The Book of Accidents: Designed for Young Children (1831). "In presenting to his little readers The Book of Accidents, the Author conceives he cannot render a more important service to the rising generation and to parents, than by furnishing them with an account of the accidents to which Children, from their inexperience or carelessness, are liable. If generally studied it will save the lives of thousands, and relieve many families from the long and unavailing misery attendant on such occurrences." [Via]
posted on Jul 3, 2008 - View this thread

From the Bookstalls of a Nigerian Market. Onitsha Market Literature consists of stories, plays, advice and moral discourses published primarily in the 1960s by local presses in the lively market town of Onitsha [in then-newly-independent Nigeria]... In the fresh and vigorous genre of Onitsha Market Literature, the commoner wrote pulp fiction and didactic handbooks for those who perused the bookstalls of Onitsha Market, one of Africa’s largest trading centers. Examples: How To Write And Reply Letters For Marriage, Engagement Letters, Love Letters And How To Know A Girl To Marry, Learn To Speak 360 Interesting Proverbs And Know Your True Brother, Struggle For Money [All full-text links are in pdf format, and some are quite large]. With links to additional resources.
posted on Jun 4, 2008 - View this thread

Observer literary editor Robert McCrum, retiring after ten years in the job, writes about the revolution in the book world he's seen over the last decade.
posted on May 25, 2008 - View this thread

50 best cult books from The Telegraph.
posted on Apr 26, 2008 - View this thread

Those big, wonderful book blogs like Paper Cuts, Guardian Books, and Poetry Foundation haven't totally satisfied your book blog bloodlust?
posted on Apr 16, 2008 - View this thread

110 Best Books. 'The perfect library' - According to the Torygraph... at least there's a 'Sci-fi' section among the usual suspects (And one or two bizarre choices - Pelzer! What the heck!)
posted on Apr 8, 2008 - View this thread

I know a man who once went to Sioux City, not one of the world’s leading destinations, precisely because he had never been there before. More than a decade later he still talks about the experience, from the Sergeant Floyd obelisk to the dog track of North Sioux and the meat packing plant converted to a shopping mall. The same impulse explains a non-specialist’s reading a history of Byzantine iconography or a survey of Australian wildlife. Both offer a break in daily life and an enlargement of our sense of wonder and possibility. That awareness can provide a sense of transcendence, and connection, or even the spark of divine discontent that leads people to change their lives.

Reading as Vacation, an essay by J. D. Smith and Subway Reader, pictures of people who read while using public transportation.
posted on Apr 6, 2008 - View this thread

Vladimir Nabokov discusses Lolita with Lionel Trilling.
posted on Apr 3, 2008 - View this thread

If you're a girl and you grew up in the 80's, chances are you read Sweet Valley High books. Guess what? They're being re-released. Don't worry, they're being updated to reflect the times- Jessica and Liz will be a size 4 now, and Liz's gossip column will be a gossip blog instead. Those wishing to relive the glory days can read reviews of the old series at The Dairi Burger, a blog devoted to all things Sweet Valley.
posted on Mar 27, 2008 - View this thread

OPAL Libri Antichi from the University of Turin offers over 3,000 books as free, open PDF files. Most of these date between AD 1500 and 1850 and most are in Italian, with many in French. They tend to be plain books with few illustrations. A few English titles are present, including David Hume's 1800 Essays on Suicide and the Immortality of the Soul; several texts by William Wycherley such as Love in a wood: or St. James's-Park (1735); and Richard Lassels 1686 work The voyage of Italy: or, a compleat journey through Italy with the characters of the peaple, and the description of the chief towns ... (volume 2) - an early travel guide. The PDFs are unsearchable plain scans. via this thread in the W4RF forum which contains hundreds of links to free online historical documents
posted on Mar 10, 2008 - View this thread

"Here is your chance to weigh in on one of the most troubling dilemmas in contemporary literary culture." "It's the question of whether the last unpublished work of Vladimir Nabokov, which is now reposing unread in a Swiss bank vault, should be destroyed—as Nabokov explicitly requested before he died." The Original of Laura was inherited by his son Dmitri Nabokov nearly 21 years ago. Now Dmitri is 73 and will soon publish the manuscript, or following his father's dying request, burn it. Which is greater, the obligation to V.N., or the obligation to art?
posted on Jan 17, 2008 - View this thread

Matrioshka Brain? Quine? Whuffie? - 75 Words every sci-fi fan should know, Science fiction citations at the OED, Swear words from science fiction, Neologisms in science fiction, Brave new words.
posted on Jan 16, 2008 - View this thread

The 50 greatest British writers since 1945. A few interesting choices here... the 'novelist's poet' at #1 seems fair enough, but this one, this one and this one?
posted on Jan 7, 2008 - View this thread

Is this the most beautiful bookstore in the world? The Boekhandel Selexyz Dominicanen, Maastricht opened its doors in November. Located in the city's old Dominican church - which for years had been used as a bicycle parking garage - the building has been extensively redesigned by Dutch architects Merkx + Girod. From the images you can find on the web you can see that it is a bookshop made in heaven. Many books in English too.
posted on Dec 30, 2007 - View this thread

