Serific

Let me recommend Simon Garfield's (I want to write Garfunkel's) Just My Type: A Book About Fonts. Before the computer age, practically no one but printers cared, or even thought about, typefaces.  Now everyone is an expert.  With so many fonts at our fingertips we're quite aware that the look and layout of letters is not only about readability, but mood.

The book has chapters on how various fonts were created, and goes into the sometimes odd lives of the printers and designers who created them.  Garfield, as you might expect, helpfully uses each font he mentions as he mentions it, whether it's Courier, Helvetica, Verdana or much lesser known names.  He not only discusses the history, but also the aesthetics, and the fashion, of various typefaces, from an opening chapter on the desire to destroy comic sans, to later pieces on optima, sabon and so many others.  (My template for this blog has limited fonts so I can't show you these three.)

If you think the subject interesting, you probably couldn't find a better book. But even if you believe the concept itself is dry as dust, you might want to check it out.  There's more to the story than you'd imagine.