News & Curiosities

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Wisława Szymborska, 1923-2012

February 7, 2012 in Book porn, News & Curiosities by Emera | No comments

Polish poet and Nobel laureate Wisława Szymborska passed away last week, on Monday, February 1, at the age of 88. The Poetry Foundation has a brief obituary and one of her poems here. Rest in peace.

I spent several months last year reading a few of her poems in multiple translations (many of which I found through this aggregation assembled by the University of Buffalo), particularly “Brueghel’s Two Monkeys.” Her poems are carefully observed, ironic, sometimes cuttingly so, yet without the least trace of cruelty or bitterness: it is clear that she always wrote from a place of sorrow and love.

- E

łł

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Shopping (or just reading) weird

December 16, 2011 in Book porn, News & Curiosities by Emera | No comments

I think I’ve just about expended all my book- and gift-book-buying budget at this point, but I couldn’t resist poring over Ann & Jeff VanderMeer’s Gifts for the Weirdie in Your Life book recommendation post – many many additions were made to my to-read list. The VanderMeers provide detailed recommendations for both classic weird and new releases, emphasizing both literary quality and visual appeal.

Also, recommendations for weird small presses whose catalogues I’ll have to look over in more detail at some point: Centipede Press, Tartarus Press, Chômu Press.

(I really, really wanted Centipede’s Algernon Blackwood collection – “with some fine Clarence John Laughlin photographs reprinted as exquisite duotones. Quarterbound in black Japanese cloth with blue European cloth panels, with a ribbon marker, and enclosed in a clothbound slipcase.” – and then I realized that it was $250. erk.)

- E

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Hey! Oscar Wilde!

December 15, 2011 in Book porn, News & Curiosities by Emera | 2 comments

- It’s Clobberin’ Time!: artists (and authors) draw their favorite literary figures

One of my favorite websites to check at random intervals, Hey Oscar Wilde hosts a vast compilation of art featuring favorite writers, creatures, characters, and places from across the literary spectrum. Artists include Kate Beaton, Marvel Comics legend Frank Brunner, From Hell’s Eddie Campbell, Neil Gaiman, Michael Zulli (love for his prodigiously mustachioed Dracula)… ; subjects range from oliphaunts to Vonnegut to Pippi Longstocking to lots of Draculas and Frankenstein’s Monsters.

Some other favorites: this Madeleine L’Engle portrait by Farel Dalrymple (probably biased by my love for Proginoskes); Scott Morse’s incredible watercolor rendition of the tiger from Life of Pi.

- E

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Author news

November 28, 2011 in Book porn, News & Curiosities by Emera | No comments

Anne McCaffrey passed away this past Wednesday, November 21, at the age of 85. Like countless other readers, I seem to have spent a good chunk of my adolescence imaginarily living in Pern, starting from when I discovered the Harper Hall trilogy at ten years old…

See Charles Tan’s post here for links to authors’ tributes to McCaffrey. R.I.P.

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Terri Windling, editorial and artistic powerhouse and generally amazing person in the field of fantasy, is in need; a Livejournal community for charity auctions has been opened to help her out. Treat yourself, start your holiday shopping, or both – there’s a wide variety of incredible offerings, including baked goods, crafts, art, and signed drafts or ARCs or personalized poems by numerous beloved authors… Want to have lunch with Tamora Pierce, or have a Cat Valente or Jeffrey Ford character named after you? Now’s your chance!

Go to:
Anne McCaffrey: bio and works reviewed
Terri Windling: bio and works reviewed

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Fun with words, and birds

October 22, 2011 in Book porn, News & Curiosities by Emera | No comments

Check out the Omnificent English Dictionary in Limerick Form (OEDILF) to learn some new words (offerings span Pre-A- through Em- thus far; estimated date of completion is currently March 5, 2039) and broaden your appreciation of the limerick.

e.g. (with unintentional ornithological theme)

emu

On our crest, with a roo, Aussies team you.
You taste best when we stew (it’s supreme!) you.
You can’t fly. You’re absurd.
You’re our fat old Big Bird,
Yet we love and esteem you, o emu.

(by rusty – who has also completed a series of wordplay-heavy entries on musical keys.)

doughbird

The Eskimo curlew, or doughbird,
Is a vanished-a-long-time-ago bird.
Had it kept on its toes,
As it froze in the snows,
It might still be a go-with-the-floe bird.

(by Stephen Gold)

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My favorite random language fact of the week, from a feature in The Believer magazine on pangrams, sentences including every commonly-used letter in a given alphabet (e.g. “the quick brown fox…”):

The Iroha, a perfect Japanese pangram (contains every kana once and only once) and typically Japanese meditation on life’s evanescence, became so famous that the order of its kana was used as alphabetical order up until the late 19th century. Cool. See its Wikipedia entry for the full poem, two translations, and lots of interesting history.

- E

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Do we all like flowcharts?

September 28, 2011 in Book porn, News & Curiosities by Emera | 1 comment

I’m assuming we do: check out the monster that SF Signal has put together to help curious readers navigate the results of NPR’s 100 Top SFF Books survey, featuring “(obviously) 100 end points and over 325 decision points,” including such trenchant inquiries as “PoMo superheroes or tortured specter?”, “Do the words Sword and Sorcery have a positive connotation for you?”, and “Which question most frightens you: who needs books or who needs free will?”

