Rebecca Blood has started compiling her annual List of Summer Reading Lists.

I don’t dare look at these—I have too many to read already.

Posted by Amy as Readers & Reading at 1:17 AM EDT

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Novel Approach: Tish Cohen Hits Hollywood Big Time With Literary Debut:

In September 2005, before she’d even found a publisher, the 40-year-old mother of two from the Toronto exurb of Richmond Hill sold her first novel, Town House, to Fox Studios. Director Ridley Scott (Alien, Thelma & Louise, Gladiator) has been brought on to produce and Quills screenwriter Doug Wright is adapting the book for the screen.

Only an anointing from Oprah could have ensured a bigger buzz.

Posted by Amy as Authors at 1:29 AM EDT

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Writers’ Rooms: 19 authors talk about the rooms they write in. Authors include Clare Tomalin, David Lodge, and A. S. Byatt, and Hanif Kureishi. Click on the link with the author’s name to go to the full entry for that person.

Posted by Amy as Authors at 1:43 AM EDT

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The Book As Notepad (and Purse).

Via Likely Stories.

Posted by Amy as Books, Readers & Reading at 1:32 AM EDT

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Mythical Monsters:

Charles Gould, the son of the ornithologist John Gould, wrote this book in the 19th century on the subject now called ‘cryptozoology,’ the study of (possibly imaginary) animals only known through anecdotal or folklore evidence.

The core of the book is about dragons: Western, Chinese, and Japanese, although it also covers the Sea-serpent, the Unicorn, and the Chinese Phoenix. Gould hypothesized that the dragon was based on an unknown, very rare animal, a huge reptile with wings, which became extinct in historical times. He also concluded that persistent sea-serpent sightings were also due to an undiscovered surviving prehistoric marine animal. He drew on the then-emerging body of fossil evidence for prehistoric megafauna, from flying lizards to whale-sized aquatic dinosaurs.

Via Plep.

Posted by Amy as Fantastic at 4:04 AM EDT

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Omniglot:

This blog contains my musings on language and languages, language learning and teaching, language-related technology, linguistics, interesting words and phrases, details of my adventures in foreign parts, and various other bit and bobs. The main language will be English, but I’ll slip into other languages on occasion, just to see if you’re paying attention.

Via A Sweet, Familiar Dissonance.

Posted by Amy as Blogs and Bloggers, Language at 1:39 AM EDT

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Kim at the wonderful blog Kimbooktu has tagged me for a meme: the 8 Random Things About Me.

Here goes with my (mostly literary) random facts:

1. All-time favourite Jane Austen novel: Mansfield Park, although lately I’ve been rereading Emma again and again.

2. I love Anglo-Saxon and medieval literature.

3. I think the semi-colon could be used more frequently.

4. When I’m not reading, blogging, or writing, I watch way too much T.V.: my husband and I are huge fans of Corner Gas, the CSI franchises, Grey’s Anatomy, House, and Trailer Park Boys.

5. I love mysteries: Anthony Bidulka, Gail Bowen, James Lee Burke, P. D. James, and Robert B. Parker are just a few of the authors whose series I read.

6. I want to scream when people use the word “home” to mean “house”—as in, “We’re putting our home up for sale.” I have many other strong opinions about word use/misuse, but I don’t feel like shooting my blood pressure up any more right now.

7. Regular readers of this blog may have noticed that Jane Austen is my favourite author. What they may not know is that she and I share a birthday (which I’ve always been unjustifiably smug about).

8. I’m hooked on Harry Potter.

The rules for this meme:

1: Each player starts with 8 random facts/habits about themselves.
2: People who are tagged, write a blog post about their own 8 random things, and post these rules.
3: At the end of your post you need to tag 8 people and include their names.
4: Don’t forget to leave them a comment and tell them they’re tagged, and to read your blog.

According to the rules of memes, I’m supposed to tag other bloggers to do this, so here are 8 blogs I’d like to see do this meme: I Buy Books, A Reader’s Journal, Hassenpfeffer, Petrona, Books, Inq., The Scott Stein, Debi Alper, and book book book.

I always feel bad because I can’t tag everyone who likes to do memes, so if you’re fond of them, please consider yourself tagged!

Posted by Amy as Memes at 1:12 AM EDT

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Cooked Books: Real Food From Fictional Recipes:

Not long ago, I attempted to mimic some cooking as it is done in a number of relatively recent novels.

This article charts his progress and ponders the purpose of the description of cooking in fiction.

Via Rebecca’s Pocket.

Posted by Amy as Fiction, Readers & Reading, Unusual at 1:24 AM EDT

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Judge a Book By Its Cover:

For those of you who don’t know, I work in a public library. I see literally thousands of books every week; the good, the bad, and the truly hideous. These are the covers from the latter category.

Via A Sweet, Familiar Dissonance.

