Even when inspired by deep department store discounts, I’ve never been good at simple calculations. After a particularly satisfying vacation, I’ve been known to forget how to turn on my computer. Never in my life have I been tempted to take apart a household appliance or look under the hood of the family sedan. In other words, I’m about as far from a geek as a person can be. - Alida becker, NYT
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In order to have the walls of my diminutive apartment scraped and repainted, I recently had to heap all of my possessions in the center of the room. The biggest obstacle was my library. Despite what I like to think of as a rigorous “one book in, one book out” policy, it had begun to metastasize quietly in corners, with volumes squeezed on top of the taller cabinets and in the horizontal crannies left above the spines of books that had been properly shelved. It was time to cull.
- Laura Miller, NYT
I began guerrilla gardening four years ago. These strikes were solo nocturnal missions. My aim was to make myself a garden from the miserable and neglected flowerbeds abandoned by Southwark Council's horticultural contractors. In parallel, little did I know, but thousands of others were doing the same, taking land that was not theirs and cultivating it, for flowers and food, alone and in groups, in cities and in country lanes. Read More...Buy the book here.
Bad Day at the Office Inspires Edgy Breath Mint Concept
It was 2002, a good year. But an attorney was having a bad day at the office and needed a breath mint, though her peers said an attitude adjustment might be more in order. And though she got neither a mint nor her mind altered that day, the Embittermints concept was born. Even though the lawyer couldn’t say “bite me” or “you suck” or “buzz off” or “yo mama” or “wench” or “idiot” to the people who were ruining her day, she soon figured out a way for anyone to say those things, and still keep their job.
- Lindesay Irvine for the Guardian.co.uk
"A shilling life will give you all the facts," as Auden sadly observed, and a memoir by James Frey will add a bit more. But how much would a life compressed into six words be worth? That's the challenge in our six words competition, and the entries have been rolling in.
We've started adding some of our favourites to a postcard gallery. I particularly enjoyed the understated romance of Nick Bailey's "Grumpy bastard. Until wife came along", and Rishi Dastidar's "To date; one love, no deaths."
I've been thinking that the perfect entry was already - almost - written by Samuel Beckett ("Tried again. Failed again. Failed better.") Which inspired my first thought: "Entered various competitions. Did not win." I'm sure you can do much better - please feel free to post them here too.
The School of Life: "We need good ideas today more than ever, to give us the courage and humour to get through these uncertain times. So today we’ve launched The Daily Aphorism, a new website that distributes a short and pithy piece of wisdom every morning. Sign up now to receive a beautifully typeset aphorism in your inbox every day for a month."
But what exactly is an aphorism? An ‘itch of wisdom’, 'the world in a phrase’, or for the more prosaically minded, ‘an original thought, spoken or written in a laconic and easily memorable form’. Anyone can write one, though it takes some skill to do it well. Famous aphorists have included Blaise Pascal, William Blake, Oscar Wilde, Mark Twain, Albert Einstein, Marcel Proust, Franz Kafka, Winston Churchill, Jenny Holzer and Woody Allen, many of whom are featured on The Daily Aphorism website.
"Once upon a time, it was easy to find books that you could enjoy and felt were relevant. Now a new book is published every 30 seconds, and you would need 163 lifetimes to get through all the books offered on Amazon. That’s why The School of Life has set up a bibliotherapy service: the perfect way for you to discover those amazing but too often elusive books that can transform and illuminate your life."
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Every passage that features the most taken-for-granted player in the Bible’s vast cast — the planet Earth — is printed in grass-green ink. The effect can be powerful, chastening and even exhilarating, as when you come upon these lines in the book of Isaiah, glinting green: “The mountains and the hills before you shall burst into song, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands.”
