MetaFilter posts tagged with books

A World of Hits

chunking express — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 13:57:21 -0800

A World of Hits "Ever-increasing choice was supposed to mean the end of the blockbuster. It has had the opposite effect." It's a pretty interesting article. I liked this quote:

In “Formal Theories of Mass Behaviour”, William McPhee noted that a disproportionate share of the audience for a hit was made up of people who consumed few products of that type. (Many other studies have since reached the same conclusion.) A lot of the people who read a bestselling novel, for example, do not read much other fiction. By contrast, the audience for an obscure novel is largely composed of people who read a lot. That means the least popular books are judged by people who have the highest standards, while the most popular are judged by people who literally do not know any better. An American who read just one book this year was disproportionately likely to have read “The Lost Symbol”, by Dan Brown. He almost certainly liked it.

Look at this f**king MetaFilter thread

mkultra — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 12:02:45 -0800

Not content to sit by and watch other single-topic blogs ink book deals, Look At This F**king Idea For A Blog-To-Book Deal goes wide where others have gone narrow. (Actual site and URL not censored. Adjust your NetNanny expectations accordingly)

Goodnight Sticks. And Goodnight Sick

Rumple — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 13:10:27 -0800

Goodnight Keith Moon

"I am a former child,'' she said, ''and I haven't forgotten a thing.''

ocherdraco — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 12:35:52 -0800

Ursula Nordstrom—the "Maxwell Perkins of the Tot Department"—was, from 1940 to 1973, head of the Department of Books for Boys and Girls at the New York publisher Harper & Row, and until 1979 had her own imprint there, Ursula Nordstrom Books. A legendary editor known to her authors as UN, she published the books of Laura Ingalls Wilder, Margaret Wise Brown, Shel Silverstein, Maurice Sendak (whom she is credited with discovering) and, to not a little controversy, E. B. White (previously). One of "the last generation of devoted letter writers," she wrote nearly 100,000 during her five decade career at Harper, of which 300 of the most amusing, acerbic, and illuminating are collected in Dear Genius by Leonard S. Marcus, the first hundred pages of which can be read at the Harper website. My favorite UN letter: to Maurice Sendak, when he was in a moment of despair, she wrote, "You may not be Tolstoy, but Tolstoy wasn't Sendak, either."

Pappy's Golden Age Comics Blog

wittgenstein — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 10:08:32 -0800

Let me introduce you to Pappy's Golden Age Comics Blog. To start,, I recommend some Ghost Patrol stories from Flash Comics. Or, perhaps some Spacehawk or Powerhouse Pepper by Basil Wolverton is more to your liking. No? How about some Stuntman by Jack Kirby? Maybe Golden Age Flash stories? Maybe some John Stanley? or Fletcher Hanks? Well, look around, I'm sure you will find something you'll like. Not into Golden Age comics? Maybe you will like The Big Blog of Kid's Comics or Gold Key Comics.

I used to be the future, and now I'm the past

shothotbot — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 08:09:00 -0800

Notice some best of the year or best of the decade lists? I guess you could do that, if you are into the retro thing. Forward thinking websites bring you the best of the year to come. From The Millions we have books and from io9 science fiction books. (Io9 is also worried about a few things in the coming year.) From The Onion AV culb we have media, broadly defined. Rotten Tomatoes lists the most anticipated Sundance films. You want games? We got games from BoingBoing, MTVu and Kotaku. And no-one saw fit to add the live action version of Space Battleship Yamato a/k/a Star Blazers?

Cut-ups, op art and book design

mediareport — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 16:42:23 -0800

The Art of Fontana Modern Masters James Pardey, the mind behind The Art of Penguin Science Fiction, has just put up another site telling the story of the cover art on the Frank Kermode-edited "Modern Masters" Fontana Books series, inspired by the Op Art of Victor Vasarely and the cut-ups of Brion Gysin and William Burroughs. [via, via] Victor Vasarely's (needlessly complex) official site Vasarely on Wikipedia 2006 Guardian Kermode interview The "next page" button at the top moves you past the blank folder covers at the Fontana site.

Now that we're in the future, let's look back at the past.

tractorfeed — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 11:30:03 -0800

The Vintage Ad Browser "aims to collect vintage ads from a variety of sources, including comic books, CD-Roms, websites, APIs, your submissions, book, magazine & comic book scans, and more." At the time of this post, the site contains 123,286 ads. Brought to you by the creator of Cover Browser (previously), where you can peruse almost half a million covers of "comics, books, and more."

David Levine, R.I.P.

pasici — Fri, 01 Jan 2010 21:08:13 -0800

David Levine, beloved caricaturist for several publications, but most notably for the New York Review of Books, died last Tuesday at age 83 due to complications of prostate cancer. Since 1963, he contributed over 3,800 caricatures for the magazine, which prominently featured his drawings in promotional material. You can look at over 2,500 of his drawings here, review his website featuring his painting here, and see him interviewed here. Toward the end of his life, his vision failed due to macular degeneration and his relationship with the magazine became somewhat strained. Upon his death, the magazine noted that he was, simply, "the greatest caricaturist of his time." Everyone has his or her favorites; mine include: Freud Einstein Faulkner U.S. Presidents (previously)

In words of one syl-la-ble

twoleftfeet — Fri, 01 Jan 2010 04:25:02 -0800

Time was, folks wrote books with just small words, for kids, or for folks who could not read well. Interesting exemplars of this forgotten literary parsimoniousness include:

Classics: Gulliver's Travels, Pilgrim's Progress, Robinson Crusoe, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
Tales of animals: Aesop, Reynard, and others
Moral lessons from fairy tales or from the Bible, or for Little Political Economists
Histories: France, Germany, England, Russia, Japan, New York, or Ohio
Lives of Lincoln or Grant or other presidents

Some of these books are still worth the read. And it's hard to write that way.

