"Twitterature" Has Book World Atwitter

Two nineteen year old freshmen at the University of Chicago have scored a publishing deal for their book, Twitterature: The World’s Greatest Books, Now Presented in Twenty Tweets or Less, to be released later this year by Penguin.

The students, Emmett Rensin and Alex Aciman, “had an epiphany,” they declare on their website. "What, we asked, are the grandest ventures of our or any generation? And what, to give this a bit more focus, best expresses the souls of 21st century Americans?"

Their answer: that the two most important platforms of expression for their generation were literature and Twitter, and so they sought a way to marry the two.

"More than any other social networking tool, Twitter has refined to its purest form the instant-publishing, short-attention-span, all-digital-all-the-time, self-important age of info-deluge that is the essence of our contemporary world. So what could be better than to combine the two? After all, as great as the classics are, who has time to read those big, long books anymore?"

And so their "humorous retelling of works of great literature in Twitter format aimed at people aged between 18 and 35.”

The intent is to metaphorically throw the works of Dante, Shakespeare, Stendhal, Joyce and JK Rowling into a log-chipper and have twenty 140-character Tweets for each come out the other end. The humor, presumably, will be added somewhere along the process, like carnauba wax in a car wash, then polished to hilarious sheen. Humor’s a tricky thing; without meta-context the laughs get lost and there's no room for any sort of context in a Twitter tweet.

This is not exactly a fresh idea. In early May of 2009, the U.K. Telegraph reported that writer Tim Collins has a new book, The Little Book of Twitter, comprised of plot summaries of the great books and aimed at the Twitteratti, i.e.:

Ulysses:

jamesjoyce: Man walks around Dublin. We follow every minute detail of his day. He’s probably overtweeting.

Great Expectations:

charlesdickens: Orphan given £££ by secret follower. He thinks it’s @misshavisham but it turns out to be @magwitch

The Catcher in the Rye:

jdsalinger: Rich kid thinks everyone is fake except for his little sister. Has breakdown. @markchapman is now following @johnlennon

Pride and Prejudice:

janeaustin: Woman meets man called Darcy who seems horrible. He turns out to be nice really. They get together.

Bridget Jones’s Diary:

helenfielding: RT @janeaustin Woman meets man called Darcy who seems horrible. He turns out to be nice really. They get together.

Okay, this is fun up to a point; I got paid to do this in an earlier incarnation: Ultimately, Collins’ book is an exercise in writing what in TVLand-speak is called the “high-concept,” a high-fallutin' way to describe the log line for the program/movie’s TV Guide entry, nothing more. Writing “high-concepts” sounds a lot more significant than writing TV Guide teasers, along the lines of “sanitation engineer” for garbageman which, come to think of it, was exactly what I was doing.

Twitterature apprs 2B aimng at smthng mre &, hopefully, litteratwerps hu thk plot is bk wll B dsapntd.

If Rensin and Aciman can capture the soul of a book within its theme, plot, character, and milieu in twenty Tweets of 160 characters each or less, and include a wry slant, that would really be an accomplishment; high art, I think, and poetry of the highest rank.

I’m not counting on it.


There is, however, a way to salvage the project so that the preciousness and intrinsic humor of each Twitter-fied book is suitably captured but it'll have to wait for the audio book version: Twitterature. As Read by Internationally Renowned Star of Looney Tunes Cartoons, Tweety-Bird.

"Cawl me Itchmale! I taut I thaw a mighty whitey-whale dwown a cwazy captain and hith cwew!"






Image ™Warner Brothers.

John Updike Collection Up For Grabs

One of the largest collections of John Updike material in private hands has hit the market.

The collection, which was amassed over a 30 year period consists of:

126 Signed works,

267 “A” items representing almost 90% of his primary publication titles,

Extensive “B” items and numerous other appearances, including a 29 year (1980-2009) run of his “New Yorker” work.

Two signed letters from Updike and multiple uncorrected proofs.

Highlights of the collection include:

1. Dance of the Solids, inscribed.
2. Earthworm, first and second state.
3. Lovelorn Astronomer.
4. The Angels.
5. Bath After Sailing.
6. Rabbit, Run, First Edition.
7. A Rabbit Omnibus, twvo volumes signed.
8. Chaste Planet, signed.
9. Couples, first edition review copy
10. Dog’s Death, framed and signed.
11. Carpentered Hen.
12. Flying to Florida, signed by Updike and Roth.
13. Happy Birthday, Kurt Vonnegut.
14. Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu, signed.
15. Hugging the Shore, with TLS by Updike to Doris Grumbach
    (literary editor of “The New Republic”) laid in.
16. Review copy of Parini’s Robert Frost with copious notes by Updike for his New Yorker review, and also includes a poem written by Updike on the inside back cover.
17. The Indian.
18. January, limited signed edition.
19. Poem Begun on Thursday, October 14, 1993, signed broadside.
20. Query, inscribed.
21. Radiator, signed limited issue in wrappers.
22. 75 Aromatic Years of Leavitt & Peirce.
23. Sixteen Sonnets.
24. Warm Wine.
25. Witches of Eastwick, uncorrected proofs (first and second state)
26. English Train Compartment, broadside.

