Peter Bil’ak is a multidisciplinary designer and the founder of Typotheque, a pioneer in the type foundry scene for being the first to license its entire font collection as webfonts. He is also the co-founder of magazines Dot Dot Dot, a seminal art and culture publication, and Works That Work which uses a unique ‘Social Distribution’ system. Peter is also the founder of font platforms Fontstand and TPTQ Arabic.
Which three books would you recommend?
Immortality Milan Kundera
The last book by Kundera written in Czech, and I believe his best one. Immortality is a bit of a meta-novel, with an inventive narrative, but also exploring the format of the novel, and delivering something that can’t be adapted to any other medium — it uses the unique quality of a novel, how it has evolved over two thousand years, and how authors add their own contribution to this genre. The book is so rich and layered, that I found in it solutions to two of my projects, which were completely unrelated to Kundera’s work. I think this is a sign of a great book, that it triggers ideas that affect real lives.
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance Robert M. Pirsig
A classic, that was recommended to me by several people, and I postponed reading it for years, and when I did, I helped me define many aspects of my own work. Pirsig is personal, yet, managed to cover history of philosophy and science, and goes deep into "Metaphysics of Quality”, extremely difficult, but very satisfying discussion of what in general defines something worthwhile, — the elusive definition of quality. There is also a follow up of this book, Lila, which I enjoyed as much.
Sapiens: A Brief History of HumankindYuval Noah Harari
I realise that there is a share of people who are very critical of this book, but Sapiens was a book that I both couldn’t stop reading, and also savouring it in small bits, so it last as long as it can — this is how much I enjoyed it. Without hesitations and much reverence, Yuval Noah Harari ask some very big questions (about religion, idea of progress, happiness), and actually answers them directly. It is smart, funny, and illuminating in a way how it connects history and science. There are not many books that are so easy to read, while so informative, and well researched.
Whose reading list are you most curious about?
I'd love to know what Kundera, Pirsig and Harari read.