Posted by Amy as Books, Design/Illustrations at 6:24 AM EDT

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The “Something About Me” Reading Challenge:

Start thinking about some books to nominate that will “represent” who you are as a person outside the blogging world. The characters could do your career, your hobbies, live your life….or the setting could be where you live, etc.

Everyone can nominate up to 5 books that represent them (fiction or non-fiction)….then each reader will choose a list they want to read out of all the books nominated. We won’t read them collectively as a group, everyone will make their own list…

Any other suggestions?? Pass the word along, as it might take people awhile to figure out what books they want to nominate for the list…

Also, we can start compiling the lists in the summer — June or July — so that people can choose their reading lists and be ready to start by August or Sept…

Posted by Amy as Readers & Reading at 11:11 AM EDT

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• Hamlet and Jabberwocky
• Kundera Illustrations?: “I’m looking for a poster of Milan Kundera’s cover illustration for his novel The Unbearable Lightness of Being.”
• Tidningar. It’s a Funny Name: “Magazine fetish? Like flipping thru mags when you’re bored? Tidningar lets you look thru a bunch of Swedish mags, page by page, ads and all. Neat if you’re into design. (The link on the left under each mag is full screen–on the right is regular.)”
• Books For The Desert: “Looking for a few good books…. I am going on deployment to the “desert” for 6-7 months and will have an abundance of time on my hands. What books would y’all recommend?”
• Building a Home Library: “Avid readers: In twenty years, am I going to regret the fact that I only checked books out of the library, rather than amassing my own collection? I read about a book or two a week, and my budget could stand buying 3-4 used books a month.”

Posted by Amy as MetaFilter Links at 7:50 AM EDT

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Middle Earth Quizzes: Concerning Hobbits, Durin’s Folk, Around the Shire, Rings and Things, and many more.

Via Neat New Stuff On The Web.

Posted by Amy as Fun Stuff, Speculative Fiction at 1:18 AM EDT

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Cats Can Has Grammar:

If you spend any time at all observing net culture, then you’ll have been unable to miss the recent explosion in popularity of lolcats. This relatively recent phenomenon is the convention of taking pictures of cute animals, most frequently cats, and overlaying absurdist captions on the images.

. . . .

The rise of these new subspecies of lolcats are particularly interesting to me because “I can has cheezeburger?” has a fairly consistent grammar. I wasn’t sure this was true until I realized that it’s possible to get cat-speak wrong.

Via Quotidian Hell.

Posted by Amy as Language at 1:01 AM EDT

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Visuwords Online Graphical Dictionary

Visuwords™ online graphical dictionary — Look up words to find their meanings and associations with other words and concepts. Produce diagrams reminiscent of a neural net. Learn how words associate.

Via El Dorado County Library’s What’s Hot On The Internet This Week.

Posted by Amy as Words at 1:29 AM EDT

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Picturing a Canadian Life: L. M. Montgomery’s Personal Scrapbooks and Book Covers.

This exhibition invites you to explore L.M. Montgomery’s life (1874-1942) and visual imagination through a sample of her personal scrapbook pages and book covers, found in five Canadian archival and museum collections. For the first time, viewers may see in one place a sample of the images Montgomery collected, created, and inspired, including souvenirs, photographs, and cover art.

Known best for Anne of Green Gables and the Emily books, Montgomery is a person of national historic significance and a hero of the Twentieth Century: gifted author, diarist, photographer, letter writer, keeper of scrapbooks, and newspaper woman.

Her public and private works show Canadian culture as she reflected and imagined it; the book covers suggest how some of her imaginings were interpreted and marketed. The images in this exhibition may give you special insight into the Canada Montgomery has made famous around the world.

This online exhibition is available until August 2007.

Via El Dorado County Library’s What’s Hot On The Internet This Week.

Posted by Amy as Authors at 1:27 AM EDT

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A Minor History of Miniature Writing

Via Dark Roasted Blend.

Posted by Amy as Books at 1:26 AM EDT

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Things Found In Books:

Librarians and book collectors have many tales about ephemera left in books. While the legend of the bacon bookmark may be among the more pervasive reports of strange finds, a smallpox sample is probably the most bizarre. There are blogs and discussion boards that record other makeshift markers. Some readers prefer designated over spontaneous markers. Mirage Bookmark has an extensive collection of bookmark ephemera, with Bookmark of the Week and Bookmark Collector also offering noteworthy collections.

Posted by Amy as Readers & Reading, Unusual at 7:26 AM EDT

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The Voynich manuscript is “a mysterious illustrated book with incomprehensible contents.” Here are some photos of it.

Via Plep.

Posted by Amy as Medieval and Old English, Unusual at 1:57 AM EDT

3 Comments »

The Murthly Hours: “a medieval treasure.”

