ssmith's blog

A WEEKLY ROUNDUP OF INTERNET CURIOSITIES FROM THE BOOK WORLD

Picture me this
On The Guardian, British Children's Laureate Anthony Brown presents a slide show looking at works by the best new picture book illustrators.

Leonard Cohen: poet, Buddhist monk, sleazy drug lord

A WEEKLY ROUNDUP OF INTERNET CURIOSITIES FROM THE BOOK WORLD

Mesostomawhat?
The American composer John Cage invented a form of poetry named the mesostic, which consisted of horizontal lines of text intersecting a single word set on the vertical axis. Now, composer and designer Matthew McCabe has created a tool—called the mesostomatic—which creates instant mesostics using the web. Try it out, it's mesostastic!

A WEEKLY ROUNDUP OF INTERNET CURIOSITIES FROM THE BOOK WORLD

If LPs were books
They might look like Gee’s creations. (My fave: Blood on the Tracks, by Robert A. Zimmerman.)

If books were throw cushions
They might look like Jillian Tamaki’s embroidered book covers.

Must (not) reads
Ian Hollingshead provides a humorous take on the top 50 books you don't need to read.

A WEEKLY ROUNDUP OF INTERNET CURIOSITIES FROM THE BOOK WORLD

Introducing the Paranga
Don't they already have something that does that? Oh yeah, it's called a book!

To all those editors who don't return my emails.
Perhaps lighten your load with the edit minion.

Corpus Libris
Putting the body in body of literature.

Here hair here

A WEEKLY ROUNDUP OF INTERNET CURIOSITIES FROM THE BOOK WORLD

Poisoners of Gravy
Amongst the many gems that TVO has recently uploaded to the web from their archives is what appears to be the full Prisoners of Gravity series, the seminal news magazine about comic books and science fiction. This looks quaint by today's standards, but no one was talking about this sort of stuff on tv before this show, at least not quite in this way. Enjoy their 1993 episode about Tolkein.

"It's campoochuchuchuchu tea."

SHAUN SMITH'S SUNDAY SUNDRIES

A WEEKLY ROUNDUP OF INTERNET CURIOSITIES FROM THE BOOK WORLD

It came from outer space!
Where the heck did sci-fi come from, anyway? A blob at Places & Spaces explains.

"We could order that for you. It'll take a year to get here."
Why not take a moment to visit the Women & Women First Bookstore, in Portlandia?

Actually, I was thinking of just copying them all to my Kindle.

A WEEKLY ROUNDUP OF INTERNET CURIOSITIES FROM THE BOOK WORLD

Scrabble for font geeks
I am not a font geek myself, but something makes me think Andrew Clifford Carpener is.

Weird eatin'

A WEEKLY ROUNDUP OF INTERNET CURIOSITIES FROM THE BOOK WORLD

Gender Bender

A WEEKLY ROUNDUP OF INTERNET CURIOSITIES FROM THE BOOK WORLD

Dodgeball > Reading?
PBS reports on a new study showing that kids who study hard and who are also physically active in sports are smarter than those who only study hard. (I did neither and look where I ended up.)

Nice Threads
You know, I read the explanation twice and I still have no idea what the heck this thread-bedecked book pretends to be about, but it certainly looks cool.

Old Books, New Art

A WEEKLY ROUNDUP OF INTERNET CURIOSITIES FROM THE BOOK WORLD

"The Book That Can't Be Read"
Nerds at the University of Arizona have definitively dated one of the world's strangest antique manuscripts. The Voynich manuscript was previously believed to have been written by Roger Bacon, a 13th century Franciscan friar and philosopher, but using radiocarbon dating, scientists at UA have now determined that the work was created between 1404 and 1438. By whom? No one knows. The manuscript was purchased in 1912 from Jesuit priests in Rome by the late New York book dealer Wilfrid Michael Voynich (it is now in Yale's archives). It is written in a code that no one has been able to decipher and is filled with bizarre illustrations. Voynich spent 18 years trying to figure it out before dying. Want to take a shot at cracking the code yourself? Give it your best try here. More about the Voynich manuscript on National Geographic.