The excellent Bookride blog has posted a great little article on “The near and far future of the book“, which is a topic that gets no small amount of press in the age of Kindle and iPad—and is a near obsessive topic for booksellers. I think this article succinctly summarizes my own opinions: reading will occur more [...]
Slate has posted an interesting article by Paul Collins on perhaps the first how-to manual for writers. It should be no surprise to that Sherwin Cody’s How to Write Fiction was published in the Victorian Era. The Victorians wrote more—and more about themselves—than previous generations; thanks to advances in printing technology and the development of larger [...]
Among the various brilliant projects that Edward Gorey undertook were any number of book covers. (We even have a first edition of one at the store…but the title escapes me at the moment.) As you can see in this excellent gallery of his covers (c/o Reading Copy), many are very common and his contribution was [...]
The ever charming Colleen submitted an interesting comment to this recent post that some of what is ostensibly presented (and completely accepted by the culture at large) as classic children’s literature is really more relevant and/or revelatory for adults. I find this an intriguing premise. As a vague and wildly subjective test I’ve been thinking about the [...]
Damien G. Walter, in a recent Guardian blog post, attacks what he sees as a failure on the part of literary fiction—with its apparent obsession with realism (or its complete disconnection through postmodernism)—to confront the “real” issues of our times; he quotes J. G. Ballard: “We live in a world ruled by fictions of every kind—mass-merchandising, advertising, [...]
Over this past summer, I set myself the task of finally reading Herman Melville‘s popular doorstop Moby Dick. I’m pleased to say I completed it, but not until the end of the season. Halfway through the novel I began alternating my reading with comics as a way of pacing myself. So, the obvious question I [...]
Speaking of China Miéville, in digging up a link for my previous post, I stumbled upon this great little interview with China from August of this year. My favourite line is the one about the “D&Dification of Pynchon“, which, in some ways, captures what’s cool about China’s approach to writing. China has stated in interviews [...]
Alberto Manguel‘s excellent article on The Wind in the Willows encouraged me to finally read a classic that had somehow eluded me in childhood; despite being one of my sister’s favourites. This is odd because of the overall influence my sister had on my early reading. I always looked up to her and picked up [...]
As a fan of Robert E. Howard’s most iconic character, Conan—and not necessarily the movie, comics and games versions—I anticipate the latest upcoming screen version with equal parts hope and dread. We who have actually read the original, unadulterated Howard stories know that Conan is a much more complex and nuanced character than the one that has entered pop consciousness; [...]
