Category: book

Categories
book humor news

Slayers Scuffle Saucily Betwixt Soft Sheets

I’m in an alliterative mood today. Besides, sibilants are sexy.

panel from buffy the vampire slayer season 8

ABC News, among others, is a-huffle
over another Joss Whedon kerfuffle.
“Why can’t he”, they say,
“keep his girls ungay,
or at least make the sex more a-muffled?”

Double-meaning FTW.

buffyseason8cover

The story is interesting itself, of course, especially if you’re a Buffy fan. Perhaps even more interesting are the current 113-odd comments of people calling for censorship and of people responding to the people asking for censorship, telling them that they’re uninformed idiots. Personally, I don’t know what the big issue is. (That was a comic book joke, right there.) BtVS had plenty of steamy moments in the show. In one episode, Buffy almost gets sexed-to-death as she and Riley get it on at a haunted party. Less graphic, but equally blatant in its own right, is when Tara goes down on Willow in the musical episode singing, “Lost in ecstasy / Spread beneath my Willow tree.” The camera pans up, of course, just as Willow begins to levitate over the bed. No, that’s not obvious at all.

So what if Buffy gets a little saucy between the pages. Graphically, it’s nothing worse than what we see on the standard Image comic cover. Even DC and Marvel covers can get pretty racy these days. Ideologically? Well, considering chicks are making out on street corners these days (albeit in Canada) as a form of protest, I’d say that it’s only a matter of time before the taboo gets … well, less taboo.

In the meantime, good for Buffy, and as she so eloquently puts it, “Wow.”

Categories
book

Puzzle Master

I don’t expect anyone to get it offhand, so I’ll explain that the title is in reference to the fact that young men are titled Master instead of Mister. Think of Batman, where Alfred always said “Master Bruce.” Of course, it’s also an allusion to Will Shortz, who edits the NY Times Crossword and is commonly known as “The Puzzlemaster.”

I was blog-bouncing, and ended up on Amazon.com looking at crossword books for kids. I could explain how this actually happened in just three simple steps, but I’ll leave it to your imagination. Mystery, my dear readers, is the key to being mysterious.

Abby and I have been talking about the existence of this kind of book, speculating really, and who knew it would be so easy to track some down.

The (seven-letter word for “most enjoyable”) part about them is that they’re written by Trip Payne, who was just one of the many memorable crossword (five-letter word for “obsessive enthusiasts”) featured in the movie WordPlay. If you haven’t seen it, and you enjoyed films such as Spellbound, I highly recommend checking it out. Trip’s webpage is cool in and of itself because he has lots of his own puzzles, of various types, available for free download.

The books are cool because if you have a cool kid like we have a cool kid, then they’ll totally (five-letter word for “appreciate”) them, and personally I think any parent should be content knowing that their kid is rocking out on crosswords. Check ’em out.

Amazing Crosswords || Fantastically Fun Crosswords || Trivial Pursuit Kids Crosswords

Categories
book humor

If I wrote an alphabet book

Ornery Ahniwa arbitrates all of the arguments all his associates have;
an arduous task, he cries out, “Helas!”, and ardently argues augmenting alliances.

Inspired by Steve Martin’s new alphabet book, which was highlighted on NPR this morning.

Categories
book libraries webcomics

Bookhunter

“The year is 1973. A priceless book has been stolen from the Oakland Public Library. A crack team of Bookhunters (aka. library police) have less than three days to recover the stolen item. It’s a race against the clock as our heroes use every tool in their arsenal of library equipment to find the book and the mastermind who stole it.”

The best part? You can read it for free, right here.

via Librarian.net

Categories
book news

“No more Potter” or “No! More Potter!”?

J.K. Rowling talks to Meredith Vieira of MSNBC about the original epilogue for book 7 (it was a lot more detailed), and her future plans to write a Harry Potter encyclopedia. There ARE spoilers, in case you haven’t finished book 7 yet.

Categories
book libraries

Library smut

pic from an ad from the library bar in nyc
A couple of weeks ago, I decided that I’d start a collection of library smut. I’m simply fascinated by this whole “librarian as sex symbol” thing, and I think it would just be such a cool little collection to show off to people. I mean really, in our civilized society, how often do you get to show your friends your smut collection when they come to visit.

We aren’t in middle school anymore, after all.

Anyway, my point is, quite simply: please buy me some library smut.

The downside of this collection is that it’s difficult to track down. The upside is that it’s fairly inexpensive. I figure if people can just keep their eyes peeled, books like “Bang the Librarian Hard” are out there, practically falling off the shelves, just waiting to be found, fondled, and ultimately adored.

There is an excellent beginning list over at riverofdata.com called, simply, Librarians in Pornography. Alternately, you can do a “librarian” search over at PulpNovelProject.com (which is a fun site to check out all on its own, if still somewhat undeveloped). These are pulp novels, the very tamest of smut, so you needn’t feel any moral indignation over it or anything (unless you must, and then I suppose you must).