Pictures of writers in a thread on I Love Music. Lots and lots of pictures of lots of writers. Another thread from the same board with more pictures (some duplicates). Author photos are most often seen on dust jackets or in the back of books, a practice Frances Wilson wishes to see abolished. One famous connoisseur of pictures of writers is Javier Marías who wrote a whole book on the subject, Written Lives. Here are a few excerpts from the book: William Faulkner, Isak Dinesen (pen name of Karen Blixen) and an edited extract covering a whole lot of authors.
posted on Dec 24, 2007 - View this thread

The Page 69 Test --inspired by Marshall McLuhan's suggestion to readers for choosing a novel, a new blog, inviting authors to describe what's on page 69. One says: Not the best, but not the worst. If my pages were presidents, I’d put page 69 somewhere in the James K. Polk range.
posted on Dec 11, 2007 - View this thread

Norman Mailer has posthumously won this year's Literary Review Bad Sex Award for his novel on the early life of Hitler, The Castle in the Forest. He was up against some stiff competition but Norman managed to rise to the occasion (sorry). Safe for work, but you might feel a bit dirty in the morning.
posted on Nov 27, 2007 - View this thread

Munseys, formerly Blackmask, still my favorite free book site.
posted on Nov 12, 2007 - View this thread

Read Print. Online books, poems and short stories.
posted on Oct 29, 2007 - View this thread

Covering Photography "A web-based archive and resource for the study of the relationship between the history of photography and book cover design," with lots of ways to discover photographers like Arthur Tress.
posted on Oct 4, 2007 - View this thread

Exit Music. The King of Tartan Noir, Ian Rankin has retired his detective John Rebus. Ageing him with each novel, Rebus has finally reached the retirement age at Edinburgh CID; Although that may not stop him...
posted on Oct 1, 2007 - View this thread

Blog a Penguin Classic.
posted on Sep 21, 2007 - View this thread

50 forgotten and overlooked novels as chosen by 50 Anglophone writers, including Lionel Shriver, Hari Kunzru, Michael Chabon, Siri Hustvedt, A. S. Byatt and Philip Pullman (part two).
posted on Sep 4, 2007 - View this thread

How to discuss books that one hasn’t read... "in order to . . . talk without shame about books we haven’t read, we should rid ourselves of the oppressive image of a flawless cultural grounding, transmitted and imposed [on us] by the family and by educational institutions, an image which we try all our lives in vain to match up to. For truth in the eyes of others matters less than being true to ourselves, and this truth is only accessible to those who liberate themselves from the constraining need to appear cultured, which both tyrannizes us and prevents us from being ourselves."
posted on Aug 1, 2007 - View this thread

Writers on Writing: Interviews with Paul Bowles, David Markson, and Harry Mathews.
posted on Jul 2, 2007 - View this thread

Sam Mendes is currently directing an adaptation of Richard Yates's 1961 novel Revolutionary Road. Ignored for much of Yates's lifetime the 2000 edition, championed by Richard Ford, received renewed critical acclaim and the book went on to make Time's all-time 100 novels list. For those re-discovering it John Mullen offers a four part reading guide: imaginary dialogue, the epigraph, comic dialogue, the ending.
posted on Jun 13, 2007 - View this thread

Rant: An Oral Biography of Buster Casey is Chuck Palahniuk's eighth novel. It takes the form of an oral history of one Buster 'Rant' Casey, in which an assortment of friends, enemies, admirers, detractors and relations have their say on this (in Chuck Palahniuk's words) 'evil, gender-conflicted Forrest Gump character'. His work is controversial, but I imagine a few Palahniuk fans who read The Blue might have missed the fact that he has a new book out. [ Previously ]
posted on Jun 9, 2007 - View this thread

It's a sad old story but the reading of literature continues to decline. Prospero's Books - a Kansas-city used bookstore - is so desperate to thin out its collection it has started to burn books. Co-owner Tom Wayne says he is unable to sell many of his thousands of books, or even to give them away to libraries and thrift stores, so he started a pyre in protest.
posted on May 29, 2007 - View this thread

An informative, gossipy and surprisingly engaging 6-page exploration of the life of Charles Dickens, including his up-and-down relationship with the U.S. press, his inexcusable behavior during his messy and very public separation from his wife, the "histrionic flair" of his performance career, and, of course, his works, including the one George Bernard Shaw called "a more seditious book than Das Kapital." Lots of interesting images, too.
posted on May 24, 2007 - View this thread

Stories of Bram Stoker to enjoy on the 110^th anniversary of the publication of Dracula.
posted on May 18, 2007 - View this thread

Modern Thai fiction, in English et plus en français.
posted on Mar 26, 2007 - View this thread

