toujours tingo

Tuesday 30th December 2008 - 1:18:06 AM

tingo

Toujours Tingo: Weird words and bizarre phrases:

Toujours Tingo, a book by Adam Jacot de Boinod, lists weird words and bizarre phrases from around the world. The “tingo” of its title is an Easter Island word, meaning to borrow objects from a friend’s house one by one until there are none left.

Awesome. Thanks to this book (and article), my vocabulary has a new addition: “Layogenic: Filipino for someone good-looking from afar but ugly up close.” Yes! Why the author doesn’t blog more is beyond me. (via Angie on facebook)

totally novel picturebook frame

Tuesday 23rd December 2008 - 1:53:59 AM

novelframe

There is a lot of amazing cover art out there. Now there’s an easy way to frame it: Totally Novel Picturebook Frame.

guest post from john addiego

Tuesday 9th December 2008 - 8:58:57 PM

idm

You’d think that once the travel and jetlag are over, things would be more or less as before. Apparently that’s only true if you don’t have a baby. Perhaps next time I’ll bring Massimo’s sitter with me?

It’s times like this when a guest post is much appreciated. John Addiego, author of The Islands of Divine Music, was kind enough to share his thoughts about books as objects, especially now that he has a book with his name on it. Without further ado:

I love the heft and feel of a book. I won’t hold it against the commuters plugged into their electronic books—I’ve heard that some even give the illusion of page-turning and book-marking—and I enjoy an audio book on the road, but I’ve always loved the physicality of a book. My mom was a reader, and I remember digging through used books with her in off-campus stores on rainy days. There were shelves and stacks and piles of books to hunt among, skyscrapers of old books. In my late teens, when I fell in love with certain authors, I returned to these stores for hidden treasure. I remember rooting among the volumes in that musty smell of leaves and dust, something like the duff under trees, and finding the Collected Yeats. Some college student had written margin notes: Symbol? Celtic myth? Maude, again?

Getting to hold my own new book is a thrill. It has a lovely cover and binding, and the typeface is suggestive of long-ago times. The publisher has given it a sense of presentation I didn’t anticipate, but it fits and complements the story. In this way it is starting to take on a life of its own, a child entering the adult world and making eccentric friends.

I have so many memories of reading in the great outdoors, on trains and buses, books I carried in a knapsack with my journal. I remember reading Dune while hiking through the Southwest, Siddhartha all night on a train while snow slid down the window and sparkled in moonlight. In France I observed a woman sitting across from my wife and daughter in a train compartment, reading what I took to be a mystery, and I was struck by the open expression on her face, and the way she caressed the volume before placing it in her satchel. I think it’s that intimacy of a book that I love, especially as we come to the end, and close our eyes, and hold it close.

addiego

I so enjoyed reading The Islands of Divine Music, which reads like a collection of short stories about one family (kinda like Natasha: And Other Stories by David Bezmozgis). I hope you’ll check it out.

this is where we live

Tuesday 9th December 2008 - 6:16:22 PM


This Is Where We Live from 4th Estate on Vimeo.

4th Estate: 25 Years.

travel plans

Monday 1st December 2008 - 9:05:11 AM

I’ve been collecting so many links and cool things to post, but I just haven’t had a moment to do so. Between Thanksgiving (yes, we observe Thanksgiving, even though we’re on this side of the ocean) and my trip with Littler Inch to the US today, I haven’t had time for posting. That will change once my feet are firmly on the ground again, in Austin. BookPeople, here I come! Although NOT, NOT, NOT on December 7th.

the fade theory holiday gift guide

Friday 21st November 2008 - 5:19:46 AM

Posts around here have been so sparse because I’ve been busy putting together The Official Fade Theory Holiday Gift Guide! Every blog out there seems to have a holiday gift guide. I suppose the intent is to limit the options, but most of the time gift guides introduce me to products I had no clue existed. Hence, more options, and I now avoid gift guides as much as possible.

But that is no reason for you to avoid mine. Besides, I didn’t want all of you to think I didn’t care enough to create one. And so, in my attempt to truly limit the options and make your life easier, you have two routes:

A) Buy your friend or loved one a book. Reading is fun!

B) Make a donation to a non-profit on your friend’s or loved one’s behalf. They may be pissed off for a day or two, but they’ll get over it.

See how magical a gift guide can be? I know you felt wave upon wave of stress relief. And now that we have that out of the way…

daniel alarcón wins pen usa award

Thursday 20th November 2008 - 12:20:04 PM

lcr

I’ve more or less stopped paying attention to all the literary awards. Not sure why exactly, I guess I just lost interest. Anyway, the PEN USA 2008 LITERARY AWARD WINNERS were announced a few days ago. I didn’t pay attention at the time (didn’t even glance over the list of winners), but I just saw that the fiction winner was Daniel Alarcón’s Lost City Radio.

I never got around to posting a review of Lost City Radio, but I did read it about a year ago. I picked it up because he was listed as one of the new voices representing Latin American literature. Yesterday’s magical realism is today’s gritty realism. Anyway, the novel opened up a world of recent history that I was quite ignorant about. I read it quickly (a page-turner, as they say) and was satisfied with the read, except for the main character. I suspect that Alarcón just doesn’t write women very well, but I found her emotionally stiff. Alarcón isn’t my new favorite writer (obviously), but I’m glad I read Lost City Radio and will gladly read any future novels.

