Nicole Cliff has been reviewing
Classic Trash fiction for The Awl, with a recent exposition on
Clan of the Cave Bear. Jeffrey Sconce reviewed 100 obscure and largely unloved books last year on
Consumed and Judged, and shows no sign of slowing down.
Pop Sensation profiles the cover of one, generally trashy, paperback, three times a week, (and includes a seemingly random quote from the book).
posted by latkes
on Feb 8, 2012 -
19 comments
If Nicholas Carr is right, and consuming words on a screen is a "more primitive way of reading," then the iPad is a little bit Neanderthal and a little bit Prometheus. Its potential for creative ways to interact with literature makes it more than just an e-reader. And while it took more than a year and a half since the iPad's launch, some publishers are beginning to experiment with that potential. Last year saw several forays into innovative literature apps, most notably T.S. Elliot's
The Waste Land;
Atlas Shrugged and
On The Road also received the "enhanced" app treatment.
Laura Miller (Salon.com co-founder, NY Times Book Review columnist, author) and
Maud Newton (writer and critic for The NY Times Book Review, Granta, The Awl) have both written extensively about digital reading and publishing and they've launched
The Chimerist, tagline:
Two iPad lovers at the intersection of art, stories, and technology. Newton
writes:
[more inside]
posted by not_the_water
on Feb 7, 2012 -
20 comments
Hey! Do you like books? (Yeah...) Do you like free books? (Yeah!) Do you like giving books to friends and strangers and whomever? (Hell yeah!) Are you American? (I just said "hell yeah" didn't I?) Then
sign up here! (Then what happens?) You can select from one of
thirty books. (And?) They'll send you a box with twenty copies of one book which you can give to friends, strangers or enemies. (What's the catch?) There's no catch, it's
World Book Night.
[British edition previously on MeFi]
posted by Kattullus
on Feb 4, 2012 -
39 comments
The
Hatchet Job of the Year Award, sponsored by
The Omnivore, is looking for 'the angriest, funniest, most trenchant book review of the last twelve months'. The
shortlist includes
Geoff Dyer on Julian Barnes ('excellent in its averageness'),
Lachlan Mackinnon on Geoffrey Hill ('he is wasting his time and trying to waste ours') and
Jenni Russell on Catherine Hakim ('if you should pass it in a bookshop, pick up a copy and drop it somewhere where nobody's likely to take an interest in it'). Mary Beard, another of the shortlisted candidates, insists that '
it's not actually a prize for skewering .. it's for honest as well as entertaining book reviewing, that isn't afraid to go beyond deference, to call a spade a spade'.
[more inside]
posted by verstegan
on Jan 17, 2012 -
21 comments
"
So I carve landscapes out of books and I paint Romantic landscapes. Mountains of disused knowledge return to what they really are: mountains. They erode a bit more and they become hills. Then they flatten and become fields where apparently nothing is happening. Piles of obsolete encyclopedias return to that which does not need to say anything, that which simply IS. Fogs and clouds erase everything we know, everything we think we are."
Biblios.
The Great Wall.
posted by SpacemanStix
on Dec 22, 2011 -
5 comments
How Computers Work. Recently recovered & scanned in by the good folks at BoingBoing, this was an early textbook explaining the fundamental concepts & inner workings of modern computing systems. I believe a slightly different edition of this book was my own introduction to computers when I was in 6th grade or so, which explains a lot about my approach to using them.
posted by scalefree
on Dec 22, 2011 -
44 comments
James Gurney
answers "What inspired you really to create Dinotopia?".
"Myths and stories ARE real, I tried to tell her. And they're enduring. They're the one thing that lives on through the years as the physical monuments of old civilizations crumble into dust... The key to inventing Dinotopia was believing that it already existed beyond the confines of my own mind. Even if I couldn’t tell the the latitude and longitude, I believed it was out there somewhere beyond the reach of my senses. To engage readers with that reality I had to pay attention to the spaces between the paintings, the moments poised across the page turn, which each reader conjures anew." [more inside]
posted by flex
on Dec 20, 2011 -
11 comments
The Library: [SLYT] A film by Sergey Stefanovich. A journey through Duncan Fallowell's library which has spilled over into every available space and become an art installation in its own right. With the writer talking.
posted by Fizz
on Dec 20, 2011 -
8 comments
How well do you really know old Arty? It all began with the Welsh: The The Annales Cabriae (inside) and parts of the Welsh oral tradition (later collected into
the Mabinogion) give a very different picture of the popular King Arthur than contemporary readers are familiar with: no Lancelot, three or four different Guens, no love triangles or Holy Grails. A look at the vast scope of the Arthurian legend.