The Jules Verne Collecting Resource. If you're a Verne fan or a book collector at all, this site is an absolute treasure. There are pictures of almost every single edition of his works, major and minor, as well as everything even slightly Verne-related, including: movie posters, matchbooks, autographs, playing cards, cards for stereoscopes, postcards he sent, board games, Jules Hetzel's excellent covers and posters for his work (more here, and this one is amazing), the man himself, and god knows what else - pretty much everything.
If it's not here, it's somewhere else, like the extraordinary maps which adorned some editions, or the virtual library with links to all of his works, the many, many incredible illustrations therein, and even one scanned manuscript (in French, obviously). Hope this makes somebody's day as much as it made mine.
posted on Feb 25, 2007 - View this thread

Dead Plagiarists Society. Using Google Books to uncover old (and recent) literary crimes. "Given the popularity of plagiarism-seeking software services for academics, it may be only a matter of time before some enterprising scholar yokes Google Book Search and plagiarism-detection software together into a massive literary dragnet, scooping out hundreds of years' worth of plagiarists—giants and forgotten hacks alike—who have all escaped detection until now."
posted on Dec 24, 2006 - View this thread

Confessions of a Bookplate Junkie [via]
posted on Nov 6, 2006 - View this thread

"Welcome to the Archive of the Now. The Archive of the Now is an online and print repository of recordings, printed texts and manuscripts, focussing on innovative contemporary poetry being written or performed in Britain. It is part of the Brunel Centre for Contemporary Writing, at Brunel University in west London, UK. At present, the Archive consists of readings by 65 UK-based poets. This number will continue to grow, and includes newly commissioned, recently acquired and historical recordings."
posted on Oct 22, 2006 - View this thread

As he read, Mr Sterling became convinced he had to publish the book. Jed Rubenfeld's "The Interpretation of Murder" had an intriguing cast of characters, an engaging plot and a dash of kinky sex. It was a historical thriller, one of publishing's hottest recent categories. It had the potential, he thought, to be the next "Da Vinci Code."

The Wall Street Journal details the fascinating mechanics of modern-day book marketing as Henry Holt & Co labors to birth this year's must-buy publishing phenomenon.
posted on Oct 16, 2006 - View this thread

What Good Are the Arts? asks John Carey’s recent book of the same name. The New Criterion think Carey’s thesis is informed by cynical political motives rather than earnest convictions, and accuses Carey of dabbling in the risky art of aesthetic relativism: Obviously, art is ultimately about “the search for truth” (a lesson we’d do well to remember before society falls apart). But as Carey and others point out to the contrary, the Third Reich was all about art—and yet, art under the Third Reich had precious little to do with “searching for truth.” So just what good are the arts? Here’s what a few others have to say on the subject.
posted on Oct 4, 2006 - View this thread

Banned Books Week -- 25th anniversary year. How to deal with a challenge, what you can do generally, and of course, lists, and more lists. Captain Underpants is a more recent entry, i notice.
posted on Sep 25, 2006 - View this thread

Choose a (public domain) book and Daily Lit will e-mail it to you bit-by-bit every day. Finally, War and Peace delivered to your inbox in only 675 bite-sized pieces. [via LH]
posted on Sep 14, 2006 - View this thread

Pirates! in an Adventure With The Internet Author Gideon Defoe offers the missing link between ham and piracy in his hilarious Pirates! novels. Feel free to thrill at the marvelously dry NPR interview
posted on Jul 5, 2006 - View this thread

101 "Crackerjacks". The best sea books.
posted on Jul 1, 2006 - View this thread

What is the world reading? The UNESCO Index Translationum database has over 1.6 million bibliographical entries of translated works. Interesting stats such as: The worlds Top 50 translated authors. The Top 10 translated Norwegian authors (or other languages). Number of translations for any given book. Some surprising results, lots to explore, and an interesting lesson on what sells.
posted on Jun 21, 2006 - View this thread

“You should consider a new career as a garbage collector in New York City, because you’ll never quote a Joyce text again." A New Yorker profile of Stephen Joyce, the man who controls James Joyce's estate - and, by extension, Joycean scholarship the world over. [more inside]
posted on Jun 12, 2006 - View this thread

Find your next favourite author or, use the literature map to see how authors relate.
posted on May 30, 2006 - View this thread

The Literature Map. Type in an author, and it tells you who wrote similar stuff. Includes a nifty floaty effect. And you know, I never knew that Jane Austen and Socrates had so much in common.
posted on Mar 24, 2006 - View this thread

Literary novels going straight to paperback. Because, you know, nobody reads them.
posted on Mar 22, 2006 - View this thread

What to read. A list of lists for book recommendations, includes a compiled "Great Books" Lists with a World Literature list and lots more.
posted on Mar 20, 2006 - View this thread

I first read "Ask the Dust" in 1971 when I was doing research for "Chinatown". I was concerned about the way people really sounded when they talked, and I was dissatisfied with everything else I had read that was written during the '30s. I wanted the real thing, as Henry James would say. When I picked up Fante's "Ask the Dust," I just knew that was the way those kids talked to each other—the rhythms, cadences, racism.
Robert Towne on adapting John Fante's novel for the big screen. More inside.
posted on Mar 4, 2006 - View this thread

