infographic courtesy of Global English Editing
World Reading Habits in 2020 – Infographic
Japanese used bookstore chain really wants to buy your books
Book Off, a secondhand bookstore chain in Japan, is in dire need of inventory. To try and remedy the situation they have produced a television commercial "begging customers to sell them books" The commercial features employees standing solemnly in two lines along near-empty bookshelves pleading with the viewers to sell them books. Watch: [youtube]https://youtu.be/9kUTT4TxWV8[/youtube] What kind of books are they asking after: “Books you’ve read already” “Books that won’t fit on the book shelf.” “Books left behind by the girlfriend you forgot about!” “Books you thought would make you look cool!” “Books someone could not stop talking about but...
Machine Poetry with Feeling
Researchers at the University of Colorado (UC)- Colorado Springs and Drury University have recently developed a unique language generation system that they claim can produce creative poetry verses infused with emotion. The project focused "more on the content, emotion and creativity of the text, as opposed to the structure or rhythm found in prior poetry generation studies." Combing through large text repositories like Project Gutenberg the researchers looked for words included in EmoLex, an emotion-lexicon dataset developed by the National Research Council of Canada. They also fed the machine "a combination of dream data and poetry to create what is...
Illustrations by James Firnhaber
James Firnhaber is a young and rising freelance illustrator living in Philadelphia. His work has appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post and Philly Magazine. Firnhaber influences include his love of mythology, magical realism and traditional animation. Here is a sampling of his book-themed work. Enjoy! Alice in Wonderland - created for a reading campaign untitled - illustration based on the novel The Book Thief, 2018 untitled - completed for school assignment Star Speaker, 2016 Curative AI Based on an article about Google Photos’ AI and it’s ability to curate emotionally moving slideshows, 2019...
DIY: Build your own book arch
Scott Hill, the proprietor of Sandman Books in South Florida, has shared his secrets on how to make your very own book arch. It begins with a familiar bookseller quandary - what to do with all those books one acquires "that are simply at the end of their lives". Hill decided to do something fun and went to work building a book arch. He built his first one in 2013 and when his shop moved in 2019 he was back at it. The arch has become a bit of tourist destination and next month the first wedding vows will be...