MetaFilter posts tagged with book

Chuck Klosterman's New Book Out This Week

JakeWalker — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 12:58:13 -0800

Chuck Klosterman's new book of essays Eating The Dinosaur is out this week. You can read the first chapter, which features interviews with Ira Glass and Errol Morris. Chuck appeared on Bill Simmons' podcast [warning, browser resize] today.

Prometheus In The Kitchen

The Whelk — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 07:48:07 -0800

"Good, big ideas about evolution are rare." Simon Ings of the Independent reviews "Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human" by Richard Wrangham. (via)

We live in the city of dreams, We drive on the highway of fire

Toekneesan — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 09:59:08 -0800

David Byrne has just published a new book about bicycles called Bicycle Diaries. A long time rider, Byrne muses on how the world looks and works from the vantage point of a cyclist. It's getting pretty good reviews. To launch the book, Byrne is touring the US and arranging public forums. Each event features a civic leader, an urban theorist, a bicycle advocate, and Byrne himself speaking about bikes in cities. Here’s a schedule of the upcoming events. He’s also designed some bike racks for his hometown of New York City. Special Bonus Links! Byrne's review of Pedaling Revolution: How Cyclists Are Changing American Cities by Jeff Mapes A map of Byrne's Bike Racks. A three part tour of Byrne's New York studio. David Byrne on the perfect city. (Previously)

Design On Demand

The Whelk — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 08:28:51 -0800

Douglas Coupland wants you to design your own cover for his new book, Generation A.

The New Liberal Arts

srboisvert — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 02:27:37 -0800

The New Liberal Arts book is out. 47 pages of free pdf about things the various authors think will help prepare you for modern life. Earlier discussion about the planning phase of the book.

Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes.

Toekneesan — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 13:08:37 -0800

"Then there are the classification errors, which taken together can make for a kind of absurdist poetry. H.L. Mencken's The American Language is classified as Family & Relationships. A French edition of Hamlet and a Japanese edition of Madame Bovary are both classified as Antiques and Collectibles (a 1930 English edition of Flaubert's novel is classified under Physicians, which I suppose makes a bit more sense.) An edition of Moby Dick is labeled Computers; The Cat Lover's Book of Fascinating Facts falls under Technology & Engineering. And a catalog of copyright entries from the Library of Congress is listed under Drama (for a moment I wondered if maybe that one was just Google's little joke)." —Linguist Geoffrey Nunberg on Google's little metadata problem.

Corporate Brand Identity Avoidance Consultant

netbros — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 00:18:50 -0800

Aunt Feminina Boots's Char-Broiled Book Club — Feminina Boots has been experiencing a lot of difficulty lately trying to find a book club where she can say things that aren’t just going to upset people. From MeFi's own applemeat.

Leo and Diane Dillon, illustrators of children's books

nervousfritz — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 00:33:16 -0800

The work of Leo and Diane Dillon is on display in Brooklyn. I was tempted to find more of their art after noticing the cover they did for A Wrinkle in Time. Then I learned they've made a lot of paperback covers, also among everything else a series of Greek deities, this frightening encounter between the wolf and the little girl, a lot of work which is typical of the kind of simple wisdom that children receive daily, but which some of us may be missing in adulthood, finally this link provides an interview and two galleries (linked at the top right of that page.

Perfect is the enemy of good

lucia__is__dada — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 06:56:07 -0800

Take three kids and a flute. Anne says the flute should be given to her because she is the only one who knows how to play it. Bob says the flute should be handed to him as he is so poor he has no toys to play with. Carla says the flute is hers because it is the fruit of her own labour. How do we decide between these three legitimate claims? This is the point of departure for Nobel Prize-winning Amartya Sen's new book The Idea of Justice ("his most ambitious work to date") in which he seeks to create in practically-minded way a political philosophy that aims to reduce injustice in the world rather than to postulate what constitutes the perfect, just society which is unachievable. And thus taking a swipe at Rawls, as the Economist put it. Lecture by Sen at the LSE (video).

