May 19th, 2010 | by theorist | published in history, reading
I celebrated my 29th birthday earlier this month. It was a tough day (not because it was my birthday, but for other reasons), made better by two birthday thoughts I received. I’m going to share them here because I continue to find them tremendously powerful and beautiful and true…
March 26th, 2009 | by theorist | published in books, culture, history, reading
“Seriously, the New York Public Library has a secret room reserved for people with book contracts?”
March 25th, 2009 | by theorist | published in books, culture, history, publishing
Bibliography and scholarly editing according to Tanselle…
March 10th, 2009 | by theorist | published in books, culture, history, news, publishing, reading
My jaw dropped today when I saw it’s been a month since my last post. Where does the time go? Well, lately it’s been going to work, Mo, and apartment hunting. After 2.5 years of sitting on the couch while I work, it’s just time to get a bigger place so I can have a [...]
February 9th, 2009 | by theorist | published in books, culture, history, publishing, reading, writing
The Bat Segundo Show is always a fun listen, but some episodes are of particular interest. This time it’s an interview with Azar Nafisi (BSS #260). Azar Nafisi is most recently the author of Things I’ve Been Silent About, as well as Reading Lolita in Tehran. Check it out.
February 5th, 2009 | by theorist | published in books, history, news, publishing
Publisher teeters:
It’s the latest chapter in the convoluted recent history of a grand old Boston name, a publishing institution since 1832. As recently as 2001, Houghton was a strong independent company with thriving K-12 and college textbook businesses and a stable of such best-selling authors as Roger Tory Peterson, JRR Tolkien, Philip Roth, and Rachel [...]
February 5th, 2009 | by theorist | published in books, culture, history, publishing
The latest episode of BBC Radio 4’s In Our Time is all about The Brothers Grimm:
Cinderella does not have a Fairy Godmother, Sleeping Beauty does not have an evil stepmother, Rapunzel is pregnant and Frog Princes do not get kissed but thrown against walls.
This is the world of the Brothers Grimm – two German siblings [...]
February 3rd, 2009 | by theorist | published in books, culture, history, paper art, reading, text art
Things in Books:
I’ve found all sorts of things in all sorts of books, haven’t you? A receipt. A letter. A bookmark. A wrapper. A flower. A train ticket. A glimpse into the random doings of another person, leaving you to wonder who they were, what they were doing. Leaving you to marvel at the chaotic [...]
February 2nd, 2009 | by theorist | published in books, culture, design, history, publishing, text art
In case you missed it last week, check out BibliOdyssey’s Grand Alphabet Amusant post.
February 2nd, 2009 | by theorist | published in books, history, publishing
A Prayer For Archimedes:
For seventy years, a prayer book moldered in the closet of a family in France, passed down from one generation to the next. Its mildewed parchment pages were stiff and contorted, tarnished by burn marks and waxy smudges. Behind the text of the prayers, faint Greek letters marched in lines up the [...]
February 2nd, 2009 | by theorist | published in books, history
DNA testing may unlock secrets of medieval manuscripts:
Thousands of painstakingly handwritten books produced in medieval Europe still exist today, but scholars have long struggled with questions about when and where the majority of these works originated. Now a researcher from North Carolina State University is using modern advances in genetics to develop techniques that will [...]
January 29th, 2009 | by theorist | published in books, culture, design, history, publishing
For Publisher Of Literature, Printed Word Is His Reward:
What compels a man, 63, to run a side business in publishing books mainly of poems, as well as reprints of classics, in the year 2009? Not money. Orchises, which has published 115 titles, nets about $12,000 annually, so he and his wife, Begoña, who home-schools their [...]
January 29th, 2009 | by theorist | published in culture, history, publishing
Publishing is hurting. There are layoffs everywhere, newspapers are reducing their pages (The Washington Post’s Book World didn’t make the grade), magazines are closing up shop… It should come as no surprise, then, that college newspapers have also been hit by the economic downturn. Let’s face it, print publications can’t get buy with just subscriptions, [...]
January 27th, 2009 | by theorist | published in books, culture, history, reading
Wonder Book and Video: Fast-Growing Reseller Navigates the Changing World of Online Commerce:
The owner of Wonder Book and Video is standing in a 54,000-square-foot warehouse in Frederick, waving an arm toward what looks like a combination of the world’s biggest bookstore and a grungy aircraft hangar.
Eight-foot metal and wooden shelves, housing the used books Roberts [...]
January 27th, 2009 | by theorist | published in culture, history, publishing
I love me some publishing history. From The New Yorker:
The Stamp Act—the “fatal Black-Act,†one printer called it—was set to go into effect on November 1, 1765. Beginning that day, printers were to affix stamps to their pages and to pay tax collectors a halfpenny for every half sheet—amounting, ordinarily, to a penny for every [...]
The habit of reading is the only enjoyment in which there is no alloy; it lasts when all other pleasures fade. ~ Anthony Trollope . Subscribe via RSS »