Melville's Marginalia Online. The study of Herman Melville's creative process has long been hampered by a lack of primary sources. Melville's long lost annotations (they were written in pencil and subsequently erased) to the 1839 book The Natural History of the Sperm Whale have been restored through high-tech innovations such as squinting and digital photography. The results are available here in a PDF file. [more inside]
posted on Feb 13, 2006 - View this thread

The David Foster Wallace Bibliography (in BibTex format) is ridiculously complete. The site also includes a zip file of DFW's essays and mp3s of a round table discussion. [via]
posted on Jan 10, 2006 - View this thread

Gould's Book of Fish (full contents of Chapter One) by Tasmanian author/historian/Rhodes Scholar Richard Flanagan is a critically lauded 2002 novel that is the most interesting and accomplished work of fiction I've read in years. Set in the 19th century on a penal colony off the coast of Tasmania, the book is narrated by William Buelow Gould, a convict, charlatan, and possible madman. Here is an audio interview with Flanagan; here's an audio clip of the author reading from his book. (.ra files) Yes, the book is a few years old, but it somehow passed under my radar; and, anyway, a good book is timeless. (Picking up the piscine gauntlet thrown down by Plutor.)
posted on Nov 30, 2005 - View this thread

"This book isn't as good as Harry Potter in MY opinion, and no one can refute me. Tastes are relative!" A review of Orwell's 1984 on Amazon, from a list compiled by Matthew Baldwin at The Morning News with a selection of the funniest one-star reviews of books from Time's list of the 100 best novels.
posted on Oct 23, 2005 - View this thread

Scientific Sleuth Cracks Code to $54,000 Treasure The treasure was the 12th and last set out in Treasure's Trove , a children's book published last fall. People shared information on many forums. The solution to the Beetle puzzle is in this forum. Missed out? All is not lost. Apparently, a new 14th puzzle has been announced. Maybe we can solve it together.
posted on Sep 22, 2005 - View this thread

Free, good science fiction for download, some you might have seen, some new, all are worth the time. If you have only a few minutes, Michael Swanick's Science Fiction Table of the Elements features 108 short short stories. If you have a little more time, Kelly Link, called by Neil Gaiman "the best short story writer currently out there" has released her much-praised collection Stranger Things Happen. For longer reads, Charlie Stross has made available his cyberpunk novel Accelerando and his Lovecraftish Colder War. The creepier Peter Watts has posted the New York Times Notable Book Starfish, and its sequels as well [previously]. If you haven't had enough, you should check out the Baen Free Library, with books by everyone from Andre Norton to Larry Niven, as well as a large amount of right-of-center combat-oriented stuff by David Weber and friends. Also, the Science Fiction Channel has made available many well-known classic short stories as well as a lot of contemporary Hugo and World Fantasy Award winners [previously]. Finally, you probably already know that Cory Doctorow has four novels available under creative commons. Happy reading!
posted on Sep 19, 2005 - View this thread

Rat Scabies and the Holy Grail. Best known as the drummer for 1970s punk band The Damned, Rat Scabies grew up with a father interested in the mysteries of the French town of Rennes-le-Château, which may or may not contain the Holy Grail and in the enigmatic priest Berenger Sauniere. Conspiracy theories surrounding the town first popped up in the 1970s book Holy Blood, Holy Grail and gained a certain amount of infamy in recent years from The DaVinci Code. Upon striking up a friendship with his neighbor, journalist Christopher Dawes, Scabies discovered common interests in conspiracy theories and all things paranormal and a shared hatred of the DaVinci Code. Now the pair wrote a book about their alcohol-sodden quest for the Holy Grail that asks the question: What happens when an ex-punk rocker goes looking for the Holy Grail?
posted on Sep 16, 2005 - View this thread

Flaubert on Structural Unity. "I’ve just read 'Pickwick' by Dickens. Do you know it? Some bits are magnificent; but what a defective structure! All English writers are like that. Walter Scott apart, they lack composition. This is intolerable for us Latins". Extracts from the letters of Flaubert (via the very awesome book coolie)
posted on Jul 29, 2005 - View this thread

Zora Neale Hurston's Glossary of Harlem Slang. Profiles of black writers including Audre Lorde, Chester Himes, The Last Poets and Linton Kwesi Johnson. The complete list of Coretta Scott King children's book award winners. Lots of informative off-site links. A lively forum filled with juicy gossip, among other pleasures. Just a few things you'll find at the African American Literature Book Club.
posted on Jul 27, 2005 - View this thread

The Aesthetics of Resistance. The first part of Peter Weiss's 3-volume novel Die Ästhetik des Widerstands (1975-81) has, after many delays, finally been published in a Joachim Neugroschel’s English translation: a major, though largely-unheralded literary event. The book ‘stands as the most significant German novel published after The Tin Drum.’ [more inside]
posted on Jun 28, 2005 - View this thread

50 years with Lew Archer A detailed tribute to classic hard-boiled mystery writer Ross Macdonald, including a fascinating interview with Macdonald's biographer. Considered one of "the big three of the American hard-boiled detective novel" (with Hammet and Chandler), Macdonald has unfortunately "slipped to the back shelves." He had a lifelong lover's quarrel with Hollywood and - oh yeah - probably saved Warren Zevon's life back in 1979.
posted on Jun 3, 2005 - View this thread

