“Dolce far niente” 1877
Auguste Toulmouche
art movement: Academic art
nationality: French
To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis
So I was loaned this book by someone with, apparently, the exact same taste in books as me (I mean, not really, but his is SUPER CLOSE). Because, okay, it’s sci fi—time travel sci fi—by a British lady, and it’s basically… a P. G. Wodehouse novel. Except with an unbelievably good plot.
Like. Even if it was terrible, jesus christ, what a fucking gorgeous concept. And it wasn’t terrible! It was AMAZING! I can’t believe I hadn’t ever read it before—it was very Diana Wynne Jones-y; seriously, she almost could have written it.
I love this book a whole lot.
Number 1 recommendation when people ask for new readables.
What happens if you flip gendered book covers?
You are informed about a book’s perceived quality through a number of ways. Probably the biggest is the cover.
And the simple fact of the matter is, if you are a female author, you are much more likely to get the package that suggests the book is of a lower perceived quality. Because it’s “girly,” which is somehow inherently different and easier on the palate. A man and a woman can write books about the same subject matter, at the same level of quality, and that woman is simple more likely to get the soft-sell cover with the warm glow and the feeling of smooth jazz blowing off of it.
This idea that there are “girl books” and “boy books” and “chick lit” and “whatever is the guy equivalent of chick lit”* gives credit to absolutely no one, especially not the boys who will happily read stories by women, about women. As a lover of books and someone who supports readers and writers of both sexes, I would love a world in which books are freed from some of these constraints. Click here to read more about the perceived differences between ‘girl’ and ‘boy’ books.
This is a pretty interesting experiment from author Maureen Johnson.
I read this earlier today. Really, really worth looking at and thinking about. There’s a whole gallery of them.
YES. I’m tired of all of you pretentious assholes saying that I’m not “really reading” because I use a kindle.
Yes, you are reading.You are just reading a “lesser” form of book. Reading isn’t just reading the words on a page/screen, it’s smelling the book, new or old, it’s wearing the books spine out after rereading it for the X’th time, it’s leaving crease marks on a page you flipped too fast because you were that eager to get to the next page, and most of all, it’s losing yourself in a book to the point where the world around you no longer exists. And I, for one, cannot lose myself in an electronic screen. The words of a real book take on a depth that cannot ever be recreated on anything electronic. So you may be reading a book, but you will never truly experience a book unless you read it in a printed medium.
What ineffable twaddle.
If it’s a large chunk of narrative prose that contains a story with a beginning, a middle and an end, then it’s a book, whether it’s inside an electronic device or between paper covers or boards.
If you can surrender yourself so deeply to a story that you forget whether you’re holding a device or something bound between covers, or even (at best) that you exist at all, then the most important thing has happened. You are in the white-hot core of reading, and the very last things that can possibly matter are paper weights or smells or other mere details of materials technology. You won’t have time to get all precious about your sensoria, because the story will be ruthlessly overriding yours until it’s wrung you out and let you go. If you’re purposely stopping in mid-tale to waste your time gourmandizing over the smell of the binding, you’re not a reader: you’re (at best) very confused or (at worst) a garden-variety snob.
(eyeroll) Of course physical books have a unique beauty. But that beauty is only of value because of the content: the words, the stories. Remove those and all the paper and leather are rendered merely vaguely attractive decorative objects. It’s what’s inside that counts.
The contents of a Kindle or an iPad can leave you as effectively heartbroken or weeping with joy as the most beat-up paperback or busted-spined tome. If old reading habits can’t be broken, if you prefer books, fine. Read them. But don’t presume to talk down to fellow readers because of footling differences about format.
(eyeroll) Seriously.
(ETA: whoops, I plagiarized Arthur Conan Doyle. Sorry, Artie.)
Tcha, books are like so mainstream. You’re not really reading if it’s not on a papyrus scroll.
(Source: piratesswoop)
npr:
nypl:
We’re speechless… and also curious whether we would ever be able to eat any of these cakes, let along cut into one of them. But, we want one anyway.
Of course, we also think that you should read the book while you eat its cake doppelganger, so why not visit NYPL’s online catalog and pick one up today!
Mmmmmm, cake! — tanya b.
(Source: bookconfectionery)
Lovely poems Waterstones!
the last one, i’m dying
The perfect end to Valentine’s Day. God bless you Waterstones.
The Duchess Affair is currently at the top of my list of favorite (straight) romance novels and you can now get it for $1.99 from Kobo. (If you don’t use Kobo, the full retail price of $3.99 is hardly going to break the bank either.) DRM-free!!
Powell's Books: “I don’t know about you, but I’m kind of fed up with realism. After...
“I don’t know about you, but I’m kind of fed up with realism. After all, there’s enough reality already; why make more of it? Why not leave realism for the memoirs of drug addicts, the histories of salt, the biographies of porn stars? Why must we continue to read about the travails of divorced…
“Somewhere along the way we have confused the love of books with the love of reading. For many dedicated readers it seems infeasible that they might enjoy a book without the dry rustle of paper, or the musty smell of history. The sensory experience and the intellectual experience have become fused. But this need not always be the case. Any reader will tell you that a good book can transport you away from the mundane and the tangible. A great writer can suck you into the world of his or her creation, making you forget your surroundings, and even the book that you hold in your hands. When we admire (and desire) a book as a physical object we’re not admiring the author’s work, or the writing. Often we’re simply admiring the cover design, or the quality of the paper stock, or the typeface. We’re revering the marketing team behind it, or the sense of history in its crackling, yellowed pages – when we should be focusing on the author’s voice.
I’m not suggesting that we should stop loving books, or collecting them. It’s still one of my great pleasures. But let’s not mistake our opinions as book collectors for our opinions as readers. An intelligent, balanced, emotive, transcendent work of literature still retains all those qualities, whether you read it on a page or on a screen. The power of writing lies in the words.”
I’m not suggesting that we should stop loving books, or collecting them. It’s still one of my great pleasures. But let’s not mistake our opinions as book collectors for our opinions as readers. An intelligent, balanced, emotive, transcendent work of literature still retains all those qualities, whether you read it on a page or on a screen. The power of writing lies in the words.”
Dan Coxon | The Argument for eBooks | The Nervous Breakdown (via zoearcher)
I agree with all of the above
(via beckyblackbooks)
Sometimes I wonder if I would’ve had more resistance to ebooks if I hadn’t already had years of reading fanfic on screens behind me before purchasing an ebook. I was already used to reading (sometimes really great writing) on screens anyway; the only thing I won’t accept is the loss of the ability to protect my purchases through backing them up, converting them to other formats, etc.
When you’re reading a really good book
And then you finish it
And its the last in the series
And you can’t even process all your feelings about the book
So you just sit there like
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