Afterward, the rest of us were invited to do the same. The organizers began the evening by going up to the podium and giving brief readings from a couple of the books.

Josan, who is a librarian in the Art Department, explained that the phrases were sometimes left over from print jobs, sometimes taken from popular advertisements, and sometimes composed especially for these books. But rather than simply printing the alphabet in the different typefaces, they composed the type into sentences and turns of phrase, many of which were poetic or amusingly strange. Type specimens were books produced by type foundries, the companies that manufactured the metal and wood type used in printing presses, to showcase the type for potential buyers. After looking at the books myself I see their point. It was organized by The People’s Museums of Philadelphia, a project run by the artists Leah Mackin and Alina Josan, and its conceit was that anyone who looked through type specimens like the one above would want to read aloud from them-to “declaim their contents,” as the organizers put it. Yes, our library is a special place, and the “Reading Type Specimens Aloud” event was unique. It’s such a wonderful library, in fact, that if you were feeling fanciful-or if you had recently looked through a book of type specimens-you might be inclined to call it eminently grand, bold and solid, magnificent.

In June I attended an unusual event at Parkway Central, Philadelphia’s wonderful main library.

Zipper Mouth by Laurie Weeks