In the beginning, I decided to keep Alice’s brain be the same: always the Xenotheka library, because it contains a variety of books from the branch of architecture, which is always the main topic of our books. Obviously, I chose the topic to be architecture.
Firstly, I focused on the title of my book “Memoirs on the Most Important Objects of Architecture”. I picked the phrase “the most important objects” as my first try on the search engine, as this is the main point of the book and helps build its whole guide line. However, the results showed that it sometimes refers to a particular more detailed criteria, such as the most important objects in 1950s, or those of materials.
Then I chose another key word which is Pierre Patte, the author of the book, for the reason that there might be more reference to what he has written in this book, or that he might have some similar points of view as the author of other books. Fortunately, the results showed exactly what it was expected. There are many statements he made that are appropriate in the content of those books.
In the end, I chose two books as following that are relevant to my book:
The first one is called Eighteenth Century Architecture by Van Eck. I chose it because it was shown twice at the first place as I used both key words I mentioned before, and the content has also a strong connection with my own book. On one hand, the author used Patte’s statement to compare with other architects’ statements; on the other hand, Van Eck mentioned that the most important things in architecture should not be the useless decoration, but the practical construction, which should also be a main point of my book.
The second book is called City Life by Rybczynski. The quote I found says: “Only the most important public buildings, like the churches or the courthouse, were meant to be experienced as freestanding objects”. The public buildings play an important role in my book, because one of its main topics would be city construction. Also, there are many detailed illustrations of churches and ancient public buildings in my book, which can have a strong connection with this book.