June 14, 2013 On the Shelf A Book Vending Machine, and Other News By Sadie Stein A California library introduces a children’s book vending machine! The perfect number of children for literary success: a slideshow. As dirt goes, this seems pretty tame, but: it seems Avril Danica Haines, nominated as CIA number two, used to read Anne Rice (or should we say, A. N. Roquelaure?) aloud at her bookstore’s erotica night. “Grammar cops are rarely good writers. Imagination always disobeys.” Sherman Alexie starts a Tweet storm. We have mentioned Japan’s book towers, or tawaa tsumi, before. But I think we can agree that we all need to see more. (Even if the trend has been exaggerated.)
June 13, 2013 On the Shelf Books on the Floor, and Other News By Sadie Stein Pamela Paulsrud, Bibliophilism, 2006. Flooring. Made of books. “New Canadian research finds reading a literary short story increases one’s comfort with ambiguity.” ’Nuff said, really. Finland’s passport doubles as an excellent moose-themed flipbook, as it should. Notes on “politeness formulae.” Or, why we inexplicably sign e-mails with unwarranted thanks. Speaking of linguistics: the derivation of the term paperback.
June 12, 2013 On the Shelf The Knight’s Tale, and Other News By Sadie Stein A London street artist, with an apparent interest in Middle English, paints, among other motifs, scenes from The Canterbury Tales. In one day—well, a day filled with further NSA surveillance revelations—1984’s Amazon sales jumped 6,021%. Seattle librarians take to the streets on a series of customized, book-carrying bicycles. In Scotland, June 22 will be National Flash Fiction Day. We won’t pretend to prefer all of these reader-designed covers of classics, but the idea (and creativity!) is fantastic.
June 11, 2013 On the Shelf Dads Reading Exciting Books, and Other News By Sadie Stein Doesn’t it seem like a picture of a dad reading is about the last thing that would inspire recalcitrant kids to crack an exciting book? Either way: these vintage school library posters are fantastic. A glimpse at Edward Snowden’s bookshelf is … not that illuminating. (As one would expect of a spy.) In Norway, 50 Shades is wrested from the top of the best-seller list by a new translation of the Bible. Related: the many guises of Too Hot to Handle. (Apparently a perennial titular favorite!) This new font was developed specifically to help those with dyslexia.
June 10, 2013 On the Shelf Farewell, Iain Banks, and Other News By Sadie Stein Iain Banks died Sunday, age fifty-nine. Friends and colleagues pay tribute. “A stiff-legged figure in a wolf suit cuts a caper, pawing at the air, eyeing the page in front of him with mischief of one kind and another in mind. It’s Max, of course, there on the front of Google.co.uk to celebrate what would have been the eighty-fifth birthday of his creator, Maurice Sendak.” Is the doodle not in the spirit of the famously touchy Sendak? Scarlett Johansson is suing a French novelist for using her name—a character resembles her, so he refers to her that way for about sixty pages—sans permission. The Indiana Department of Education is trying to facilitate summer reading by making three thousand books available online and matching said titles to students’ interests and reading levels.
June 7, 2013 On the Shelf A Library Grows in Istanbul, and Other News By Sadie Stein The British comic novelist Tom Sharpe has died at 85. Protesters have erected a makeshift library in Istanbul. “The books, arranged on shelves laid on breeze blocks below a tarpaulin, range from left-wing philosophy to author Dan Brown. With contributions from individuals and bookstores, the number of books has swelled to more than 5,000.” Author John Green makes a passionate appeal to “strike down the insidious lie that a book is the creation of an individual soul laboring in isolation … because it threatens the overall quality and breadth of American literature.” Narrowing this list down to only ten misbehaving literary rogues must have been a challenge. (And we are offended on Bukowski’s behalf.) And without further ado: a dog who allegedly has a “grasp of the basic elements of grammar.”