The Mathematical Fiction Homepage is a collaborative attempt to "collect information about all significant references to mathematics in fiction." Feel free to add classic or recent works in any medium to the collection, or rate existing entries on their mathematical content and literary quality.
posted on Apr 18, 2005 - View this thread

The Language of Saxophones At 55, L.A. musician and poet Kamau Daáood is finally beginning to acknowledge the possibility of his own place in local letters with his debut book of poetry, The Language of Saxophones, a 30-plus-year retrospective published by City Lights. Though he’s recorded a solo CD and read nationally and internationally, Daáood had never seen fit to collect his material in a book. Until now. “I never liked the idea of poetry sitting on a shelf somewhere, lost in all those book spines”.
posted on Apr 17, 2005 - View this thread

BooksWeLike collaborative book recommendations. This site was mentioned in passing in a recent MeFi thread and in this Salon article, but it deserves a moment in the spotlight of its own. A beta, it may have yet to realize its full potential in terms of features and performance, but the more people join and recommend books, the more interesting and useful the recommendations will be. It also offers links to Amazon, indie booksellers, and maybe even your local library.
posted on Feb 16, 2005 - View this thread

whoa again. Amazon introduced "Search inside the book" a while ago, but now the searchmasters are doing it.
posted on Feb 14, 2005 - View this thread

The Digested Read at The Guardian reduces popular books to 400 words and a conclusion. Recent notables include Belle du Jour ("Sometimes I lie about my age to clients. Sometimes I even lie to my friends. I guess you must be wondering whether I'm lying now.") Crichton's State of Fear ("Author's note: I'm very, very clever and have read a lot and you're all stupid wishy-washy liberals.") and Tom Wolfe's I am Charlotte Simmons ("At least it covered her breasts, whatever they were. Charlotte knew men might want to touch them, but she didn't know why as she had never read Cosmopolitan.") Possibly NSFW if you have an employer with no sense of humor. On preview: Individual Digested Reads have been linked in previous discussions on Henry James and Camille Paglia.
posted on Jan 17, 2005 - View this thread

The Nobel Prize in Literature 2004: Elfriede Jelinek, probably best known for the story behind Michael Haneke's La Pianiste.
posted on Oct 7, 2004 - View this thread

Rare Books. Links to virtual exhibitions, 1991-present.
posted on Oct 3, 2004 - View this thread

Question for a gray Saturday. What is literature for ? Three litblogs -- Conversational Reading, The Reading Experience, and Leonard Bast -- discuss. Curl up and consider.
posted on Sep 18, 2004 - View this thread

CliffsNotes is now offering 180 literature guides available for free online viewing.
posted on Sep 13, 2004 - View this thread

"First, look up the most popular and critically-acclaimed books, movies, and music on Amazon. Click on 'Customer Reviews,' and sort them by 'Lowest Rating First'..." The Amazon.com Knee-Jerk Contrarian Game.
posted on Jul 2, 2004 - View this thread

Speaking of free audio books, Project Gutenberg is currently working on releasing about 500 free, public domain audio books in mp3 format. Among the titles included are Melville's Typee, A Midsummer Night's Dream,A Modest Proposal, Huck Finn, and many, many more. I have some Great Expectations for this one...
posted on Mar 27, 2004 - View this thread

10 Books to Feed the Imagination. Just in time for World Book Day, Lady Georgia Byng offers her favorite tomes for sparking a child's fancy. The usual suspects are here (Roald Dahl, J.K. Rowling, Philip Pullman) with a couple of welcome surprises (Yann Martel and Jostein Gaarder). But tell me, MeFites ... which others did she miss?
posted on Mar 3, 2004 - View this thread

Remembrance of Books Past, by Ray Bradbury
"Why not a sequel to 'Fahrenheit 451' in which all the great books are remembered by the Wilderness People and are finally reprinted from memory. What then?"
"Wouldn't it be," he continued, "that all would be misremembered, none would come forth in their original garb? Wouldn't they be longer, shorter, taller, fatter, disfigured, or more beautiful? "
[if possible, use the Wall Street Journal link - subsription required]
posted on Feb 4, 2004 - View this thread

Books I Did Not Read This Year: For novelty or perhaps for gleeful one-downmanship, Kieran at Crooked Timber shares a list of books he did not read in 2003. Literary guilt is hardly new, but some argue our neuroses about unread books grows as our distractions multiply. Of course, this attitude (besides bordering on criticism of the glib, "pop lite" type) usually comes part and parcel with the common complaint that paper culture is dead. And one could easily make a distinction between neurotic englit-geek Guilt and the casual reader's mere missed opportunity. Without rehashing either of those discussions, what are the (presumably) best books (or any pieces of art) you didn't consume in 2003?
posted on Jan 17, 2004 - View this thread

