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No child should touch a gun or pistol, or on any account present one at another person. We behold a little boy shooting his sister dead!

And:

Here we see the danger of playing with lighted candles. One little girl has set the bed-curtains on fire, and the other her hair; and both are in great danger of being burnt to death, unless someone grants them speedy assistance.

From The Book of Accidents (1831), with excellent woodcut illustrations.

(via Ectoplasmosis)

There is not now, nor I suspect will there ever be, a le Carré novel with ninjas in it. Most serious novelists are wary of including ninjas in their writing. That’s a shame, because many much-admired works of modern fiction could benefit from a few.

(via Telegraph: “Nick Harkaway: Le Carré with ninjas” [28-June-08])

This is the last, best novel you will ever read. The last you will ever need to read; you could just read it over and over again, filled with the crushing immensity of its hope, despair, and comedy.

You will read other fiction, eventually. And then you will feel guilty.

“Life is sad. Here is someone.”

Anagrams shows futility better than anything else I have ever read, and it shows why that futility is irrelevant. Or might be.  I loved this book, maybe not from the first page, but definitely from the second.

If you read the first page, you must read through to the last page, or you will be totally and completely crushed.  You’re likely to be crushed anyway, but it’s a good feeling, when you finish: warm, and awkward, and embracing.

Read this now.

StoryCode uses a whole series of user-coded information to match books by similarity. Intriguing, with sometimes useful, sometimes awkward results.

Chuck Palahniuk ends up telling the same story over and over again in his books. What’s astonishing is how fresh and gut-wrenchingly surprising (sorry) his approaches are. Even in his most tired formulations (sorry, Haunt), it’s still worth reading till the end. It doesn’t hurt that the basic “story” Palahniuk tells over and over again is among the strangest, yet most basically fundamental, things scratched on dead tree.

Rant rates as some of his best work.

It’s not that his writing shines, because it doesn’t. It’s not that the book starts off auspiciously, because it doesn’t, particularly. Or: it does, but of course you’re too wrapped up in preconceived notions to understand how much it’s going to blow you out of the water, by the end. And it’s unfair to say that the writing doesn’t shine, because–preconceived notions.

It’s difficult to say more, or anything.

The basic structure of Rant is that of an oral history, the sub-title tells you. Though you could probably figure it out pretty quickly based on the string of names that pop up, the bold-faced names by occupations and descriptors. Also because Palahniuk spells it out for you on the second page. Just in case you aren’t good at figuring things out. (In which case, incidentally, this book’s probably not for you anyway.) Like any of Palahniuk’s writing, Rant is schizophrenic, with lots of things going on, rapid-fire details vying for your attention, trying to disgust, compel, impress. But Rant is schizophrenic in different sorts of ways than, say, Survivor, or Fight Club. There are the usual things put there to snag your attention, the things that make good soundbites for reviews, jacket copy, blah blah blah. Party crashing, rabies, spider bites, and so on.

Yes, but. These are distractions, mostly. Mind you, the distractions are their own commentary, but they’re not the main show. Figuring out where distraction ends and something else starts is the whole point, or at least part of it. You want the story? Read the book. Just don’t expect applause.

In Alaska, a child saves a life by dialing 911 — thanks to the teachings of one of his favorite books, It’s Time To Call 911 - What To Do In An Emergency.

The real question, though, is how a child raised on Captain Underpants And The Preposterous Plight Of The Purple Potty People would have fared in the same situation?

I hope we’ve all learned our lesson for the day.

Yeah, I was surprised, too.

A trailing headline at the foot of an article on the Book Standard boldly shouted “Florida man wins Hemingway look-alike contest”.  Except that the link is defunct, and doesn’t actually lead to an article describing the contest in all its certain hilarity.

So I did a search on Yahoo! News… and came across not an article on a Hemingway look-alike contest (of which there are at least a few, apparently), but an article on a group of folks in Florida being paid big bucks for their land by would-be developers.  You’re wondering, of course, where all this is going.