The collection, out of Portland, Oregon, is being offered by Charles Seluzicki Fine & Rare Books. All items are in Very Good or better condition. A complete list of material included in the collection- over 500 books and broadsides plus a generous sampling of periodical appearances- is available upon request.

Asking price: $60,000.

High School Locker Is Banned Books Library

A U.S. student at an unnamed private school has created an illegal lending library in the locker adjacent to hers to serve the interest of fellow students in books banned from the student curriculum by zealous school officials.

Anxious that she may be subverting her future success in life by current criminal activity and seeking guidance from the wise, she posted her dilemma on Yahoo! Answers:

“Is it OK to run an illegal library from my locker at school?

“Let me explain.

“I go to a private school that is rather strict. Recently, the principal and school teacher council released a (very long) list of books we're not allowed to read. I was absolutely appalled, because a large number of the books were classics and others that are my favorites. One of my personal favorites, The Catcher in the Rye, was on the list, so I decided to bring it to school to see if I would really get in trouble. Well... I did but not too much. Then (surprise!) a boy in my English class asked if he could borrow the book, because he heard it was very good AND it was banned! This happened a lot and my locker got to overflowing with the banned books, so I decided to put the unoccupied locker next to me to a good use. I now have 62 books in that locker, about half of what was on the list. I took care only to bring the books with literary quality. Some of these books are:

•The Perks of Being a Wallflower
•His Dark Materials trilogy
•Sabriel
•The Canterbury Tales
•Candide
•The Divine Comedy
•Paradise Lost
•The Godfather
•Mort
•Interview with the Vampire
•The Hunger Games
•The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy
•A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court
•Animal Farm
•The Witches
•Shade's Children
•The Evolution of Man
• the Holy Qu'ran
... and lots more.

“Anyway, I now operate a little mini-library that no one has access to but myself. Practically a real library, because I keep an inventory log and give people due dates and everything.

“I would be in so much trouble if I got caught, but I think it's the right thing to do because before I started, almost no kid at school but myself took an active interest in reading!

“Now not only are all the kids reading the banned books, but go out of their way to read anything they can get their hands on. So I'm doing a good thing, right? Oh, and since you're probably wondering 'Why can't you just go to a local library and check out the books?’ most of the kids are too chicken or their parents won't let them get the books. I think that people should have open minds. Most of the books were banned because they contained information that opposed Catholicism.

“I limit my 'library' to only the sophomores, juniors and seniors just in case so you can't say I'm exposing young people to material they're not mature enough for. But is what I'm doing wrong because parents and teachers don't know about it and might not like it, or is it a good thing because I am starting appreciation of the classics and truly good novels (Not just fad novels like Twilight) in my generation?

“More books I have:
•One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
•The Picture of Dorian Gray
•Slaughterhouse-5
•Lord of the Flies
•Bridge to Terabithia
•Catch-22
•East of Eden
•The Brothers Grimm Unabridged Fairytales.
...the list goes on.

“Twilight is banned also, but I don't want that polluting my library.

“As for getting the press involved, reporters are not allowed on campus. Besides, my parents would be so mad if they found out I was doing this.”

It’s a regular Vatican Library Index Prohibitum she’s running there. It’s nice to see kids engaging in productive, enriching activity rather than the usual teen shenanigans. Where was this young woman - the high school valedictorian, as far as I’m concerned, with excellent taste - when I was in high school?

Meet Ninomiya-kun, the Book-Reading Robot

It is 1 meter tall and weighs in at 25 kilograms, it is the brainchild of Kitakyushu National College of Technology and Shanghai Jiao Tong University.

He "reads by training its camera eyes on printed materials placed on a special book stand. Character recognition software installed on a computer in the robot’s backpack translates the text into spoken words, which are produced by a voice synthesizer"

Here it is reading some fairy tales:




After a little more tweaking "the robot will be ready to read books to children and the elderly for a living"

Now that is one glorified audiobook. Shouldn't it be reading from a Kindle?

More at Pink Tentacle
Story at Daily Yomiuri (in Japanese)

Thanks to American Libraries Direct for the lead

On Spines and Memories

"Scan your bookshelves. Consider the spines. Connect one to a specific memory. It's easy."

This is how, noted designer and creative director of Marquand Books, Ed Marquand kicks off his short essay On Spines and Memories, the first volume in a new series by Marquand Editions.

