In response to a mail art call sponsored by the Paint Rock River Valley
Postal Authority, Cascadia Artpost created a block of four artistamps calling
attention to favorite books. The call was for "favorite book," but who can point
to just a single book and call it their favorite book? The artistamps were
printed on February 26, 2010.
The aristamp designs are based on scans of four book covers.
A Pattern language by Christopher Alexander et al. is a unique
handbook first published in 1977 and now has gone through 20 printings. Based on
empirical observations that aim to identify a set of structural and spatial
patterns of human buildings and communities that function well, sustain
individuals psychologically, and appear inviting, this book is subversive to
what architects have been doing the past 30 years. Nikos Salingaros calls A
Pattern Language "one of the great books of the century." One could say any
century.
A Glass Face in the Rain is a 1982 collection of poems by the late
Cascadian poet William Stafford. Stafford's poems are often set in the western
United States and contain a certain affirmation, confidence, and optimism that
we find attractive even in the face of darkness. These poems embody the spirit
of Cascadia.
The Brothers K by David James Duncan is a wonderful epic novel
about the Chance family and set in the 1960's Vietnam War era. A coming of age
tale about four brothers and twin sisters incorporates a number of interesting
ingredients: baseball, fundamentalist Christianity, humor, and the response to
circumstances that we personally lived through.
The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein is a critiqueof contemporary
capitalism in the wake of wars, terrorist attacks, natural and human-made
environmental disasters, and self-inflicted financial crises where the corporate
state uses public disorientation to impose control through a mix of
privatization, further deregulation, repression of unions and other opponents,
reductions in social spending, and police/military repression. This all works,
up to a point where reality overwhelms shock. The unfolding scope of degradation
resulting from the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is a case in point.
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