Tag Archives: books

These scorpions are probably hiding in your bookcase | SPLOID

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If you have old vintage books, you may have some book scorpions in your bookcase. Actually, you really should want to have them, even if they look scary and gross. Book scorpions protect your old books—they love to munch on the book lice that eat the glue which holds old books together.

A book scorpion or pseudoscorpion is not a true scorpion, hence its name. Theyre often mistaken for bedbugs, in fact, causing many people to kill them, which is obviously a big mistake for your collection of vintage encyclopedias. A book scorpion is also very tiny—too tiny to hurt you, so dont worry about being pinched when you pull out your original signed copy of The Metamorphosis.

READ MORE: These scorpions are probably hiding in your bookcase | SPLOID

The real Jane Austen immortalised as waxwork | CNET

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Working from a single confirmed portrait of the Regency author, a forensic artist has created what she believes to be the most accurate representation of Jane Austen possible. READ: The real Jane Austen immortalised as waxwork | CNET

13 Essential Lessons Little Women Can Teach You About Living Well | HuffPost Books

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13 Essential Lessons Little Women Can Teach You About Living Well

Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women, a two-volume novel following the four March sisters through their adolescence and young adulthood, was first published in the late 1860s. Almost 150 years later, the book remains remarkably popular; in fact, the unassuming tale is one of the ten most beloved books in America, according to a poll released recently by Harris International…

…Modern readers would not be alone in finding Little Women a bit fusty. The author herself notoriously described her children’s stories as “moral pap for the young.” She wrote the books not for artistic reasons, but to pay the bills. Yet it can’t be denied that her stories have spoken to generations of readers. Maybe because there are some genuinely good lessons for living in there — as well as some sneaky progressivism, endearing characters, and funny stories of everyday life. All in all, Little Women may not be perfect, but most of us could learn a great deal about how to live today from this old-fashioned novel…

READ: 13 Essential Lessons Little Women Can Teach You About Living Well | HuffPost Books

Your New Favorite Storytelling Website Is All About Books | BuzzFeed

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CallMeIshmael.com is a fascinating and fantastic new way to celebrate books. The concept is simple:

  • Step #1. Call Ishmael’s number: 774.325.0503. It goes straight to voicemail.
  • Step #2. Listen to Ishmael’s short answering machine message. It changes weekly.
  • Step #3. Leave a voicemail about a book you love and a story you have lived.

Read More: Your New Favorite Storytelling Website Is All About Books | BuzzFeed

The Genesis of Genius [Bronte Mini Books] | Harvard Gazette

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Flames of childhood passion often die. How many astronauts and ballerinas are among us? Yet some talent is so profound that even early efforts signify genius. The tiny, hand-lettered, hand-bound books Charlotte and Branwell Brontë made as children surely qualify. Measuring about 2.5 by 5 centimeters, page after mini-page brims with poems, stories, songs, illustrations, maps, building plans, and dialogue. The books, lettered in minuscule, even script, tell of the “Glass Town Confederacy,” a fictional world the siblings created for and around Branwell’s toy soldiers, which were both the protagonists of and audience for the little books.

READ MORE: The genesis of genius | Harvard Gazette.

This Waterproof Kindle Paperwhite Is Humanity’s Greatest Achievement | TechCrunch

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Sometimes a device comes so close to being perfect that you’d be forgiven for not realizing that with just a single tweak, it can become, in actual fact, perfect. The Kindle Paperwhite is such a device, as an e-reader that Amazon has crafted so well that you pretty much never need look beyond for anything better. But while a regular book ends up with wrinkly pages after being caught in a surprise downpour on the beach, the Paperwhite fizzles – unless you get the Waterfi-treated Kindle Paperwhite.

The Waterfi version is shipped in the original Kindle packaging without any outward appearance of having been modified. It looks and feels like a Kindle, albeit a slightly heavier version, and interacting with its touchscreen is the same as you’d find with an unmodified version. But because of Waterfi’s special treatment process, its Kindle Paperwhite is completely waterproof – submersible to above 200 feet in either fresh or salt water, for any length of time.

READ MORE: This Waterproof Kindle Paperwhite Is Humanity’s Greatest Achievement | TechCrunch

What Makes Old Books Smell Like Old Books? [Infographic]| Co.Exist

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One of the most unique and little-noted features of the dead-tree reading platform is its smell. A crisp new edition of Pride and Prejudice is scented a whole lot differently than the musty, middle-aged printing still being read in many a high school English class today.

But what causes these smells? A UK chemist and teacher who runs the blog Compound Interest, an exploration of everyday chemical compounds, went to investigate and came up with an infographic to explain the matter.

Read More: What Makes Old Books Smell Like Old Books? | Co.Exist | ideas + impact

What Makes Old Books Smell Like Old Books? | Co.Exist | ideas + impact

Calgary tops Amazons list of most well-read cities in Canada | Calgary Herald

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Here’s another way to confound your friends who still harbour wildly silly notions of Calgary as a city driven by good ole boys and Cowboys beer-tub girls: Calgary is the most well-read city in Canada, according to online retailer Amazon.ca.The city moved into the top spot in Amazon’s annual list of Most Well-Read Cities in Canada, measured by compiling sales of print and Kindle e-books from May 2013 to May 2014. Calgary overtook Vancouver, which held onto the No. 2 spot.

Read more: Calgary tops Amazons list of most well-read cities in Canada  | Calgary Herald

LETS REINVENT THE BOOKSHOP | More Intelligent Life

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Bookshops are closing down like nobody’s business. So do they need rethinking for the electronic age? Rosanna de Lisle asks four firms of architects and designers to create the bookshop of their dreams

READ: LETS REINVENT THE BOOKSHOP | More Intelligent Life

Awesomely Gross Medical Illustrations From the 19th Century | WIRED

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In the 19th century, doctors couldn’t use photographs to teach their students to distinguish between benign or cancerous growths. Or how teeth looked in patients affected by hereditary syphilis. Or the stages of cholera.

So the physicians, surgeons, and anatomists of the 1800s built close relationships with artists, craftsmen, and publishers to produce beautiful (yet horrifically off-putting at times) illustrations. In The Sick Rose: Disease and the Art of Medical Illustration, Richard Barnett collects up the best examples of these images. They—and the accompanying chapters of text, organized by disease—are endlessly fascinating.

 

Excerpted from The Sick Rose: Disease and the Art of Medical Illustration, by Richard Barnett, published this month by Distributed Art Publishers.

VIA: Awesomely Gross Medical Illustrations From the 19th Century | Science | WIRED.