Watched any good books lately?
What are they reading in Mad Men, The Sopranos, True Blood and Skins - and what does it mean? We read between the linesFurther reading: what titles would you choose for your favourite characters? In the same way that Captain Kirk never took a loo break, the depiction of reading on TV has traditionally been considered anathema. Who turns on their telly to watch someone buried in a book? Remember that moment in Seinfeld when the characters pitch "Jerry", their (anti)-sitcom-within-a-sitcom to NBC? George stresses that one thing the characters will be doing a lot of is reading. "Reading?" shoots back the network exec in disbe...
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Guardian Unlimited Books - February 5, 2010 Author: David Stubbs Tags: Television Books Culture Mad Men True Blood Skins Lost The Guardian Features & amp; radio
Ginsberg's Howl resounds on film
In 1955, Allen Ginsberg performed a poem about sex, drugs and race that became a battlecry for the US counterculture. It also led to an obscenity trial. B Ruby Rich on a new film about the epic HowlOn 7 October 1955, at the Six Gallery in San Francisco, Allen Ginsberg brought the house down with a performance of his hallucinatory new poem, Howl. Among other things, this epic work in four parts dealt with drugs, mental illness, religion, homosexuality – the fears and preoccupations of a generation. Jack kerouac and Lawrence Ferlinghetti were both in the audience. Ginsberg was 29 years old. Also present was the future chor...
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Guardian Unlimited Books - January 19, 2010 Author: B Ruby Rich Tags: Film Allen Ginsberg Books Poetry Culture The Guardian Features
McGee on music: Jack White and the wonders of spoken word
Spoken word has become a lost art in rock'n'roll – so give thanks to the White Stripes frontman for reviving the genre"I believe in vinyl records/I believe in MP3/I believe in Tutti Frutti/I believe in R&B/I believe in psychedelics/I believe in LSD." The above words are from BP Fallon's spoken word and rock'n'roll instructional record I Believe in Elvis Presley. Fallon is a personal friend, cultural raconteur, DJ, writer, photographer, and now a musical spoken-word poet (with the help of Jack White's Third Man Records). Fallon is indeed a legend, having worked with Led Zeppelin, the Beatles, and T-Rex. I Believe in Elvis...
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Guardian Unlimited Books - January 5, 2010 Author: Alan McGee Tags: Pop and rock The White Stripes Music Jack kerouac William Burroughs Poetry Culture guardian.co.uk Blogposts
Een gek 2010
Het wordt tijd dat ik On the Road herlees. Citaten als deze mag je gewoon niet vergeten.
Ik wens iedereen een gezond en heel gek 2010.
The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes 'Awww!'"
-Jack kerouac-
@
Reminder
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Digitaal Inlichtingenwerk Zeeuwse Bibliotheek - December 31, 2009 Tags: nieuwjaar Jack kerouac On the Road Nieuwjaarswensen
Something old, something new: 2009's best photography books | Sean O'Hagan
From reissues of classic editions to an eye-opening collection of mobile-phone snaps, photography books in 2009 captured a medium in flux. Sean O'Hagan picks his favouritesIn 2009, photography grappled more than ever with the notion that the mobile phone, rather than the cheap digital camera, may yet make photographers of us all. It seemed apposite, then, that it was also a year in which old masters reasserted their importance with books that reminded us that the truly visionary are few and far between.In many ways, the year belonged to Robert Frank. Now 85, the Swiss-born photographer was garlanded with a major American ...
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Guardian Unlimited Books - December 28, 2009 Author: Sean O'Hagan Tags: Photography Art and design Culture guardian.co.uk Features
Tonight I'm a rock'n'roll scribe: Infernal moonshine of the spotless mind
The first instalment in his series of literary adventures in rock'n'roll sees novelist Richard Milward indulging in booze, book readings and fighting like Bruce LeeIt's face-crunchingly cringeworthy how far some folk go to appear rock'n'roll. Rock'n'roll, after all, is an almighty religion, inspiring even the most timid of beasts to beat their chests and act silly after one too many lager shandies. While the messiahs of rock all seem to be cocksure, bonkers bagheads like Jim Morrison, Keith Richards, or Sid Vicious, many of its followers nowadays are merely tight-jeaned, boring bedroom-dwellers. The nearest most of them ge...
