March 2011
4 posts
“For the Internet screen has always been like the palantír in Tolkien’s ‘Lord of...”
– Adam Gopnik - “The Information” from The New Yorker (Feb. 14 & 21, 2011 issue)
“[David Foster Wallace] struggled for years to get to grips with the work and,...”
– Breaking: Franzen still a huge asshole. From “The Rich Literary Afterlife of David Foster Wallace.” (via michellelegro)
“The worth of a book is to be measured by what you can carry away from it.”
– James Bryce (via libraryland)
December 2010
5 posts
November 2010
1 post
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September 2010
7 posts
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Mr Eternity's graffiti
Between his conversion to Christianity in 1930 and his death in 1967, Arthur Stace was compelled to inscribe the word ‘Eternity’ in chalk or crayon more than half a million times on various public surfaces around the city of Sydney. He was dubbed Mr Eternity. See his entry in Wikipedia for more.
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books as bar code
Arrived at the bookshop, Alice browsed without pleasure. The books conveyed both intimidation and overabundant presence. They lined up like the immense bar code of some key to all mythologies.
Gail Jones, Dreams of Speaking (2006), p. 80.
August 2010
29 posts
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Women and Books in Art
Forbidden Fruit: A History of Women and Books in Art by Christiane Inmann looks at the way women with or near books have been depicted in art. For example, this one ‘Laus Veneris’, by Sir Edward Burne-Jones.
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Maria Bantjes's book of wonders
Maria Bantjes spoke at Ted earlier this year about design arguing that ”truly imaginative visual work is extremely important in society” and sees herself as “seeding the imagination of the populous” … “inspiration is cross-pollinating”.
Her book I Wonder is out in a month or so. It looks gorgeous and very textual.
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visual carbon footprint
Adelaide graffiti artist uses skills for political change
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political graffiti part two
A little more digging found some good Australian repositories of political graffiti.
For example, Melbourne Graffiti contains an interesting repository of street art found all over the city.
Including this piece:
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political graffiti ...
I’ve been looking around to see if there are any items of political graffiti relating to Australia’s recent non-event election. Haven’t found anything yet but came across these:
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Letters of Note
Letters of Note is a blog that posts online intriguing letters that they feel are instances of ”Correspondence deserving of a wider audience” .
A letter from Wil Wheaton to a former fan who never received her membership kit. A letter from Christa McAuliffe who died in the Challenger disaster. A letter (supposedly)...
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beware the robot holocaust
courtesy of melbourne graffiti
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a book's found objects
The Guardian Book Blog takes a look at things found inside books.
Here “The precious unprinted content of books” includes such found objects as pressed flowers in a Virginia Woolf book, and links to this guy who has become a bit obsessed with the author of a series of handwritten and typewritten diaries he found in a box of second hand books.
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A Psychology of Fonts
Slate asks a bunch of authors what font they use to when they write and why, and gets some interesting answers. For one thing, it reveals the nostalgia for the typewriter as if it occupies some saintly place in creativity (despite, as another writer recalls, the inconvenience of the things)
Jonathan Lethem says:
I dislike the temptation of making a raw draft look like it’s already...
more than ideas found inside a book ...
Abe Books has a page detailing a range of curious objects found inside books
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the Argentine Book Tank
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marginalia of the instructional kind
The University of Virginia Historical Collections site says:
standard practice for students to make copious notes in books. Here every bit of the page has been covered with small manuscript annotations in Latin.
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marginalia referenced in Arcadia ...
In the margin of his copy of Arithmetica, Fermat wrote that he had discovered a wonderful proof of his theorem but, the margin being too narrow for his purpose, did not have room to write it down.
So says Septimus in Tom Stoppard’s awesome play Arcadia (Faber and Faber, 1993, p.6).
Further down the page Thomasina replies:
There is no proof, Deptimus. The thing that is perfectly...
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can we learn using iPads?
An article at USA Today asks whether students can learn as effectively using iPads and ebooks.
One interesting comment considers the different reading styles required for a textbook and a novel, and suggests the iPad favours the latter rather than the former.
“Usually in a novel you’re going through it from start to finish. In a textbook you’re constantly flipping back and...
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Wall inspiration. If you can't put a bookshelf...
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Turning Books Into Art
Interesting thoughts on book art at Trashionista
including this from Alice in Wonderland
and a look at some Etsy book art
Wired Magazine in the 90s
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You are already using this library. You have been...
I stumbled across this project, the Interstitial Library by Head Librarians Shelley Jackson (of Patchwork Girl fame) and Christine Hill.
We consider that the entire floating body of documents at large in the world’s books, paper ephemera, electronic texts, et al., constitutes a huge, siteless library.
You are already using this library. You have been using it all your life.
A...
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WatchPoet Rob Walker and his son Ben Walker collaborate on this animated video poem “Bibliophobia”.
information a diversion
Obama bemoans ‘diversions’ of IPod, Xbox era
(AFP) – May 9, 2010
HAMPTON, Virginia — US President Barack Obama lamented Sunday that in the iPad and Xbox era, information had become a diversion that was imposing new strains on democracy, in his latest critique of modern media.
…
“With iPods and iPads and Xboxes and PlayStations, — none of which I know how to work...
July 2010
26 posts
stairwell
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The Waste Land in book and app form
The future of reading
Kevin Kelly’s process for his new book in progress, called What Technology Wants, includes having an online dumping place for notes and ideas called, magisterially, /thetechnium/. Part of Kelly’s research is on the intersection between technology and reading. He follows this train of thought for the August issue of the Smithsonian magazine with an article called ‘Reading in a...
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More Book Art →
Love this. Judd Turner writes:
Using welded steel and found objects, I create artwork which embraces opposites — the tension between humans and nature; the perils of balancing biology and technology; or the combination of ancient fossils with modern machinery.
But I wonder, does it always have to be a binary? Can we only think of biology and technology as a binary, of human and machine as a...
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The Codex Seraphinianus
Ah, book lust. I’ve just added a new book to my mental “must own someday” list: a rare 1981 book by Italian architect and artist Luigi Serafini … often called the strangest book ever published …
The Codex Seraphinianus goes for $500 to $1000 around the traps. Youtube provides a viewing experience and Justin Taylor talks about trying to track down those involved in...
