I purchased Reinventing the Wheel after flipping through the book at Elliot Bay Bookstore. I’m a sucker for these kinds of niche retro-design books, and this one offers a narrow slice of design history through the rotating wheel chart. Makes me want to create new wheels for everything — a color-coded wheel chart for all of my “outfits” (a la Geranimals), a kilograms-to-pounds converter (for that European bathroom scale), dot-com wheel-o-facts…

Even though the book is about the collection and you don’t even notice the written comments in your first eight flip-throughs of the book (at least from the graphic design point of view), author and collector Jessica Helfand does an excellent job of organizing and describing the pieces from their ancient astrological beginnings to 50’s pop kitch.

Advertisements contain the only truths to be relied on in a newspaper.
    —Mark Twain

Jason Kottke talks about advertising in books as a way to lower the price of books. He also makes the claim that:

I believe the world is a better place without advertising absolutely everywhere. But if advertising makes books more affordable — and in some cases absolutely free — and therefore accessible to more people, it’s hard to argue that it wouldn’t be a good idea.

Dare I say, go to the library for free? (Unless you live in Seattle, of course)

Going one ludicrous step further and following the Hollywood paradigm, there could be paid product placement in novels:

Dickens:
“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. You can have even better times with Fritos® brand corn chips!”

Melville:
“There she blows!- there she blows! A hump as graceful as the new Volkswagen Beetle®! It is Moby-Dick! Drivers wanted.®”

Shakespeare:
“Sleep seldom visits sorrow; when it doth, it is a comforter. Sorrow getting the best of you? Try Paxil®, because your life is waiting!”

Emily Dickinson:
“Because I could not stop for death, He kindly stopped for me; The carriage held but just ourselves and immortality and my Nokia® 6800 cell phone.”