Shakespeare For British photographer Mark Vessey it's all about creating art and order from everyday objects and for his ongoing series Collections, magazines and books take center stage. Says Vessey: My work is about trying to establish a sense of order. There is comfort in collecting things, studying things that people take for granted, grouping every day objects into such a way that they become something special, seeing how they fit together to become a thing of great beauty Keith Haring Vessey is always "searching for that elusive edition of a magazine; that one book that will make his collection complete" and...
Bookshop Theater: A little “Misery” at Barnes and Noble
In 2011 Norfolk, Virginia's The Generic Theater presented "a thrilling stage adaptation" of the Stephen King novel Misery. As part of the promotional festivities one of their actresses went to the local Barnes and Noble for a little publicity stunt. 'Crazy Chick Flips Out in Barnes & Noble' is how they titled it and what we get is a "Misery" infused encounter with an unsuspecting (?) employee. The actress is channeling the character Annie Wilkes (think Kathy Bates in the film version) from the novel and is asking after a novel by Paul Sheldon, who is the protagonist in Misery. Warning to booksellers:...
A book-of-the-month club for the infants and toddlers of Washington D.C.
By the time kids reach the third grade in the public schools of Washington D.C. less than half are reading at grade level! I repeat, less then half. We know the equation pretty well and we know that the long term consequences lean severe. Low literacy = higher chance of unemployment and incarceration. Ward 6 DC Councilmember Charles Allen has introduced legislation that would send a book a month to all 41,000 children under 5 that live in the district. “We have households in the District that have hundreds of books and households where the only book in the house may be the phone...
Model Bookshop: The new Shonan T-Site bookstore sets the stage for the 21st century
Recently I mused about the benefits of putting a bookstore in every mall and wouldn't you know Japan's leading entertainment retailer Tsutaya has just hit it out of the park with the opening of their latest store Shonan T-Site, located 30 miles outside of Tokyo. Tsutaya returned to architects Astrid Klein and Mark Dytham to help create their second retail outlet. Their first venture together, the Daikanyama project, won numerous awards including World’s Best Shopping Center at the World Architecture Festival and the 2013 Grand Prize at Design For Asia. Says Dytham: Shonan T-Site continues the reinvention of the modern-day bookstore as initiated by the Daikanyama project. However, the new space takes this...
What Darwin Saw: Sketchbooks from the voyage of the HMS Beagle added to Cambridge Digital Library
Charles Darwin considered it to be one of the most formative journeys of his life. His diary and scientific journal of his time aboard the HMS Beagle, now best known as The Voyage of the Beagle, was a bestseller. It was also on this voyage that the first seeds of his masterwork, Origin of Species, were planted. Now thanks to Cambridge University the entire sketchbooks of Conrad Martens, a shipmate of Darwin's on the HMS Beagle, are available online. Martens made the drawings between the summer of 1833 and the early months of 1835. They "vividly bring to life one of the most famous...