Read a Book
Read a book! Great video (but foul language).
Read a book! Great video (but foul language).
NY Times: Why I can't stop starting books &dmash; I have this disease too [via Lisa]
Overclocking your reading speed — ironically, at Leo's blog but not by Leo
For T.S.: Edward Gorey coming to the Big Screen
The Brick Testament — The Bible. In Lego.
Revolving bookcases. Covet. Covet. Covet.
Tammy on whole language vs. phonics. I'm with her 100% on this one.
Book #7: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows [via fahrni]
Bowling Alone — through a strange twist of fate, this was the most recent del.icio.us bookmark when I checked the site. It's also the book we're reading for bookgroup this month.
For Joel: Master of the Dark Arts — Ignored for decades, the twisted genius of Mervyn Peake is finally getting the attention it deserves
Children of Men trailer — I remember discussing this book with Kris, Nory, and Todd many years ago. Now it's being made into a film.
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix teaser trailer [via Rob, of course]
Speculative fiction as literature: Great Science Fiction and Fantasy Works [via Josh]
For geeks like me: there's a new Rbert Fagles translation of the Aeneid (NYT login required) [via Paul J.]
Pride and Prejudice re-enacted with dolls is very funny, if you're a P&P fan.
Most of you know that Cold Mountain is my favorite book. (Well, after Proust, of course.) Charles Frazier's second novel, Thirteen Moons, will be released in a few weeks. The first review calls it one of the great American books. I cannot wait. I cannot wait.
In the company of Zen, a conversation with Robert Pirsig
Making fun of Objectivism is quite fun
A huge list of facts and figures about the book industry — this is fascinating
How Proust avoided the gay-lit gulag — could it be because his books were simply awesome? [via bookslut, which I read often but rarely mention]
Dean King's list of 101 crackerjack sea stories could serve as something of plan of attack for Joel, Andrew, and me...
"The concluding pages of the final Harry Potter book are liable to be stained with muggle tears, it emerged yesterday, as JK Rowling dropped her broadest hint yet that the eponymous boy wizard might be killed off in the seventh book in the series."
John Clute's review of Cloud Atlas
Good Things to Eat as suggested by Rufus — "A collection of practical recipes for preparing meats, game, fowl, fish, puddings, pastries, etc. by Rufus Estes, formerly of the Pullman Private Car Service, and present chef of the subsidiary companies of the United States Steel Corporations of Chicago, published by the author. 1911.
Lenny's Alice in Wonderland site
You guys are awesome. Lynn, remembering that my all-time favorite book is Charles Frazier's Cold Mountain, let me know that his second novel, Thirteen Moons, is due in the fall. (Though I'll admit the plot description makes me nervous that this is just a rehash.)
Fun for English majors everywhere: Geoffery Chaucer hath a blog.
Polish science-fiction giant Stanislaw Lem died this morning. He was 84. Though Lem was not as well known as Asimov or Heinlein or any of the other "Masters", he was just as important to the genre. Lem was not a fan of traditonal science-fiction, and in his work tried to approach futuristic themes from a more humanistic, almost psychological, perspective. (And his books are funny!) His best-known work, Solaris, was twice made into a film, most recently in 2002. [Woefully out-of-date official site.]
AskMe: What is Proust's longest sentence? I ♥ Proust. [via Macdaddy, who spotted this on a Friday afternoon, when I would have missed it]
Barnes & Noble on-line buyback: sell your used books to Barnes & Noble by entereing ISBN, getting a quote, and then waiting for them to send packing information. Think I'll be using this? Damn straight, I will! I'll finally finish my book purge!
Awesome! A MeFi post on Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and the concept of flow. I'm already working on a weblog entry about this subject (which was introduced to me by Lisa).
A do-it-yourself bookbinding wiki. I've been intrigued by the notion of binding some magazines and comics, but reluctant to pay the big bucks to have it done for me. [via lifehacker]
Brad Pitt to star in film adaptation of Mary Doria Russell's The Sparrow? I'm not sure this is a good idea.
Advice on importing audiobooks into iTunes [via lee]
The secret life of a letter to the editor is a fascinating look at the sort-of-controversy behind the recent New Yorker article on P.L. Travers [via kottke]
From this week's New Yorker comes Far from Narnia: Phillip Pullman's secular fantasy for children
For the parents in the audience: The Reading Well features used rare and out-of-print children's books
strongbrains.com is a sort of syllabus for "Objectivist home-schooling and self-education" — basically, these are books that the Ayn Randians approve (which is amusing, of course, but does not change the fact that the recommendations are good ones)
Proust's Way?, a fantastic review of the new translation of Swann's Way. The article features a fascinating comparative review of various translations, and discusses the difficulties in translating an author like Proust. I was transfixed by the entire piece.
Can you believe it? La Temps de Proust is a weblog about Proust (though one could wish it were updated more often) [via frykitty and dennoma]
I just googled for a Proust action figure; I thought it would be a fun ironic thing to own. (Proust and action are kind of opposites). The search result made me sigh.