literature
The iTunes music store is offering an audio book of John Hodgman’s The Areas of My Expertise, for free. Here is the hardcover from Amazon.
from boingboing
KCRW interviews Zadie Smith in the Bookworm podcast on her recently released (in the US) novel, On Beauty, which incorporates everyone from Forster to Elaine Scarry:
But the problem with readers, the idea we’re given of reading is that the model of a reader is the person watching a film, or watching television. So the greatest […]
I finally got around to reading this the other day after it spent several months hiding in one of my folders of things to read. Here is Jorges Luis Borges’ short story: The Garden of Forking Paths (pdf), and an interesting hypertext adaptation.
from Matt
Roland Barthes’ essay: The Death of the Author
wikipedia on Barthes
Roland Barthes (November 12, 1915 – March 25, 1980) was a French literary critic, literary and social theorist, philosopher, and semiotician. Barthes’ work extended over many fields and he influenced the development of schools of theory including structuralism, semiology, existentialism, Marxism and post-structuralism.
and further reading.
Inside Higher Ed looks into personal annotation in books:
To many people, of course, the idea of marking up a book seems distasteful – a violation of the text, a sign of disrespect for the author’s authority. The structuralist literary theorist Roland Barthes divided readers into two categories: those who produced marginalia, and those who left […]
Take some time and read “100% perfect girl,” a short story by Haruki Murakami.
Here’s Random House’s page on the author, what seems to be an official page, and
the wikipedia entry.
The Evolution of Speech Balloons
During the 18th century, British caricaturists changed the shape of speechballoons from gothic speech-bands or flags into fluffy balloons, our modern speechballoons.I’m using the word speechballoon as the general, inclusive term. (The gothic form of speechballoons are speechbands, flags, scrolls or sheets of paper, the modern form of speechballoons are balloons, […]
Design Observer on library organization.
Questionable personal beliefs aside, I have never found the Dewey Decimal Classification system to be an accurate reflection of how books are organized in my own mind — or anybody else’s for that matter. Certainly I understand the DDC’s advantages when when it comes to large-scale collections, but if how we […]
I’ve primarily been using amazon for book purchases over the past few years. I tried out half.com, but wasn’t ever really impressed with the service or quality. In my search for textbooks, I just found out about the following sites which appear to link together thousands of independent bookstores. Excellent prices and an enormous selection.
http://www.abebooks.com/
http://www.bookfinder.com/
The Guardian looks at Babar:
In the 75 years that Jean de Brunhoff’s creation has been on the Celesteville throne, Babar has shown no inclination to relax the iron tusk in his velvet glove. Having returned from Paris to the African jungle in 1931, he promptly built a city modelled on western architecture and forced all […]
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