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Guardian Unlimited Books - December 22, 2009 Tags: Music Pop and rock Books guardian.co.uk Features
If there's one genre you have to read before you die it's the travel book
Guidebooks, celebrity memoirs, activity-based books, travelogues, travel blogs, coffee table whoppers: travel has a ferocious grip on the books market. Here's a guide to the guidesLonely Planet Publications was set up in 1972 by Tony and Maureen Wheeler, who trekked across Asia during a time when trekking and Asia were perilous and terrifying in equal measure, parlayed their experiences into a bestselling book and parlayed that success into a publishing empire of guides for the miserly and dreadlocked.That empire recently sold its 100-millionth copy: proof of the ferocious grip travel has on the books market. It has someho...
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Guardian Unlimited Books - December 9, 2009 Author: Darragh McManus Tags: Travel Books Culture guardian.co.uk Blogposts
Do typewriters hold the keys to fine writing?
In the age of the PC, a surprising number of authors remain wedded to rather older technologyAfter five decades and 5m words, Cormac McCarthy is parting company with the faithful typewriter he bought in a Tennessee pawn shop for $50.Despite his decision to auction his elderly Olivetti – offers around the $15,000 to $20,000 mark, please – not to mention the advent of the PC, McCarthy remains a devotee of the manual typewriter.He is not alone. Will Self, Don DeLillo and Frederick Forsyth are also members of the small and select group of writers who find typewriters more conducive to the creative process than their electr...
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Guardian Unlimited Books - December 1, 2009 Author: Sam Jones Tags: Fiction Cormac McCarthy Will Self Don DeLillo Books Culture Jack kerouac guardian.co.uk Blogposts
William Miller obituary
Innovative editor, publisher and literary agent with a love of the good lifeWilliam Miller, who has died aged 75, lived a life of many passions, but perhaps the most enduring of these was to try to make "good books popular and popular books good". And, first as an editor, then as a publisher, and finally as an agent, that is what Miller did.His first job was as an editor under Frank Rudman, the pioneering paperback publisher, at Four Square. From there, in 1962 he joined John Boothe as joint managing editor at Panther Books. At the time, Panther was an independently owned middle-range paperback publisher. William and John ...
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Guardian Unlimited Books - November 24, 2009 Tags: Publishing Books Financial Times Japan Nuclear weapons Media Culture Fiction The Guardian Obituaries
The Paris Review Interviews Vol 4 edited by Philip Gourevitch | Book review
Jack kerouac, William Styron and VS Naipaul among others offer stunning insights into the art of writing, says Jessica HollandWriting is difficult and painful and writers are all a little mad. That's the first impression you get from this fourth anthology of interviews with authors about their art, which are arranged chronologically from William Styron in 1954 to Marilynne Robinson in 2008. "Let's face it," Styron says, right off the bat, "writing is hell."Of course, it offers highs as well as lows and both are fascinating to read about. Aspiring writers should find plenty of tips to prod them into action: stick to a sched...
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Guardian Unlimited Books - November 21, 2009 Tags: Books Culture The Observer Reviews
Cool. Even Batman uses Google.
When I first started at Google, Craig Nevill-Manning, engineering director here in New York, said to me: "The Google homepage doesn't belong to us. It belongs to the millions of people who use it." Besides the fact that Craig can make one of those insanely cool leaf patterns in his latte, I find the simple truth of his statement inspiring. I often refer to it as a guidepost for our work.So when we got together with the search team to brainstorm ways to talk about our latest innovations (like music in search results), we decided to feature them through stories inspired by our users. Because while we're proud of the innovati...
