wear books like hats upon your crazy heads

(via fuckyeahundercuts) can I grow up to be her?

Sun, 20 Dec 2009 17:31:22 -0600

(via fuckyeahundercuts)

can I grow up to be her?

(via ohcardigan)

Mon, 14 Dec 2009 08:05:55 -0600

(via ohcardigan)

(via wearemaps)

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 18:02:30 -0600

(via wearemaps)

from "Sunset on Mont Blanc"

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 17:39:09 -0600

“The sun rose on one of those fresh dewy dawns unknown except in the mountains, when the buoyant air seems as it were to penetrate every pore in one’s body.
[…]
The heavy, sodden framework of flesh and blood which I languidly dragged along London streets underwent a strange transformation, and it was with scarcely a conscious effort that I breasted the monstrous hill which towered above me. The pinewoods gave out their aromatic scent, and the little glades were deep in ferns, wild-flowers, and strawberries. Even here, the latent terrors of the mountains were kept in mind by the huge boulders which, at some distant day, had crashed like cannon-balls through the forest. But the great mountain was not now indulging in one of his ponderous games at bowls, and the soft carpeting of tender vegetation suggested rather luxurious indolence, and, maybe, recalled lazy picnics rather than any more strenuous memories.”

Sir Leslie Stephen

I kind of really adore nature/adventure writing. I love the “strange transformation”, the scents of the forest, and the contrast of terror and indolence. This is from a collection of mountain literature, called Where the Silence Rings, ed. Grady.

wingsandfins: libraryland: goodtimeforpie: just stumbled...

Sat, 14 Nov 2009 18:54:48 -0600

wingsandfins:

libraryland:

goodtimeforpie:

just stumbled across My Penguin, where you can design your own cover for classic books. they also asked 7 bands to contribute covers. above is the Dragonette cover for Alice In Wonderland. fantastic project.

They’re no longer taking covers, but the gallery is something else.

Amazing! Penguin Deluxe editions are so wicked.

"It is what you read when you don’t have to that determines what you will be when you can’t help it."

Sat, 27 Jun 2009 09:11:53 -0500

“It is what you read when you don’t have to that determines what you will be when you can’t help it.”

- Oscar Wilde (via 52books)

All Objects Reveal Something About the Body | Catie Rosemurgy

Wed, 24 Jun 2009 23:38:11 -0500

Crisp is to the apple what
flexed is to the body.

Poor apple.

Being bitten is to the crisp apple
what walking is to the ripe body, but it’s more complicated than that:

the apple of the face has been given
to the running juice of the body

and the body, which is often gracious,
makes it shine.

Lucky apple.

Having a core is to the apple
what having a core is to the body, city, method, circumstance, endeavor.

Having a core is flower-shaped and hurts
in the way that having a shape hurts, which is to say

it hurts ironically, because to have limits
is not just to make a declaration upon a mountainside,

it is also to be the mountainside. Having a flowering core
also hurts in the way that being flower-like always hurts,

which is to say sexually, as if the whole self
has exceeded the skin, which it hasn’t, which means

we always seem to be opening but never ever do.
Both these types of suffering color the air

when we pause to have them. The affected atoms
are hard to see amongst the billions

of sofa atoms, newsprint atoms
but, like the illnesses in the crystalline sea, they are there.

Red apple sliced, quartered, salted. Green apple,

alone in the basket.
Anything left on the shelf becomes weak,

suggestible, vulnerable to other shapes, hungry to be refilled
by something other than itself,

a poison apple.
The joining we do with others needs containing.

Apple pie.
Imagine the mess. Imagine a finger touching the sack of the heart.

Imagine being stopped, controlled that powerfully.
Imagine nothing like that being possible. Nothing ever stopping you

at the root of the breath. Huge apple.
The world in reference to you. How you move. Time a backdrop.

Or close the other eye: you in reference to the world.
How it varies and happens simultaneously.

Good morning.
Little apple.