On how important a spine's design is to the whole of the book Marquand says "The spine becomes the most familiar part of a book after it is slid into a bookcase, but it is often designed in haste"

The series will feature essays from writers, publishers, curators and the like and will focus on the various aspects of books and publishing. Each book is printed letterpress and is hand-bound

On Spines and Memories is printed in an edition of 500 copies printed with less than 200 being offered for sale as most sent as gifts to friends of the author/publisher. Delivery offered two ways: the traditional well-packed method or sent without packaging with publishers mailing sticker on fore-edge and rear board.


Buy the book here

To be notified when future publications in this series become available please click here

Kindle Sighting

The picture above shows a book reader existing peacefully with a Kindle reader while they ride the bus.

With all the hype surrounding the Kindle I have yet to see one in public and this is one of the first images I've seen of one out in the world. And to boot it was taken on mass transit. Is mass acceptance far behind?

Image via Narisa Spaulding (@narisas) of Seattle

Thanks to @emersonsalon for the lead

2010 Havana Book Fair Open To U.S. Librarians

The 19th Annual Havana International Book Fair - Feria Internacional del Libro de La Habana - considered by some to be the most important in Latin America, is scheduled for February 13-20, 2010.

The entire island becomes a festival for books. Beginning in Havana's San Carlos de la Cabaña fortress overlooking Havana Bay, the fortress becomes a fairground with numerous expo pavilions and several halls where authors present their books throughout the day. There are also poetry readings, children’s activities, art exhibitions, museum events, and evening concerts. The Book Fair then extends to other cities throughout all fourteen provinces, ending in the eastern city of Santiago de Cuba. Over one hundred international publishing houses exhibit their books.

Each year, the fair, whose motto is Leer es Crecer ("To Read is to Grow"), highlights a country—last year it was Chile—and features international booths, screenings, and author readings. It reviews all aspects of Cuban libraries, and Cuban literary and cultural production. The fair is an all-encompassing event drawing huge crowds.

Cuba boasts a 93% literacy rate, the highest in Latin America but it was hard won. At the time of the 1959 revolution, the illiteracy rare was 26%. During 1960-61 there was a major push for island-wide literacy and the illiteracy rate dropped from 26% to 7%. The Cuban literacy program, Si, Se Puede ("Yes, We Can"- no relationship to a certain U.S. president) is now used as an international model, and over twenty-seven nations have adopted it to success.

Overlapping for three days with the Book Fair is the Havana International Jazz Festival, February 7-16th. Double-whammy. Add the great food, the dancing, and the people and this is a monster event.

The Havana Book Fair routinely attracts librarians from all over the world, and their feedback on the experience is uniformly positive. University and public librarians in the U.S. can legally attend as professionals and LegalCubaTravel.com provides an easy step-by-step license/visa application kit.

Cuba Educational Tours has an all-inclusive travel program for the Havana Book Fair. Early registration to ensure participation is encouraged.

ABC's of Book Collecting : Americana

AMERICANA

Books, etc., about, connected with or printed in America, often, but not exclusively, the United States of North America; or relating to individual Americans: as distinct (properly, though nowadays not invariably) from books by American writers. The Columbus Letter is a piece of
Americana, as describing the discovery of the continent; the Bay Psalm Book, as the first known book printed in what is now U.S.A.; and Thomas Paine ’s Common Sense, as one of the influential documents of the War of Independence. Poe ’s The Raven, on the other hand, is not Americana, nor is Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms. Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn or Thoreau’s A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers might be considered borderline cases, for if they are primarily outstanding works of American literature, they are also classically descriptive of the countryside and life of the people.

A currently fashionable sub-category should be mentioned: Western Americana. This embraces any piece of manuscript or printed matter documenting or deriving from the great westward expansion of the United States in the 19th century, from Lewis & Clark and the Louisiana and Gadsden Purchases down to Buffalo Bill and Frederic Remington. More local enthusiasms are reflected in other neologisms, such as Texana or Californiana.

Since Canada, Mexico, Central and South America are just as much part of the hemisphere as the United States, and since their ana have keen collectors, the implicit limitation in terms like ‘Latin Americana’ is beginning to break down. This catholic view has been enhanced by the publication, begun under the editorship of the late Mr John Alden, of European Americana, a catalogue of generous comprehension, as applied in the collection of the John Carter Brown Library, Providence, R.I.


Previous ABC's of Book Collecting posts













Carter, John & Nicolas Barker
ABC's of Book Collecting. 8th Edition
New Castle, Delaware : Oak Knoll Press, 2004

Buy a copy

Birth Of The Slow Reading Movement (The Longest Story Ever Told)

A shortage of oddities has compelled Ripley Entertainment, parent of Ripley’s Believe It Or Not, to send great weird hunters across the land in search of strangeness. Seems Ripley’s has been opening so many new museums of curiosities that their collection of bizarreness is being spread thin and needs to be beefed up, according to a recent story in the Wall Street Journal.