What's American about American poetry?
posted on Dec 14, 2003 - View this thread

Looking for that rare science fiction first edition? The Barry R. Levin Science Fiction & Fantasy Literature store just might have the volume you seek.
posted on Nov 24, 2003 - View this thread

On Sundays West Coast Live I heard an interview with Adam Johnson, the author of Parasites Like Us, a post-apocalyptic novel with a decidedly (if somewhat spurious) anthropological bent. Literary criticism aside, as an anthropologist myself (and die-hard sci-fi reader), it got me thinking of what our vaunted Western culture may have to offer the survivors of whatever catastrophe may befall our civilization in the future. From classic novels like Earth Abides, or even The Stand, writers and storytellers have tried to discern what may be the surviving aspects of culture once all else fails; what it is that has made and defines us as modern humans, and perhaps what it is that will sustain us. So, what is it that would sustain you? What would separate you from the crazed and the mad that seem to populate the annals of post-apocalyptic literature? Or perhaps more specifically, what is it that you value of your culture and your technology that makes it worthwhile to maintain and perhaps fight your way back to?
posted on Aug 18, 2003 - View this thread

Damn your eyes, Harry Paget Flashman lived through and thrived in spite of his involvement in almost all of the sticky and and unpleasant incidents involving agents of the British Empire from the late 1830s to the beginning of the last century. Although a fictional creation, his tales seem to ring as true as anything written about any other Victorian Gent, whether he got his V.C., took a jezail bullet, or even knew 'little Vicky' herself.
posted on Aug 7, 2003 - View this thread

The Gutenberg Bible : the first book printed with movable type, is the one of the greatest treasures in the University of Texas's Ransom Center's collections. It was printed at Johann Gutenberg's shop in Mainz, Germany and completed in 1454 or 1455. The Center's Bible was acquired in 1978 and is one of only five complete examples in the United States. All 1,282 pages now available for viewing on the Ransom Center's Web site. Also check out the anatomy of a page.
posted on Jul 23, 2003 - View this thread

"The same thing we do every night, Pinky. Try to take over the world!" Who says 'Murricans are insular and self-absorbed?! Okay, everybody, but everybody's wrong. Proof positive? The absolutely last and final word that'll make everybody believe we really do care about their mangy foreign butts? The fact that the Library of Congress has a wonderful site called A World of Books: Annotated Surveys of Noteworthy Books from Around the Globe, devoted to "some of the most important and interesting books published abroad that an American public may have overlooked. The results provide a fascinating insight about other peoples and cultures." It's good times.
posted on Jul 9, 2003 - View this thread

Inspector Maigret And The Strange Case Of The Immortals: The immensely prolific Georges Simenon, most well known for his Maigret mysteries, has just been published in 2 volumes by France's most prestigious collection, the Bibliothèque de la Pléiade. Crime fiction looks like it's slowly becoming respectable. What popular crime novelists would you like to see elevated to literature's highest pantheon? Or does it somehow ruin the fun a bit? For comparison purposes, I'd say The Library of America is the nearest English language equivalent. [First, second and fourth links in English; others in French.]
posted on Jul 7, 2003 - View this thread

GLAMORLUX Cool Collections ~ vintage photos, movie posters, book covers and album covers from Hollywood's golden era.
posted on Jun 28, 2003 - View this thread

Don Swaim has posted numerous unedited interviews recorded in the 1980's with famous authors, including Anthony Burgess (who has some troubles recalling "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"), Douglas Adams, William S. Burroughs, and many more... even Richard Nixon. (RealAudio)
posted on Jun 27, 2003 - View this thread

After 'The Bell Jar,' Life Went On. Sylvia Plath immortalized the guest editor program at Mademoiselle Magazine in her famed book, "The Bell Jar." A photo of the 20 young guest editors was taken back in 1953, and they were all lined up in a star -- with Plath, unsurprisingly, at the top. Plath killed herself in 1971, but the other women in her program reunited recently, to discuss their experiences, how they've changed, and their famous classmate. A fascinating read for anyone who's read "The Bell Jar." (NY Times reg required)
posted on Jun 23, 2003 - View this thread

Did you know that George Eliot's Middlemarch is posted online in its entirety? As is Madam Bovary, Anna Karenina, and Don Quixote. ClassicReader.com contains 769 books and 1041 short stories by 211 authors. (via Bookfilter.)
posted on Apr 8, 2003 - View this thread

Violet Books: Antiquarian Supernatural, Fantasy & Mysterious Literatures, including the Gallery of Rare Dustwrappers, the Golden Age of Illustration Index, or the Westerns Dustwrapper Galleries, and more.
posted on Mar 22, 2003 - View this thread

TextArc is an interactive program that reproduces the text of more than 2,000 books as works of art.
The software converts the text into an interactive map that allows viewers to quickly see relationships between words and characters at a glance, even without having read the book. Try it with Alice in Wonderland. (Links opens a full-screen window.)
posted on Nov 30, 2002 - View this thread

