This site deserves to rank with this site and this one. [more inside]
posted by bad grammar on Jul 8, 2009 - 18 comments

You will be Riveted when you read this riveting first page of the new rivetting book Moon People by Dale Courtney! If that doesn't convince you, maybe the overwhelmingly glowing Amazon reviews will. [more inside]
posted by captnkurt on Jul 8, 2009 - 83 comments

"We need another and a wiser and perhaps a more mystical concept of animals. Remote from universal nature and living by complicated artifice, man in civilization surveys the creature through the glass of his knowledge and sees thereby a feather magnified and the whole image in distortion. " - Henry Beston, naturalist and writer. [more inside]
posted by jquinby on Jun 24, 2009 - 15 comments

The blog associated with Ptak's online science bookstore is an absolutely fascinating, frequently-updated tour through historical, social, and scientific miscellany extracted from unusual books in the collection of the author, John Ptak. [more inside]
posted by Rumple on Jun 23, 2009 - 5 comments

What happens when Elton John reads your book? As Joel Derfner, author of Swish: My Quest to Become the Gayest Person Ever recounts, you go from crying at lunch with your agent over a slow-selling hardcover edition to a brand-spanking-new paperback edition, complete with a blurb from Elton John. [more inside]
posted by joeclark on Jun 22, 2009 - 20 comments

The Readers of Boing Boing interview Michael Moorcock
posted by Artw on Jun 18, 2009 - 42 comments

Hoping to work his way around to describing the graphic novel bookstore he wants to open some day, big box bookstore employee the Rocket Bomber has made strides in natural history by delineating the seven types of bookstore clients. Some snark in the comments has led to a followup post with additional how-to-run-a-bookstore musings.
posted by shothotbot on Jun 10, 2009 - 108 comments

If you're loathe to invest in an e-Book because you long for the physicality of books, you can now purchase book perfume designed to replicate the smell of books. [via]
posted by grapefruitmoon on Jun 7, 2009 - 47 comments

It’s only natural that if you wish to present yourself as a well-read person, a certain degree of complete bullshit is required. There’s no shame in lying about what you’ve read. There’s only shame in getting caught. Then you look like a doofus, and an illiterate one at that... How to lie about books.
posted by Artw on May 28, 2009 - 73 comments

Ecocomics: Where Graphic Art Meets Dismal Science. With such entries as "Superman, New Krypton, and Labor Unions" and "The Construction Industry in Comics."
posted by dersins on May 28, 2009 - 26 comments

A private school student asks "Is it OK to run an illegal library from my locker at school?"
posted by spock on May 24, 2009 - 101 comments

Infinite Summer - "The Challenge: Read Infinite Jest over the summer of 2009" [more inside]
posted by mattbucher on May 21, 2009 - 118 comments

The Woman Who Fought Back: "[Stieg] Larsson’s novels - the bestselling Millennium trilogy, which starts with The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo — have sold 12 million copies worldwide... [Eva] Gabrielsson [link to Swedish video], now 54, lived with Stieg Larsson from 1974 until his death in 2004. Yet, due to Swedish inheritance laws, she was not entitled to a single krona...'It’s like the plot of a Larsson novel,' said [Jan] Moburg. 'He wrote about how women are abused by men and about how they sometimes fight back. That was one of the messages of the books - to fight back. That’s what we’re trying to help her do.'"
posted by ocherdraco on May 21, 2009 - 20 comments

Dreams With Sharp Teeth – clips from a Sundance Channel documentary on science fiction writer (and somewhat litigious colourful character) Harlan Ellison. Harlan says pay the writer. (via)
posted by Artw on May 19, 2009 - 101 comments

Rebinding a 1518 printing of Ovid's Metamorphoses. [Via]
posted by homunculus on May 17, 2009 - 17 comments

Blanka is a collection of original, vintage, and limited edition posters and prints.
posted by netbros on May 16, 2009 - 9 comments

University of Iowa Creative Writing professor Robin Hemley on Guggenheim Fellowship in the Philippines first broke the news through a McSweeney's dispatch that the Bureau of Customs in the Philippines has begun to tax imported books, in direct violation of the Florence agreement. Concerned netizens rally against the government by spreading the news, causing #bookblockade to get trended on twitter. Neil Gaiman's tweet. More and more updates. An update from Robin Hemley. [more inside]
posted by drea on May 15, 2009 - 22 comments

1984: The masterpiece that killed George Orwell
posted by Artw on May 9, 2009 - 79 comments

