The details of the mysteries of the carne vera sacra have now been unsheathed.Those expecting cooking news about a nuova cucina Italian delicacy will be disappointed. We’re talking foreskin here, and not just any foreskin but THE foreskin of the ages – the “miraculous membrane” of Jesus Christ.As discussed in a piece in The New Yorker, travel writer David Farley has published his first book, An Irreverent Curiosity: In Search of the Church’s Strangest Relic in Italy’s Oddest Town. Within, he relates that the foreskin of Jesus Christ went missing from a church in the village of Calcata, a medieval...
Book Do’s and Don’ts For the 21st Century
Sad that it has come to this but signage has now been created to prevent those whose experience with books is severely limited from making serious, life- or book threatening gaffes when in their presence.The signs are appropriate for libraries, book stores, reading rooms, or general household use, and delightfully capture the current, confused book zeitgeist.It is unlikely that ebooks will ever require warning signs beyond a Magritte-ish This Is Not a Book poster. Kindles, however, may need an additional caveat, the Do Not Taunt This Book alert with image of Jeff Bezos wagging his finger at us.
Wall Street Bank For Poets Proposed. Never Too Big To Fail?
There are many contenders for Top Dog status in the bone yard of bonehead ideas. [Provide favorite to Comments]. In the late nineteenth through early twentieth centuries, the highest honors for magnificently cockeyed excogitations belonged to one known only as the Idiot.The Idiot, the creation of Harpers humor editor, John Kendrick Bangs (1862-1922), whose Idiot confections were collected into six volumes*, was a boarder in Mrs. Smithers-Pegagog’s High-Class Home for Single Gentlemen. I’m always anxious to learn as much as I can about the history of the fleabag with a foyer and threadbare lace doilies I currently call home, so,...
Romance and Erotic Novels Drive Ebook Sales
Call it The Story of Oy.One of the many fascinating insights that Nicholson Baker provides in his recent piece on the Kindle, A New Page, for The New Yorker is what kind of ebooks are most downloaded from Amazon.“The success of the ebook is being fueled by the romance and erotic romance market,” asserts Peter Smith in the TechoFile blog for ITworld as quoted in Baker’s piece.Felicia Day, “Vi” on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, is cuckoo for the Kindle for that very reason. She writes in her blog that “as an insane reader of genre paperbacks, I’m absolutely in love...
Bio of Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper in the Works
On a recent reconnaissance mission for Book Patrol I met Brian Kehew, co-author of Recording the Beatles: The Studio Equipment and Techniques Used to Create Their Classic Albums, a massive eleven pounds of Beatlemania that takes us behind the scenes of the making of the Fab Four’s records. At the end of our interview, he dropped a joy bomb in my lap.Years of research and extensive interviews with the group’s former engineers and technicians shed new light on those classic sessions that provided the music that influenced and defined a generation and continues to impact pop music today.Kehew co-produced Fiona...