Robert Crumb set to publish satire the Book of Genesis | Books | guardian.co.uk

The famously subversive US cartoonist Robert Crumb has announced the completion of his long-awaited take on the Book of Genesis .

Library Mystery Tour

Shown to incoming students as part of their library orientation activity.

10 Literary one-hit wonders

Sometimes one is enough.

Jason Courtney

Jason Coutney's illustrations based on Margaret Atwood's apocalyptic novel, Oryx and Crake, are as creepy as they have to be.
Via

What Work Is

What Work Is
Philip Levine

We stand in the rain in a long line
waiting at Ford Highland Park. For work.
You know what work is--if you're
old enough to read this you know what
work is, although you may not do it.
Forget you. This is about waiting,
shifting from one foot to another.
Feeling the light rain falling like mist
into your hair, blurring your vision
until you think you see your own brother
ahead of you, maybe ten places.
You rub your glasses with your fingers,
and of course it's someone else's brother,
narrower across the shoulders than
yours but with the same sad slouch, the grin
that does not hide the stubbornness,
the sad refusal to give in to
rain, to the hours wasted waiting,
to the knowledge that somewhere ahead
a man is waiting who will say, "No,
we're not hiring today," for any
reason he wants. You love your brother,
now suddenly you can hardly stand
the love flooding you for your brother,
who's not beside you or behind or
ahead because he's home trying to
sleep off a miserable night shift
at Cadillac so he can get up
before noon to study his German.
Works eight hours a night so he can sing
Wagner, the opera you hate most,
the worst music ever invented.
How long has it been since you told him
you loved him, held his wide shoulders,
opened your eyes wide and said those words,
and maybe kissed his cheek? You've never
done something so simple, so obvious,
not because you're too young or too dumb,
not because you're jealous or even mean
or incapable of crying in
the presence of another man, no,
just because you don't know what work is.

Listen to him read it here.
Via Nag on the Lake

A Spot of Bother

A Spot of Bother is a lighthearted look at family dysfunction, adultery, heartbreak and mental illness. It is Mark Haddon's second novel, following The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time.
While trying on a suit to wear to the funeral of a friend George discovers a rash on his hip. He is convinced it is cancer and becomes completely discombobulated. He discovers that his wife is having an affair with one of his ex-colleagues. Their son, Jamie, is gay and this embarrasses George and Jean. Their outspoken daughter, Katie, is about to marry for the second time. Ray, her fiance is, in George's and Jean's view, totally unsuitable but he is good to Jacob, Katie's young son from her first marriage. What ensues can best be described as chaos theory set loose in British suburbia.
Haddon's empathy and insight adds emotional depth to a novel that, in other hands, might have been merely an amusing comedy of manners. Do read it.

Oddest Book Title prize goes to treatise on fromage frais

There was stiff competition!


Author of more than 200,000 books wins Diagram prize for the Oddest Book Title of the Year for The 2009-2014 World Outlook for 60-Milligram Containers of Fromage Frais.

10 fictional coffee scenes

From Cheever to Murakami, debut novelist and coffee lover Benjamin Obler brews up the most aromatic mentions of coffee in literature. (I don't know any of them).

A Hypertextual & Illustrated Companion to Malcolm Lowry's Under the Volcano.

I love this.Via

Stacked Book Font

Stacked Book Font | Reading Copy Book Blog
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Claire's Head

Claire's Head, Catherine Bush's third novel, is about three sisters. Two (Rachel and Claire) suffer from migraines, one (Allison) does not. Their parents died in an accident, something to do with airplanes but we're not told what, exactly. Claire is a cartographer in Toronto. She fears for Rachel who has disappeared without a trace and embarks on a search for her. Claire follows Rachel's trail from Montreal, to Amsterdam, to Italy, Las Vegas and Mexico. She suffers physical pain and puts her relationship with her partner, Stefan, at risk in the process. Allison, the sister who does not experience headaches and is the most stable of the three, stays home to care for her own children and Rachel's daughter, Star.

This novel is about pain, how much one can bear and how it affects lives and choices. It is well written and a bit offbeat, the way I prefer my fiction.
Ages ago I read Bush's Minus Time (about a middle aged female astronaut and her family) and The Rules of Engagement (about a modern day duel) and I recommend both of them. It took me a long time to get around to reading this one but I'm glad I did.

Kurt Vonnegut Motivational Posters

Kurt Vonnegut Motivational Posters
Via Nag on the Lake

On This Day

On this day in 1941 Sherwood Anderson died in Panama at the age of 64, of peritonitis brought on by swallowing a toothpick in an hors d'oeuvre.

Stuff Fictional Characters Would Leave at My Apartment if We Broke Up

A nifty list by Jill Morris.

Captain Ahab
— Harpoon he’s been promising to take home for weeks
— VHS of Free Willy
— Tylenol PM, in bulk
— Sleep machine that makes wave-crashing noises, up to 70 wave-filled minutes
— Nice velvet sleeping mask we got on sale at Linens ’n Things back in June or maybe July
— Legal pad with whales committing suicide doodled all over it
— Toothbrush

More Stuff

Soda, Pop, or Coke?

America’s First Dictionary of Dialects, a comprehensive lexicon of local language quirks, nears completion
Here are a few examples of American regional expressions:

monkey’s wedding
Like dog’s breakfast, this expression (found in Maine) describes a hot mess, a real cluster-something.

discomgollifusticated
This New Englandism makes the standard discombobulated seem succinct and restrained. Just a few words down is the even more extravagant discumgalligumfricated.

cockroach killers
Found in New Jersey, this is a term for shoes that are pointy enough to go medieval on our revolting friends.

to fight one’s hat
This southwestern expression means “to struggle uselessly,” which makes sense if you’ve ever tried to pick a fight with a lid, most of which are neither pugnacious nor easily offended.

death balls
You may know them as dust bunnies, but in the dust bunny community, this southwestern Missouri term is favored since it commands more respect. The example in DARE indicates that death balls reveal not only past squalor: they foretell future death. (Note to self: clean under couch).

The 20 best travel books of all time

I think there's a copy of this on one of my bookshelves. If I can find it I'll read it when I go to Venice in the fall.

Please Plant This Book

Richard Brautigan published Please Plant This Book in the Spring of 1968. It consisted of eight packets of garden seeds, each printed with a poem, all gathered in a small folder.

Books Are People Too Via Uncertain Times

Sci-Fi - Six Word Stories

• Time traveller dies tragically. (1967 - 1608) —Sean from Dublin
• Epitaph: Foolish humans, never escaped Earth —Vernor Vinge

There are many more