Keeping us safe from racist literature

Toekneesan — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 10:04:16 -0800

The Brooklyn Public Library reshelves a children's book—behind locked steel doors

Forgotten Bookmarks

milquetoast — Sat, 25 Jul 2009 21:33:46 -0800

Forgotten Bookmarks. "I work at a used and rare bookstore, and I buy books from people every day. These are the personal, funny, heartbreaking and weird things I find in those books. "

Wisconsin book burners

sredefer — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 22:32:59 -0800

"If you told me we would be going through a book challenge of this nature, I'd think, 'Never in a million years.' " A Wisconsin couple's petition to have certain "objectionable" books moved from the young adult to the adult section of their public library has lead to heated debates on both sides of the issue and has culminated in 4 "elderly" men filing a claim against the library in question. They're asking for a book to be removed and burned as it damaged their "mental and emotional well-being". The book is called Baby Be-Bop. The American Library Association's compilation of information on book burnings (200 B.C.E - present).

The Lithuanian Press Ban, 1864-1904

mdonley — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 12:17:27 -0800

From 1864 to 1904, the Russian Empire tried to quelch the nationalism of Lithuanians by ordering all Lithuanian texts to be printed with Cyrillic characters instead of in the Latin-derived Lithuanian or Polish alphabets. But they didn't count on the Knygnešiai - the Booksmugglers. Working in Lithuanian-speaking areas of East Prussia, now the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad and parts of the Polish voivodeship of Warmia and Masuria, and with texts printed locally and sometimes from as far away as the United States, many thousands of people over the decades worked to transmit books, leaflets, journals, and other written works over the heavily guarded border, risking imprisonment and exile to Siberia; over three thousand people were caught. A harrowing recollection of what it was like to dodge the military patrols can be found here. The movement also was assisted by a network of clandestine "village" lessons in the language outside the school system, organized through local churches and civic organizations. The Lithuanian National Movement, active before independence, used the language to resist Russification and, later, promote the cause for an independent state. When Lithuania became independent again in the early 1990s, the back of the 5-lita banknote featured an image of a sculpture of a woman teaching a child to read Lithuanian in defiance of the press ban. The anti-Lithuanian language effort had been part of Tsar Alexander II's Russification campaign across all of the lands Russia had absorbed through the partitions of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. After the Uprising of 1863, St. Petersburg attempted to create a divide between the Polonized Catholic nobility, the szlachta, and the Lithuanian-speaking rural populations in order to allow Russian language and culture to supplant the Catholic, Latin heritage left behind by the Commonwealth. Today, Lithuanian is spoken by between four and five million people, has made a cameo appearance on CSI: New York, and, like everyone these days, has a podcast. Lithuanian has also been the focus of much attention in linguistics circles for its links to Proto-Indo-European (PIE), the theoretical progenitor to all the Indo-European languages. Some early texts in Lithuanian can be found at the University of Texas at Austin's Linguistics Research Center here. Check out some Indo-European roots yourself with this Google Books preview of the American Heritage Dictionary of Indo-European Roots. And this year, Vilnius hosts the European Capital of Culture title together with Linz, Austria. It's a quick hop from most of Europe and an amazing destination for anyone into the culture and history of the region.

Or have we eaten on the insane root that takes the reason prisoner?

The Whelk — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 08:09:04 -0800

“Josephine had practically every desirable personal characteristic, except wisdom and mercy.” Gee, that sounds like she actually isn’t a nice person at all! Gary Brecher (previously) reviews Banquo’s Ghosts, a political-minded spy thriller from National Review editor Richard Lowry and novelist Keith Korman. Lowry describes it as an "episode of “24″ written by Proust. " Bonus Conservative Potboiler Review: Matt Taibbi on William F. Buckley's Tucker's Last Stand.

Our Band Could Be Your Comic

interrobang — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 13:42:18 -0800

Metafilter's own COBRA! has been producing a great comic about a rock band for quite awhile; and now it's been released as a book! Get to know the Awesome Boys in Nowhere Band.

Mark Helprin vs The Mouth Breathing Morons

shoesfullofdust — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 14:56:15 -0800

The overall effect is like listening to an erudite gentleman employing $20 words while he screams at a bunch of punk kids to get off his front lawn. A review of Mark Helprin's Digital Barbarism : A Writer's Manifesto. This is an insanely long review of Helprin's book by Lawrence Lessig. You can read Helprin's 2007 NYT editorial, the impetus behind all of this, here. [previously]

Milkcrates are also okay

The Whelk — Sat, 06 Jun 2009 21:41:14 -0800

20 Brilliant Bookcases via ( mightygodking )

Learn to draw Les Animaux!

fings — Fri, 22 May 2009 14:40:46 -0800

Les Animaux tel qu'ils sont is a delightful 1920s French art instruction book, showing one how to draw various animals, from the previously discussed Agence Eureka.