Well:

One of the new Briny millionaires is Tom Byrne… whose salt-and-pepper beard and barrel chest make him a sure winner in any Ernest Hemingway look-alike contest…

“Pitch ‘n’ Putt with Joyce ‘n’ Beckett” pretty much says it all. Though don’t take my word for it.

Of philosophy books at academic libraries, ethics books are more likely to be stolen than non-ethics books. Or, borrowed pending their comprehension? The Splintered Mind provides a slightly more comprehensive analysis of the phenomenon than you’d expect to find, probably.

(originally by way of Bookslut; Splintered Mind: “Still More Data on the Theft of Ethics Books,” by Eric Schwitzgebel [Jan 8, 2007])

As is usually the case, I slogged through a few handfuls of non-fiction written to various levels of quality and a bunch of imaginative, curious fiction that sometimes didn’t work.

Bland but bloody

The Brothers Bulger was horrendously written, but was a quick and fascinating read. Stacy Horn’s The Restless Sleep, a book on NYC’s cold case squad, was much more solidly written, and is a book I’d actually recommend. I picked up a used copy of Dead Men Do Tell Tales (by William Maples), the autobiography of a forensic anthropologist, and was curiously entertained. Conversational in a way you don’t usually expect “true crime” to be, it had the feel of sitting down with a great uncle in someone’s living room.

Better luck last time

Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (Murakami) and Oryx and Crake (Atwood) both left me disappointed, mostly by comparison to the authors’ other works, which I’d been enthralled by (e.g., The Blind Assassin and The Handmaid’s Tale, by Atwood, and A Wild Sheep Chase and Dance Dance Dance by Murakami). Granted, I wasn’t dissuaded enough to stop reading either book, but I wasn’t as overwhelmed as I’d hoped to be.

Cream of the crop

Fortunately, I had the opposite experience with quite a few books. I found Elizabeth Kostova’s The Historian totally captivating, and I also had immense difficulty putting down Walter Moers’ Rumo & His Miraculous Adventures. Both were imaginative, ambitious, and sweeping. Kostova’s book struck me as something akin to Foucault’s Pendulum (which, for the record, I am a fan of), but less pedantic and more convincing. And with more vampirism. Rumo & His Miraculous Adventures, a follow-up to the fantastical 13 1/2 Lives of Captain Bluebear, transports us to a far-off land filled with wacky creatures, grand spectacle, and… well, everything you could possibly want in a story (including a friendly warrior dog protagonist, epic travels, and hideous monsters).
John Haskell’s American Purgatorio was solemn, honest, astonishing, humane, and the book I’m most likely to re-read from this past year.

They said

According to Metacritic, I’ve read some pretty good books, too.  Kathryn Davis’ The Thin Place got a composite metascore of 88, based on a handful of actual reviews.  Which, I read and enjoyed the book, but wasn’t blown away.  Possibly I was missing something.  Possibly it just wasn’t quite my style.  But: a good read.  I warmed more to Ali Smith’s The Accidental, which also rated highly among the books of 2006.  It was a fast read, a little more coy than it needed to be, but good.  Kevin Brockmeier’s Brief History of the Dead made Metacritic’s list and also my reading list.  Thoughtful, amusing, and relevant, it didn’t have nearly the surprise ending it purported to, but seeing the ending half-way through the book didn’t really come as that much of a detriment.

Surprise!

I was pleasantly surprised by Jeff Lindsay’s Darkly Dreaming Dexter, the crime novel about a “friendly” serial killer who only dispatches other serial killers (which has recently spawned an acclaimed Showtime series).  I found it warmly cynical, clever, and colorful.

(As a brief and fairly meaningless side-note, I managed to get through seven fewer books than I did last year [about 1200 pages' worth]; however, I saw 79 more movies than I did last year… so go figure.)

Books are so popular in home decor that even people who don’t read acquire them. They buy volumes by the yard at Half Price Books. They send orders off to a California book-decor specialist who ships Danish language books by the foot.

No comment.

Danish? Well, they aren’t meant to be read.