Link sent to me by the one and only and extremely busy Kakaner.

- E

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Pieces of eight

September 6, 2011 in Book porn, News & Curiosities by Emera | No comments

And by eight, I mean news:

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Ah–! Art Student Hand-Illuminates, Binds a Copy of the Silmarillion; Tolkien fans across the world experience heart palpitations.

Check here for an interview with the artist, and larger images of his gloriously detailed work.

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And some incredible (belatedly posted, here) news for fans of Peter S. Beagle’s The Last Unicorn. Since the release of the 1982 animated adaptation, Beagle had been denied payment of contractually due royalties for the film. At the beginning of August, Connor Cochran, Beagle’s business manager, sent this announcement:

“THE EIGHT-YEAR STRUGGLE FOR PETER’S LAST UNICORN RIGHTS IS OVER!

Really. No joke, no fooling. It’s over. And everybody won. [...] For now suffice to say that Peter has signed an agreement with ITV that (a) ends the whole mishagosh in a way that is great for him, and (b) great for ITV, and (c) great for LAST UNICORN fans everywhere, since now all kinds of things are going to be possible that could never be done before.”

This is news that I’ve been waiting to hear for years.

I’d been exploratorily rereading bits from The Last Unicorn, lately – exploratorily because I know I’ve been growing out of a lot of things that used to fill my head and make me cry. We’re safe; TLU still makes me cry. (It probably helps that I still feel completely unironically about unicorns.) I sound a little flippant, but it’s a deeply beautiful, wise, and timeless book. I don’t like recommending it willy-nilly because I know unironic books about unicorns and mortality and love aren’t everyone’s thing (even though it is sometimes ironic, too! and meta!), but consider this my sideways plea for more people to read it.

Hey, “unironic” and “unicorn” are almost anagrams. Coincidence? I think not.

Go to:
Peter S. Beagle: bio and works reviewed
The Last Unicorn comic #1 (2010): review by Emera
The Last Unicorn comic #2 (2010): review by Emera

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The faces of Endicott

September 2, 2011 in Book porn, News & Curiosities by Emera | 2 comments

Endicott Studio is an association of writers, artists, and performers dedicated to arts based in mythological and folkloric traditions. (Wikipedia tells me that it began as a warehouse-turned-salon-space in Boston; wish I had been around for it then.) I was aware of their work on the Journal of Mythic Arts, but wasn’t quite clear on who all comprised the studio. While I was looking for something else (that I’ve now forgotten, in the way of the Internet), I stumbled upon this nifty compilation celebrating 20 years of Endicott, featuring photos from 1987 and 2007 of many of the creatives behind Endicott: founder Terri Windling, Charles Vess, Neil Gaiman, Ellen Kushner,  Delia Sherman, the Frouds, Holly Black, Catherynne Valente, Theodora Goss, and a host of other Black Letters favorites.

A lot of the 1987 photos are downright adorable, it goes without saying. (prom! ’80’s hair! scrunchies and onesies!) Check them out here:

Twenty Years of Mythic Arts

P.S. Terri Windling keeps an Endicott Studio blog here, filled with art, music, history, and links galore, for those of a mythical inclination.

- E

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The long good-bye

July 20, 2011 in Book porn, News & Curiosities by Emera | 3 comments

Say farewell to Borders: “Borders to shut down for good after deal collapses.”

In a twist or knell or something or other, I received what will theoretically be my last-ever package from Borders yesterday, too.

Any Borders reminiscences to share? I just remembered that Borders was the first legit bookstore in my vicinity to stock manga; prior to that I’d scoured E. B. Games and, occasionally, Toys ‘R’ Us, to pick up single, frequently battered issues of Pokémon, Digimon, and some horrifically translated Gundam Wing. I think my first high-intensity exposure to manga (lots of it! all in one place! in a bookstore!) was a long, dazed afternoon in a Borders spent flipping through, among others, a CLAMP series that seemed really cryptic and creepy at the time, probably partly because the first volume was missing. I’m not going to say what series it was, just to preserve the imagined mystique.

Edit: This article does a great job of explaining what Borders’ closing will mean for consumers, publishers, and authors.

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“How To Buy a Book,” and authorial fisticuffs

May 21, 2011 in Book porn, News & Curiosities by Emera | No comments

For anyone who’s ever fussed over conscientious book-buying and the care and keeping of indigent authors, Nick Mamatas advises on How To Buy a Book (or where, really). Much of it seems to come down to whether a retailer feeds into BookScan, a book-sale data compiler that informs many publishers’ decisions. More interesting details with which to inform your future Amazon vs. indie decisions over at the post.

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If you’ve ever found yourself wondering what China Miéville would look like with hair, you may well fall within the target audience for this blog: Could They Beat-Up China Miéville? In a sort of long-form, extra-nerdy variation on Chuck Norris facts, two bloggers take turns scripting deathmatches between everyone’s favorite weird-fiction pioneer/nerd sex symbol and a variety of cultural icons, e.g. Sting and the Archbishop of Canterbury. Why not?

- E

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