Infinite Summer

mattbucher — Thu, 21 May 2009 14:46:49 -0800

Infinite Summer - "The Challenge: Read Infinite Jest over the summer of 2009" "You've been meaning to do it for over a decade. Now join endurance bibliophiles from around the web as we tackle and comment upon David Foster Wallace's masterwork, June 21st to September 22nd. A thousand pages1 ÷ 93 days = 75 pages a week. No sweat." There is also a Twitter account, hashtag (#infsum), and a Facebook group.

A Literary Response to a Son's Drug Addiction

andoatnp — Mon, 11 May 2009 07:49:46 -0800

What is the best way to respond to your son's drug addiction?
Write a book? No!
Write two books? Yes?

Beautiful Boy: A Father's Journey Through His Son's Addiction
Tweak: Growing Up on Methamphetamines Addiction - a father-son story

One of the unsettling themes in David Sheff's memoir, "Beautiful Boy," a wrenching tale about his son's drug addiction, is that even though Sheff was among what he calls the "first wave" of self-conscious parents who were hip enough to forge honest relationships with their kids, he was woefully unprepared for the vagaries of methamphetamine. ... But David's then-teenage son Nic took a detour. Despite his cultured, well-to-do Marin County upbringing, during which he shared dinners with writers like Armistead Maupin, Nic developed a meth addiction that led to heroin use. By 22, he was emaciated and roaming the Tenderloin in search of a fix. ... The latest unexpected turn: Last week, Sheff embarked on a national book tour with Nic, now 25, who's been sober for two years and lives in Savannah, Ga. The younger Sheff has his own memoir to promote, "Tweak: Growing up on Methamphetamines." After the father wrote about his son's slide in a November 2005 New York Times Magazine article, an editor from Simon & Schuster contacted Nic, who was then freelancing for the online magazine Nerve.

This NPR article has an audio interview with father and son and an extended excerpt from the father's book.

unknown pleasures

the_very_hungry_caterpillar — Mon, 11 May 2009 03:40:57 -0800

Classic record sleeves - re-designed as Pelican book covers (Flickr set).

What are you reading, charming writer?

mattbucher — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 08:13:48 -0800

What are writers reading? An eclectic mix of authors answer the perennial question. A sampling of responses: George Packer Anne Fadiman Cass Sunstein Jane Smiley Lydia Millet Steven Zipperstein Abraham Verghese John Dunning Stephen Burt Tim Harford

Arts & Crafts Videos from Etsy

Kattullus — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 14:01:14 -0800

Etsy has a YouTube channel where they have all kinds of profiles of their users and how-to guides. My two favorite series are the Process series (e.g. New Books with Old Materials & Tin Toys) and Handmade Portraits (e.g. Armor Guitars & Wood Mosaics). In the description of each video there is a link to the corresponding entry on Etsy's blog, The Storque. The blogposts have more information on the users and sometimes further links and videos. [via Work in Progress]

A Temple of Texts

mattbucher — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 10:27:54 -0800

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." Now in my own home I am surrounded by nearly 20,000 books, few of them rare, many unread, none of them neglected. They are there, as libraries always are, to help when needed, and who knows what writer I shall have to write on next, what subject will become suddenly essential, or what request will arrive that requires the immediate assistance of books on—well—libraries, or the language of animals or the pronunciation of Melanesian pidgin, since my essays tend to be assigned, not simply solicited, and because I am easily seduced by new themes. I can actually say a few things in Melanesian pidgin, none of them polite.

"Essentially, it is all about money and power."

Toekneesan — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 09:48:59 -0800

"It would be naïve to identify the Internet with the Enlightenment. It has the potential to diffuse knowledge beyond anything imagined by Jefferson; but while it was being constructed, link by hyperlink, commercial interests did not sit idly on the sidelines. They want to control the game, to take it over, to own it. They compete among themselves, of course, but so ferociously that they kill each other off. Their struggle for survival is leading toward an oligopoly; and whoever may win, the victory could mean a defeat for the public good. ...We could have created a National Digital Library—the twenty-first-century equivalent of the Library of Alexandria. It is too late now. Not only have we failed to realize that possibility, but, even worse, we are allowing a question of public policy—the control of access to information—to be determined by private lawsuit."—Robert Darnton on what the proposed Google Book Settlement could mean for the pursuit of knowledge—Google and the Future of Books