Are you ready to get your spook on? October is here and that can only mean that Halloween is right around the corner. Here are a few bookish goodies to help you get in the mood. The Penguin Book of Witches. Edited by Katherine Howe, 2014. Who better to give us a bit of witch history than Katherine Howe, a direct descendant of three accused Salem witches. Starting with the few scant mentions of witches in the Bible and taking us through the Salem Witch trails Howe provides nothing but source material to illuminate just how slippery and unconvincing the...
Little Gestalten: A new imprint for the kids
When one of the leading publishers of books on visual culture starts making books for kids you know is going to be good. Introducing Little Gestalten, the new children's book imprint from the noted German publisher Gestalten. Here's the reasoning and the plan: Nothing fosters children's imaginations better than a book. Good books can help children understand the world and learn a lot about life. They can pique their natural curiosity, impart knowledge, and hearten them to be empathetic or brave. The world is, of course, already filled with wonderful children’s books. Still, there are always new and surprisingly different stories...
F is for Fantods: Edward Gorey as Publisher
The latest exhibition at Edward Gorey House, F is for Fantods, focuses on the books Gorey published himself under the banner of the Fantod Press. Using various anagrams and pseudonyms like Garrod Weedy, Ogdred Weary, Aedwyrd Gore, and Mrs Regera Dowdy, Gorey churned out twenty-eight books under the imprint. "F is for Fantods opens a window onto the restrained, graceful, and frequently hysterical mayhem that was Edward Gorey’s world." Here's a sampling of books from the press: The Beastly Baby. Gorey writing as Odgred Weary, (1962). One of 500 copies illustrated throughout by Gorey in black and white. Possibly his scarcest title. The Stupid...
Five Book (and one record) Birthday Salute to Wallace Stevens
Harmonium (First Edition, first issue, signed). The poet's first collection, published when he was 44 years old, after almost a decade of appearances only in magazines. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1923. Soldier, there is a war between the mind And sky, between thought and day and night. It is For that the poet is always in the sun, Patches the moon together in his room to his Virgilian cadences, up down, Up down. It is a war that never ends. -from Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction Today is the birthday of Wallace Stevens. Literary critic Harold Bloom called Stevens "the best...
The Thing The Book: A Monument to the Book as Object
Assembled by the brain trust of THE THING Quarterly's, Jonn Herschend & Will Rogan, The Thing The Book is a magical tribute to our favorite physical object, the printed book. More than 30 "creative visionaries" were asked to contribute with each being assigned a different traditional element of a book. From endpapers to ribbon bookmarks to page numbers, no part of the codex is left untouched. Here's a taste: Ed Ruscha got the bookplate; Jonathan Lethem got the footnotes; Miranda July got the erratta slip; Lawrence Weiner got the thumb tab; John Baldessari got the epigraph; Rick Moody got the endnotes. There are also plenty of essays and...