They need look no further than Opium magazine, Issue 00, The Infinity Issue, featuring The Longest Story Ever Told: Estimated Reading Time: 1,000 Years.

The story is nine words long.

Before you sign up for a master class at Evelyn Wood Speed Reading school, be forewarned that no matter how hard you try you cannot read this nine word story in less than the appointed 1,000 years.

The writer is San Francisco-based conceptual artist, journalist, and diabolically inspired Jonathan Keats who in the cover to the magazine has embedded the nine word saga.

Wired reports:

“The printing process in question is a simple but, as usual with Keats, pretty clever idea. The cover is printed in a double layer of standard black ink, with an incrementally screened overlay masking the nine words. Exposed over time to ultraviolet light, the words will be appear at different rates, supposedly one per century.”

“The precise quantity of ink covering each word is different, so that the words will appear one at a time,” Keats said. “Provided that your copy of Opium is kept out in the open, and regularly exposed to sunlight over 1,000 years to be read progressively."

One may have to smoke opium to have the patience to read the story to the end - or perceive to have done so.

“The high-quality acid-free paper on which Opium is printed will certainly last that long,” Keats assured the anxious. Then, dashing all peace of mind, he added “Whether humankind will, of course, remains an open question.”

Keats is not your average reader-writer. It has never occurred to me to copyright my mind, try to pass a Law of Identity, or attempt to genetically engineer God. But they have to Keats. So, what’s the point?

“Like most people, I live my life in a rush, consuming media on the run,” Keats admitted. “That may be fine for reading the average blog,” he said, “but something essential is lost when ingesting words is all about speed. My thousand-year story is an antidote. Given the printing process I’ve used, you can’t take in more than one word per century. That’s even slower than reading Proust.”

Yes, reading should never be about speed. Yet this is a cruel man. He doesn’t even provide a plot summary. So, after waiting with baited breath, century by century, we will either be blissfully satisfied at the outcome of this tale or bitterly disappointed to have invested so much time and for what?

I’ll wait for the reviews.

ABC's of Book Collecting : American Book Prices Current

AMERICAN BOOK PRICES CURRENT

Published annually since 1895: first edited by Luther S. Livingston, for many years afterwards by Edward Lazare and now by Katharine Kyes and Daniel J. Leab. Now divided into two sections: (1) printed books, maps, charts and broadsides, (2) autograph letters and manuscripts. Each volume (published in January every year – ABPC is the most punctual, as well as accurate, of such records) contains an entry for every lot in all recorded sales. Nothing is included which sold for less than $50.00.


Since 1958 ABPC, as it is commonly called, has included (without feeling the need, as yet, to change its title) the record of printed books (and, unlike its British competitor, of MSS) sold in the principal London and European auction houses as well as those of the United States and has recently added Australia to its coverage. From January 1994, too, ABPC has been made available in CD-ROM, with over half a million entries going back to 1975. It is now, since the demise of book auction records, the only record of sales, and a very good one at that. See also auctions (3).


Previous ABC's of Book Collecting posts













Carter, John & Nicolas Barker
ABC's of Book Collecting. 8th Edition
New Castle, Delaware : Oak Knoll Press, 2004

Buy a copy

A Word With You, Please. The Millionth Word.

On June 10, 2009 at 10:22AM in Stratford-on-Avon in the U.K. a new English word was born.

“No one said nothin’ ‘bout birthin’ a baby” to me, so at precisely the same time in Los Angeles, 2:22AM, I was asleep with not even a duffel bag at bedside in case I needed to rush to the natal ward, catch this neologism as it exited the womb, and sack out in the neonate department afterward. I like to think of myself as a lexicographical Mother Teresa; all words are my children no matter who sired them, the more humble their beginnings, the better.

I hate it when parents give their newborn a name that will become fodder for schoolyard cruelty so imagine my chagrin when this new word was declared, “Web 2.0.”

Was that the sound of Samuel Johnson choking in his grave?

The birth announcement was sent out by a media consulting company in Texas. (Why the time of birth was noted in Stratford-on-Avon remains a mystery). And immediately lexicographers consulted their slang dictionaries of the vulgar tongue and reached for the most appropriate oath they could come up with. For, you see, declaring a word, any word, as the millionth word in English, is a fool’s game. The New York Times covered the story recently and recorded the vicious execrations of a few experts.

“Bushwa, fraud, hokum,” said Geoffrey Nunberg, a linguist at the School of Information at the University of California at Berkeley.

Grant Barrett, a lexicographer and co-founder of the online dictionary Wordnik.com, said: “It’s a sham. It’s a hoax. It’s fake. It’s not real.”

Whoa, throw some water on these guys, they need to cool down. Anger management may be in order.

The OED lists 600,000 words with 1,000 new words added each year. Merriam-Webster’s claims 1,000,000 plus or minus 250,000. I have trouble coming up with a thousand words for this space, and am now consumed with guilt because with 600,000-1,000,000 words to chose from all I can come up with is what you’re reading now.

