That former President Bill Clinton is an avid reader is not news. What is news is that he reads book blogs. (Can you hear me now, Mr. President?). As Carolyn Kellogg, lead writer for the Los Angeles Times blog Jacket Copy and laundry-challenged because of it (tell me about it, sister!), today reports, she just about fell over when the former POTUS wrote a note to her in response to a Fourth of July post of hers about his reading habits. After offering a correction of fact, he then provided an unsolicited heads-up on what he’s been reading lately. The...
THE BOOK Project : Isabelle Vaverka’s Trip Down Memory Lane
click to enlargeIn THE BOOK Project graphic designer Isabella Vaverka adds a new layer to her library. Each book is shrouded in a printed white cover that Vaverka uses to share a unique story or memory that relates to each book. What the book is about takes a back seat to how the book fits into her life.click to enlargeThere's the:The Book In which I discovered a bill for the Beatles-record "Michelle"The Book I've Borrowed from SomeoneThe Book I found in the Garbage...The Book No One Has Touched For More Than 30 YearsOf the project Vaverka says:Today there are thousands...
Edgar Allan Poe Lights Up The Ransom Center
Break out a cask of amontillado and let the pale sherry flow. Fans of Edgar Allan Poe are in for a treat this year, the bicentennial of the American poet, critic and inventor of the detective story’s birth.The Harry Ransom Center, the humanities research library and museum at The University of Texas at Austin, is commemorating the two-hundreth birthday of Poe with the exhibition From Out That Shadow: The Life and Legacy of Edgar Allan Poe.The exhibition is based upon the extensive holdings of the Ransom Center and the Harrison Institute/ Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library at the...
Banned Books Week Coming Soon
Banned Books Week is scheduled for September 26th- October 3rd, 2009.Every time we think that banning books in the United States is a thing of the past, we are sorely reminded that there are still many who believe that removing books from book stores and library shelves will make the social issues that the books represent go away and that the world will be a better place.The American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression is fighting the good fight for retailers.“The American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression is the bookseller's voice in the fight against censorship. Founded by the American Booksellers...
New Book on Prepuce at the Precipice
The details of the mysteries of the carne vera sacra have now been unsheathed.Those expecting cooking news about a nuova cucina Italian delicacy will be disappointed. We’re talking foreskin here, and not just any foreskin but THE foreskin of the ages – the “miraculous membrane” of Jesus Christ.As discussed in a piece in The New Yorker, travel writer David Farley has published his first book, An Irreverent Curiosity: In Search of the Church’s Strangest Relic in Italy’s Oddest Town. Within, he relates that the foreskin of Jesus Christ went missing from a church in the village of Calcata, a medieval...