The bibliochaise, a clever hybrid of chair and bookshelf.
A Place to sit and read
More Rejected New Yorker Cartoons
Who knew there was such a market for rejected New Yorker cartoons? The Rejection Collection: Cartoons You Never Saw, and Never Will See, in The New Yorker (which we noted upon its release) apparently did well enough to spawn a sequel: The Rejection Collection Vol. 2: The Cream of the Crap.Those who really go in for cartoons that never saw the light of day may also appreciate Killed Cartoons: Casualties from the War on Free Expression, a collection of editorial cartoons that got spiked from various newspapers for various reasons.Finally, if we may leap to cartoons that were no doubt jettisoned from generations of classrooms, a massive two volume set collecting the complete cartoons of Mad Magazine legend Don Martin. Hard to go wrong with that.
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A sleek marriage of luxury and literature
I got a real kick out of this story about Edward P. Jones doing a reading at a Volvo dealership near Washington, DC.The reading at the car dealership may have been one of the stranger marriages of highbrow art and the mass market. Even Jones said afterward that when he got the invitation, he figured that he’d be appearing at a school or in a conference room. “I’ve never been in a car dealership before, not having a car,” he mused. “But I used to pass by here on the bus.” Classic. And, by the way, is this the sort of thing we all talk about when we wish that literary fiction got more exposure? I think maybe it is.
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In Our Parents’ Bookshelves
Even a megabyte seems bulky compared to what can be conveyed in the few cubic feet of a bookshelf. What other vessel is able to hold with such precision, intricacy, and economy, all the facets of your life
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Books in the News
Scanning the headlines for news about books:I noticed, after I’d been working at the book store for a while, that there is a religious book industry that shadows the mainstream book industry. There isn’t much crossover between the two: there are mainstream bookstores that sell exclusively mainstream books and Christian bookstores that sell exclusively Christian books. But now the Associated Press is reporting that the lines are blurring thanks to the success of the The Da Vinci Code and the odd cultural phenomenon of Mel Gibson’s The Passion of Christ. According to the story, several psuedo-religious books, books that don’t fit neatly into either segment of the book industry, have become big sellers in the last year. The Gnostic Gospels by Elaine Pagels, Holy Blood, Holy Grail by Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh, and Henry Lincoln, and The Woman With the Alabaster Jar: Mary Magdalen and the Holy Grail by Margaret Starbird are among the beneficiaries.Advanced Book Exchange is a giant online marketplace for used books. I happened to notice that they recently posted a list of their “top 50 bestselling used, rare and out-of-print books on Abebooks in 2003.” It’s an interesting list that includes current bestsellers (Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix), classics (East of Eden), collectible magazines (National Geographic Magazine), and scholarly texts and reference books (Black’s Law Dictionary).And while we’re talking bestsellers, here’s Barnes & Nobles’ 100 bestselling books of 2003, including one of my favorite books of recent years, Ian McEwan’s Atonement coming in at number 46.
Free Music from Amazon
Stumbling through Amazon’s MP3 store today (I’ve recently become an iPod owner), I was surprised to find that they have quite a bit of music available for free download. In fact, they’ve collected it all in one place, so you can click through and grab what you want.Some of the goodies on offer include songs by The Apples In Stereo, David Byrne and Brian Eno, Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings, The Streets, Loudon Wainwright III, Bob Mould, an entire Amazon Jazz Sampler, and a bunch more.
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