While the book (Hungry Planet) looks interesting, the photos are fascinating…
For example, a family from the US:

And another from Peru:

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Book Inscriptions collects– well– book inscriptions. Personal inscriptions, not famous autographs. Sadly, I imagine all my well-meaning and heartfelt inscriptions will end up discarded soon enough, probably not even memorialized digitally.

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I won’t pretend to be the first to see in the Internet parallels to the all-remembering mind of Funes; a book could be written, if it hasn’t already been, on how Borges invented the Internet.
More on the Internet, memory and forgetting…

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Good news… Aimee Nez has a new book out At the Drive-In Volcano! Will let you know what I think as soon as my copy gets here…

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“A novel is a two-way street, in which the labour required on either side is, in the end, equal. Reading, done properly, is every bit as tough as writing…”
Read more from Zadie Smith’s look at literature’s ‘legacy of failure’…

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I’m about 1/3 of the way through Francine Prose’s book Reading Like a Writer and I’m already comfortable recommending it. The subtitle “A Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them” is apt– you don’t have to be (or wish to be) a writer to get a lot out [...]

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Maybe… or maybe printed books will become a retro-collector’s item like original Star Wars figurines and metal lunch boxes….

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Nothing particularly earthshaking in this Forbes article about the exaggerated demise of the printed book except that it’s one of the few pieces on this subject in a mainstream media source that points to the much more important– and often completely ignored– issue of the harm in current copyright protections:
For Stein, serious engagement with ideas [...]

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My discovery today (I’d be upset it took me so long except that just means I have a huge archive of wonderful stuff to read through): 37days. You can read about the blog if you want, but “write like hell” pretty much sums it up…

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Bookslut reports that NPR is asking authors about their buttonhole books, “the ones you urge passionately on friends, colleagues and passersby.” I have a small menagerie of books that fit this cateogry, the ones I have bought– some many times– for others. Not coincidentally, they are also the kind that can cause a real strain [...]

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