The Art of Penguin Science Fiction is a historical guide to the design of book jackets in the Penguin SF line by James Pardey. But before reading the essay I recommend looking at some of the wonderful cover designs, for example We, Deathworld, Rork!, The Drowned World, Star Maker, The Evolution Man, Fifth Planet and Alternating Currents. They certainly don't make SF book jackets like they used to. All hundred plus covers can also be browsed alphabetically by author. [via The Guardian Books Blog]
posted by Kattullus on May 7, 2009 - 25 comments

The SF Signal Mind Meld feature poses science fiction related questions to a number of SF luminaries and the scientist, science writer or blogger. Subjects have included the best women writers in SF, taboo topics in SF, underated authors and the most controversial SF novels of the past and present. The also cover lighter topics, such the role of media tie-ins, how Battlestar Galactica could have ended better (bonus Geoff Ryman) and the realistic (or otherwise) use of science on TV SF shows.
posted by Artw on May 6, 2009 - 17 comments

Gather 'Round the Cadaver! : A new "coffee-table" book, Dissection: Photographs of a Rite of Passage in American Medicine is a new collection of photographs documenting what happened when bored medical students of the early 1900s met the camera.
posted by grapefruitmoon on Apr 29, 2009 - 22 comments

Build a DIY non destructive book scanner for under $300. An open source OCR package. A gratis ebook creation tool. An open source ebook library management tool and reader. An open-source Linux distribution for eink-based devices. And many, many ebook readers.
posted by bigmusic on Apr 23, 2009 - 84 comments

What are writers reading? An eclectic mix of authors answer the perennial question. [more inside]
posted by mattbucher on Apr 21, 2009 - 10 comments

Within the last few hours, a trend on Twitter has emerged in response to Amazon's removing the sales ranking of books they consider to have "adult content," which also keeps those books from appearing in search results. However, while seeming to unilaterally de-list any books with gay themes and characters, many books with adult heterosexual content were left untouched. [more inside]
posted by TochterAusElysium on Apr 12, 2009 - 311 comments

William Gass's personal library. The photos accompany this article by Gass about his love of books -- specifically about collecting them over his life and "living in a library." [more inside]
posted by mattbucher on Apr 8, 2009 - 21 comments

What is a lipogram? It's a book or short work of fiction that omits a particular scriptural symbol, commonly a vocalic sign, as a stylistic ploy to amplify a motif, or simply as a stimulating bit of wordplay. Skilful application of this form is shown in US and Gallic publications such as Gadsby: Champion of Youth and La Disparition (also known, in an award-winning translation, as A Void). [more inside]
posted by permafrost on Apr 3, 2009 - 31 comments

If you're like me, you are not a top computer science researcher, and you haven't written a classic book about programming and made it available online for free. Let's review who we're not. We're neither Abelson nor Sussman, and we haven't written Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs (previous proof). We're not part of TeachScheme and we had no hand in the writing of How to Design Programs (not even the second edition, natch). Shriram Krishnamurthi didn't need our help to write Programming Languages: Application and Interpretation. We wish we were Simon Peyton-Jones and had a hand in The Implementation of Functional Programming Languages. [more inside]
posted by Monday, stony Monday on Apr 1, 2009 - 45 comments

There was no way to simply say, "I read a really bad description in this book last night." I had to scan it and share it for you to understand just how bad it truly, truly was. It is the sort of bad that causes pain and must be shared with other people so you can feel better. Part 1, Part 2. This really is prose so purple that it verges into the infra-red. Some NSFW descriptive naughtiness.
posted by fearfulsymmetry on Apr 1, 2009 - 149 comments

The winner of this years Diagram Prize for the oddest book title is "The 2009-2014 World Outlook for 60-Milligram Containers of Fromage Frais." Runners up were "Curbside Colon Consultation," and my favorite Baboon Metaphysics.
posted by Xurando on Mar 27, 2009 - 15 comments

From cops vs. hoods and other toughies to mad science and dramatic ledges and bridgewalkers, a vast and entertaining collection of vintage pulp art categorized into themes.
posted by madamjujujive on Mar 26, 2009 - 17 comments

Everything you ever wanted to read about left-wing political theory but were afraid to look up. [more inside]
posted by cthuljew on Mar 23, 2009 - 67 comments

The Giving Tree (1973), animated short based on Shel Silverstein's 1964 children's story and narrated by the author. [more inside]
posted by the_bone on Mar 18, 2009 - 38 comments

Legend of the Seeker is a syndicated TV show based on Terry Goodkind's Sword of Truth novels from some of the people behind the mid-90s Hercules show and Xena: Warrior Princess. It is in a similar vein, yet now with more earnestness. The entire series is available on Hulu for your enjoyment.
posted by The Devil Tesla on Mar 16, 2009 - 58 comments

