. Back in the days, I read as much Flash books as I could. I think I have wasted a huge chunk of my time on Flash books since I don’t even use it anymore.

This year I am tackling English grammar. I have always been fascinated with grammar, but could never master it. Several weeks ago, I went to Mason library to get some books to read on my vacation. I could’t get any on jazz or typography I wanted to read; therefore, I hopped over to the grammar section. I picked up June Casageande’s The Best Punctuation Book, Period. and Stephen Wilbers’s Mastering the Craft of Writing. I loved both of it and I wanted to read more. My recent favorites include Stephen King’s On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft and Jenny Baranick’s Missed Periods and Other Grammar Scares.

Now I want to read as much as I can on this topic. I reread William Struck Jr. & E.B. White’s The Elements of Style now and then hoping I could remember all the advice from the book. I find books on writing and grammar intriguing because they are well-written. The authors have to master their own craft before they offer their advice.

I will be concentrating on grammar and writing for at least this year. I hope that I can get the grammar rules under my belt once and for all. For twenty years I have avoided learning it because I felt like English is always my weakest strength. It is time to get over it. If I re-read my blog posts, I could catch my own errors. I don’t do it not because I don’t care, but I don’t have time. Whenever I write a blog, I focus on getting the idea off my head rather than getting bogged down with grammar. If I am too concern with proper English, I would never have finished writing a blog post, but I will try to re-read at least once before I hit the publish button.

Ms. Baranick makes grammar not only easy to grasp but also fun to read. She uses pop-culture references and witty analogies to keep the subject engaging. It’s a concise book that could be knocked off in a few hours, and you’ll be convinced: “Writing stimulates our brains to penetrate language, conjugate verbs, and insert punctuation.”

I have finally read a Stephen King book—ironically not a novel, but a nonfiction on writing. In the first half he shares a vivid memoir of how he became a writer. Some of his childhood details are hilarious. In the second half he writes about the craft, the process, and the language. The book is a fascinating read, but in short, King’ Prime Rule to writing is “read a lot, write a lot.” Not revelation but reassuring advice coming from the King himself.

For my independent design project to complete my graduate journey in the spring of 2015, I wanted to tackle a subject that suits both my personal interest and creative passion. I have thought about this project when I first began the program. I wanted to do something related to music (jazz, hip-hop, or Vietnamese) or typography. In the summer of last year, I finally settled on the topic that I am excited about: Vietnamese typography. I am passionate about typography and Vietnamese is deeply personal.

As I become more conscious of typography, I realize that fonts that support Vietnamese writing is extremely limited. The combine of online font services from Typekit and Google Fonts featured thousands of fonts, and yet only a handful could be used to display proper Vietnamese characters. As I am browsing Vietnamese publications to read news or music, many sites, 99% of the time, are still using default system fonts such as Arial, Helvetica and Times New Roman.

With those two issues in mind, the purpose for this project is to introduce the Vietnamese writing system and its unique typographic features to two types of audiences. First, my goal is to help type designers to understand the nuances of Vietnamese letters so they could expand their fonts library to support Vietnamese language. Second, my intention is to guide web and graphic designers in using correct Vietnamese typography in their work.

When I first began my research on the topic, I find my sources to be very limited. The most resources I found were books and only posts on Vietnamese grammar. Nevertheless, they gave me a good start. During the summer of last year, I began putting together a rough draft with the resources that I had combined. I sent the draft to my friend whose language skills are equally impressive in both Vietnamese and English. She sent me back with so much valuable feedback that I have decided to do more research and rewrite everything.

I started doing all of this work before my it was approved for my final project. I didn’t realize that I needed approval until I signed up with an advisor this year to do my research for the project. Luckily when I presented my concept, it was approved immediately. I am now in the process of finding more sources and digesting everything. I have already changed my plan from my original direction, but I still get plenty of time to work on it.

Yesterday, Đán held a flashlight with his left hand and opened my eyelids to exam with his right. After that he instructed me: “Now take off your clothes.” I laughed my ass off. At three and a half, he could be quite charming when he wants to. Unfortunately that only happens about 10 percent of the time. The other 90 percent of the time is quite the oposite.

He is at his worse when he gets up from his nap. He snaps just like that. Somehow Đạo had gone through this routine as well when he was at Đán’s age. Now Đán is doing the same but with a much worst tantrum. I simply can’t cope with it so I let his mom deal with it. She is much better than me.

On Saturday, we took Samantha, Eric and the kids out to bowling. Đán couldn’t wait until his turn to bowl. He simply wanted to bowl continuously. When we tried to explain to him about the game, he kicked he his bowling shoes and pushed him mom. When we couldn’t get him to calm down, we took him out to the car. I guess we won’t come back to bowling until he understands the concept of self-control.

There’s not much to weigh in on Hà Thanh Xuân’s new release, Cuối Tuần Bên Anh. Other than her luscious voice riding cha-cha rhythm as smooth as a glass of Sangria, the album is a typical Asia’s reprocessed productions. Most of the arrangements are dated back to the early ‘90s. As long as Trúc Hồ still holding down the reign, Asia is still stuck in the past two decades. He has more interest in politics than moving the music production forward.

With that said, Cuối Tuần Bên Anh brings back so much nostalgia. A few weeks ago, as I was lounging at the beautiful beach in Punta Cana, Dominican Republic with a Crazy Monkey in my hand and Hà Thanh Xuân’s album pumping in my Sennheiser, I took a trip down to memory lane. That keyboard lick in the beginning of “Ngựa Hoang” is a Trúc Hồ’s unmistakable arrangement. I still remember rocking that instrumental cha-cha medley album while walking from and to middle school everyday. Damn, those good old days are now long gone.

From Vũ Tuấn Đức’s produced “Tình Đầu Dễ Quên” and “Cuối Tuần Bên Anh” to Trúc Sinh’s “Hãy Vui Đêm Nay” and “Cố Quên” to Sỹ Đan’s “Tình Là Sợi Tơ” and “Bé Yêu,” these familiar sounds, which remain intact, make me wonder what the recording process is like in the studio. Probably something like this. A singer looks up the catalog and picks out a song. The producer finds the pre-recorded arrangement, puts it on and tells the singer to get into the booth and just sing into it. After ten or fifteen songs, they have completed a professional karaoke session. Now they just need to take a few studio pictures, send them over to the graphic department, probably one guy, to Photoshop the hell out of the image and whipped up the album design with some horrendous typefaces. Done!

A big, beautiful coffee table book on Erik Spiekermann, an eminent type and graphic designer. Although his body of work is inspiring to flip through, it would be more insightful to read about his process, like Yves Peter’s “The Making of FF Meta Serif.” I was expecting something along the line of Adrian Frutiger Typefaces.