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Official Google Blog - November 19, 2009 Author: A Googler
Escrituras continuas
Llego vía Bibliographos / Le Bibliomane moderne y Sobre llibres / blog de Thomas Hawk a dos curiosos ejemplos de coincidencia en procedimiento de escritura: página continua en un rollo de papel.El caso superior es el manuscrito de la obra del Marques de Sade Las 120 jornadas de Sodoma, mientras que el inferior es el original mecanoscrito de On the Road de kerouac. Si en el divino marqués pudo influir la escritura en la prisión (¡y cuántas obras importantes han visto la luz en establecimientos penitenciarios!) y los medios que había a mano, en el caso de kerouac la razón puede ser más bien artística: la escritura ...
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El blog del futuro del libro - November 17, 2009 Author: José Antonio Millán
Roberto Bolaño was no literary rebel, says novelist
The myths surrounding the late Chilean author are false, says Bolaño's friend and fellow novelist, Horacio Castellanos MoyaHe's been compared to James Dean and described as the "Kurt Cobain of Latin-American literature", but the real Roberto Bolaño was very different to the myth created by the North American cultural establishment, according to the author's friend and fellow novelist Horacio Castellanos Moya. Coverage of the late Chilean author, writes Moya in an acerbic essay for La Nacion, reprinted in English in Guernica, emphasises his tumultuous youth, his decision to drop out of high school and become a poet,...
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Guardian Unlimited Books - November 5, 2009 Author: Alison Flood Tags: Fiction Books Culture guardian.co.uk News
The final cut
Raymond Carver and Ernest Hemingway are both celebrated for their brutal minimalism – but how much do they owe their renown to the interventions of their editors? As two new 'original' versions of their work are published, the question of posthumous restoration has never been more vexedIt's been a good year for dead writers: they have been an uncommonly busy bunch. This year sees the publication of "new" works by Raymond Carver, who died 20 years ago, Vladimir Nabokov, who died 30 years ago, and Ernest Hemingway, who died almost 50 years ago – as well as Roland Barthes, Jack kerouac, William Styron, Graham Gr...
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Guardian Unlimited Books - October 23, 2009 Author: Sarah Churchwell Tags: Books Raymond Carver Culture The Guardian Features
On the Road: Better with Age?
Dan Green has an interesting re-appraisal of On the Road:
In short, On the Road seemed rather tame to me, its rebellion more ingenuously earnest than hard-edged, and I read no further kerouac for many years. Not too long ago, I decided to try reading On the Road again, expecting that I would quickly enough find it the same tepid experience as the first time around, that I would in fact probably stop reading it fairly early on and consign kerouac permanently to the category of literary disappointments. However, although I can't say I immediately became entranced by it, I did not stop reading it. I did almost immediately ...
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Conversational Reading - October 22, 2009 Author: Scott Esposito
Kerouac the Writer
When I read On the Road for the first time, I didn't care for it much. I didn't exactly hate it, but I was disappointed by it. I had not at that time developed the suspicion of writers and novels alleged to be "saying something" that I now have, but I do recall being puzzled by the reputation--conveyed to me by fellow graduate students, I must say--this novel had of being a radical statement of postwar restlessness, or disaffected youth, or spiritual exhaltation, or whatever other urgent "content" On the Road was supposed to offer. I couldn't find any statements at all in it, although the ch...
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The Reading Experience - October 19, 2009 Author: Daniel Green
The BBC Meme, or I bet you I read more than 6
I found this over at C.W.'s blog here. Here are the instructions as described over there, which come from some FB meme of all things. By the way, much like C.W., I am not too keen on FB memes, preferring to do them over here.The directions:"Have you read more than 6 of these books? The BBC believes most people will have read only 6 of the 100 books here. How do your reading habits stack up? Instructions: Copy this into your NOTES. Look at the list and put an ‘x’ after those you have read. Tag other book nerds. Tag me as well so i can see your responses!" My initial response:Yes, I have read more than 6 (even if a lot o...