"Mad fathers stalk up and down the boulevards, shouting. Avoid them, or embrace them, or tell them..."

Wed, 24 Jun 2009 17:33:56 -0500

“Mad fathers stalk up and down the boulevards, shouting. Avoid them, or embrace them, or tell them your deepest thoughts—it makes no difference, they have deaf ears. If their dress is covered with sewn-on tin cans and their spittle is like a string of red boiled crayfish running head-to-tail down the front of their tin cans, serious impairment of the left brain is present. If, on the other hand, they are simply barking (no tin cans, spittle held securely in the pouch of the cheek), they have been driven to distraction by the intricacies of living with others. Go up to them, and, stilling their wooden clappers by putting your left hand between the hinged parts, say you’re sorry. If the barking ceases, this does not mean that they have heard you, it only means they are experiencing erotic thoughts of abominable luster. Permit them to enjoy these images for a space, and then strike them sharply in the nape with the blade of your tanned right hand. Say you’re sorry again. It won’t get through to them (because their brains are mush) but in pronouncing the words, your body will assume an attitude that conveys, in every country of the world, sorrow—this language they can understand. Gently feed them with bits of leftover meat you are carrying in your pockets. First hold the meat in front of their eyes, so that they can see what it is, and then point to their mouths, so that they know that the meat is for them. Mostly, they will open their mouths, at this point. If they do not, throw the meat in between barks. If the meat does not get all the way into the mouth but lands upon (say) the upper lip, hit them again in the neck, this often causes the mouth to pop open and the meat sticking to the upper lip to fall into the mouth. Nothing may work out in the way I have described; in this eventuality, you can do not much for a mad father except listen, for a while, to his babble. If he cries aloud, “Stomp it, emptor!” then you must attempt to figure out the code. If he cries aloud, “The fiends have killed your horse!” note down in your notebook the frequency with which the words “the” and “your” occur in his tirade. If he cries aloud, “The cat’s in its cassock and flitter-te-hee moreso stomp it!” remember that he has already asked you once to “stomp it” and that this must refer to something you are doing. So stomp it.”

- Donald Barthelme, “A Manual for Sons” from The Dead Father

(I am making my way through The Count of Monte Cristo so it’s going to be a little while before I have any more review-type things. In the interim, Barthelme.)

wingsandfins: i12bent: “Approached in 1926 by publisher R. R....

Wed, 24 Jun 2009 10:13:52 -0500

wingsandfins:

i12bent:

“Approached in 1926 by publisher R. R. Donnelley to produce an illustrated edition of Richard Henry Dana, Jr.’s Two Years Before the Mast, Rockwell Kent suggested Moby-Dick instead. Published in 1930 by the Lakeside Press of Chicago, the three-volume limited edition filled with Kent’s haunting black and white wood engravings sold out immediately; Random House produced a trade edition which was also immensely popular. A previously obscure book, Moby Dick had been rediscovered by critics in the early 1920s. The success of the Rockwell Kent illustrated edition was a factor in its becoming recognized as the classic it is today.” (Wiki)

Found this today in a vintage shop for $10. I was juuuuuust a...

Tue, 23 Jun 2009 19:05:27 -0500

Found this today in a vintage shop for $10. I was juuuuuust a little excited.

Photo

Tue, 23 Jun 2009 19:03:09 -0500

My collection of Tolkien, not including the Extended Edition DVD...

Tue, 23 Jun 2009 19:00:25 -0500

My collection of Tolkien, not including the Extended Edition DVD Boxset. Yup, I’m a dork.

Omnivoracious: Leave an Idea, Take an Idea: Five Things Someone Else Should Totally Do (Guest Blogger China Mieville)

Sun, 21 Jun 2009 20:55:32 -0500

Omnivoracious: Leave an Idea, Take an Idea: Five Things Someone Else Should Totally Do (Guest Blogger China Mieville):

China Mieville: smart, outstanding writer, generous with the wicked ideas. Read this!

