“What if some day or night, a demon were to steal after you into your loneliest loneliness and say to you: ‘This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more’… Continue Reading…
Tag Archive - Literature
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Classic records lost in time and format, re-emerged as Pelican books. Brilliant!
CONNECT! Marketing in the Social Media Era: The Book
Be the first on your block to own CONNECT! Marketing in the Social Media Era a book that gives 100 marketers 400 words each to discuss how social media has impacted the way that brands connect with consumers.
I had the honour of not only being a contributor but also of designing the cover which, with the help of the keen photographic eye of Leigh Peterson, turned out quite decent.
Best of all it is for a good cause: all profits will go to Susan G. Komen for the Cure foundation. So order your copy today.
Where the Wild Things Are Trailer
It may be the defining position that this book had in my childhood. Or it might be a result of the fact that rumours of this Spike Jonze project have been piquing my interest for what seems like half a decade. Or perhaps I have simply been caught up in the momentum of the Arcade Fire soundtrack. But it took the trailer for Where the Wild Things Are to break me out of my tumbleweed blogging silence. Enjoy.
Recycled Words
“Like an archeologist I hunt for the words that speak to me with new meaning. Intuitively, one word at a time, they turn into a kind of haiku or philosophical poetry that I can call my own.
“At some unpredictable point along the way, in my mind, the images start to invent themselves. Using colored vellums, graphite and or India ink to highlight or obscure my words; I create the image of that invention. Though I strive to make each document visually engaging I find it is the words that I value most.”
Recommended Reading: Tom McCarthy’s Remainder
The moment that I finished Tom McCarthy’s Remainder, I began reading it again, slower this time; often pausing and re-reading a particular passage 10 or 20 times over again. I would spend hours going over a single sentence to the point where the words entirely lost their meaning and the very act of reading became the mechanical exercise of my eyes discerning the white space between the black of the type. At one point in the process of turning page 97 over to page 98, I became so enthralled by the way that the texture of the paper fell away from my fingertips and settled so serenely under my opposite thumb that I spent the rest of the afternoon reliving this moment, practicing that exact transition from 97 to 98 until I could do it effortlessly and exactly every time. Other days I would lie in the bath and simply think about reading the book as it sat on my bedside table and that would be enough.
Any and all of the above methods for fully appreciating Remainder should be taken under strict advisement by the reader however, if you begin to experience black outs or mild seizures, then I must advise that you consult a physician immediately.
Read The Believer interview with McCarthy here.
Bleeding skies…
A YouTube clip of my new favourite author Tom McCarthy talking about his new favourite author Georg Trakl.
Field Tested Books 2008
The team over at Coudal.com are back at it with the launch of the 2008 edition of Field Tested Books, a collection of book reviews by a variety writers, each with an interesting twist. As Jim explains:
“We had this notion that somehow through experimentation we could identify how our perception of a book is affected by the place where we read it. Or maybe the other way around. Maybe it’s possible to determine how a book colors the way we feel about the place where we experience it.”
This year, the ever-experimental crew are trying their hand at book publishing by offering the Field-Tested Books collection (including all three years of FTB reviews) “in a handsome trade paperback”. I was quite honored to be asked back as a contributor, and in return submitted a gonzo-inspired review of “The Proud Highway” by Hunter S. Thompson as read in Bangkok. (My 2006 submission, “Siddhartha, on a train between Madrid and Barcelona, Spain” can be found here.)
A perfect way to blow a Friday morning: peruse the website, buy the book and be sure to throw it in your backpack this summer when you light out on your own great literary adventure.
The Communist’s Future
Illustrations from various works by Russian science fiction writer Alexander Kazantsev
(via Coudal)
Re:Read
“The idea is that one artist takes a hardcover from a book, tears out the pages and draws in one half (or half draws in both halves) of the binder/diptyque. In a nod to Ray Johnson, the two books are mailed (swapped) and each of these will be finished by the other.”
“For the past five hundred years, humans have used print — the book and its various page-based cousins — to move ideas across time and space. Radio, cinema and television emerged in the last century and now, with the advent of computers, we are combining media to forge new forms of expression. For now, we use the word “book” broadly, even metaphorically, to talk about what has come before — and what might come next.”
-from the mission statement of The Institute for the Future of the Book
“The Bodleian Library at the University of Oxford in England is the only place you are likely to find an Ethernet port that looks like a book. Built into the ancient bookcases dominating the oldest wing of the 402-year-old library, the brown plastic ports share shelf space with handwritten catalogues of the university’s medieval manuscripts and other materials. Some of the volumes are still chained to the shelves, a 17th-century innovation designed to discourage borrowing. But thanks to the Ethernet ports and the university’s effort to digitize irreplaceable books like the catalogues — which often contain the only clue to locating an obscure book or manuscript elsewhere in the vast library — users of the Bodleian don’t even need to take the books off the shelves. They can simply plug in their laptops, connect to the Internet, and view the pertinent pages online. In fact, anyone with a Web browser can read the catalogues, a privilege once restricted to those fortunate enough to be teaching or studying at Oxford.”
-from The Infinite Library by Wade Roush
“The Library Project’s aim is simple: make it easier for people to find relevant books – specifically, books they wouldn’t find any other way such as those that are out of print – while carefully respecting authors’ and publishers’ copyrights. Our ultimate goal is to work with publishers and libraries to create a comprehensive, searchable, virtual card catalog of all books in all languages that helps users discover new books and publishers discover new readers.”