Come now, don’t act like an eager young librarian doesn’t get your pages turning.

Related links: Hot Library Smut (with pictures!)
“Libraries” by Candida Höfer
Jessamyn’s gallery of saucy bookplates (potentially NSFW)

Categories
book libraries

LCSHotD

Library of Congress Subject Heading of the Day:

Dandies — Great Britain — Correspondence

Dandies in literature is also pretty great, and offers such great titles as Dandies and desert saints : styles of Victorian masculinity and Performing the dandy : Manuel Machado and the anxiety of masculinity.

Fun stuff.

Categories
book libraries tech

Amazon RSS and Three Books

Amazon.com now offers RSS feeds, based on tags that you choose. You can then aggregate these feeds to your site, and even keep them as affiliate links, if you’re into that kind of thing.

See: RSS web feeds for tagged products (syndication)

Three books I need to own:

Creating Database-Backed Library Web Pages: Using Open Source Tools — Stephen R. Westman

Because these are exactly the sorts of sites I want to, and will likely be able to, make.

The Wisdom of Crowds — James Surowiecki

Because this book is mentioned so often it has nearly become annoying, but I suppose I should read it anyway.

Ambient Findability: What We Find Changes Who We Become — Peter Morville

Because in the world of federated searching, findability is a more interesting topic than ever.

Categories
book libraries

File under: Books to Buy

In my experience, LIS students are always concerned that the field is shrinking. So it’s nice to have a book like this talk about the options available, and offer some anecdotal experience too.

From liscareer.com

Many people, not just those new to the field of Library and Information Science, are curious about their career options. The editors of LIScareer.com have assembled 95 authors, each of whom describes a “typical” workday or work routine, sharing joys, sorrows, and annoyances in refreshingly candid fashion.

Categories
book humor

Books! Tasty, tasty books …

threadlessbooks

Threadless just released this shirt today, available as a tee for guys, girls, and kids! The kids get it on light blue, which is my favorite of the three colors offered. Combine it with your “Reading is for awesome people” t-shirt, and you’ll truly be a force to be reckoned with (even if you will be sending mixed messages, I mean, do you read the books, or eat them!?).

Categories
book libraries news school

Is “teen reading” an oxymoron?

According to this librarian’s story, it may be becoming one:

I recently spoke with a junior who was stressed about her decreasing ability to focus on anything for longer than two minutes or so. I tried to inspire her by talking about the importance of reading as a way to train the brain. I told her that a good reader develops the same powers of concentration that an athlete or a Buddhist would employ in sport or meditation. “A lot out there is conspiring to distract you,” I said.

She rolled her eyes. “That’s your opinion about books. It doesn’t make it true.” To her, the idea that reading might benefit the mind was, well, lame.

On the one hand, I appreciate librarians using things like DDR to connect with teens, but I’m anxious that with more “engaging” (i.e. distracting) pursuits, reading will continue to be set aside, to our (as a society) long-term detriment.

Categories
book personal webcomics

Indicitive.

It's indicitive of our relationship, I think, that I make sure to read Penny Arcade before I meet Theo for lunch.  Plus, I'm still waiting for them to announce their special edition release of Bacon Robots.  Waiting anxiously.

Categories
book poetic

Beautiful Evidence

Edward Tufte's latest book, Beautiful Evidence, has gotten some mixed reviews, but whether good or bad they've certainly piqued my curiosity.

From 37signals:

“What struck me is how you almost never have to hold something in your head while turning the page…he usually finishes his thought within the two pages you can see…and when you flip, it’s something new…that’s an excellent self-imposed constraint…’whatever i need to say, i’ll do it here.’”

and from an Amazon.com reviewer:

This book is, of course, going to be widely read and highly praised. But I don't think it will it be read enough. It is frustrating to read something like this advocating ethical scholarship and standards for evidence when there are new books that flat out lie about science. And when you can lie about science — that part of human endeavor that Galileo transformed with his forever idea that it was all about evidence — you can lie about anything.

To do your bit to kill truthiness, you could do much worse than following the principles in Beautiful Evidence.

 (via kottke)

Categories
book poetic

Poem of the day

Because some days, you need a poem.

Down by the Salley Gardens – WB Yeats

Down by the salley gardens my love and I did meet;
She passed the salley gardens with little snow-white feet.
She bid me take love easy, as the leaves grow on the tree;
But I, being young and foolish, with her would not agree.

In a field by the river my love and I did stand,
And on my leaning shoulder she laid her snow-white hand.
She bid me take life easy, as the grass grows on the weirs;
But I was young and foolish, and now am full of tears.