The Murthly Hours is an early example of the Book of Hours, a new kind of prayer book for the laity that made its appearance in France, England and the Low Countries in the 13th century. At this time books of hours were written for wealthy laypeople, more often than not women, as in the case of the Murthly Hours.

Via Plep.

Posted by Amy as Medieval and Old English, Unusual at 1:54 AM EDT

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Six Word Stories.

Here’s my favourite:

The Lord of the Rings: To Mordor! “Gandolf, no!” Plunk. Home.

See also my earlier post for some more examples and another link.

Via bookshelves of doom.

Posted by Amy as Humour, Writing at 1:28 AM EDT

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Think You Know How To Read, Do You?: “A new throng of authors wants to save literature from our nefarious English departments and teach us how to read their way. “

Via Rebecca’s Pocket.

Posted by Amy as Readers & Reading at 1:30 AM EDT

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List of Fictional Diseases: “This article is an attempt to compile a list of fictional diseases—nonexistent, named medical conditions which appear in fiction. The list contains illnesses which have evolved naturally; artificially engineered biological weapons; hereditary diseases; magical diseases; and technology-based diseases.”

Via Plep.

Posted by Amy as Fiction at 1:39 AM EDT

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Aspiring authors should check out the quotations at Writerly Advice.

Here are a few of them:

• The way you define yourself as a writer is that you write every time you have a free minute. If you didn’t behave that way you would never do anything.
— John Irving
• What is written without effort is in general read without pleasure.
–Samuel Johnson
• Read, read, read. Read everything– trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read! You’ll absorb it. Then write. If it is good, you’ll find out. If it’s not, throw it out the window.
–William Faulkner
• A professional writer is an amateur who didn’t quit.
–Richard Bach

Posted by Amy as Writing at 1:19 AM EDT

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Monstropedia: “Monstropedia is the ultimate online encyclopedia of monsters in myth, magick and legend.”

They are grouped into the following categories:

• Angels and demons
• Artificial monsters
• Corporeal undead
• Cryptids and dinosaurs
• Fairy creatures
• Human Monsters
• Paranormal entities
• Fabulous beasts
• Shapeshifters

Posted by Amy as Fairy Tales/Folk Tales, Speculative Fiction, Fantastic at 7:47 AM EDT

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Here’s a reading challenge that warrants some attention: the New Notions 5 Reading Challenge:

The challenge is to pick 5 books that you believe will challenge your thinking about any topic. For me, it was rethinking some religious issues that led to this idea. For you, it might be tackling a political viewpoint, a stance on a social issue, and notions about a color of skin, a creed, or an “ism”. You might challenge your notions about science, the world, or economics. You might want to read a book about something you already agree with that presents a whole new take on it. Anything that YOU believe is outside your normal viewpoint or that will make you rethink your preconceptions or assumptions is fair game.

. . . .

The challenge will take place from May 1 till September 30, 2007.

. . . .

Feel free to overlap with any other challenges.

It’s always worthwhile to shake up our fixed views of the world, but it’s not always easy. I’m going to see if I can come up with 5 books that will help me do so, but it may take some time.

Suggestions welcome!

Posted by Amy as Readers & Reading at 5:41 AM EDT

5 Comments »

PoemHunter.com: “Our database contains 168,207 poems from 16,474 poets.. 126,006 Songs.. 10,148 Artists.. 64,870 Quotations..”

There are also links to international headlines on the literary arts (primarily poetry, of course).

If you like, you can subscribe to the mailing list and get a poem E-mailed to you every morning (a good way to start the day).

Via A Sweet, Familiar Dissonance.

Posted by Amy as Poetry at 9:03 AM EDT

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The Guardian’s Poetry Workshop:

Want to have your work reviewed by a published poet?

Every month, our poetry workshop is hosted by a different poet who sets an exercise, chooses the most interesting responses and offers an appraisal of them. That’s the hard part taken care of - all you need to do is start writing …

Via Humanyms.

Posted by Amy as Poetry at 1:44 AM EDT

2 Comments »

The Reading List For the Academic Program At St. John’s College:

Something over 2,000 years of intellectual history form the background of the first two years; about 300 years of history form the background for almost twice as many authors in the last two years.

The first year is devoted to Greek authors and their pioneering understanding of the liberal arts; the second year contains books from the Roman, medieval, and Renaissance periods; the third year has books of the 17th and 18th centuries, most of which were written in modern languages; the fourth year brings the reading into the 19th and 20th centuries.

The chronological order in which the books are read is primarily a matter of convenience and intelligibility; it does not imply a historical approach to the subject matter. The St. John’s curriculum seeks to convey to students an understanding of the fundamental problems that human beings have to face today and at all times. It invites them to reflect both on their continuities and their discontinuities.

Authors range from Homer to Virginia Woolf, from Euripedes to Husserl.

Via Metafilter.

Posted by Amy as Readers & Reading at 3:48 AM EDT

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