But wait. Call the verbal OB/GYN. I’ve had this one gestating within for almost nine months and I’m about to break word-water. I’ve taken lexicon Lamaze classes, and have my breathing under control.

But yikes, it’s crowning! Look out world, here it comes:

“Hemolexiphiliac.” One who bleeds words, a condition whose only cure is a daily transfusion via reading books.

My luck, I'll be hooked up to a copy of Jacqueline Susann's, Every Night, Josephine, the story of a poodle, a pseudonovelist, and puddles of love. Poison in the blood; call the toxicologist. Drain my arteries and refill with embalming fluid. That book is death; a million words, give or take a few, and not a decent one in the lot.

I'm feeling faint, Web 2.woozy.

Tom Bloom's Illustrations for Between the Covers

In was sometime in the late 1980's when Tom Congalton, the proprietor of Between the Covers Rare Books, and cartoonist, book collector Tom Bloom struck a deal. They agreed to swap books for art. Now, some 20 years later, Tom Bloom's illustrations have graced the covers of over 100 catalogs for BTC. His work has also appeared on numerous lists issued by BTC and is a seminal element of their website.

Bloom's work has also regularly appeared in The New Yorker, The Wall Street Journal, and The Village Voice. His cartoon illustrations have also appeared numerous times on the front page of The New York Times.


Bloom's work has become as much a part of the BTC brand as the Modern First Editions they specialize in. The relationship is reminiscent of the one Edward Gorey developed with the Gotham Book Mart.




Dan Gregory has begun to document this relationship with a series of galleries featuring Bloom's work for BTC. In addition to the images for each catalog he provides a brief history of the catalog itself. He also notes that many of the catalogs did not have names until after Bloom's illustrations arrived.



Here's to the next 20 years of this amazing collaboration!


Previously on Book Patrol:
The Return of the Bookseller Catalog

ABC's of Book Collecting : Almanac

ALMANAC

A calendar, usually in pocket-book (more rarely sheet) form, augmented
with Saints’ days, fair-dates and astronomical and meteorological
data; a bestseller from the start and protected by jealously guarded
patents, the different titles, hot rivals in the 17th century, were all
finally swallowed up by Dr Francis Moore’s Vox Stellarum, familiarly
known as ‘Old Moore’s Almanack’.


Previous ABC's of Book Collecting posts















Carter, John & Nicolas Barker
ABC's of Book Collecting. 8th Edition
New Castle, Delaware : Oak Knoll Press, 2004

Buy a copy

A Book Club For Hipsters? Solid, Baby!

Sisters and Brothers and Children of the Flip:

When, in the course of literary events, it becomes necessary for one peeps to dissolve the bonds that are such a drag due to connection with Squaresville, and to assume it’s a gas to watch the laws of nature and nature's Big Sky Daddy-O pull their coat on respect to the jaw music of mankind, man, it requires that they should lay out the beefs which impel them to Splitsville.

It don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that swing.

Listen, knock me your lobes, ‘cause, DIG!, we hold these riffs to be self-evident, that all you cats n’ kitties are created equal but that some are more equal than others - y’know what I’m talkin’ ‘bout! - that they are well-endowed, baby, oh yeah!, by the Hip One on High with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of hipness.

Feeling the need to channel your inner Lord Buckley? Does Danielle Steel homogenize your blood and thin it to sugarwater? Does the sound of one hand clapping tickle your cochlea? Do you run down the Best-Seller list and realize to your utter joy that you have not read a single one nor will you ever read any of them, on principle?

Welcome to The Hipster Book Club, a “website…created as an offshoot of the LiveJournal community of the same name. Formed in October, 2003, the Hipster Book Club LiveJournal community grew from word of mouth alone. It currently boasts over 3,400 members from a variety of nations, including the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, Germany, Spain, Japan, Honduras, and the Netherlands.

"The website began when one community member asked why a good comprehensive website didn’t exist to focus on book reviews and literary topics…so we decided to make one.”

What makes this site so “hipster”?

“Well, obviously, we’re better than you.

"Just kidding. The term 'hipster' is and always will be used in an ironic sense for us. We don’t consider ourselves particularly ‘hip.’ Instead, we strive to be accessible to people of all ages without pandering only to what is popular. We do, however, bear some of the elitism associated with what people consider hipster: We believe that if you don’t read books, you’re totally not cool.”

Amen, sista!

The latest issue of The Hipster Book Club features a must read piece, The Influence of Anxiety: Wading In by Marie Mundaca, who, while a production staffer at Little, Brown worked with David Foster Wallace, designing his book, Oblivion. This is the story of their collaboration and friendship.

Not much point in reiterating what Ms. Mundaca has so well-written. Suffice it to say, if you value your hip cred – or are looking to gain some – check out The Hipster Book Club.