Unless you happen to read Danish. In which case, they are.

Perhaps the ultimate signal that books are decor came when a recent Pottery Barn catalogue showed an entire bookcase with the books turned backward, annoying mismatched spines facing inward, all in an attempt to achieve a neutral, uniform look.

Because… Oh, never mind.

Can’t find a particular book on that shelf? That isn’t the point. As a decorating technique, books work even better when they’ve been read.

Okay.

Then books become signs of a full life, one of inquiry and imagination. Well-loved books are invitations to linger and relax. They are conversation starters. They are small monuments to our interests and passions. As antiquarian book dealer Michael Utt says, “When you look at a person’s books, you can see into his soul.”

–

The trend toward books as decor-only is jarring to longtime book collectors, such as Mr. Utt.

“You should collect what you love,” he says. Or, at least, invest in something you want to read.

–

Here are tips from the experts on how to decorate with books.

That’s “experts”.

Make it personal If you loved your last trip to Oaxaca, a stack of books on regional Mexican art will evoke memories. That’s one way books personalize a room, says interior designer Debbie Chirillo. If Matisse is your favourite artist, a few books of his work will establish your taste. NASCAR your thing? There are books on that, too.

You mean to say that people write books about things they find interesting? How novel.

Stack books on the floor or in baskets. The casual arrangement makes them inviting.

What a brilliant idea… stack books… on the floor.

Create interesting storage Paint a wooden ladder black and use it to shelve an assortment of books, says Leni Leth on www.hgtv.com. Leth runs Book Decor, the California company that sells foreign books by the foot for the express purpose of looking at them rather than reading them. Danish books cost US$100 a foot, German are US$150 a foot and French are US$200. More info at bookdecor.com.

And the reason people care about the language of books they’re not reading…?

A lamp that is too low for its location can be raised by placing it on a stack of books, says designer Linda French. Custom bases can be ordered to raise lamps, but a stack of books is a more personal touch.

Again, brilliant! Make a light higher… by putting it on top of books! Never would’ve thought of that myself.

Create platforms Accessories stand out when they are placed atop a stack of books.

Show them off Stack nicely bound books on end tables or on tables behind sofas. Books add height, create interest and make a room feel lived in.

Jackets on or off Take book jackets off to create a more subdued colour palette. Leave pretty jackets on large art or garden books.

Make a table Put a pile of large books next to a chair. Top with a small piece of glass. Use as an end table.

(a Knight-Ridder news article, initially found someplace, then rediscovered over at the National Post [in Canada]: “Books smarten up a room.” [July 13, 2006]; originally pointed out at The Millions)

Who says you can’t craft a totally compelling story around a horned dog named after an imaginary card game?

Walter Moers’ 13 1/2 Lives of Captain Bluebear was most excellent, and this book surpasses even that. It’s cartwheeling, free-associating, spectacle-topping, coincidence-breaking fun, pure and simple. Though of course it isn’t simple. Nothing in Zamonia is, really.

The story begins with a tiny horned puppy, raised by dwarves (a kind of dwarf called a Hackonian, in case you were interested). But of course it can’t always be crumpets and daisies; sooner or later, everyone’s carted off to a free-roaming island by one-eyed giants that like to eat their prey live (the livelier, the better). And it’s from there that the story gets its wings and flies well beyond the stratosphere of creativity.

The titular Rumo is, as we find out, a Wolperting–a horned, superquick, civilized warrior dog. Held captive by the one-eyed beasts on Roaming Rock, he’s given the name ‘Rumo’ by a giant, eight-armed semi-aquatic and bulbous Shark Grub called Smyke.

But let’s not give away too much. Curious, astounding things happen, fate is defied, and we learn a little more about Zamonia and all its bizarre inhabitants in the process. Rumo’s a born hero–that much you should know: if you were hoping for a book centered around a vain, evil, megalomaniac badger-creature with wings, this isn’t the book for you.