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The Itinerant Librarian - October 9, 2009 Author: Angel, librarian and educator
Horacio Castellanos Moya Is Disgusted with the "Bolano Myth"
I'm not sure I can translate this properly, but this has to be one of the best lines I've read recently:
El mercado tiene dueños, como todo en este infecto planeta, y son los dueños del mercado quienes deciden el mambo que se baila, se trate de vender condones baratos o novelas latinoamericanas en Estados Unidos.
This line comes in conjunction with a very acidic essay that novelist Horacio Castellanos Moya has written on the "Bolano Myth" (published in the Argentina newspaper La Nacion). The following line explains what moved Moya to such a statement (partial translation below):
Lo digo porque la idea...
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Conversational Reading - September 23, 2009 Author: Scott Esposito
A Life in Comedy by Garrison Keillor
Lake Wobegon is only mentioned in A Life in Comedy by Garrison Keillor, an audiobook which is mostly drawn from sources other than A Prairie Home Companion. No Bunsens, Inqvists, or Krebsbachs. These stories and comments from the man from Minnesota instead come from a solo performance at the Yale Repertory Theatre in 2003. For his night at Yale, he drew from his commencement addresses, magazine articles, and books, especially The Book of Guys. As he jokes at the beginning of "The Midlife Crisis of Dionysus," he is trying to show some range, prove that he knows about life outside the Midwest. So he talks about living in Den...
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ricklibrarian - September 11, 2009 Author: ricklibrarian
¿Qué leemos los socios de SEDIC? Encuesta 2009 – VII
Rosario
Recomendados
· Ian McEwan – Chesil Beach – Un relato concentrado con una exelente descripción de los sentimientos de los personajes.
· Arundhati Roy – El dios de las pequeñas cosas – Me gustó la historia y cómo la cuenta, con una prosa rica en imágenes.
· Siri Hustvedt – Todo cuanto amé – Además del tÃítulo, me gusta la historia de relaciones humanas contada con sensibilidad.
No recomendados
· Muriel Barbery – La elegancia del erizo – Me han resultado poco creíbles los personajes, de tanto que quieren alejarse de los estereotipos. Tiene buenos momentos, pero me cansó.
· Dan Brown ...
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infoesfera.com - July 20, 2009 Author: contacto at infoesfera.com (Infoesfera.com) Tags: Bibliotecas Add new tag Biblosfera
¿Qué leemos los socios de SEDIC? Encuesta 2009 - VII
Rosario
Recomendados
· Ian McEwan – Chesil Beach – Un relato concentrado con una exelente descripción de los sentimientos de los personajes.
· Arundhati Roy – El dios de las pequeñas cosas – Me gustó la historia y cómo la cuenta, con una prosa rica en imágenes.
· Siri Hustvedt – Todo cuanto amé – Además del título, me gusta la historia de relaciones humanas contada con sensibilidad.
No recomendados
· Muriel Barbery – La elegancia del erizo – Me han resultado poco creíbles los personajes, de tanto que quieren alejarse de los estereotipos. Tiene buenos momentos, pero me cansó.
· Dan Brown –...
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SEDIC - Blog - July 20, 2009 Author: Secretaría de SEDIC Tags: Miscelánea Tema del mes de julio 2009: Leer en verano
On Paying For The Times
Levi makes some excellent arguments:
I understand the appeal of a payment system to support the Times' massive journalistic infrastructure, and if Times management does actually go forward with this ambitious plan they will be applauded by many within the newspaper and publishing communities who yearn to see an online payment model succeed.
The New York Times has a history of seeking out innovative revenue models for its website. Under the leadership of Martin Nisenholtz, who has remained at the helm of Times digital operations for a remarkable 14 years, NYTimes.com pioneered the "demographics first" approach i...