Now, it’s a sad state of affairs when reading becomes so marginalized, so fringe that it becomes an activity only for in-the-know initiates. In other words, hip. I’m quite certain that when R&B group Tower of Power released What Is Hip? (1973) they did not figure reading into the equation.

Pure, vintage hip used to have a timeless connotation. Now, alas, it has deteriorated into an adjective for faddish style.

That is SO unhip.

Reading? Hip eternal. Goatees and berets for the gents, black turtlenecks and capri pants for the ladies, unnecessary. Wear words on your sleeve, all you Jacks n' Jills!

Liz Moody's "Burgeoning Blossoms/Fairy Tales"

Brightest in the Garden #1, 2008

The work of Liz Moody is featured in the inaugural exhibit at the Shooting Gallery.

From the artist's statement:

Liz Moody is inspired by her mother's old vogue dress patterns, the magic and texture in the pages of vintage children's books, and the profusion of blossoms when spring finally arrives in the Northwest. Liz uses acrylic paint, India ink, collage, and pastel to build up layers of texture in each piece. She loves brilliant, saturated color and playful organic shapes that reveal small mysteries of text and paint.

The show, titled "Burgeoning Blossoms/Fairy Tales," showcases Moody's multi-layered work which combines text, collage and paint and connects the power of fairy tales on a child's fertile imagination with the profusion of blossoms that accompany each spring.

Andersen's Fairy Tales, 2008

These "small mysteries of text and paint" are worth seeing.

the Shooting Gallery lives inside newly opened Wallflower Custom Framing in West Seattle. There will be artist's reception this Thursday June 11 from 6-9pm

More images at Moody's website
and at imagekind

BoysRead.org is on a Mission to Transform Boys into Lifelong Readers

Here are the cold facts:

America's boys are the most violent in the industrialized world.

50% of all minority male students drop out of school.
87% of boys play explicitly violent video games.
92% of convicted violent felons are male.

Seattle-based BoysRead.org is an organization of parents, educators, librarians, mentors, author that believes that "male literacy is part of the solution."

In 2004 the NEA study, "Reading at Risk: a Survey of Literary Reading in America," found that reading by young men plummeted from 55 percent to 43 percent; by working to develop a lifelong passion for reading in boys, which includes teaching them about the realities of war, BoysRead.org hopes to reverse this potential catastrophic cultural trend.

Their website offers numerous helpful hints and resources to get and keep the boys reading.

We can't afford not to support them.

The Perfect Shelf for Your Kindle, IPhone or E-Book Reader

The folks at Not Tom design studio have done it; perhaps unintentionally.

The good old book has become the fodder for what might be the perfect charging station for your electronic reading devices.

Here's how the design came about:

The idea for the Book Book Shelf came from the realisation of how many books are discarded on a regular basis. These particular books were to be thrown out at the end of a jumble sale and we wondered what more could be made of them. We like the idea that value can be added to many discarded items through ingenuity and redefinition of context.

"Ingenuity and redefinition of context." Imagine this shelf a little shorter and installed over an outlet.





Thanks to @prathambooks for the lead

ABC's of Book Collecting : All Published

ALL PUBLISHED

This means that, despite appearances or an original intention to the
contrary, the volume or series described was not continued, and is
thus as complete as it ever can be in this form, given its (usually)
unexpected truncation.





Previous ABC's of Book Collecting posts














Carter, John & Nicolas Barker
ABC's of Book Collecting. 8th Edition
New Castle, Delaware : Oak Knoll Press, 2004

Buy a copy

Corporate Censorship Trumps School Library Censorship

“If Wal-Mart won’t carry a book because they think it’s steamy — or just good — that will affect your book more than any school district” Fran Lebowitz speaking at the launch party for the Free Speech Leadership Council sponsored by the National Coalition Against Censorship.

Mokoto Rich, A Fireside Chat About Book Burning, at Paper Cuts

Photos from the inaugural event.

Help Wanted: Professional Reader

To provide cogent, erudite and insightful marginalia to digital books and thus help foster social reading. Must be able to read in a crowd and accept potentially constant input and distraction. Digital sociability a must; digital loners, misfits, hermits, screwballs need not apply.

As Clive Thompson writes in The Future of Reading in the Digital World in this month’s issue of Wired, “We need to stop thinking about the future of publishing and think instead about the future of reading…Books have a centuries-old tradition of annotation and commentary, ranging from the Talmud and scholarly criticism to book clubs and marginalia.”

Bob Stein, director the Institute for the Future of the Book, recently posted Doris Lessing’s The Golden Notebook (1962) online with a sleek commenting system, then hired seven writers to collaboratively read it and provide notes. “Stein believes that if books were set free digitally, it could produce a class of ‘professional readers,’” Thompson writes, “people so insightful that you'd pay to download their footnotes. Sound unlikely? It already exists in the real world: Microsoft researcher Cathy Marshall has found that university students carefully study used textbooks before buying them, because they want to acquire the smartest notes.”

