SHAUN SMITH'S SUNDAY SUNDRIES

A WEEKLY ROUNDUP OF INTERNET CURIOSITIES FROM THE BOOK WORLD

Corm
From the site Art For Derek...

Our dear friend Derek McCormack became seriously ill last fall with a very
rare cancer of the appendix. Fortunately, it’s treatable, but the treatment
itself is extraordinarily arduous — a fourteen hour surgery from which he will
be recovering for at least six months. (But which could, fingers and toes
crossed, put the cancer in remission for a very long time.) He had the surgery
at the end of March and got out of the hospital on Thursday, April 12th. He is
now staying with friends and has begun the long road to recovery. He’ll be
unable to work for a long time, and there’s still the possibility of
complications that could prolong his recovery even further. And, as you know,
Derek’s a writer and bookseller; he doesn’t make, or have, a lot of money.

In order to help him along, and to cover his trip to New York (where he went
for a second opinion at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center), his living
expenses during his recovery, and possibly even a bit of a cushion for any
unforeseeable complications, we put together an online art sale as well as a
fundraising evening of music and performance that happened at The Garrison on
April 10th. Both events were very successful. If you would like to donate to
Derek, please use the button below. Thank-you so much.

Please go to Art For Derek and give. I can think of no one else in the book industry more deserving.

Igloo
Books as furniture? Screw that, how about books as domicile?

Smell
Ohh-ohh that smell, can't you smell that smell?...I’m talking about the smell of old books, of course. I’ve always likened it to chocolate. In this video, ABE Books explains what it’s all about, chemically speaking.

Waste
One writer's account of what she blew a $200K advance on.

Murder
How much paper do you use a year? According the The Economist, I likely killed almost 5 forty-foot trees last year, which actually seems kind of low when I think about the number of newspapers and books I go through. I wonder to what degree tree-murder per capita is a measure of a country’s literacy.

Nine
E-books? Germany? They are having none of that, danke. (Or very, very little so far, according to Der Spiegle.)

Fish
Here's quite a remarkable animated version of The Old Man and the Sea. Actually, animated is not quite right...it is a stop-motion film of Dutch artist Marcel Schindler’s hands drawing The Old Man and the Sea...no, that doesn’t quite capture it either...oh, just watch the vid. (And I’d advise shutting the superfluous music off.)