What are you reading?

There are two books that I recently read. One was "The Money Dragon," a story about a Chinese merchant in Hawai'i, written by Pam Chun. The other one my granddaughter, who's a freshman at 'Iolani, recommended to me: "Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close" by Jonathan Safran Foer.

What do you like about them?

I read these to learn and understand what's going on. In "The Money Dragon," I was trying to understand my family and the Chinese structure of family. That was a good read for me because I now understand the path that my grandfather and father took was the same path that these people took. ...They all strive to become wealthy and be successful in their structure, and I can picture this with most of the Chinese merchants in Hawai'i who have all been very successful and hold this code or structure. In the other book, it was just kind of for me to understand, and my granddaughter was also trying to understand, the pain and suffering of 9/11. ...

Both books offer insight into complex situations; are you drawn to them because as a graphic designer, you also reduce complex ideas to more easily understood imagery?

I never thought of that, but I guess in graphic design we're always trying to understand and digest what the visual problem is, and then we try to come up with a visual solution to that problem. In a way it's a similar thinking process of understanding the situation — whether it's the Chinese heritage or the 9/11 disaster — and then trying to understand it and trying to find some of the answers to it. I guess you could say it parallels what we as graphic designers do, but I'm much more a visual person than a literary person.