Rumo is an epic like not much else. A different kind of epic. There’s alchemy, fortune-telling, sentient weapons, talking trees, living fog. Journeys beyond death.  Rumo falls in love, learns cabinetry, and journeys into lands typically braved only by the criminally deranged and the dangerously brutish.

More than that, the story is wickedly, brilliantly paced.  It’s filled with comical (and occasionally frightening) illustrations by the author, who also happens to be a cartoonist.  You follow Rumo along through danger and excitement with an unshakable curiosity and sense of awe, and before you know it, you’re at the end of the book, wishing you were only getting started.

Maybe you can go back and re-read The 13 1/2 Lives of Captain Bluebear.

Too bad, probably. But go ahead and search FictionFinder anyway, just in case. An excellent searchable database put together by the Online Computer Library Center, FictionFinder lets you search (or browse) by character, setting, literary form, awards, and lots of other things, too. (Like author and title, for instance.) Not only that, but once you find what you’re looking for, FictionFinder lets you track it down at a library.

A handy list of how to pronounce difficult-to-pronounce author’s names.

(via The Millions: “Hard to Pronounce Literary Names Redux.” 26 Aug 2006.)

The evocativeness of dust-jacket photos is why publishers put them on the cover. They’re selling tools, part of the book’s packaging, like the packaging on a bar of soap. Yet in the work of some photographers, the author’s photo can aspire to the level of high art.

A curious little article on the pros & cons of dust-jacket author photographs.

It’s a selling point, something to get the customer to pick up the book. Something to give a curious reader insight into the mind of the author, via the face?

Some publishers apparently bank on the photo; others could care less—Chronicle Books, for instance—and tend to use, e.g., passport photos and such. Or no photos at all. That’s cool.

Sometimes you just don’t want the photo, the author’s actual appearance conflicting too much with expectation. Or something.

Good fun, all around.

(Article originally spotted in the Chicago Tribune, but up & vanished, rediscovered over at the Southern Illinoisan)

I, too, would like to note that, for a mere $10,000, I could tell you that puppies sell.

(The main point: a publisher [Nolo Press] spent hundreds o’ thousands o’ dollars to decide what would help it sell more books, and it decided that thing was a friendly golden retriever added to its covers.)

P.S. Above-pictured puppy is in no way affiliated with the aforementioned Nolo Press.

(via The Millions)

Now you have a forum for it, via the entertaining and succinctly-titled “Covers.” A site for the discussion of cover design, with a searchable database of book covers (surprise!), searchable by, e.g., designer, author, etc.

As part of Slate’s Pulp Fiction week, some designers/artists were asked to envision classic works of literature as pulp fiction covers. The results are excellent. The Moby Dick cover won me over for its alliteration, but all the covers have their own special charms.

Not totally up-to-date as far as the more recent years go (e.g., 2002), but interesting for the historical content, or something like that.  1981’s bestselling novel was by James Clavell, and the bestselling non-fiction book was a diet book.  1919’s bestselling novel was The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, by V. Blasco Ibanez (which, if you’re interested, you can read thanks to Project Gutenberg).

Bestselling info from Publisher’s Weekly, and hosted web-side by Publisher’s Lunch.

Much fun.  Background & info on literary hoaxes spanning over 200 years (though only by virtue of the two examples that come from the 1700s; the rest are from the mid- to late- 1900s).

Forrest Carter’s The Education of Little Tree
One of the stranger hoaxes. Published in 1977, Forrest Carter’s celebrated memoir about a Cherokee orphan who fights racism and struggles to connect with his heritage was later revealed to have been written by a white Ku Klux Klan member named Asa Carter. (In more recent reprints, The Education of Little Tree was labeled “fiction.”) Carter had previously worked for Alabama Governor George Wallace, penning his infamous inauguration speech, in which Wallace vowed: “In the name of the greatest people that have ever trod this earth, I draw a line in the dust and toss the gauntlet before the feet of tyranny, and I say: segregation now, segregation tomorrow, and segregation forever.”

(via CBC Arts & Entertainment: “Writing Wrongs,” by Rachel Giese [Jan 12, 2006])