'Literature of fact' The high wall which seperates fact and fiction has a small door in it through which people can step. A piece which discusses how someone writing a supposed eyewitness account of an event always tends to fictionalise, even unconciously, in order to make the subject interesting, the idea being that just because a book is in that section, it might not actually be completely non-fiction.
posted on Nov 16, 2002 - View this thread

The Gospel According to Harry Potter. Connie Neal thinks that she sees "glimmers of the Gospel" in the Harry Potter books. Not the most interesting attempt to counter the occult hysteria surrounding this book, but sure to stir up some hilarious controversy just the same.
posted on Oct 8, 2002 - View this thread

In the new LRB, a pretty good attempt to answer the pressing question - why do the Bush people want to attack Iraq so much?
posted on Sep 25, 2002 - View this thread

On The Road... coming to a theater near you (scroll down in link). Francis Ford Coppola is working on a film adaptation of Kerouac's classic (?), starring Brad Pitt. Genius? Heresy? I can see the Barnes & Noble tie-ins now...
posted on Aug 29, 2002 - View this thread

Af-Am poet disses Maya Angelou's new book, gets disinvited to book signing In this calm and thoughtful piece, smart, sharp poet Wanda Coleman reflects on the "furor" she caused in the Af-Am community with a savage review of Angelou's latest work. After the review appeared, she was asked not to attend a signing at a famous black bookstore for an anthology she participated in (story confirmed halfway down this page). She notes, "Critically reviewing the creative efforts of present-day African-American writers...is a minefield of a task." Also: Coleman on American poetry, Coleman recalls a mid-70's interview with Marley and Tosh and ponders black hair, Wanda's all-time top 10 books. [more inside]
posted on Aug 19, 2002 - View this thread

J.T. LeRoy: The Next Lit-Crit It Boy? A report from the trendy and bespectacled world of hipster-lit book-readings and its newest star, the mercurial J.T. LeRoy. From the article: "LeRoy is the mirror image of the New York hipster’s aspiration: the lost soul done good, when so many in the audience, in pricey vintage t-shirts, seemed to want nothing more than to shed the trappings of middle-class life. More than a few in the audience spoke of him with a sort of rapt awe usually accorded NBA stars and minor deities." For more info on LeRoy, check out the author's official website.
posted on Jun 4, 2002 - View this thread

Who's the Best-Read MeFite? The 100 best works of fiction (as chosen by Norwegian Book Clubs) (via Archipelapogo via rebeccablood). Sure, it's arbitrary, but there's a lot of great writing here. Bragging rights awarded (unless someone cares to sweeten the pot). How many have you read?
posted on May 22, 2002 - View this thread

Cyril Connolly , who once quipped, with himself in mind, Whom the gods wish to destroy they first call promising, wrote The Unquiet Grave, of which Ernest Hemingway wrote, A book which, no matter how many readers it will ever have, will never have enough. For one, I am curious what smilar books you would add to Hemingway’s nascent list, and for another, what you may have regarding Connolly. (More within)
posted on May 10, 2002 - View this thread

Good Riddance to Oprah's Book Club, and Her Literary Amateurism Norah Vincent says Oprah's opinion in matters of literary taste is amateurish to say the least and she presumed where she should not have, and wouldn't want her sticker on his/hers book either.
Just for fun adds People who dislike Oprah's Book Club dislike it for the same reason that they dislike Barnes & Noble. The fact that the two do a brisk business isn't accidental, and the two represent the same pernicious homogenization of American life that makes existential despair all but unavoidable.
Pompous?
posted on Apr 12, 2002 - View this thread

Tom Perrotta may be one of the best novelists working today, yet not that many folks know his name. His books and short stories portray prosaic suburbia accurately and without condescension, and he has uncanny insight into the mind of the terminally adolescent. Not to mention an uproarious sense of humor. If the films of Kevin Smith and Richard Linklater, the music of Weezer, or Pete Bagge's comics resonate with you, you may want to check out their literary equivalent. As an added treat, here's an audio link of Perrota reading his work. For my money, this guy is one of our best American writers right now, although you wouldn't know it.
posted on Mar 2, 2002 - View this thread

Book-A-Minute SF/F--- Their "minute" is so spot-on a review for those books I've read that I'm off to find some books I haven't, just on this site's odd say-so.
posted on Feb 17, 2002 - View this thread

Alexandre Dumas on film This AP/CNN article says Dumas’ books make good movies, but aren’t being read as much as they used to be. Do the changes the movies make improve the books, or would more faithful adaptations be better?
posted on Feb 2, 2002 - View this thread

projet MOBILIVRE-BOOKMOBILE projet is a collection of independently-produced books and zines traveling and exhibiting across North America in a vintage Airstream trailer. The project is accepting submissions for the 2002 tour.
posted on Jan 16, 2002 - View this thread

Franzen wins National Book Award. Another logo to go on the dust jacket next to the O. Pulitzer next?
posted on Nov 15, 2001 - View this thread

As a youngen, I was very much enamored with Ken Kesey's questioning soul and his flare for the wild. His novels provided much comfort as I tried to navigate my way through those conforming years we all know as high school. May he RIP.
posted on Nov 11, 2001 - View this thread