JSBlog

brundlefly — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 18:42:29 -0800

JSblog: on varied topics inspired by working in a secondhand bookshop.

Tom's Glossary of Book Publishing Terms

Prospero — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 14:37:22 -0800

Tom's Glossary of Book Publishing Terms

Anyone who claims that readers can’t and won’t and shouldn’t own their books are bent on the destruction of the book, the destruction of publishing, and the destruction of authorship itself.

Lobster Garden — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 11:25:13 -0800

How to Destroy the Book. "The anti-copyright activists have no respect for our copyright and our books. They say that when you buy an ebook or an audiobook that’s delivered digitally, you are demoted from an owner to a licensor." (Previously).

Steal This Book

stbalbach — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 20:01:10 -0800

"Steal These Books" is a NYT essay about the most commonly shoplifted books from bookstores. tl;dr? #1=The Virgin Suicides. The NYT article apparently inspired an enterprising soul to write a more encyclopedic "Book store shoplifting" for Wikipedia, with some more interesting articles on this meme: *"Flying Off the Shelves: The Pleasures and Perils of Chasing Book Thieves" (2008) *Shoplift Lit: You Are What You Steal (1999) *Stealing Books (2005) *Theft an ongoing issue for bookstore (2009)

My pen is mightier than your pen!

The Card Cheat — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 10:05:58 -0800

The Top 10 Literary Feuds Of The Aughts, as compiled by Toronto journalist and author Shaun Smith. Some highlights: #8: Dale Peck vs. Rick Moody [previously] #7: Jonathan Franzen vs. Oprah Winfrey [previously] #4: Christopher Hitchens vs. Henry Kissinger [previously] #3: James Frey vs. Oprah Winfrey [previously] [previously]

Metastasis

Artw — Sun, 20 Dec 2009 00:26:45 -0800

SffMeta - Metacritic for Science Fiction.

The Kitsune Noir Poster Club

You Should See the Other Guy — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 09:11:05 -0800

The Kitsune Noir Poster Club "feature[s] curated prints by all kinds of artists & designers creating around central themes." Current designs are for Infinite Jest (by Cody Hoyt), Moby Dick (by Mark Weaver), Slaughterhouse 5 (by Frank Chimero), Walden (by Jez Burrows), and The Road by Garrett Vander Leun. From Bobby Solomon's Kitsune Noir Art & Design Blog and Society6.

“I love you anyway too.”

The Dryyyyy Cracker — Sat, 12 Dec 2009 11:06:32 -0800

The Defiant Ones. In today’s picture books, the kids are in charge.

Did you remember to turn off the gas?

caddis — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 00:21:19 -0800

If there's one genre you have to read before you die it's the travel book
Standard guidebook: "Should you be caught up in a frenzied riot during your time in Jakarta, make your way immediately to your country's embassy. Once inside, relax with one of the native beverages, and think about what a great story you'll have to tell Andy and Rhona on your return."
Hip guidebook:"Should you be caught up in a frenzied riot during your time in Jakarta, consider yourself fortunate to witness the valid cultural expression of a wonderfully passionate race. Feel free to hurl a Molotov cocktail at the riot squad." (via Jorn>

The Fortsas Bibliohoax

brundlefly — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 11:04:15 -0800

In 1840, book collectors from around Europe flocked to the Belgian town of Binche hoping to buy at auction the late Jean Nepomucene Auguste Pichauld, Comte de Fortsas's collection of one-of-a-kind books. Unfortunately for them, neither the man nor his collection ever existed. More recently, librarian and bibliophile Jeremy Dibbell posted the contents of the Fortras Catalogue to LibraryThing with English translation as well as an introduction to the collection. Scans of the original catalogue can be found on Google Books. via ZPi Previously

Tokyo Blues by Do Projects

malphigian — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 14:16:37 -0800

Tokyo Blues is a photography book about taking a closer look at the ordinary, in this case an omnipresent blue construction tarp which shows up just about everywhere in Tokyo. This is the first book in an apparently planned series by Do Projects. The book is available for sale or as a free PDF under the CC license.

Hey! It's a bunch of lists we can all agree on!

Navelgazer — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 09:02:32 -0800

The A.V. Club's Best of the Decade: Films. Performances. Scenes. Bad Movies. Books. Short Story Collections. Comics. Video Games Music. Metal. Electronic Music. Comedy Albums. Television Series. Television Episodes. Reality Series/Competitions. Made-For-TV Movies/Miniseries. Late-Night Comedy/Talk Shows. One-Season Wonders. And the orphans.

Well, that's that then

shothotbot — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 21:09:49 -0800

Lev Grossman (wiki) has picked the six greatest fantasy novels of all time to This Weeks "Best Books...chosen by" series. Grossman blogs that each one"absolute indisputable classic" that "completely changed the game." The unordered list: -- The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis -- The Once and Future King by T.H. White -- Fritz Leiber's Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser stories -- The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien -- Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke -- Magic for Beginners by Kelly Link

It's real! You can touch it!

You Should See the Other Guy — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 06:49:17 -0800

Remember Paper is a blog with photos of interesting magazines, books, and other paper-based ephemera. NSFW.

where books come to life

lalex — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 12:10:28 -0800

A beautiful ad for the New Zealand Book Council. (SLYT, via)