Can you go home again?

García Márquez heads home to Macondo
"For the first time in more than two decades, Colombian author Gabriel García Márquez is returning to his hometown which he immortalised as Macondo in One Hundred Years of Solitude."

Quote/Unquote Bookends

Quote/Unquote Bookends designed by eric janssen are for the truly literate with books that speak to them in image alone.


Via Blog on a Toothpick

Fahrenheit 451

Missouri bookstore owner burns books to decry decline of printed word

Eek! I don't know one of these

100 Words Every High School Graduate Should Know

I do not know the meaning of moiety. Perhaps I should go back to high school.
Via Presurfer

Haiku 4 U

"In the cubicle
a frown is easily wiped
off with a soft butt."

Lots more

Amis: boozer. Tynan: cold. Beckett: rubbish

Roger Lewis reviews The Angry Years: the Rise and Fall of the Angry Young Men by Colin Wilson

The way the Angry Young Men became angry old men was not a pleasant sight.

Steal This Poem

Steal This Poem
This poem is copy left.
You're free to distribute it and diffuse it,
re-write it and abuse it,
and use it.
For your own ends,
and with your own ending.

This is an open source poem
entering the public domain.
Here's the source code,
add a little salt and pepper if you like,
share it out amongst your friends.

Because I didn't write this poem,
I moulded it,
picked the lines out of a skip as I was walking on over here
took used up fragments of leftover ideas,
and put them to use.

Dylan's hut

Dylan's hut
"'When I think of that concentrated muttering and mumbling and intoning, the realms of discarded lists of rhyming words, the innumerable repetitions and revisions and how at the end of an intensive five-hour stretch prompt as clockwork, Dylan would come out very pleased with himself saying, he had done a good day's work, and present me proudly with one or two or three perhaps fiercely belaboured lines.' -- Caitlin Thomas on her husband Dylan's antics in his writing shed"

The Forbidden Library

Banned and Challenged Books

Beat history -- for $1,100 a month

You can live in Beat history :
LOWELL -- For rent: 3 bdrm apt, w/d hookup, $1,100 a mo., Centralville. Btw, Jack Kerouac was born here.

Via Syntax of Things

Bookbinding & Royal Bindings

Everything you ever wanted to know about bookbinding. Paul Tronson is a Master Bookbinder who specializes in traditional bookbinding and book restoration in the ancient styles of the great masters, with materials that cannot be bought but are hand made using their exacting techniques and formulae. He has visited the National Historic Site where I work and has recently relocated to Ontario.

Literary Britain - the next chapter

Brought to book: Literary Britain
To celebrate the 25th anniversary of its first shop, Waterstone's has predicted the next generation of superstars. More

Bookshelf wallpaper

Deborah Bowness creates wallpaper that looks like bookshelves for the book deprived. Most of my walls are lined with books and they provide better insulation than wallpaper.
Via Coudal Partners

Best Places to Get Free Books

The Ultimate Guide

Via Metafilter

Russian Bookjackets

Scrap book of Russian bookjackets , 1917-1942

Via Grow a Brain

Top 10 books about wine

'Drinking wine is fun and reading about it should be as well. This selection might not please the purist, but it's as varied as a good cellar, with authors ranging from a 12th-century Persian poet to a Hollywood scriptwriter, and whether it's by a pool with a glass of rosé or curled on the couch with some warming rioja, the books below are the perfect accompaniment to your favourite tipple.'
top 10 books about wine

Mother's Day Yarns

FRESH YARN presents eight personal essays for your maternal pleasure.

The Book Inscriptions Project

About the Project:
We collect personal messages written in ink (or pen or marker or crayon or grape jelly) inside books. Pictures count. So do poems. So do notes on paper found in a book. The more heartfelt the better. Send a copy of the cover and the inscription and any details about how, when and where you found it.

Via Neatorama

Ratking

Ratking is an Aurelio Zen mystery by Michael Dibden. Italian Police Commissioner, Zen, is dispatched from his desk job in Rome to Perugia to solve the kidnapping of wealthy industrialist, Ruggerio Miletti. Zen has a lot of personal issues to sort out: his checkered working history, the disappearance of his father many years ago, the mother who has moved in with him and has maternal expectations that conflict with those of his American girlfriend who is running out of patience. The offspring of the kidnapped Miletti are a nasty bunch, spoiled and dysfunctional. One gets the sense that they do not want the kidnapping to be resolved. His colleagues in Perugia resent him and are uncooperative at best. He has real troubles and his character is sufficiently flawed to create interest

Some of the writing is very good. Descriptions of life in Italy give us a real sense of the place and the people who live there. I love the passage where the cleaning lady compares herself to Jesus handing on the cross:"He hangs up there doing sweet fuck all and they expect us to feel sorry for Him! I just wish we could change places, that's all! Half an hour of my life and He'd wish He were back on His nice cosy cross, believe you me." That really cracked me up.