[more inside]
posted by kittenmarlowe
on Dec 19, 2011 -
30 comments
The Rabbit Dreams of Dr. Freud's Niece - An illustrator of children's books, Sigmund Freud's niece Martha went by the name Tom, wore men's clothing, and died by her own hand in her late 30s, a year after her husband's suicide. BibliOdyssey recently featured some of her early work from
Das Baby-Liederbuch, noting that because she was Jewish, many of her books were destroyed in the Nazi era and are scarce in the book trade. More about the artist and her work at
Tom Seidmann-Freud.
posted by madamjujujive
on Dec 18, 2011 -
14 comments
Despite the popularity of long-arc, serialized TV shows,
no one really wants to read serialized fiction, apparently. That's not stopped anyone from trying, though, like say Stephen King with
The Green Mile and
The Plant, semi-successful efforts from
a mega-successful author. That was before the current rise of the ebook, though, and a few
authors (also
here and
here and
here) are betting technology will turn serialized novels into
the next big thing, that we're in "
the perfect environment for a resurgence."
posted by nospecialfx
on Dec 7, 2011 -
44 comments
In reflecting on the project, McAllister feels “caught between the intimacy of each individual response, and the pattern of the cumulative replies.” The question remains: Why did they answer? McAllister claims no credit, describing his survey form as “barely literate.” He recalls that in his cover letter (no examples of which exist) he misused the word precocious—he meant presumptuous—and in hindsight he sees that he was both, though few writers seemed to mind. “The conclusion I came to was that nobody had asked them. New Criticism was about the scholars and the text; writers were cut out of the equation. Scholars would talk about symbolism in writing, but no one had asked the writers.” Sixteen year old boy dislikes English homework, goes outside the chain of command.
posted by villanelles at dawn
on Dec 5, 2011 -
55 comments
Maria Popova may be the best curator of Awesome on the Internet after the blue's own hivemind. Her site,
Brain Pickings, has been
mentioned a
few times, but no-one appears to have pointed out her
Twitter feed or her contributions to TBWA's tumblr,
Curiosity Counts. Some recent posts of note: a piece on
digital parasitism and the business of culture, Terry Prachett's self-documentary
Choosing To Die, her selection of
the best children's and picture books of 2011. Also, the best of Brain Pickings from
last week and
2010. When not doing all that, she's writing for several magazines,
organising the effort to
restock the Brookyn OWS library after its destruction by police, and
curating physical objects, sent as gifts every quarter.
posted by Bora Horza Gobuchul
on Nov 21, 2011 -
20 comments
Meme Weaver In which
"the author tries—and fails—to cash in on a big idea". Warning: skippable full-screen ad alert. Behind it is an article in the Atlantic (the magazine, not the ocean). Of possible interest to fans and critics of the popular science genre of books, Wikipedians, and underdog/failure sympathisers.
posted by nthdegx
on Nov 18, 2011 -
7 comments
Library Science is an exhibition at New Haven (Connecticut) libraries that contemplates our personal, intellectual and physical relationship to the library as this venerable institution—and the information it contains—is being radically transformed by the digital era. Some examples:
Untitled (Suburban Homes) by Erica Baum,
Hurricanes by Chris Coffin, and
Chinese Library No. 46 by Xiaoze Xie.
posted by carter
on Nov 15, 2011 -
2 comments
Malpertuis (Belgium, 1971, aka ‘The Legend of Doom House’) is a
movie that has been described as ‘bizarre, lurid and baffling;’ ‘a mysterious curiosity;’ and ‘exquisitely bonkers.’ An international cast led by Mathieu Carrière and Susan Hampshire (playing
five rôles) also included Orson
Welles. Its director, Harry
Kümel, is otherwise best known for his stylish
lesbian vampire
flick Les Lèvres Rouges (aka ‘
Daughters of
Darkness’). The
movie was adapted from an
unusual gothic
novel, first published in wartime Brussels—the
work of Jean
Ray (aka Raymond Jean-Marie de Kremer): a convicted embezzler & prolific
hack, who was, nevertheless, one of the foremost
exponents of the
fantastique in French-language fiction. Please note that some of the links above are
NSFW (some nudity) & several contain
SPOILERS.
[more inside]
posted by misteraitch
on Nov 14, 2011 -
7 comments
I don’t believe in dissing books I used to love, and I always suspect the moral judgment of people who sneer at the taste of the reader they used to be: “I know thee not, old book.” Six writers talk
what's on their shelves.
posted by villanelles at dawn
on Nov 12, 2011 -
72 comments
