Tag Archives: books

Book News Links

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Two Gaimen stories: Author Neil Gaiman to join Bard College faculty | The Wall Street Journal and Recurring Dream: Morpheus Returns In Gaiman’s ‘Sandman’ Prequel | NPR

What Do I Tell My Daughter About Ender’s Game? | HuffPost
A gay father’s perspective on Orson Scott Card’s homophobia, the book and the new film.

Amazon First Provides Early Access to New E-Books | PCMag
“Amazon [launches] Kindle First, a new program that offers customers access to books a month before their official launch — and serves as another tactic to encourage Prime memberships.”

A library of classics, edited for the teething set | Julie Bosman (The New York Times) | Manila Bulletin
“…[T]oday’s babies and toddlers are treated to board books that are miniature works of literary art: classics like “Romeo and Juliet,” “Sense and Sensibility” and “Les Misérables;” luxuriously produced counting primers with complex graphic elements; and even an “Art for Baby” book featuring images by the contemporary artists Damien Hirst and Paul Morrison.”

Facebook Drives the Most Traffic to Publishers, Beating Twitter and Reddit | Mashable. See the original report from Sharaholic.

Source: Statista (http://www.statista.com/topics/1164/social-networks/chart/1549/social-traffic-sources/)

Jane Austen game is a proper MMORPG [Kickstarter Project] | CNET

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Forget swords and sorcery. Ever, Jane invites MMO players into the treacherous waters of England’s Regency Period.

Read: Jane Austen game is a proper MMORPG | Crave – CNET.

Now this is a Kickstarter project I can get behind!

Jane Austen MMORPG

 

25 Literary GIFs for Book Lovers | Mashable

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See: 25 Literary GIFs for Book Lovers | Mashable.

One of my favourites…10. You never travel without at least one book.

10. You never travel without at least one book

Creature Feature: The Original Frankenstein Text Is Now Readable Online | Gizmodo

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In the pantheon of classic horror, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein ranks as one of the first, and most memorable, monster tales ever told. And while it’s easy enough to pick up a new copy of the spine-tingling 1818 narrative from pretty much any bookstore, it’s now possible to pore over the original, hand-penned manuscript online.

New York Public Library teamed up with the University of Maryland’s Institute for Technology in the Humanities to digitize Shelley’s two surviving notebooks containing most of the work—complete with edits by Percy Bysshe Shelley, her poet husband. Making this almost 200-year-old text click-accessible for a modern audience is only the first step for the Shelley-Godwin Archive, which hopes to digitize the entire oeuvre of the ultra-writerly family of Percy, Mary, and her parents, William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft.

There’s a pretty extensive how-to on the best ways to navigate the site, which fittingly launched this All Hallows Eve and is currently in beta mode. Have a look around at what genius looked like in the most truly terrifying time of them all: pre-word processing. [New York Times ArtsBeat]

Frankenstein
Image: Shelley, M. (1817). “Frankenstein—Draft Notebook B,”
in The Shelley-Godwin Archive, c. 57, fol. 29v.

via Creature Feature: The Original Frankenstein Text Is Now Readable Online | Gizmodo.

Recent Book News Links

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Publishers

Authors, Writers

Books, Bookstores, Media

Library Catalog Cards For Classic Books | HuffPost Books

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For many of us, a trip to the library these days involves an efficient search on the branch’s site, a hold placed on a hot new release, and a quick pop-in to collect our spoils.

It’s great that so many libraries have gone digital — and some have even gone bookless— because to remain open, remaining relevant is key. Still, it’s hard not to pine for the more quixotic days of dusty shelves and hand-written library catalog cards.

For those of us who romanticize a more tactile library experience, Chronicle Books has created stationary from images of The Library of Congress’s original cards for a number of classic authors. The text of each card interestingly matches the mood often evoked when imagining the author’s era.

See all: Library Catalog Cards For Classic Books (IMAGES) | HuffPost Books

30 Notecards from the Library of Congress | Chronicle Books

Jane Austen

Look Inside the Extremely Rare Codex Seraphinianus, the Weirdest Encyclopedia Ever | Wired.com

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A couple having sex metamorphoses into a crocodile. Fish eyes from some weird creature float on the surface of the sea, staring at me. A man is riding his own coffin. Text accompanies these surreal images, handwritten, seemingly ancient but totally unintelligible. I’ve just stepped into the bizarre universe of Codex Seraphinianus, the weirdest encyclopedia in the world.

