January 4, 2013 Look In Praise of Bookstore Cats By Sadie Stein In addition to bringing the world the glory that is the Weird Book Room (plus, of course, the main site itself), AbeBooks curates a gallery of bookstore cats from all over North America. (We imagine international felines are welcome; the current batch just happens to hail from the U. S. and Canada. Certainly the resident orange cat at Paris’s Tea and Tattered Pages is a notable omission!) While a number of the kitties on display have literary names, Booker Fox, of the Book Nook in Mexico, Missouri, seems to be the only one with her own Facebook page, on which she gives literary recommendations. (The Street of the Fishing Cat was a recent pick.)
December 20, 2012 Look “Make Time, Not Love” By Jason Novak Jason Novak works at a grocery store in Berkeley, California, and changes diapers in his spare time.
December 6, 2012 Look F. Scott Fitzgerald, Lyricist By Sadie Stein About ten years ago, after depositing my brother at camp, my parents found themselves in a junk shop in upstate New York. My dad came upon the following playbill for The Evil Eye: A Musical Comedy in Two Acts, presented by the Princeton University Triangle Club from 1915 to 1916. He opened the first page and noticed the following: “Book by Edmund Wilson, Jr., 1916,” and, a bit further down, “Lyrics by F. Scott Fitzgerald, 1917.” Numbers like “Jump Off the Wall” and “Harris from Paris” may be lost to history, but we thought we’d share the program with you nevertheless! Pause Play Play Prev | Next
December 4, 2012 Look WPA Wants You to Read By Sadie Stein Melville House has a terrific slide show of WPA posters about books and reading. (The Library of Congress has even more!) The art is inspiring enough; the sentiments behind it, even more so. A few of our favorites, below. Read More
December 3, 2012 Look Norman Mailer, Sporting Goatee By Sadie Stein Did you know that Norman Mailer once affected a bohemian goatee? Well, he did. [tweetbutton] [facebook_ilike]
November 20, 2012 Look The Year 476: An Illustrated Panorama By Jason Novak History is full of linchpin dates around which the world is said to have pivoted. The year 476 is touted as the momentous one in which the Roman Empire fell and the world descended into a dark administrative vacuum inhabited by pillaging, horned demons. The reality is that, after blowing through dozens of emperors over the course of a generation, 476 was simply the year in which the ceremony of crowning yet another emperor didn’t seem worth the cost or trouble, and everyone stayed home. What is usually absent from the “Rome fell” story is that the eastern half of the Roman Empire flourished for another thousand years. In fact, 476 was when things were just getting interesting. The sixth-century historian Procopius wrote about his contemporaries in eastern Byzantine Rome in two works: one famous, one infamous. The first, the official history, paints a rosy picture of Emperor Justinian and his imperial accomplishments. The second, the “Secret History,” describes Justinian; his empress, Theodora; and their bosom companions General Belisarius and his wife, Antonina, as wicked, conniving, and so outrageously scandalous and beastly that the whole work has to be read as an act of either revenge or farce. Needless to say, the second one is a delight to read. The following panels are culled from both works, and from lore about the period: a miscellany on the exciting century that followed 476. Jason Novak works at a grocery store in Berkeley, California, and changes diapers in his spare time.