Thompson relates the story of McKenzie Wark, who wrote Gamer Theory (2007), an analysis of why people enjoy playing videogames, that Harvard University Press published in hardcover. Wark, however, published it online using CommentPress, "an open source theme for the WordPress blogging engine that allows readers to comment paragraph by paragraph in the margins of a text. Annotate, gloss, workshop, debate: with CommentPress you can do all of these things on a finer-grained level, turning a document into a conversation." The free blog theme opened the book into a series of reader-book/reader-to-reader interactions, with every paragraph potentially spawning its own discussion forum for the readers.

“Sure enough, hundreds dove in, and pretty soon Gamer Theory had sparked erudite exchanges on everything from Plato's cave to Schopenhauer's ideas on boredom. It felt as much like a rangy, excited Twitter conversation as it did a book. ‘It was all because we opened it up and gave readers a way to interact with each other,’ Wark says. ‘It changed the way they read the book.’"

Digital books could, conceivably, have a URL for every chapter, paragraph, sentence. “Readers could point to their favorite sections in a MySpace update or instant message or respond to an argument by copiously linking to the smartest passages in a recent best seller,” Thompson notes.

The technology is available for digital publishers to link to Facebook or Twitter to facilitate the creation of digital book clubs devoted to a single book with links to every online reference to the book, author, content, and beyond to other books or virtually anything related. The immediately apparent advantage to this over a real-world book club is that you’d only read what you truly want, rather than books chosen by other group members who may not share your tastes.

For all the buzz about it, however, "social reading" seems like an oxymoron. For most of us, reading has always been a private and solitary activity, a way to not only learn, intimately interact with the author and our own thoughts but to deeply focus, become lost in the book and, for awhile at least, escape the boundaries of temporal existence. The act of reading is deeply layered and much more than the simple acquisition of information. While I’d enjoy listening to my friends’ thoughts about a particular book, I don’t want to be interrupted until I’m finished with not just the reading but the thinking and feeling about it.

This all reminds me of Mystery Science Theater 3000 and the classic show’s sometimes rude, often sarcastic, always hilarious voice-over running commentary from the peanut gallery that accompanied the worst sci-fi movies ever made. It was a great formula for watching lousy movies but would have been a horrible one for good films - and pointless; no one likes a chatty-Cathy circus in a movie theater. The darkened theater of a book is, however, apparently another matter: "This Theater Available for Conferences and Meetings."

On its face, "professional reader" sounds like a dream job. Perhaps in this context it would be. But in the late 1970s I worked as a "story analyst" aka "reader" for a major TV and film production company and had to read and analyze every book and screenplay thrown my way. Many if not most of them were only suitable only to be thrown. Hell is being paid to read but only crap.

I do not anticipate curling up in bed at night with a souped-up, maximized content social Kindle any time soon. I don't know about you but I don't want a crowd with me in the sack for any reason much less reading company. Albert, my companion of thirty-four years and most successful LTR, is about all I can tolerate. Albert is a Yellow-Naped Amazon parrot. When he isn't attempting to eat whatever book I'm reading, he quietly sits on my shoulder. And though he has the ability for verbal self-expression, he thankfully keeps his comments to himself.

Budget Crunch Forces the Entire Seattle Public Library System to Close for a Week, Including Website

The entire Seattle Public Library system will shut its doors for a week beginning August 31st.

The move is expected to save the Library $655,000 of the $1 million it needs to save due to budget reductions. An additional $300,000 in cuts will "include management and administration layoffs, extending the staff computer replacement schedule and reducing the training budget."

"The closure will mean salary reductions for about 700 employees who will not be paid, or accrue vacation or retirement benefits during those week."

Amazingly enough, the closure also includes the the SPL website. During the closure there will be "No access to the Web site (www.spl.org). No staff members will be working to maintain and troubleshoot problems. This means online computer sign-ups, the online reference service and other features will not be available."

On the decision City Librarian Susan Hildreth says “While there were no good options, temporarily closing will have the least impact on public service for the long term"

Here's the Press Release:

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THE SEATTLE PUBLIC LIBRARY SYSTEM TO CLOSE

AUG. 31 THROUGH SEPT. 7



The Seattle Public Library system will close Monday, Aug. 31 through Sunday, Sept. 6 due to citywide budget cuts. Please note Monday, Sept. 7 is the Labor Day holiday and all libraries will be closed. Regular Library operations will resume Tuesday, Sept. 8.

All city departments identified reductions to address a $43 million gap in the 2009 city budget. The Library is funded from the city general fund.

The systemwide closure, along with other cuts, will help the Library meet a 2 percent budget reduction – about $1 million. The closure will save approximately $655,000.

