Reading Positions and more from Warby Parker

READING POSITIONS  INSTRUCTIONS: 1. Stretch 2. Grasp book 3. Assume position (see above) 4. Hold position for required amount of time 5. Cool down Art: Patrick Kearns Eyewear company Warby Parker clearly leans bookish . Who is Warby Parker you ask? He was plucked out of the journals of Jack Kerouac! We’ve always been inspired by the master wordsmith and pop culture icon, Mr. Jack Kerouac. Two of his earliest characters, recently uncovered in his personal journals, bore the names Zagg Parker and Warby Pepper. We took the best from each and made it our name. We hope your new glasses...

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Book Art Bonanza at MCBA

  Ania Gilmore (Lexington, MA).  Knowledge Inc., (2013). A folded book work inspired by Wisława Szymborska’s poem Contribution One of the highlights of the Book Art Biennial that just wrapped up at The Minnesota Center for Book Arts (MCBA) is the awarding of The MCBA Prize. The prize is "the first honor to recognize book art from across the field and around the world." The judges for this years festivities were three titans from the book art world; Sarah Bodman, Buzz Spector and Sandra Kroupa and clearly they had their work cut out for them for an amazing array of work from all over...

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McSweeney’s is moving to Texas

not really, but their archive is. The Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas (HRC) has acquired the archive of McSweeneys. Founded in 1998 by Dave Eggers, McSweeney’s is easily one of the most influential literary journals and publishing houses of our generation. Aside from the stellar content McSweeney's also boasts some of the highest production and design chops in the trade. This holistic approach to the book has separated them from much of the field. The bulk of the archive includes of manuscripts of books, essays, and short stories; correspondence drawn from the publishing house’s work with hundreds of writers;...

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Found: Harry Houdini’s Long Lost Spiritualism Scrapbook

An antique dealer in Southern California has unearthed a long lost scrapbook belonging to Harry Houdini. Labeled as "IMPORTANT SCRAP BOOK - MISCELLANEOUS CLIPPINGS," the book is "jam-packed with newspaper clippings about Spiritualism and Houdini's own spirit busting activities. Many of the clippings have annotations in Houdini's own hand. The majority of the material is from 1925 with a few clippings from early 1926." The content of the scrapbook focuses mostly on Houdini's anti-spiritualism crusade and his exposure of Mina Crandon a.k.a. "Margery the Medium." The Library of Congress houses over 100 of Houdini's scrapbooks but somehow this one escaped its clutches;  hitherto...

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