I discovered that a ratking is not a king rat but an entity created when too many rats live together in a small space, and their tails become intertwined. They create a new, living organism where all must work together for the survival of all. Yuck.

I like to read mysteries from time to time and I'll be sure to read more of the Zen series.

Book-A-Minute Classics

May be a repost.

Book-A-Minute Classics: Jane Eyre:
Jane Eyre
By Charlotte Bronte
Ultra-Condensed by Samuel Stoddard



(People are MEAN to Jane Eyre.)
Edward Rochester
I have a dark secret. Will you stay with me no matter what?
Jane Eyre
Yes.
Edward Rochester
My secret is that I have a lunatic wife.
Jane Eyre
Bye.
(Jane Eyre leaves. Somebody dies. Jane Eyre returns.)



THE END

Via Coudal Partners

"City of Glass" Photos

Quinn's travel Photo Gallery
In this gallery, you will see Quinn's travel of 'City of Glass', book by Paul AUSTER.

Via Coudal Partners

Cut Short

Publisher makes lite work of the classics
To howls of indignation from literary purists, a leading publishing house is slimming down some of the world’s greatest novels.
Tolstoy, Dickens and Thackeray would not have agreed with the view that 40 per cent of Anna Karenina, David Copperfield and Vanity Fair are mere “padding”, but Orion Books believes that modern readers will welcome the shorter versions.

Books Waiting To Be Read

These photos are pathetic! I couldn't take a picture of all mine even with a panoramic camera. Due to my growing-less-benign-by-the-day book buying addiction I have hundreds of books screaming,"Read me! No, read me!". I'm beginning to feel a certain constant but not yet painful pressure to do something about it.

Flickr: The Reading Stack Pool Via Blog on a Toothpick

Vienna's public library raises cash with erotica hotline

VIENNA — This isn't the typical whispering you might expect to hear at a library.
Vienna's City Hall has launched a “sex hotline” to raise money for the capital's main public library, officials said Tuesday.
It's unusual, but it's not particularly raunchy: Callers pay the equivalent of 53 cents (U.S.) a minute to listen to an actress read breathless passages from erotica dating to the Victorian era.
City Hall set up the hotline earlier this month to help the library raise cash for planned remodelling and expansion, Austrian media reported.
Anne Bennent, a famous Austrian stage and film star, reads passages from the Vienna library's collection of 1,200 works of erotic fiction from the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries, the library said.

Fifty Word Fiction

The Language of Women (In response to The Language of Men)
Dawn tearfully pressed the speed dial.
Carrie picked up on the first ring.
Dawn: 'He's such a jerk.'
Carrie: 'I told you so, honey.'
Dawn: 'I just want us to be happy.'
Carrie: 'I'll be right over. Start a pot of coffee.'
Dawn: 'Don't forget the Haagen-Daz. I've got spoons.'

by Mrs. Ris

More

Via Plep

Today in Literary History

Shakespeare & Shrews
On this day in 1594, Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew was entered in the Stationers' Register. Much of the main plot seems to come from a 1550 popular ballad called 'Here Begynneth a Merry Jest of a Shrewde and Curste Wyfe, Lapped in Morrelles Skin, for her Good Behaviour.' By the endeth, this contribution to the shrew-taming canon was merry from only one perspective. . . .

FULL STORY »

Judge a Book by its Cover

"As a public librarian, I've seen a lot of books. Some covers are intriguing, some make me really want to read the book...*these* are the 'other' covers."

Via Metafilter

Swimming In The Volcano

I read this Caribbean sort-of-thriller while I was vacationing in Sicily. Although it goes on far too long I had to keep reading. Bob Shacochis presents a scary snapshot of life on the fictional Caribbean island of St. Catherine. There are some very funny passages at the beginning of the novel that drew me in: the terrifying ride down the mountain in a derelict Comet named Miss Defy had me laughing out loud as did the ensuing scene at the airport. Unfortunately this downhill race is a metaphor for what happens to the novel. It's as if Shacochis can't decide what type of book he's writing. Is it a humourous take on life in the Caribbean? Is it about a doomed romance? Is it a political treatise? It's all of these. Mitchell Wilson, an American agricultural expert works at The Ministry Of Agriculture on the island. He has a ragtag group of friends, native and ex-pat. The girl who broke his heart long ago arrives on the island, fleeing some sort of bad and dangerous situation in Hawaii. Mitchell has ambivalent feelings toward her; he's attracted but angry. The story of their relationship unfolds against the backdrop of a very unstable political situation. The ruling coalition government is fragile and is being undermined by forces within and without. Murder and violence ensue and Mitchell is drawn into the vortex. The tendency to veer off in all directions throws the pacing off but the good writing hooked me and I'd recommend the book.