The closure will mean salary reductions for about 700 employees who will not be paid, or accrue vacation or retirement benefits during those weeks. An additional $350,000 in cuts – which include management and administration layoffs, extending the staff computer replacement schedule and reducing the training budget, are also being implemented.

No Library services will be available during the one-week closure and will have the following impacts:

· No materials will be due and no fines will be accrued.

* The last day to check out Library items before the closure is Sunday, Aug. 30. Visit www.spl.org, or call 206-386-4636 for more information on which Library locations are open on Sunday and their hours of operation.



* No book drops will be open. Customers should keep books and materials at home until the Library system reopens. No fines will be charged during the closure week. Customers will be responsible for theft, loss or damage to Library materials left outside buildings.



* No access to the online catalog. You will not be able to search the catalog or databases, place holds on materials, or check your Library record.



* No access to the Web site (www.spl.org). No staff members will be working to maintain and troubleshoot problems. This means online computer sign-ups, the online reference service and other features will not be available.



* No Library computers will be available. You will not be able to reserve a computer for the week the Library system is closed.



* No programs or events in Library meeting rooms.



* No Telecirc, the Library’s automated telephone service.



* No Quick Information telephone service.



* No mail will be received during the closure. The Library will have the U.S. Post Office hold all mail until the Library reopens. There will not be staff available to accept deliveries.



· No book club books will be sent, received or returned during the one-week closure. Book club books will be sent to libraries as usual on the last Wednesday of the month, Aug. 26. Books not available then will be sent as soon as possible after Labor Day, Monday, Sept. 7. Contact your library, or the Washington Center for the Book at bookgroups@spl.org or 206-615-1747 if you are part of a book group and have questions.



* No Mobile Services.



* No book donations will be collected at Library facilities during the closure. If you have book donations to make during the one-week closure, please contact the Friends Book Sale office at (206) 523-4053 or e-mail booksale@spl.org.

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* The underground, independently operated parking garage at the Central Library will remain open, as well Neighborhood Services Centers co-located with branch libraries with separate entrances. Service Centers located within branches will continue to provide assistance by appointment only.





Aug. 31 through Sept. 6 was the week was selected for the closure because general Library use at that time is not as high as other times during the year, school is not in session and there are fewer Library programs scheduled.

Other options, such as a rotating schedule of closures so that some Library service was available were examined, but did not produce the magnitude of savings necessary. Closing all branch libraries on Fridays for the second half of 2009 would have produced the same savings as a one-week closure, but service hours would have been reduced by 5,408, in comparison to the 1,437 hours lost by closing all operations for a one week. Also, a Friday closure of all branches would have resulted in an estimated 22 staff layoffs.

“While there were no good options, temporarily closing will have the least impact on public service for the long term,” said City Librarian Susan Hildreth.

The Library’s $50 million operating budget is mainly allocated for personnel who run the libraries and provide direct public service, books and materials, and fixed costs, such as telecommunication and Internet services and utilities.

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Book Sculptors at BAM

Guy Laramée, Pétra (2007). Sandblasted encyclopedias, pigments
13 x 11.25 x 8.5 in. Courtesy Gallerie Orange, Montreal and the artist
Photo: Guy L’Heureux © Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / SODRAC, Montreal.

Wondering what to do with those old encyclopedia's or those obsolete white pages that keep landing in your driveway? Perhaps a trip to the Bellevue Art Museum might help.

"The Book Borrowers: Contemporary Artists Transforming the Book"is the latest installment in the Bellevue Art Museum's (BAM) ongoing Material Evidence series.

The show features work by some of today's leading artists working with books including pieces by Brian Dettmer, James Allen, Noriko Ambe, Long-Bin Chen, Jacqueline Rush Lee and Georgia Russell among others.

"The works in this exhibition reveal new and unexpected layers of meaning that go beyond the book as a source of information and offer a fresh look at its place in an increasingly digitally oriented world. The Book Borrowers is both a nostalgic homage to the book and a reflection on our current progression beyond it."

Alan Corkery Hahn. Dictionary. Courtesy Gallery IMA Seattle

This is the second stellar book-related museum exhibit in the Seattle area within the last 2 years; The Seattle Asian Art Museum hosted the seminal exhibit Shu: Reinventing Books in Contemporary Chinese Art in 2007.

Long-Bin Chen. Guan Ying with Flower Crown (Ming Dynasty), 2007
Manhattan white pages phone books. 22 x 12 x 13 in.
Courtesy of the Artist and Frederieke Taylor Gallery, NYC

Here's a video of Casey Curran's "The Whale" which is also featured in the exhibit.




The future looks bright for book infused art.


Jonathan Shipley's piece on the exhibit, Running With Scissors, at Fine Books & Collections


Previously on Book Patrol:
The Book Gods of Contemporary Chinese Art