P.S. I wrote this post several days ago, but apparently I have mommy brain and forgot how to set the stupid thing to auto-publish. Better late than never.

imitation, influence… and coincidence

Thursday 20th November 2008 - 7:53:40 AM

iic

I received an email yesterday from Covering Photography’s Karl Baden, who curated an exhibition now on view (until 31 December) at the Boston Public Library. It’s called Imitation, Influence… and Coincidence:

The exhibit explores the influence of iconic photographs on book cover design by comparing book covers from Baden’s own collection that he believes were either directly appropriated or influenced by famous photographs, with book illustrations of the original photographs, as the photographer meant them to be seen.

For those of us who aren’t able to see it in person, there’s a virtual version that’s definitely worth a look-see. And by the way, I blogged about Covering Photography here in 2006.

happy people read

Tuesday 18th November 2008 - 12:12:45 PM

Unhappy People Watch TV, Happy People Read (and Socialize). (Was it you who posted about this, Trav?)

zukzuk

Monday 17th November 2008 - 4:11:41 PM

zukzuk

I like the peacocks of Zukzuk.

the portable library project

Monday 17th November 2008 - 4:08:21 PM

plp

It must be art and design day at fade theory. The Portable Library Project:

Invited artists were sent/delivered an empty cigar box, roughly the size of a hardcover book. Over the course of a week, individuals were expected to create a ‘book’ a day reflective of each person’s day-to-day activities and artistic process. Books were ideally made while on the go; boxes were intended to be carried with the participant, where books were to be added and collected each day for seven days.

Click here for our Aimee’s submission (yes, our Aimee). So cool. How did I miss this?

design nearby 2008

Monday 17th November 2008 - 4:02:48 PM

designnearby

Design Nearby 2008:

The annual Design Nearby show at pinkcomma gallery kickstarts the holiday shopping season with “Cloth, Paper, Scissors.” This one-night exhibition and sale (on Friday, December 12) builds on 2007’s successful print-themed show (deemed “contempo” and featured in DailyCandy’s weekend edition). This year’s show focuses on printed, sliced and stitched works by Boston-area artists and designers. Whether on paper, canvas, t-shirts, or textiles, the sixteen featured artists display a variety and breadth of design sensibilities. Each designer will present two to six pieces, with editions available for sale.

Oh, to be in Boston.

the islands of divine music

Wednesday 12th November 2008 - 11:52:39 AM

idm

One of Unbridled’s fall titles, The Islands of Divine Music by John Addiego, was featured in the Book Brahmian section of today’s Shelf Awareness:

Your top five authors:

This is so hard. I guess my all-time favorites would be James Joyce, Saul Bellow, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Italo Calvino and Ian McEwan. I’d put Joyce on the mound, McEwan at short and the other three in the outfield chasing the deep, lofty drives.

Yes, he likes baseball. We might not have that in common, but we do both like GGM and Mr. Calvino (yes, I like the others, too, but they’re not favorites). Stay tuned for more on Addiego…

books for the holidays

Wednesday 12th November 2008 - 11:25:30 AM

Perhaps you’ve already seen folks around the web promoting books as great gifts, especially considering the hurting economy. Now there’s even a site devoted to the concept: Books for the Holidays. I was watching a movie the other day (can’t recall which one) in which the main character said to someone, “No woman wants a book as a gift.” Wrong. Anyone who wants me to love them forever, best get me a book. And most of the items on Massimo’s wishlist are books, too.

How about you? Do you often buy books as holiday gifts (or for other occasions)? Do you prefer books over other gifts? Any books you’re particularly itching for this year?

of bibliophilia and biblioclasm

Tuesday 11th November 2008 - 8:09:01 PM

Of Bibliophilia and Biblioclasm:

Orwell did not have a high regard for the customers, who struck him as awkward and mainly suffering from psychological problems. As a long-time habitué of second-hand bookshops, I should say that this is a fairly typical attitude of booksellers to buyers, whom they regard largely with contempt. This contempt arises not only from the character of book-buyers, but from their tastes. I knew a bookseller, a communist of the Enver Hoxha faction, who was constantly frustrated and irritated that the elderly black ladies of the area in which he had his shop were always asking for Bibles rather than for revolutionary literature that he thought that they, as the most downtrodden of the downtrodden, ought to have been reading. Another bookshop owner of my acquaintance so hated his customers that he would sometimes play Schoenberg very loudly to clear the shop of them. It was a very effective technique.

and

According to the owner of a bookshop that I have now been patronising for forty years (and who seemed to me to be of the older generation when I first met him, but now seems, mysteriously, to be precisely the same age as I), browsing in the fashion and for the purpose that I have just described is a thing of the past. Young people do not do it any more, as they still did when he started his life in the trade. Instead, they have a purely instrumental or utilitarian attitude to bookshops: they come in, ask whether he has such and such a title, and if he does not they leave at once, usually with visible disgruntlement: for what is the point of a bookshop that does not have the very title that they want here and now?

Oh, just read the whole thing. It’s worth it. (via Father Inch)

korey ditri busegera tizis