Via Sarah of Prima la musica, poi le parole comes an irresistible meme: nominate four currently living, breathing people likely to produce interesting and stageable libretti, and four books which could be re-worked into, again, interesting and stageable libretti. As I commented over at Sarah’s blog, I have a hard time coming up with anything […]
1. Cole Swensen’s Oh, a very short book that does for opera what her later books of poems did for the Tres Riches Heures and the history of illumination. A fellow LibraryThing user recommended it, and I snapped it up, because I dug Goest big time, and there are so few poets who write about […]
Sarah Waters has a new book coming out! And there was much rejoicing.
BookCrossing, a site for free, random book exchange, looks like a lot of fun. The idea is that you tag one of your books with a label that directs the finder to the Bookcrossing site, release the book into the wild, and then post a message indicating where you left it. Then the next person […]
Department of "Reading list decisions destined to interfere with each other": 1. I decided to catch up on my reading of all the Harry Potter books (I stopped after volume 2, fell out of sync with everyone else on the planet, and am now thinking that I want to catch up, but not to read […]
Like vilaine fille and languagehat, I also wasn’t sure if this wasn’t a really elaborate hoax. But since it’s evidently not, holy cow. Lost works by Sophocles and Euripides and Hesiod and maybe Aeschylus! Lost epics! This makes me want to revive my Greek. Oh, how I envy the classicists…
Check out this exhibit of hand bookbindings through the ages from Princeton University Library. Among the highlights: disappearing fore-edge decoration (scroll to the bottom of this page for an explanation of how it’s done); books meant to be attached to your belt; a sixteenth-century book satchel from Ethiopia; lovely embroidery; and recycled manuscripts used as […]
Over at About Last Night, Our Girl in Chicago wants to see more close reading in the blogosphere. As a still card-carrying member of the Partnership of English Majors (tm Garrison Keillor), I’m happy to oblige, but first I’ve got a frantically busy week to finish. Actual exegesis to follow eventually (as will the results […]
(This is part two of an occasional series on reading. Part one is here. I’m writing about two kinds of reading: one that acts as a window into other people’s minds and motivations, and one that acts as a mirror for the reader. For those of you keeping track, this is the “window” part of […]
Check out this illustrated version of Dante’s Inferno set in a nightmarish Los Angeles. I’m coveting those lithographs, especially the one illustrating the gates of Hell as the entrance to an underpass, complete with signs that read "Abandon All Hope On Entry Here." (Reminds me rather of Martin Rowson’s fantastically inventive noir comic book version […]