Archie's Recipes - When my grandparents passed away my family rediscovered an old family recipe book that my great grandfather wrote by hand in an old ledger. [via
mefi projects]
posted by item
on Jan 5, 2013 -
17 comments
Happy Thomas Pynchon rumor day! [LAtimes.com] "What's that, you say? America's most reclusive author, Thomas Pynchon, appeared in the news Friday -- not once but twice? Why, yes, yes, he has, surfacing in two unconnected rumours. Conspiracy? Pynchonian? Maybe we should henceforth designate Jan. 4 as Thomas Pynchon Rumor Day."
[more inside]
posted by Fizz
on Jan 5, 2013 -
40 comments
The Secret Lives of Readers Books reveal themselves. Whether they exist as print or pixels, they can be read and examined and made to spill their secrets. Readers are far more elusive. They leave traces—a note in the margin, a stain on the binding—but those hints of human handling tell us only so much. The experience of reading vanishes with the reader.
How do we recover the reading experiences of the past? Lately scholars have stepped up the hunt for evidence of how people over time have interacted with books, newspapers, and other printed material.
posted by jason's_planet
on Dec 29, 2012 -
25 comments
"People haven’t been fascinated by this book because the translation is mellifluous or beautiful,” said Michael F. Suarez, a professor of English at the University of Virginia who directs the Rare Book School there. “People haven’t been attracted to this book because the presswork is beautiful. It’s not.” Instead, the
Bay Psalm Book is treasured for being
the first surviving piece of printing done in the British North American colonies. Only 11 copies, many incomplete, today survive. Remarkably two of those copies belong to the same owner, Boston's
Old South Church. This month, the church made the
controversial decision to sell one (the first such sale in 65 years), and it could bring as much as $20 million for the church's endowment.
posted by Horace Rumpole
on Dec 25, 2012 -
7 comments
The
NYT Book Review just named it one of the
5 best fiction books of the year. The AV Club
helpfully posted a video to show you what happens when you open it. Actually,
lots of folks posted videos to show you what happens when you open it.
Other folks raved in print about the author and his career.
The Comics Journal asked a dozen critics of the author's work to send in reviews;
this one focuses on the role of disability in the narrative.
This one notes the book "is in a very primary sense a comic about women and the private lives they lead, and it investigates more fully than any other comic I have ever read the way they age, fall in love, explore their sexuality, come to terms with compromises they’ve had to make as they’ve grown, accept their limitations, confront squandered ability, have children (or choose not to have children), marry (or stay single), and make sense of the world around them." You might find
Chris Ware's Building Stories worth a look or two. Or fourteen.
[more inside]
posted by mediareport
on Dec 19, 2012 -
28 comments
"There are certain novels that can shape a teenage boy's life. For some, it's Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged; for others it's Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings. As a widely quoted internet meme says, the unrealistic fantasy world portrayed in one of those books can warp a young man's character forever; the other book is about orcs. But for me, of course, it was neither. My Book – the one that has stayed with me for four-and-a-half decades – is Isaac Asimov's Foundation Trilogy, written when Asimov was barely out of his teens himself. I didn't grow up wanting to be a square-jawed individualist or join a heroic quest; I grew up wanting to be Hari Seldon, using my understanding of the mathematics of human behaviour to save civilisation." [
Paul Krugman: Asimov's Foundation novels grounded my economics]
posted by vidur
on Dec 9, 2012 -
79 comments
Just when you thought it was safe to open a book... it's the
Literary Review's annual Bad Sex Award! (
Previously) This year's nominees include works by
Tom Wolfe,
Ben Masters,
Nicola Barker,
Paul Mason,
Nancy Huston,
Craig Raine,
Nicholas Coleridge, and
Sam Mills. Not on the list? J.K. Rowling's
The Casual Vacancy--despite "a couple of queasy moments," in the
words of TLR senior editor Jonathan Beckman--and E.L. James' Fifty Shades of Grey, since the award "is not intended to cover pornographic or expressly erotic literature." Snippets from the nominated books can be found at the Guardian link.
posted by Cash4Lead
on Nov 21, 2012 -
33 comments
Steven Pinker is apparently writing a science/academic writing style guide of sorts based on insights from psychology. Here is an
hour-plus long video of Pinker discussing the book at MIT.
posted by AceRock
on Nov 21, 2012 -
19 comments
Mubei, or
Tombstone, by Yang Jisheng, was published in 2008 and is considered to be the definitive account of the Chinese Great Famine. The book is banned in China, but has been available in Hong Kong. Counterfeit and electronic copies have allowed many Chinese to access the book. Before this November, Tombstone was available only in Chinese; however,
the English translation has now been released.
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posted by Bokmakierie
on Nov 11, 2012 -
27 comments
What really concerns librarians;
what do they discuss when they self-organise and decide for themselves? After the
inaugural UK event, the
second UK Librarycamp, with around 200 attendees, was recently held; reflections by
Frank Norman, Carolin Schneider
[1] [2],
Sarah Wolfenden,
Amy Faye Finnegan,
Shambrarian Knights,
Michelle,
Jennifer Yellin,
Jenni Hughes,
Bookshelf Guardian,
Amy Cross-Menzies and
Simon Barron, and by one of the
organisers.
[more inside]
posted by Wordshore
on Nov 1, 2012 -
10 comments
The book publishing world is merging into behemoths in order to better negotiate with Amazon. Rupert Murdoch (HarperCollins) has
made an offer to buy Penguin for
$1.6 billion. This just hours after Penguin said it was in talks to merge with Random House to create a 'Random Penguin' with nearly 25% of all English-language book sales. Either way the reputation of Penguin
could soon be in tatters. As one agent said, "Authors have told me they are frightened by a Random House takeover, but terrified by a HarperCollins one."
posted by stbalbach
on Oct 29, 2012 -
77 comments
The universe (which others call The Twitter) is composed of
every word in the English language;
Shakespeare's folios, line-by-line-by-line; the
Exegesis of Philip K. Dick, exploded;
Constantine XI, in 140 character chunks;
Sun Tzu's Art of War, in its entirety; the chapter headings
of JG Ballard, in abundance; and definitive
discographies of Every. Artist. Ever...
All this,
I repeat, is true, but one hundred forty characters of inalterable
wwwtext cannot correspond to any language, no matter how dialectical or rudimentary it may be.
[more inside]
posted by 0bvious
on Oct 27, 2012 -
14 comments
On the day he turned thirty-eight,
Michel Eyquem de Montaigne retired from public life to the tower of the
Château de Montaigne, there to spend the next ten years composing an
assay of his life's experience. That his mind might thrive, he turned the tower into a
"Solitarium" and its top floor into a sumptuous
library, lining its round walls with some 1,500
books. Even the roof beams were made to bear his thoughts: on them he inscribed 46 quotations,
here collected and translated.
posted by Iridic
on Oct 11, 2012 -
22 comments
