Viewing entries tagged
Books
Fellas, increase your literary pimp game with these books. Or just put them on your bookshelf for appearance's sake.
The downside to lending friends and coworkers books is that some of them never return it. Cough*CYRUS*Cough. This personal library kit which comes with self adhesive pockets , insert cards, date stamp, and pad will let you tap into your inner librarian. Start stampin' those books and collect late fees!
$20 here.
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Times UK list of 10 authors "for whom one novel proved quite enough." One of the books on the list is an all time favorite novel of mine:
John Kennedy Toole - A Confederacy of DuncesThe author committed suicide in 1969, having given up hope of seeing his comic masterpiece in print. Eventually it was published in 1980.
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The Book Cover Archive is a great repository of book cover designs and their designers. You can search and browse by title, designer, art director, photographer, et cetera.
[Thanks Melissa!]
[vimeo 2376275]These amazing breathing books that look like some prop from the Harry Potter movies were created by Edith Kollath.
Subplot to this exhibit is how her books were detained by the TSA at Newark airport when she tried to return to Germany with them for another exhibit. The books were held for three months.
Read the artist's recount of the whole experience with our security apparatus here.
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The Book Design Review lists their favorite book designs from 2008.
Couple weeks ago I purchased Foer's Everything is Illuminated mainly because I liked the cover.
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Maxine Hong Kingston, 68, speaking at the 2008 National Book Awards ceremony this week remarked on the power of the Internet. After a political piece she wrote earlier this year was rejected by every newspaper she submitted it to, she decided to post it online.
All I had to do was type, then click a button marked publish. Yes, there is such a button. Click, publish. Voila, I was published," she said. The response was instantaneous, she said. "They chose me to be their Facebook friend. I felt young again. All that rejection, then miraculous publication and making new friends all over the Worldwide Web."
Yes, the Internet kind of rocks.
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Watchmen co-creator and artist Dave Gibbons' companion book Watching the Watchmen is a real insider treat for fans of this seminal and iconic graphic novel. Here's some of the original concept art. I'm really glad Gibbons and Alan Moore decided to not go with the Rorschach seen in this early sketch.
Read more here.
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I really wanted to see one of my all time favorite contemporary authors, Haruki Murakami speak at the New Yorker Festival, but I couldn't get tickets (Tickets sold out in eleven minutes!).
On stage, the writer belied his rock-star reputation, glancing shyly at his feet. He began by telling the story of a jazzman who, when accused of playing “just like Charlie Parker,” handed his saxophone to his critic and said, “Here—you try playing like Charlie Parker.” He said that we should draw three conclusions from this...
Read more here.
Harper's Magazine breaks down each literary format with succinct descriptions.
Chick Lit: A patriarchal term of oppression for heterosexual female writing; also, a marketing means to phenomenal readership and prominent bookstore space.Personal Essay: Characterized by 51 percent or more of its sentences beginning with the personal pronoun “I”; traditional narrative strategy entails doing one thing while thinking about another.
Literary Essay: Akin to the personal essay, only with bigger words and more profound content intended to demonstrate that the essayist is smarter than all readers, writers, teachers, and Europeans.
Haha.
Read rest here.
It amuses me that Julia Allison is reading Amy Sutherland's What Shamu Taught Me about Life, Love, and Marriage. Why my amusement? The MRod Nation kept an obsessive eye on the Shamu story as it dominated and pulverized the competition on the Times Most E-mailed article list.
You may go back to your regularly scheduled program.
The opening paragraph of "Harrison Bergeron," a short story by Kurt Vonnegut should be enough to pique your interest:
The year was 2081, and everybody was finally equal. They weren’t only equal before God and the law. They were equal every which way. Nobody was smarter than anybody else. Nobody was better looking than anybody else. Nobody was stronger or quicker than anybody else. All this equality was due to the 211th, 212th, and 213th Amendments to the Constitution, and to the unceasing vigilance of agents of the United States Handicapper General.
Read rest here.
DC Comics posted a Cliffs Notes, short concise summaries, of the origin stories of many of their heroes and villains (in comics form of course), as well as a 10 part series that explains the current retcon DC universe.
Check out the website here.
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After a girl recommended Norwegian Wood to me, a novel that I then consumed from front to back without a break while on a vacation abroad, I've become a huge fan of Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami. I think he is one of the best contemporary writers, period. So with that fanboy disclaimer, I'm really excited about A Wild Haruki Chase: Reading Murakami Around the World , a collection of essays written by "novelists, translators, artists, and critics" from around the globe, that attempts to unwrap, distill, and explain his novels' worldwide popularity.
But I'm not so interested in those essays. If anything I prefer to leave the journey to myself. What REALLY gets me jazzed about this new book however is that it includes a full-color montage of his novels' covers from various markets. I've been trying to track down this one particular copy of Norwegian Wood just because I love the cover, and I actually jump into used book stores when I pass by them to see if they have it. No luck so far, and I can't find it on the great Internets.
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Here's an annoying internet commercial for Borders Books under the guise of a video of two favorites of cultural elites, Wes Anderson and Jason Schwartzman flippantly browsing through the selections at a Borders location. How do I know it's a marketing effort from Borders? It was uploaded by BordersMedia on YouTube (brought to you by Google). I don't know why I'm posting this. I want a free copy of Rushmore in exchange. And a Borders gift certificate and apology from corporate for not hiring me during the summers when I was in college. It was very damaging to the self esteem.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UdRC9oDeVjk]
The Observer's literary editor discusses ten contemporary siminal moments, that he breaks out in chapters, which has shaped today's world of novels--starting with Zadie Smith (whom I discussed here) and ending with the Kindle. Fascinating read.
The author of White Teeth was first noticed in 1997 when she landed an unheard-of advance, rumoured to be £250,000, for her work-in-progress. Such hype was dangerous. When publication came in 2000, there were plenty of envious critics to pronounce her book dead on arrival, as they had done to so many precocious talents in the past. But White Teeth was exhilaratingly and distinctively new. In his review for The Observer, Caryl Phillips declared that her 'wit, her breadth of vision and her ambition are of her own making'.With worldwide sales of more than 2 million, White Teeth won success that was sustained by a new global market. The effect was almost instantaneous. In London, Sydney, Delhi and New York, publishers were now on the alert for 'the next Zadie Smith', a new generation of writers - Hari Kunzru, Monica Ali, Kiran Desai, Peter Ho Davies and Ali Smith among them - who would replace Ackroyd, Rushdie, Swift and Seth.
Read more here.