In a foreword, Archbishop Desmond Tutu reveals the unsubtle message of this edition: “We, who should have been responsible stewards preserving our vulnerable, fragile planet home, have been wantonly wasteful through our reckless consumerism, devouring irreplaceable natural resources.” Repent while ye may … and along the way, recycle. - Liesl Schillinger, New York Times: extract from the Paper Cuts blog
The new film of Evelyn Waugh's classic leaves Alyson Rudd longing for the subtleties of the original novel
IF YOU READ Evelyn Waugh's 1959 preface to Brideshead Revisited, you might be tempted not to bother with the novel at all. Waugh warns us of glaring defects and ornamental language and more or less apologises for the whole project, offering the circumstances he wrote in - the Second World War - as explanation or, perhaps, excuse. But despite his misgivings, the novel has become famous. It is on that list of books that must be read and probably on that list of books that were more enjoyable than anticipated - and more complex. - Alyson Rudd, Times Online
"While the publishing industry has struggled to come up with a "Happily Ever After" storyline in recent years, there's still plenty of money to be made in the business of books."- Lacey Rose and Lauren Streib, Forbes.com
- John Spain, Books Editor of the Independent"The best-selling children's author Eoin Colfer is heading into a whole new galaxy.The Wexford writer has been chosen to write a new book in the hugely popular 'Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy' series.
Eight years after the tragically early death of its creator, Douglas Adams, Colfer has been asked by Adams's widow to continue the series of Hitchhiker books that are international bestsellers and have a cult following of millions of readers around the world."
"The six finalists for the Man Booker Prize, considered by many to be the most prestigious award for literary fiction in the English-speaking world, were announced on Tuesday in London with the traditional fanfare. But this year, as sometimes happens, the shortlist attracted more attention for who was not on it."
"Danny Fingeroth is an American comic book writer and editor. He was group editor of Marvel comics' Spider-Man books, and is the author of many comics for Marvel. An expert on superheroes, he is the author of Superman on the Couch, among other works. His latest book is The Rough Guide to Graphic Novels, a comic book companion which looks at the medium's history, details 60 must-read graphic novels, profiles the movement's legends, and covers everything else you need to know about: film and television adaptations, manga, documentaries, conventions, books, magazines and websites, as well as how to make a graphic novel."
- Guardian.co.uk
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The five stories are:
The Wizard and the Hopping Pot
The Fountain of Fair Fortune
The Warlock’s Hairy Heart
Babbitty Rabbitty and her Cackling Stump
The Tale of the Three Brothers
"Turin and Sanchez are smart, funny, deeply literate and crazy/sexy tour guides, and they persuade you that “perfume is, among other things, the most portable form of intelligence.”http://papercuts.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/08/19/how-to-smell-like-a-used-bookstore/
"Diet of the drunken English is so bland. Food is better in Soweto, Jamie Oliver tells French.Jamie Oliver has portrayed the English as a nation of beer-guzzling cultural illiterates who live on a diet of dreary food munched in front of wide-screen televisions."
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Read more..."He is known to the world as the author of bestselling children’s books such as Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and James and the Giant Peach. Yet before he became a successful writer, Roald Dahl had a very different reputation – as the sexiest British spy in America.
A ribald portrait of Dahl’s second world war years as an undercover agent attached to the British embassy in Washington emerges from the pages of a new biography that credits the writer with a very special talent for the Anglo-American special relationship."
- Tony Allen-Mills, Guardian.co.uk
"One judge threatened to throw himself off a balcony, another provoked a punch-up, a third was chatted up in the taxi home by Saul Bellow ... To mark the 40th anniversary of the Booker prize and the impending announcement of the 2008 shortlist, we asked a judge from every year to tell us the inside story of how the winner was chosen."- Guardian.co.uk
"In this digital age of computer-generated graphics and typography, it's refreshing to find typographers who still believe in working by hand. No longer relegated to designer's sketchbooks, hand-drawn type has emerged from the underground as a dynamic vehicle for visual communication—from magazine, book, and album covers to movie credits and NFL advertisements. As the practice and appreciation of hand-drawn type grows, it's time to celebrate the work of those typographers whose every letterform is a work of art.- Magmabooks.com
Hand Job collects groundbreaking work from fifty of today's most talented typographers who draw by hand. Graphic designer and hand typographer Michael Perry selects work representing the full spectrum of design methods and styles. Each hand-drawn work is entirely shaped by the artist's unique process—every one a carefully executed composition enhanced by unplanned "accidents" of line, color, and craft. Hand Job also includes photographs of found type, artists studios, and the tools that help make typography come to life. Whether you are looking to invigorate your design work or are just in need of a little offbeat inspiration, Hand Job will have you reaching for your favorite pen."