In 1948 Caryl Chessman was awarded two death sentences on two counts of attempted rape. He was probably innocent, yet he was executed in 1960 for more or less "being a smartass." In the years between his sentencing and death, he wrote three memoirs and a novel, which sold well. After the first memoir the prison forbade him to write about anything other than the legalities of his case, so he developed an elaborate code to get his work out to his lawyer. His spirit never broke, as strange as it was. This is his story.
posted on Nov 3, 2001 - View this thread

Monday is the last day to declare your intention to write a 50,000-word novel during National Novel Writing Month (Nov. 1-30). "Dubious fiction writers from all nations are invited to participate," says organizer Chris Baty. So far, around 3,000 writers have pledged to bring 150 million new words into the world.
posted on Oct 28, 2001 - View this thread

Finally the Nobel Prize For Literature Gets It Right Jorge Luis Borges didn't get it. Neither did Marcel Proust. But today V.S.Naipaul, arguably the best writer in the English language since Samuel Beckett died, was awarded the Nobel Prize. Doesn't this just show it helps not to be English(e.g. Irish, American, Indian or Trinidadian)to be able to write dry and timeless prose such as Sir Vidia's?
posted on Oct 11, 2001 - View this thread

So this year's Best American Poetry book is out, which means it's time once again for me to feel (English-major) guilt about not enjoying, or even "getting," more contemporary poetry. It looks like I'm not the only one, though, who wonders, "Does anybody like these poems?" Poet Joan Houlihan likens this collection to a "suburban poetry mall." (via Arts & Letters Daily)
posted on Oct 5, 2001 - View this thread

Turn off the TV because it's Banned Books Week once again in the US. Personally, I've only read about 15% of the top 100 most challenged books from the past decade, though many of my favorites are there. In the midst of our freedoms being curtailed during the Current Situation, enjoy your freedom to read while you can.
posted on Sep 27, 2001 - View this thread

Bisclavret is part of a book I'm reading, "Les Lais de Marie de France." [Modern and original French versions, side-by-side]. Also the tragedy Suréna [French link], by Pierre Corneille, and for a reading group, Genesis from the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible, as a literary, not religious, text. Last week the group read The Dead from James Joyce's "The Dubliners" and before that Milan Kundera's "The Unbearable Lightness of Being." What are you reading?
posted on Sep 8, 2001 - View this thread

Aslan gets a makeover? (NYTimes link, reg. required, sorry.) Apparently Harper-Collins and the C.S. Lewis estate see a Harry Potter-style merchandising bonanza in the Narnian Chronicles -- if they de-emphasize that pesky Christianity, that is, and write a few more Narnia books, and produce some plush toys of the Narnian characters. I feel queasy.
posted on Jun 3, 2001 - View this thread

Don't make Hunter mad. Hunter S. Thompson doesn't think the production company that optioned The Rum Diaries is doing a very good job. And he tells them. Man, does he tell them.
posted on Mar 10, 2001 - View this thread

Literary Critics: "Charles Dickens, huh? Is he any good?" Slate's "Culturebox" (whatever) polls the lit-crit establishment to find out what they haven't read. Yeah, it's a Slate link, I know. Listen, shouldn't you be reading a book or something anyway?
posted on Mar 6, 2001 - View this thread

I'm something of a bibliophile; at age 17 I have a personal library of over 600 books and I read about 120 books every year. One of the cool things I discovered on the 'net last year was the growing number of personal book review sites. A couple of my favorites are John Regehr's Book Pages and Danny Yee's Book Reviews. Both sites provide literate, enjoyable commentary on a wide-range of books. Assignment: Anybody else out there found any good book review sites? If so, please share and explain. :)
posted on Jan 25, 2001 - View this thread

How to get a Ph.D. in the Hardy Boys. I wish *I* was that creative. :-) I still like the originals best. [Spotted at GirlHacker's Random Log]
posted on Jan 8, 2001 - View this thread

Jim Munroe is a zine publisher in Toronto who wrote a couple of small novels, got one ("Flyboy Action Figure Comes With Gasmask") picked up by Harper Collins, and got out of his contract to self-release his latest book. I don't know if it surprises anyone that the mainstream book scene is about as non-lucrative and power-consolidated as the music world is, but he's posted all the gory details, as well as a detailed and friendly how-to for self-publishing.
posted on Sep 10, 2000 - View this thread

perhaps i would have read more in high school...

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey
Nurse Ratched: I destroy my patients psychologically so I can have power and control.
Randall P. McMurphy: But freedom and happiness are good things.
Nurse Ratched: Lobotomy time for you, buster.
(McMurphy DIES but inspires HOPE so OTHERS may LIVE.)
posted on Feb 23, 2000 - View this thread

Wow, a killer new site: mp3lit.com. Listen to books in mp3 format. Wouldn't it be great if this was Shoutcasted and a global wireless broadband network was in place so you could hear it in your car or walking around? Another cool thing would be if they hooked up with The Gutenburg Project and had audio versions of all those free texts.
posted on Sep 21, 1999 - View this thread