"This is my empire, my kingdom...Books are my wealth, my gift" says Philane Dladla His kingdom is "at a U-turn sign at an intersection in Empire Road opposite Wits University, in Johannesburg."and his mission in life is the "reading and dispensing knowledge by selling books." image by Daniel Born When a person his mom looked after died Philane inherited 500 books. He read and reviewed them all. Now he makes his way by reading what he gets and then selling what he read by providing reviews to passing motorists. Take that Mr. Algorithm. Story at Times Live, 'An emperor of books'
An A-Z of book covers
Last Friday on The Independent Book Design Blog Jonathan Gibbs gave a call out for help building an alphabet of book jackets.It started when he looked at a copy of the pre-Valentine's Day release of The Poetry of Sex and was taken by the large "X" on the cover. Enjoy this taste and please, no Sue Grafton jokes. Friday Book Design Blog: Help me build an A-Z of book covers | Jonathan Gibbs | Independent Arts Blogs.
When books went bad: Charting the demise of the well made book
Graph accompanying Extracts from an investigation into the physical properties of books, as they are at present published, undertaken by the Society of Calligraphers The pamphlet was printed and published by noted American type designer, calligrapher, and book designer W.A. Dwiggins and L.B. Siegfried in 1919 and decried the then current state of book production. For the Society it was unanimous; "All Books of the Present Day are Badly Made" The reason were plenty "to wean mankind from the use of books. Automobiles, the motion-picture drama, professional athletics, the Saturday Evening Post" and the Society was resigned to the fact that...
Jack Kerouac reads from ‘On The Road’, 1959
[youtube]http://youtu.be/QzCF6hgEfto[/youtube] Published in 1957 by Viking, On The Road would quickly become a cornerstone work of the Beat Generation and the bible of the American counterculture. Here is Kerouac appearing on the Steve Allen Show in 1959. First we get a nice background of the book's history from Kerouac: 7 years on the road, 3 weeks to write, and that it was written on a continous piece of teletype paper. Then Kerouac gets reading and Steve Allen gets playing, providing a stellar piano accompaniment. Reading from a novel written "in a form that reflected the improvisational fluidity of jazz" with Allen and company...
Cardboard bound
"The streets are no longer paved with gold. Pizza boxes and delivery boxes from a well river in South America, crunch underfoot like beige snow" - London-based book artist Mark Cockram. He calls them Rubbish Books, and they are bound from the pulp of abandoned cardboard boxes that litter the streets of his neighborhood. And why turn cardboard into paper? Cockram says because it is "simple stuff." he immerses the side of a packing box in a vat of water for 15 minutes, then he is able to de-laminate the corrugations leaving him with a number of sheets of paper. No mashing, no pulping...