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Viewing all posts tagged "books"
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”Readers, after all, are making the world with you. You give them the materials, but it’s the readers who build that world in their own minds.
Ursula K. Le Guin (via ilovereadingandwriting, via booklover)
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A History of 16 Science Fiction Classics, Told In Book Covers
io9 shows the varied covers a handful of science fiction classics have borne over the years. (They cheat a little — showing only English editions for some books, while others include foreign editions, which for some reason are much more lurid.) As can be expected, some of the covers are incredibly bad, but mixed in with the pulpy stuff there are some moments of true beauty (and then this,too).
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This cover to The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, designed by David Pearson, is probably one of my favorite covers of all time. (Via The Second Pass)
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Are our novels being haunted by the housing bust?
io9 observes that it seems everyone’s writing horror novels about economic downturn and how we’re all now holding onto houses bound up with tons of pain and economic insecurity. Somehow that all translates into ghosts and demons and all sorts of associated hauntings.
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”There’s something inherent in the culture of reading and publishing that historically, perceptually, and financially makes it difficult for shorter works to succeed. If it’s true (as I think it is) that reading culture as we know it was born in the mid-Victorian triangulation of affordable mass printing, widespread literacy, and a middle class with a lot of leisure time on its hands, then it’s no surprise that the novel became the most dominant and popular literary form. The novels we read today aren’t the “loose, baggy monsters” that the Victorians read, but we did inherit a few of their prejudices: namely, we tend to associate heft with seriousness, while slighter volumes seem exactly that…slight. Printing technology also favors longer forms, as the cost of printing, say, Moby Dick isn’t that much more than that of printing, say, Billy Budd–and proportionally, as a ratio of pages to dollars, printing the longer work costs a whole lot less. Combine this with consumers’ unwillingness to fork out too much money for what looks like a lot less book, and–presto!–the profit margin on novellas can be perilously low.
Replacement Press Blog, talking about novellas
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A clean well-lighted place for books
A set of notes detailing some different approaches for bookstores to take as we embark on our wild and woolly journey into our 21st-century media landscape. A few ideas: creating something more akin to a library and cafe, or perhaps shelving books according to publisher — accompanied by stronger branding by publishers, resulting in each publisher creating more of an identity by the types of books it publishes. (via The Millions)
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Frodo and the Great War
This is fascinating: a summmary of a paper by John Garth that compares scenes and features from The Lord of the RIngs to aspects of the Great War that would have impressed themselves on the mind of a WWI soldier like J.R.R. Tolkien.
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City of Saints and Madmen: The Untold Story by Jeff VanderMeer
When the small press publishing City of Saints and Madmen, Jeff VanderMeer’s first collection of novellas, told him he could have carte blanch designing the interior, he went a little overboard. Here explaining the long series of trials, bouts of self-doubt, and bursts of hubris that were necessary to bring City of Saints to press.
This is a long and sometimes agonizing essay, but it’s definitely worth the read. City of Saints was the first book VanderMeer published in his excellent Ambergris cycle. In a few weeks Finch, the last book in the cycle, will be released. VanderMeer has posted a retrospective in which he brings the entire Ambergris cycle to bed; that’s where I found this essay.
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The Best Fiction of the Millennium (So Far)
The Millions asks 48 writers, editors, and critics to name their favorite works of fiction of the new millennium, so far. I’m a little impressed that I’ve managed to read five of them, without even trying at all:
20: Gilead by Marilynne Robinson
19: American Genius, A Comedy by Lynne Tillman18: Stranger Things Happen by Kelly Link17: The Fortress of Solitude by Jonathan Lethem
16: Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides
15: Varieties of Disturbance by Lydia Davis14: Atonement by Ian McEwan
13: Mortals by Norman Rush
12: Twilight of the Superheroes by Deborah Eisenberg
11: The Brief, Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz10: Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
9: Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage by Alice Munro
8: Out Stealing Horses by Per Petterson
7: Austerlitz by W.G. Sebald6: The Road by Cormac McCarthy
5: Pastoralia by George Saunders
4: 2666 by Roberto Bolaño
3: Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell
2: The Known World by Edward P. Jones
1: The Corrections by Jonathan FranzenThe full list has descriptions of each, along with excerpts, links to audio books, and other materials where appropriate. I should note that Stranger Things Happen, number 18 on the list, is available as a free, CC-licensed download.
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”If a better book than The Moviegoer has been written, I’ll cut off my little toe.
Ada Liana Bidiuc, as quoted in Oxford American’s Best Southern Novels of All Time.
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Libraria da Vila bookstore, Sao Paolo
Libraria da Vila bookstore, Sao Paolo
Libreria Acqua Alta, Venice
Libreria Acqua Alta, Venice
Two different ways to design a bookstore
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Novice Authors Must Promote Themselves, Since Publishers Won't
Fascinating look into how writers are using new media to promote and market their books — because their publishers aren’t helping . Includes a couple of success stories. (via austinkleon)
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More book titles, if they were written today
You know, as a new title for the Bible, “A Million Little Signs and Wonders” doesn’t sounds half bad.
Likes
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this is how I want to camp.
sweethomestyle:Camping (via redmann)
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“These Machines Kill Fascists” designed by You and Me, The Royal We
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ADA ad designed by Jeseok Yi
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where do I get trunks like that??
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Just saw a foursquare check-in to a church. I’m not sure God appreciates other people trying to...
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