As my final post of 2010 I am once again presenting my (now 14-year-old) son’s top-10 list of reads for the past year—with only minimal editing and no comment. The only thing I can say about Harry’s list this year is that I’m overwhelmed with pride at both the adventurous nature of his reading habits (consider [...]
I was going to let it pass without comment, but the knowledge has been nagging me, insistently, with a need to share. Yesterday marked the anniversary of the release, in December of 1979, of the greatest rock-n-roll album of all time: The Clash‘s London Calling. I’ve told this story before, but it’s my party and [...]
Matthew Cheney has posted some interesting thoughts on the ways in which people read. In particular, I liked this line a lot: “…we turn our ways of reading into prescriptions for reading: because I read this way, it is a meaningful and good way to read…” Although, to be honest, I think this statement is [...]
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 [...]