Butt nuts. Muffin fruits. Cashew apples. Jaboitcabas. Kinbaran. Miracle fruit (whose extract, miraculin, has been banned as a food additive by the FDA.) Bignays, gourkas, sapotes, mombins, langsats, and jaboticabas. The semi-ferocious rat-tailed papaya (parody.) [more inside]
posted by peggynature on Mar 15, 2009 - 35 comments

Book Burning: For Your Health! "...under a law Congress passed last year aimed at regulating hazards in children’s products, the federal government has now advised that children’s books published before 1985 should not be considered safe and may in many cases be unlawful to sell or distribute." (via Neil Gaiman's twitter stream)
posted by Lentrohamsanin on Mar 15, 2009 - 40 comments

The Second Pass is an exclusively online publication devoted to reviews, essays, and blog posts about books new and old. It is updated every weekday. [via]
posted by sciurus on Mar 12, 2009 - 7 comments

Shockingly, a novel about a Nazi officer who abets murder squads, transports Jews to Auschwitz, has sex with his twin sister, possibly kills his parents and then dies rich, old and reflective has caused a trans-Atlantic controversy among literary critics. Published in the original French three years ago, the English translation of Jonathan Littell's The Kindly Ones hit American bookstores this week. [more inside]
posted by zoomorphic on Mar 11, 2009 - 86 comments

You say Orwell, Tolstoy and Joyce, but actually it's Rowling and Grisham... Anyway if you are a chap, just make sure you put away that Clarkson before your date arrives.
posted by fearfulsymmetry on Mar 5, 2009 - 52 comments

The Saddest Bear of All. A children's book about a young girl's friendship with a morose bear. [via mefi projects]
posted by Effigy2000 on Mar 4, 2009 - 64 comments

You strike up a conversation with someone you don't know, and you're getting on OK, and then suddenly, without warning, you hear the five words that mean the relationship has no future beyond the time it takes to say them: “I think you'll like it.” via 3quarksdaily [more inside]
posted by cgc373 on Mar 1, 2009 - 108 comments

Weee! Book scramble! (Single link Daily Mail article.)
posted by serazin on Feb 27, 2009 - 14 comments

"Do you like fiction and mathematics? Are you interested in what our society thinks about mathematicians?" [more inside]
posted by Minus215Cee on Feb 27, 2009 - 15 comments

"... many critics and editors, especially male ones, make a fetish of "ambition," by which they mean the contemporary equivalent of novels about men in boats ("Moby-Dick," "Huckleberry Finn") rather than women in houses ("House of Mirth"), and that as a result big novels by male writers get treated as major events while slender but equally accomplished books by women tend to make a smaller splash." [more inside]
posted by joseph conrad is fully awesome on Feb 24, 2009 - 95 comments

The Visual Telling of Stories
A lyrical encyclopedia of visual propositions;
a visually orientated taxonomy of the ways in which pictures are used to tell stories. [more inside]
posted by carsonb on Feb 18, 2009 - 5 comments

Modern video game covers reimagined as Classic Books.
posted by ColdChef on Feb 4, 2009 - 30 comments

London's Charing Cross Road was once a renowned as destination for bibliophiles. However this has changed as a number of bookshops have closed, the crime specialist Murder One being the latest. The Guardian looks how the street has changed between 1940 and now (flash). [more inside]
posted by fearfulsymmetry on Feb 2, 2009 - 30 comments

The "I Can Read Movies" Series is a set of fake film novelizations, done in 1950's and 1960's illustration style. [via]
posted by piratebowling on Jan 30, 2009 - 20 comments

A curated collection of web comics over at Greylock Arts, with creator interviews and lots of links to strips like Underwire, Persimmon Cup, Truth Serum, Wondermark, The Process, Amazing Facts...and Beyond!, Phil McAndrew and more, including a few previously featured on the blue. [via Bookslut]
posted by mediareport on Jan 26, 2009 - 4 comments

People of the Screen : "Digital literacy’s advocates increasingly speak of replacing, rather than supplementing, print literacy. What is “reading” anyway, they ask, in a multimedia world like ours? We are increasingly distractible, impatient, and convenience-obsessed—and the paper book just can’t keep up. Shouldn’t we simply acknowledge that we are becoming people of the screen, not people of the book?"
posted by dhruva on Jan 16, 2009 - 31 comments

"We could all do worse than to write like Saul Bellow. And when I say write like Saul Bellow, I mean be Saul Bellow. And when I say be Saul Bellow, I mean unzip the skin from his body and wear it as a sort of Saul Bellow suit so that we can get cozy in it and truly inhabit it and understand the Old Macher." [more inside]
posted by zoomorphic on Jan 16, 2009 - 65 comments