#books

Contents

Michael Basinski’s Book Reviews

Reviews of poetry publications from a time before the web became ubiquitous.

Chapbooks, Zines, and Rare Books from the Early 2000s

These book reviews describe the works of poets and publishers at a time right before the web became ubiquitous, so they are a useful archive as well as an enjoyable read.

david markson the last novel the fourth and

austinkleon: David Markson, The Last Novel The fourth and final book, after Reader's Block, This Is Not A Novel, and Vanishing Point, in Markson's last four books of "nonlinear, discontinuous, collage-like" anti-novels.

Book Cover Breakdowns

Book cover breakdowns. Images are replaced with diagonal lines and text is replaced with bars of colour. Ongoing project since 2011. (via Readings : Jan Avendano )

Litblog Roundup 20

some greatly exaggerated rumors about Mark Twain, the value of paragraphs, and more.

Marginalia Exhibition

If you like to write notes, jokes, or insults into the margins of the books you read, you may be interested to know that you’re part of a centuries-long tradition. With recent commentary by the New York Review of Books, there is a new exhibition at the New York Society Library “explores the practice of reading through the many handwritten notes left in the margins of books”

New Sherlock Holmes

There’s a recently rediscovered short story about Sherlock Holmes that may have been written by Arthur Conan Doyle , or maybe not . With so many (re)discovered manuscripts already this year, it seems to be a trend. They’ve even unearthed a new Dr. Seuss book .

The Print Preferences of Digital Natives

Aa recent study suggests that college students prefer to read textbooks in print , as opposed to reading them electronically. Some responses to this finding have pointed out that this preference have more to do with resale value than with media preferences.

Had Enough of Tolkien?

With the recent release of the new Hobbit movie, we’ve reached the conclusion of Peter Jackson’s cinematic saga based on the works of J.R.R. Tolkien. But have we had enough of Tolkein? Author Michael Moorcock has had enough of Tolkein, as explained by a recent New Yorker article :

The Death of the Novel, Again

If novels are dying, should we mourn? What are we parting with, exactly? How can we make sure not to throw out the baby with the bathwater, if we move on from books?

The Doppler Effect

A tale about differences of experience and opinion, written using only a single adjective. "

Every Book Deserves a Great Cover

Recovering the Classics Recovering the Classics is a crowdsourced collection of original covers for great works in the public domain where anyone can contribute. Why? Sadly, many of the greatest classics in the public domain are left with poorly designed or auto-generated covers that fail to capture what makes these books exciting and inspiring to us. So we invited illustrators, typographers, and designers of all stripes to create new covers for 100 of the greatest works in the public domain.

Des Imagistes: Some Imagist Poems

The first anthology of the Imagism movement was titled “Des Imagistes.” Imagism was conceived by Ezra Pound, H.D. and Richard Aldington in 1912. Finally, this very rare book has been published online for all to read.

Radical Small-Press Writing

Aside from the Modernist Journals Project, it can be difficult to see online copies of the small-press publications where much of the experimental literature has happened over the past century or so. That's why Eclipse is a useful web site.

The Format and Availability of Electronic Books

a lot has changed in the world of digital books, since I wrote this post in 2005. Devices like the Kindle and the Nook and the iPad have changed the way we read digital books, and have fanned the fire for the debate about their format(s).

Poetry Reading by Thomas Raine Crowe

Look out! I don't mean the window, I mean the helicopters overhead, the buzz on the phone, and the police at the door. Achtung! The sky is falling from the atoms they have taken from the air. The trees cut to build temples to oil. The brown water no longer fit for fish. Look out! When freedom is just another word for what we have lost. When peace is another brand of bomb. When the national animal is no longer an eagle, but a sheep. I attended a poetry reading this evening by Thomas Rain Crowe , with whom I had the honor of sharing my lunch today earlier today. He’s a real bona-fide beatnik, drinking buddy to the stars: Ginsberg and company themselves. That alone was impressive, I suppose. He shared with us some selections of his fiction and his poetry. He told us about his rock band . and his first volume of translations of the poems of the 14th century Persian poet Hafiz , ( Hafiz )According to his bio: “Following six years as Editor-at-Large for the Asheville Poetry Review, he is currently writing a memoir in the style of Thoreau’s Walden based on four years of self-sufficient living in the wilderness environment in the woods of western North Carolina from 1979 to 1982. He currently resides in the Smoky Mountains of North Carolina. His literary archives have been purchased by and are collected at the Duke University Special Collections Library in Durham, North Carolina.”

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