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Bookishness: Week of February 11, 2013
Trans(it)media “When I started standing on subway platforms and watching people looking at the screens, I realized that the people who watch the screens are mostly commuters who take the same path to work every day and see those screens everyday in a ritualized way,” said Switzer. “An interesting way to reach out to those…
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Al Purdy, cabin porn, and Dachshund UN: Bookishness, Feb. 4, 2013
“What will become of all of you? What will you do with no good movies?” Richard Kramer writes about Pauline Kael. Book to film “I find that a lot of my best character stuff and ideas come unwittingly from novels… [Y]ou get to learn how to make good backstories in your own head, without needing…
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DNA poetry, thinking like Sherlock, and defining Toronto: Bookishness, Jan. 14, 2013
The little questions “What does Toronto even mean? What kind of city is it? What kind of place do we want it to be? That’s the big question, isn’t it?” – Edward Keenan, Some Great Idea. While you think about how you might answer the big question, try your hand at answering some little questions…
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Reading in 2013, pennies, and the physics of getting James’s peach airborne: Bookishness for Jan. 7
New Year’s Read-olutions Everyone around seems to be setting reading goals for 2013. I’m aiming for what now seems like a measly 100 books, held in comparison to Jeff Ryan’s 366 books in 2012. Alternatively, you might resolve to read less. The best Canadian designs ever From The Canadian Design Resource, a list of the top 100 Canadian…
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Top book lists, Little Libraries, and book cart drill teams: Bookishness, Dec. 17, 2012
If this is weird, I don’t wanna be normal Poetry makes you weird. The best best Distilling ALL OF THE top book lists. Grinches “In what can only be described as a fairly dick move, the town of Whitefish Bay, Wisconsin, has decided to ban Little Free Libraries, the most adorable manifestation of libraries to date.” I…
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Book sculptures, Dickens, and 10 rules for writing: Bookishness for Dec. 10, 2012
2012’s most looked up words Capitalism and socialism. Five new works Edinburgh’s mysterious (and delightful) book sculptor is back. 10. Hear what everyone has to say but don’t listen to anyone (except him). “Just as nobody can really teach you how you like your coffee, so nobody can really teach you how to write.” 10…
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Bookishness: Dec. 3, 2012 – MOMA, trees, the gay revolution, and more
Glad day to night “I often refer back to a quote from author Christopher Bram that I once jotted down in a notebook: ‘The gay revolution began as a literary revolution.’ The same could be said about many great revolutions. This is why we should care about Glad Day, and the similar (indie/niche/speciality) bookshops beyond…
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Bookishness: November 26, 2012
Mystery Dictionary.com‘s word of 2012 (image by craigdfreeman). Joan Didion on keeping a notebook “How it felt to me: that is getting closer to the truth about a notebook. I sometimes delude myself about why I keep a notebook, imagine that some thrifty virtue derives from preserving everything observed. See enough and write it down, I…
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Bookishness: November 19, 2012
Quill and Quire visits the Bibliomat The Monkey’s Paw’s new invention. Is this even possible? “Nostalgia cycles have become so short that we even try to inject the present moment with sentimentality, for example, by using certain digital filters to “pre-wash” photos with an aura of historicity. Nostalgia needs time. One cannot accelerate meaningful remembrance.”…
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Bookishness: November 12, 2012
Worth more than a thousand words Litographs: the entire text of classic books printed on 24×36. Here’s Around the World in 80 Days: The Smithsonian home for wayward books Inside the Smithsonian’s Book Conservation Lab, where rare books are adopted into a loving family. #love “This bit of utilitarian Web ephemera, invented with functionality…
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Bookishness: November 5, 2012
Rock (yeah) ing (yeah) chair (yeah) Rock your way to a full battery with Micasa Lab’s (still in development) ipad charging rocking chair. Canadian Poetries Promises poet secrets. How tempting. Fraaaaamed David Kaiser on the essay he didn’t write, “The essay falls in a beguiling category: the zombie fact, claims that are shown to be untrue…
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Bookishness: October 29, 2012
All of the books “Saddling another person with a book he did not ask for has always seemed to me like a huge psychological imposition, like forcing someone to eat a chicken biryani without so much as inquiring whether they like cilantro.” Joe Queenan’s 6,128 favourite books. (image via flickr user zen) Poems for Pussy…