The pen is mighty

Sun, 21 Jun 2009 15:15:21 -0500

The pen is mighty:

cbc.ca/arts/books picks Canada’s 10 best English-language poets. I’ll have to check a few of these out.

Ray Bradbury Fighting On Behalf Of Libraries With Utter Badassery

Sun, 21 Jun 2009 11:49:43 -0500

Ray Bradbury Fighting On Behalf Of Libraries With Utter Badassery:

aquabooks:

“Yahoo called me eight weeks ago,” he said, voice rising. “They wanted to put a book of mine on Yahoo! You know what I told them? ‘To hell with you. To hell with you and to hell with the Internet.’

“It’s distracting,” he continued. “It’s meaningless; it’s not real. It’s in the air somewhere.”

A Yahoo spokeswoman said it was impossible to verify Mr. Bradbury’s account without more details.

(via apollosraven)

Ray Bradbury is my HERO. Heck, I even owe the title of this blog-thing to him.

Bookdwarf » Post Apocalyptic Fiction

Sun, 21 Jun 2009 04:01:58 -0500

Bookdwarf » Post Apocalyptic Fiction:

A good jumping point for some post-apocalyptic reads.

Smaug | Contrariwise: Literary Tattoos

Sat, 20 Jun 2009 16:01:02 -0500

Smaug | Contrariwise: Literary Tattoos:

I would love to get a Tolkien tattoo someday. This one is pretty damn excellent.

Bookshelf: Mission Inspired Revolving Bookcase

Sat, 20 Jun 2009 09:58:26 -0500

Bookshelf: Mission Inspired Revolving Bookcase:

this is the perfect bookshelf. LOVE IT.

"I took the dog out for a walk tonight, and together we wandered across the meadow next door. It was..."

Sat, 20 Jun 2009 09:52:00 -0500

“

I took the dog out for a walk tonight, and together we wandered across the meadow next door. It was a warm summer’s night, dark, and moonless. There were a handful of fireflies flickering intermittently, some so close to me I could see they were burning green as they flew, and some further away, who seemed to be flashing white.

And in the sky above them a continual roil of distant summer lightning (the storm distant enough that it was silent) burned and flashed and illuminated the clouds. It seemed as if the lightning bugs were talking to the lightning, in a perfect call and response of flash and counterflash. I watched the sky and the meadow flash and flash while the dog walked ahead of me, and realised that I was perfectly happy…

”

- Neil Gaiman’s Journal: the lightning and the lightning bug

Why A Man Cannot Have Wings | Alfian bin Sa'at

Sat, 20 Jun 2009 09:50:00 -0500

Because he will crash land on his head, assuming it to be
The strongest part of his body.

Because someone will put up a sign that reads:
Do Not Step on the Cirrus Clouds.

Because it does not even take a man hundreds of feet above
Sea-level to learn contempt.

Because there will be new categories of handicaps: bow-wings,
Ostrich disease, scaly feathers, carousel flight syndrome,
Or at a freak show: The Amazing Wingless Wonder.

Because he will have a new weapon, gravity,
And everything he releases becomes a missile,
Even glass marbles, books, the fatal music box.

Because he is lonely enough without being able to
Frame the house he lives in between his forefinger and thumb.

Because then the sky will shed its metaphors of freedom
And become another path for him to carry his burdens.

Because there will be a popular form of suicide:
Flying into foreign airspace and being gunned down;
All it takes is a nose-tip to press an invisible blue button.

Because each death in mid-air, each comic comet plunge,
Will be another enactment of the fall of Man.

Because in concentration camps people will break wings
And use the feathers for quills to write sonnets
And pillow stuffing for innocent dreams.

Because he will have less to fantasize about, less of miracles
And the word ‘levitation’ will not exist.

Because there will be children who will empty their bladders
Under cloud cover in an attempt to make yellow snow.

And because he might get the wrong notion that he is closer
To heaven, when he has not even come to a mile
Within the presence of angels, despite the resemblance.