A librarian was at a commun
Rare Book Joke
A collector of rare books ran into an acquaintance who told him he had just thrown away an old bible that he found in a dusty, old box. He happened to mention that Guten-somebody- or-other had printed it."Not Gutenberg?" gasped the collector."Yes, that was it!""You idiot! You've thrown away one of the first books ever printed. A copy recently sold at an auction for half a million dollars!""Oh, I don't think this book would have been worth anything close to that much," replied the man. "It was scribbled all over in the margins by some guy named Martin Luther."via the...
The Evil 50 : The Greatest Villains in Literature
The Telegraph UK asked a panel of lit-minded folks to come up with their list of the top 50 villains in the history of literature. It's quite a dastardly listAnd the losers include the likes of Iago, Ku10 Vindice from The Revenger's Tragedy, by Thomas Middleton Filled with bile from his persistent melancholy - his beloved was killed by the duke - Vindice decides the best way to avenge her is to make the duke lock lips with her poisoned corpse. Fair enough: the duke got what was coming to him, as do the many others who fall under Vindice's...
Sacramento Book Fair
On the West Coast, 'tis the season of book fairs, what with Santa Monica two weekends ago, Seattle a few weeks from now, and Sacramento this Saturday. I'll be exhibiting at Sacramento and hope any Book Patrol readers I know will stop by to say "hi" or to introduce themselves.
New Yorker: David Foster Wallace Homage?
Hard to tell if this is coincidence, but intentional or not, I can't help but read this week's New Yorker Caption Contest (image above) as slyly alluding to the sadly-departed David Foster Wallace by way of the title essay from his last non-fiction collection:And on a related note, the Wallace fan-site Howling Fantods recently held a DFW Motivational Poster Competition which included this gem, now somehow tinged heavily with a deep sense of pathos for me:If you're unfamiliar with Wallace and are perhaps wondering what all the fuss has been about these past few days, you could do worse than...