“I can with one eye squinted take it all as a blessing.” The New Yorker reports on “Flannery O’Connor‘s Manhattan Memorial” and pitch-perfect quotation.
With One Eye Squinted
On Packing a Library
"Many times, I’ve found that a book I once held in my hands becomes another when assigned its position in my library." In The Paris Review, an excerpt on the art of packing (and unpacking) a library from Alberto Manguel's upcoming book, Packing My Library: An Elegy and Ten Digressions. Pair with: an essay on reorganizing one's personal library.
A Visual Mind
To get a full sense of the legacy of William Blake, you need to see his paintings alongside his famous poems. The Wordsworth contemporary did much of his best work -- including the covers of his own collections -- with a brush. At the New York Review of Books blog, Jenny Uglow pays a visit to a new exhibition at Oxford.
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Europe’s Largest Public Library Opens
The brand new Library of Birmingham opens next week, and the gigantic structure is said to be “Europe’s largest public library.” In addition to its modern architecture, the facility also offers “a room from the 19th Century … to house one of the UK’s most important Shakespeare collections.”
Summer Poems
Clear your schedule for today, if you have one. The Poetry Foundation rounded up a whole heap of “Summer Poems” intended to “make you one with the sun.”
“The kitchen was the scariest part of all, however!”
Rich Tommaso has penned an illustrated look at the Fantagraphics offices circa 1995.
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There’s No Escaping Your Textbooks Now
A new service available to Australian students might cut down on the line lengths at university bookstores. Then again, it might also usher in an age of self-aware, Skynet-esque airborne Terminators. Presenting: drones specializing in textbook delivery.
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