The Art of Looking Sideways

Alan Fletcher collated a life's-worth of experience and wonder into a single megalith, The Art of Looking Sideways. Coming in at over 1000 pages this is a coffee-table book, and by its weight has a tendency to bruise those who attempt to read it in bed. Although it was compiled and written by a graphic designer, and it is an excellent book for designers, it should have broad appeal for the variety of subjects it covers. It's a difficult book to categorise; Fletcher thought it warranted its own 'looking sideways' section in a bookshop, because for all the culture, jokes, history, puzzles and science it contains, what unites the content is the idea of defamiliarising the ordinary and looking at the world with fresh eyes. For example, how many letters does the Roman alphabet contain? When you consider that many letters in upper and lower case bear little to no resemblance to each other (Aa, Ee, Gg) the figure is more like 37, and this poses problems for foreigners with different alphabets, learning a language like English.This is what makes this a great book. Revelation is an enjoyable experience, even in the case of solving difficult puzzles (or finding their solution). This puzzle is by no means new, but can be found in the book. The aim is to connect each dot by drawing four straight lines without removing your pencil. The solution can be Googled.