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Bookishness: Week of July 16, 2012
Delightful A book fountain in Budapest. Poems like lace Actually, lace poems. 3608 keys Speaking as a former piano student and also as someone who has moved houses four times in the past five years, I can tell you that keyboards, even those with 88 weighted keys, are not pianos. For all those who, like…
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Bookishness: Week of July 9, 2012
Walt Whitmonster Reading Whitman into Frankenstein and Dracula. B is for Biblioclasm A-Z of Unusual Words is a collection of prints that “represent a collection of strange, unusual and lost words.” (Our favourite.) Summer nights are for stargazing This Summer Constellation Map will help you to distinguish Hercules from Ophiuchus (I am completely ignoring the fact that…
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Bookishness: Week of July 2, 2012
“A place where the past sits intimately close to the present” A visit to Paper Books (née Of Swallows). Matisse meets Joyce For those who couldn’t shell out the cash for a copy of Ulysses illustrated by Henri Matisse, Brain Pickings did (a “year’s worth of lunch money”), and posted scans of the book’s etchings. “From taxes taxes taxes…
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Weird and interesting and funny and emotional stuff: a Q&A with Rebecca Rosenblum
TRB: Where do stories start, for you? RR: Anywhere, really. I don’t exactly “use” or replicate real-life events in my stories, but real life is certainly the mulch from which stories grow. Things that have happened to me and my friends, or things I’ve overheard on the bus get woven into a story that’s largely…
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Bookishness: Week of June 4, 2012
OWS v. NYC Occupy Wall Street has filed a lawsuit against New York City for the destruction of books and equipment from the People’s Library seized during an overnight raid last November. Short bursts of story The New Yorker recently published a short story by Jennifer Egan in a series of tweets over the course of ten nights. Of…
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Bookishness: Week of May 21, 2012
“The Daniel Day-Lewis of the method prank” On How to Sharpen Pencils: A Practical and Theoretical Treatise on the Artisanal Craft of Pencil Sharpening, for Writers, Artists, Contractors, Flange Turners, Anglesmiths, and Civil Servants, with Illustrations Showing Current Practice “Balkan-Klezmer-Gypsy-Punk-Super-Party-Band” plays exclusive Air Canada show This made me smile so hard. Yay, for sure. Expand your vocabulary (beyond…
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Bookishness: Week of May 14, 2012
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Bookishness: Week of May 7, 2012
Frankenbooks Inkle’s just released Frankenstein, an interactive novel/mobile app, may have descended from the Choose Your Own Adventure stories you checked out of your school library every Thursday morning, but the resulting work is one marked by an unexpected artistry and nuance, according to early reviews. Salon’s Laura Miller says of the… novel/app/thing, it “is a…
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Bookishness: Week of April 30, 2012
A “bipolar rabbit hole of past and present” This Findings interview with Brainpicker Maria Popova about the future of reading taught me about fifteen things, as any encounter with Popova is wont to do. In other doings (she lives in hyperdrive): Popova’s book spine poetry (inspired by National Poetry Month and the delightful Sorted Books). On the intimacy of Draw Something “Draw…
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Bookishness: Week of April 23, 2012
SlushPile Hell Ever wondered what’s going through the mind of the literary agent-not-to-be as she reads your work? You probably don’t want to know. Listen carefully and you can hear handcuffs clicking in the background Erin Balser and Becky Toyne on Fresh Air discussing 50 Shades of Grey. Bonus: includes Canadian smut recommendations. How to edit…
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Bookishness: Week of April 16, 2012
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Bookishness: Week of April 9, 2012
What we like to read in bed E-books, apparently. According to a just released Pew study of e-reading, American readers now favour e-books as their preferred method of reading in bed (at 45%, with books just behind at 43%). Books to be devoured While the idea of eating a book after reading it makes me cringe,…