Dumbledore's Yellow Pages

What? I was sure they were actual, real spell books borrowed from the real Hogwarts. Sadly, the prop department had to make due with what they had on hand: old phone books rebound and distressed to look old.  The interview this is from is here, the book discovery happens towards the end.

El Ateneo

In 2000, publisher Grupos Ilhsa converted the 1920s-era Grand Splendid Theater in Buenos Aires into a bookstore called the  El Ateneo Grand Splendid bookstore.   More pictures here.

 



Amish Romance

At first glance, I would have thought this was a satirical book cover from The Onion, what with its Hollywood-gorgeous model, the title almost looks like it's not real words and devoid of meaning, the empty claim of being a "New York Times Bestselling Author" — but, no, this is the real deal.   Amish romance novels are a thing, and a big thing at that. It goes to show that having a devoted and book-hungry subgenre will do an author good, and this genre wins because of its cross-genre appeal.  Both the Amish themselves and Evangelical Christians love the books for their strict adherence to morals and faith, with a healthy dollop of romance on top.  So, really, not much different than the "true romance" magazines from the fifties and sixties, which adhered to Hayes-code style punishment for transgressors and rewards for those true of heart, but set in an idealized world of bonnets and buggies — a callback to historical romances.  It's no wonder that Amish Romances, as a genre, have such appeal: they're cobbled together from some of the most successful aspects of romance fiction from the past fifty years.

De Nyew Testament In Gullah

Someone over at Reddit found themselves a copy of De Nyew Testament at their used book store:

Just the snippet shown there, you can get one aspect of translation:  it's about context, and not just finding the right word.   One of my "projects" that I've been working on, off-and-on, for two years now is correcting an English translation of a French book that I very much enjoyed but had some trouble reading.  Quite often, the translator just picked the first word in their French-to-English dictionary, resulting in some confusing and somewhat amusing sentences.  And, if there's one book that is constantly and enthusiastically debated over the context in a translation, it's the Bible, so you know some thought went into producing the Gullah version.  If you'd like to see de hole Nyew Testament, you can read the same version pictured online at gullahbible.com., or if you can't get there because Reddit is hitting them hard, it's also available here or here. 

Video Game Penguin Paperbacks

Artist James Bit felt that his bookshelves didn't have that retro feel of the olden days, when there were, you know, books on the shelves instead of DVDs and CDs and videogames.   So, from his Etsy store, you can purchase PDFs of replacement slip-in covers for your video games to make them resemble Penguin paperbacks of yore.  What they need next are slipcovers to make these NES cases look like Big Little Books.

Dealbreaker Books

Flavorwire has a list for you, all you single book lovers hoping to find a partner in life.  They have taken suggestions for the kinds of books that are dealbreakers when you find out your date ranks said book highly on their list of must-reads.  Most are a mix of literary haughtiness — of course, Twilight fares poorly — but this one is one I can definitely agree on:

Yes, a house without books, and a person unable to remember or discuss the last book they read, is definitely a dealbreaker for me.   It's a good thing The Wifey likes books, too, otherwise I'd have the horrible life where my house wasn't about to collapse in on itself due to the enormous amount of books contained therein.  

World Book Night in Fargo

As I left the grocery store this afternoon, a voice came from behind me, "sir, can I trouble you for a minute?"  

Usually, it's a survey or a petition, but I turned around to see a woman holding out a book.  "Today is World Book Night, and a number of publishers have come together to give away free books.  Here--"  and she handed me John Irving's A Prayer for Owen Meany.

"Oh, thanks!" I said, taking the book, and I asked if she was from the library or something.   No, she said, a little evasive, and emphasized that the publishers just want to get their books into the hands of people so they can read.  An excellent proposition, in my opinion.  Apparently, she was one of the volunteer "givers", who helped bring the books to the world.   As she said, the main movers behind World Book Night are the larger publishers,  but I can't fault them for thinking outside the box as a marketing opportunity.   The book I received is bound like the galleys I've gotten, with a special cover to discourage shifty resale of the tome.  I know nothing of Owen Meany, other than the description on Amazon makes it sound rural and midwestern, which probably was picked for this area intentionally.  I've had good success with randomly acquired books before,  so maybe it'll be a good book.  I will start it tonight, before bed, in honor of World Book Night, and maybe I'll keep reading it in the coming non-book-night evenings, as is the intent of the people behind this fun free-book event.

Review: How To Be: NORTH DAKOTA

North Dakota's boom has brought new attention to the state, but few people outside of the northern plains know much beyond oil and the misguided belief that Mount Rushmore is here. Abe Sauer's solution is a new book of satire, "How To Be: NORTH DAKOTA - A Guide To The Plains", a primer on everything "top Dakota". The book is full of activities, short lessons in history and geography, and advice on how best to embody North Dakota itself. "How To Be..." is a quick read, written in short zinger-filled paragraphs, especially suited for fans of blogs and Uncle John's Bathroom Reader.

"How To Be..." is organized into topical chapters, addressing every aspect of the North Dakotan lifestyle. The jokes are satirical and bawdy, and while it gives appropriate attention to snow and lutefisk, Sauer can at times be harsh, acknowledging the darker aspects of North Dakota such as depression, Native American relations, and drug abuse.

Surprisingly, there's a lot to learn in Sauer's book. Despite the snarky humor, the book does contain many true facts about North Dakota. The book ends with a quiz, and because the real answer is so difficult to distinguish from the joke answers, getting a passing grade may be more difficult than expected. The amount of 'inside humor' betrays the fact that much of the written for North Dakotans themselves. "Hopefully, native North Dakotans will find a good number of inside jokes in the book, especially in the rundowns of individual towns," Sauer told me. "But I also wanted to keep it accessible to anyone looking to laugh and get to better know a state that is a lot more in the news lately, but for which the film 'Fargo' is still the standard of knowledge."

Typewriter Disassembly

Typewriters are amazing things. They usually have forty or fifty keys, and with the help of the shift key they can make a hundred or so different characters. It arranges each chosen character in a linear fashion, uniform according to its language, performing its roughshod typesetting and kerning as it goes. Mighty complicated pieces of machinery — and it shows, in this image from Todd McLellan's series Disassembly:

Queer Book Titles Found

From a wire news story, published in 1913:

Queer Book Titles Found

London.—As the keeper of four millions of books, the late Dr. Fortescue delighted to tell of the titular curiosities in the British Museum. He found it necessary very frequently to dip deeply into a book before discovering its subject. Thus, "Music of the Wild" resolved itself into natural history; "Light for the Blind" into an appeal on behalf of foreign missions, and "Earl Percy's Dinner Table" into a war history.

But the book that baffled him completely was "The Abbey on the Marsh." There was internal evidence that the book was an account of a real abbey, but the author had forgotten to mention its name.

So the lesson, dear writers, is as you compose your book of nonfiction, let not your creativity in describing things allow you to forget to say the name of the darn thing.