Like a guide to an alien world, Codex Seraphinianus is 300 pages of descriptions and explanations for an imaginary existence, all in its own unique (and unreadable) alphabet, complete with thousands of drawings and graphs. Issued for the first time in 1981 by publisher Franco Maria Ricci, it has been a collector’s favorite for years, before witnessing a sudden rise in popularity thanks to a growing fandom on the Internet. Now a new-and-improved edition from Italian publisher Rizzoli is about to hit bookshelves on Oct. 29, with 3,000 pre-ordered copies already sold out. The Codex attracts a new generation of fans, people who grew up surfing the net and eager to explore the exciting and relentless world outside, as bizarre as it is depicted in the book.

Look Inside the Extremely Rare Codex Seraphinianus, the Weirdest Encyclopedia Ever | Underwire | Wired.com

via Look Inside the Extremely Rare Codex Seraphinianus, the Weirdest Encyclopedia Ever | Underwire | Wired.com.

“The Book Thief” Wants You To Imagine A World Without Words, Starting With The New York Times | Co.Create

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As visuals go, it’s not the most mind-blowing advertisement you’ve ever seen–but the image of two consecutive blank pages of the New York Times, purchased to promote Fox’s upcoming film The Book Thief, is striking nonetheless.

Read:  “The Book Thief” Wants You To Imagine A World Without Words, Starting With The New York Times | Co.Create | creativity + culture + commerce.

Book News Links: Life Changing Books, 20 Ranked YA Heroines, NY Times Keeps Hyphen in E-Book, Syria Publishing, Hotel Libraries, Children’s Books Illustrations, Beckham Book Signing

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32 Books That Will Actually Change Your Life | BuzzFeed
And all you have to do is read them!

20 Classic YA Literature Heroines, Ranked | Flavorwire

E-Book Keeps Hyphen in NY Times Style Guide Refresh | Galley Cat
The word “e-book” will remain hyphenated at The New York Times, according to the publisher’s latest version of its style guide which was updated this week. However, according to the new rules, “e-mail” will now be spelled “email” on The Times’ news pages and online sites. The AP Style guide dropped the hyphen in the word back in 2011.

Publishing is Another Victim of Syria’s Civil War | Publishing Perspectives

9 Hotel Libraries (And Library Hotels) That Bring Books To Life | HuffPost

The Best Illustrations From All Your Favorite Children’s Books | FastCompany
Paddington Bear to Peter Pan, a new exhibit at the British Library celebrates our most nostalgic picturebooks.

‘Global digital book signing’ for Beckham | The Bookseller
David Beckham will hold a “groundbreaking” global digital book signing event on 30th October, for the launch of his latest book David Beckham (Headline).

Book News Links: AZ Banned Books Objection, Fans Diss Veronica Roth’s Allegiant, Myers-Briggs Book Recommendations, 28% Americans Have Not Read in the Past Year

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Arizona Education Dept. Liked It Better When These Books Were Banned | HuffPost
The Arizona Education Department is objecting to the Tucson school board’s decision to rescind a classroom ban on seven books once used to teach a controversial Mexican American Studies course.

Hell Hath No Fury Like a Superfan Scorned | BookRiot
The hype for Veronica Roth’s Allegiant (published October 22, 2013) has been huge. When it released, it immediately became the #1 selling book in Amazon’s Kindle store, outselling the final book of the Hunger Games trilogy nearly 5 to 1 . To me, the really fascinating data is the initial customer review response to the book. At the time of this writing (the day after the release), the book had 278 customer reviews, with 138 reviews being one-star reviews, and another 33 reviews ranked as two-star reviews. Drama, drama.

Here Is The One Perfect Book For Every Single Myers-Briggs Type | HuffPost
Recommending books is a tricky business. One person’s trashy romance novel is another person’s treasure. Of course, a little background on a person’s reading preferences can come in handy, but sometimes deciphering tastes can seem like an arbitrary and headache-inducing task. Still, we’re willing to bet that like-minded people enjoy similar stories — That’s where Myers-Briggs comes in.

POLL: 28 Percent Of Americans Have Not Read A Book In The Past Year | HuffPost
According to a HuffPost/YouGov poll asking 1,000 U.S. adults about their reading habits, 41 percent of respondents had not read a fiction book in the past year; 42 percent had not read a nonfiction book.