Chris Ware
Franklin Christenson Ware is an American comic-book artist and cartoonist, best known for his graphic novel Jimmy Corrigan, The Smartest Kid On Earth. He has drawn for many publications, including the New York Times and the New Yorker.
· Powerless
William Boyd
Born in Ghana in 1952, Boyd won the Whitbread and Somerset Maugham awards in 1981 with his debut novel, A Good Man In Africa. Other celebrated works include Any Human Heart. His ninth novel, Restless, a wartime thriller, was published in 2006.
· The Things I Stole
Alice Sebold
Published in 1999, her first book, Lucky, was a memoir of her rape as a freshman at Syracuse University. Her debut novel, The Lovely Bones, followed in 2002. It became an instant bestseller and is being made into a film by Peter Jackson. Her second novel, The Almost Moon, was published last year.
· For The Life Of Her
Julian Barnes
Barnes is the author of two books of stories, two collections of essays and 10 novels, including Arthur & George. In 1981, he received the Somerset Maugham award for his first novel, Metroland. His most recent work is Nothing To Be Frightened Of, an exploration of mortality.
· 60/40
Tessa Hadley
Hadley teaches literature and creative writing at Bath Spa University. Since her acclaimed 2002 debut novel, Accidents In The Home, she has published two further novels and a collection of short stories, Sunstroke.
· Because The Night
"How did a practice as vile as branding become so valued, indeed, the very mark of value? Officials in the past have branded slaves and criminals — remember Milady’s fleur-de-lis in “The Three Musketeers”? Samuel Maverick didn’t brand his cattle, but dictionaries are vague about whether he was the first maverick or his cows were. Today, cities and colleges have joined toothpastes and soft drinks in the battle for “brand loyalty.”- Christopher Benfey, The New York Times
Steven Heller’s “Iron Fists” makes a sophisticated and visually arresting comparison between modern corporate-branding strategies — slogans, mascots, jingles and the rest — and those adopted by “four of the most destructive 20th-century totalitarian regimes”: Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, the Soviet Union under Lenin and Stalin, and Mao’s China. As he pursues his four “case studies,” Heller, by means of unsettling images and shrewd analysis, amply restores the vileness to branding."
- Yuppiepunk.org
"Johannes Guttenberg invented the printing press in Germany in 1439. Samuel O’Reilly invented the modern tattoo machine in 1891. And sometime around the turn of the century the first literary tattoo was born. Whether nostalgic for the characters from a favorite children’s book or as a tribute to a favorite writer’s words, the book tattoo is a classy way to go. The lowbrow nature of the tattoo juxtaposes nicely against the highbrow art of the book. Here now, a look at some of its many forms."
"Whether it's on a far-flung beach or in your back garden, settle back in your deckchair with a selection from our guide to this summer's most rewarding reading."
"The human leg has evolved continually over many eons, adapting from an underwater propeller to its current form. But on book covers and on film and theater posters, the leg has evolved very little. In fact, the “A-Frame,” a cutoff-torso-spread-leg framing device, is the most frequently copied trope ever used. From steamy paperbacks designed in the ’40s (Pamela’s Sweet Agony), hardly a year has gone by without at least one ham-fisted advertisement using this perspective. The earliest known uses were 19th-century engravings that showed spread-legged, Simon Legree–type slave masters lording over cowering victims. In Westerns, the quintessential showdown frames one duelist through the legs of the other, and mid-20th-century pulp magazine covers were known for their noir images of recoiling women seen through the legs of menacing men. Eventually, designers used the conceit to frame all manner of things, from retro musicals (Cry-Baby) to the James Bond flick For Your Eyes Only (plus the Austin Powers spoof Goldmember) and gritty, contemporary Westerns (3:10 to Yuma)."- STEVEN HELLER
