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...
David Foster Wallace RIP
Though it sounds like something out of one of his novels, the LA Times is reporting that David Foster Wallace is dead of an apparent suicide.
Saturday Link Dump
Plastic Logic launches as-yet unnamed e-reader aimed at business users. Some call it the the Kindle Killer.Book-themed furniture: love these bookends, adore these book vases, and want the see-saw bookshelf.Over 2500 dust-jacket from the NYPL.Beautiful short film on letterpress printing.Lord Buckley does Poe's "Raven". So does the great Basil Rathbone.VIDEO: Browsing the world's oldest telephone.Make your own flip book.A versatile and interactive map of new bookstores.The Henry Ford of Literature.Amazing collection of graphic design books.Chapbooks: An Appreciation.Looks good: Grolier launches Virginia Woolf exhibition.Fantastic: Archive of public domain comic strips.Wow: Archive of things found in books at one bookstore.Man reads every...
little blue books
one of the most prolific publishers in U.S. history, putting an estimated 300 million copies of inexpensive “Little Blue Books” into the hands of working-class and middle-class Americans. Selling for as little as five cents and small enough to fit in a trouser pocket, these books were meant to bring culture and self-education to working people,http://believermag.com/issues/200809/?read=article_potts