Categories
art book cinema

Tintin and I

TintinFrom 1929 to 1982, Tintin entertained us with his adventures as he traveled across the world, traversing danger and mystery with aplomb.  Tonight, PBS' P.O.V. premiers a documentary of Tintin and its creator, Hergé.  It's not playing here until the 20th, sadly, but maybe I can catch the Oregon broadcast somehow.  Click here to check your local showtimes.

Both character and creator were unambiguous. Tintin was literally and emblematically a Boy Scout who always lived up to the Boy Scout code, no matter how dire, dark, strange or adult the situation. Tintin was the ideal with which Hergé totally identified. But, as revealed in Anders Østergaard's "Tintin and I," it was the treacherous and uncertain world around Tintin into which Hergé poured the reality of his own life. Based on 14 hours of audio interviews recorded in 1971 — heard here for the first time — "Tintin and I" shows that Hergé, while trying in life to live up to the idealized Tintin, ended up creating in art a powerful graphic record of the 20th century's tortured history.

(via comixpedia)

Categories
book news

His Imperial Majesty Emperor Norton I

I should have known that Gaiman's Emperor of the United States from the Sandman series would be based on a real character.  I guess I'd just never thought about it that closely.  Definately someone to add to my list of people, living or dead, it would be awesome to meet.  I wonder if anyone still has some empire money lying around.

(via an r. stevens lj comment)

Categories
book

For love of (book) covers

In her article, Allow us to judge a book by its cover, Rachel Cooke quotes Anne Fadiman:

In her collection of essays, Ex Libris, the bibliophile Anne Fadiman writes that just as there is more than one way to love a person, there is more than one way to love a book. Those who revere first editions and pretty covers, who worry about sun damage to spines and despise pencil notes in margins, are courtly lovers. Those who split open books as if they were ripe fruit, who dog-ear pages and use paperbacks as table mats, are carnal lovers.

It was just such a tasty passage, I had to share.  (via pixelcharmer) 

Categories
art book internet

BibliOdyssey

Mentioned by Blogger’s Blogs of Note, BibliOdyssey claims dominion over matters of Books, Illustrations, Science, History, Visual Materia Obscura, and Eclectic Bookart. For the most part, it seems to cover illustration in various literary works, and caught my eye for its post on Hans Christian Andersen illustrations by Edmund Dulac.

Categories
book news

Doug Squared

Author Douglas Coupland talks with Wired about his new book, and how he became, much to his surprise, a character in the book and developed an internet persona with its own life and interesting hobbies. So what do you do if the internet version of you has more interesting hobbies than you do? Pick them up, of course!

There’s a rumor going around the Internet that Douglas Coupland collects meteorites. Nobody knows how it began, least of all Coupland. But the story started to circulate shortly after his first novel, Generation X, became an On the Road for the ’90s. Every effort he’s made to set the record straight has been ignored by his many fan sites. So he recently decided to purchase a few choice specimens.

…

“We should all be so lucky to have people throw such good ideas our way,” he says.

Categories
book cinema personal

Book–>Movie Meme

Saw this at kottke.org, and wanted to do it.  The list is of the 50 best book to film adaptions. [B] means you’ve read the book and [M] means you’ve seen the movie.

1. [B] 1984
2. [BM] Alice in Wonderland
3. [M] American Psycho
4. [M] Breakfast at Tiffany’s
5. Brighton Rock
6. [B]Catch 22
7. [M] Charlie & the Chocolate Factory
8. [M] A Clockwork Orange
9.  Close Range (inc Brokeback Mountain)
10. The Day of the Triffids
11. Devil in a Blue Dress
12. [M] Different Seasons (inc The Shawshank Redemption)
13. [M] Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (aka Bladerunner)
14. Doctor Zhivago
15. Empire of the Sun
16. [M] The English Patient
17. [M] Fight Club
18. The French Lieutenant’s Woman
19. [M] Get Shorty
20. [M] The Godfather
21. [M] Goldfinger
22. [M] Goodfellas
23. [M] Heart of Darkness (aka Apocalypse Now)
24. The Hound of the Baskervilles
25. [M] Jaws
26. [M] The Jungle Book
27. A Kestrel for a Knave (aka Kes)
28. [M] LA Confidential
29. [M] Les Liaisons Dangereuses
30. [M] Lolita
31. [M] Lord of the Flies
32. [M] The Maltese Falcon
33. [M] Oliver Twist
34. [B] One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
35. Orlando
36. [M] The Outsiders
37. Pride and Prejudice
38. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
39. The Railway Children
40. Rebecca
41. The Remains of the Day
42. [M] Schindler’s Ark (aka Schindler’s List)
43. [BM] Sin City
44. The Spy Who Came in From the Cold
45. [M] The Talented Mr Ripley
46. Tess of the D’Urbervilles
47. Through a Glass Darkly
48. [BM] To Kill a Mockingbird
49. [M] Trainspotting
50. [M] The Vanishing
51. [BM] Watership Down

That was fun.  I feel like I need to read more books now, though.