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Conversational Reading - July 15, 2009 Author: Scott Esposito
Three in a bed
Novelist Ewan Morrison snuggles up with his pick of the best literary threesomes, from Ernest Hemingway to Anaïs NinEwan Morrison is the author of three novels which explore modern relationships and sexuality: Ménage, Distance and Swung. Ménage, his most recent novel, is the story of three bohemians in a ménage à trois in 90s London.Buy Ménage at the Guardian bookshop"The ménage à trois is a rich and rarified fictional seam which arose in the 19th century and originated from memoirs or fictionalised accounts of real-life events. The number of ménages à trois (as yet barely documented) which occurred in the lives ...
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Guardian Unlimited Books - June 24, 2009 Tags: Books Culture Fiction guardian.co.uk Editorial
The ugly spirit
For the past 50 years William Burroughs and his Naked Lunch have amazed and revolted in equal measure. James Campbell on the gestation and strange life of a work of extraordinary powerThe biography of a book is a literary genre awaiting development, and few books have had such an unusual birth and upbringing as William Burroughs's Naked Lunch. Even its proper name is in question: is it The Naked Lunch by William Burroughs, or Naked Lunch by William S Burroughs? (It is the former in its original Paris incarnation, and in the British edition that followed. When the book came out in the United States in 1962, the definite art...
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Guardian Unlimited Books - June 19, 2009 Tags: William Burroughs Books Fiction Culture The Guardian Features
Voices from America's underbelly
Philipp Meyer's debut novel, set in Buell, Pennsylvania, the heart of America's withering Rust Belt, could easily be a regular tale of life on the other side of the tracks. When the once-booming steel and coal industries collapsed, "half the people went on welfare and the other half went back to hunter-gathering". Buell has become the kind of place where kids cook up meth in their backyards and Wal-Mart is the only company hiring. Meyer's cast is equally familiar: Isaac England, a bright boy who should have gone to college but stayed to look after his disabled father; his sister, Lee, who has fled town for the Ivy League; ...
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Guardian Unlimited Books - May 23, 2009 Author: Mary Fitzgerald Tags: Fiction Books Culture Observer The Observer Reviews
Jack Kerouac and Fantasy Baseball. No. 5.16.2009. 73.
NYT: Jack kerouac obsessively played a fantasy baseball game of his own invention, charting the exploits of made-up players like Wino Love, Warby Pepper, Heinie Twiett, Phegus Cody and Zagg Parker, who toiled on imaginary teams named either for cars (the Pittsburgh Plymouths and New York Chevvies, for example) or for colors (the Boston Grays and Cincinnati Blacks)….He collected their stats, analyzed their performances and, as a teenager, when he played most ardently, wrote about them in homemade newsletters and broadsides. He even covered financial news and imaginary contract disputes.
All these “publications,” s...
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Librarian - May 16, 2009 Author: admin Tags: Uncategorized baseball
The Beats: a Graphic Beats
by Pekar, Harvey and Ed PiskorThe Beat Generation is remembered for wild behavior as well as literary experimentation, making them a natural subject for comics. More a collection of character studies than a comprehensive history, the first half is devoted to Jack kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, and William S. Burroughs (all written by Harvey Pekar and illustrated by Ed Piskor). Their literary achievements are celebrated, but so are their personal excesses and brushes with the law, resulting in "warts and all" portraits. Pekar and Piskor are joined by several other writers and artists for the "Perspectives" section, which cover...
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Reader's Club's Latest - May 13, 2009
THE BLANK [CHECK] GENERATION: In the Age of Self-Important Microcontent Conformity, Hipster Couture Wallows in a Sea of Dull Wit
OXFORD, Ohio (ZP) -- Four young women and three young men, all upperclassman hipsters at the threshold of college graduation, huddled together in a dismal corner of a dark bar.The bar is foreign territory for me, outside of my normal comfort zone. But, well, every once and a while a guy just needs a little change of scenery, away from bars filled with diverse mixtures of college undergrads and Townies, miscreants and stoners and saints, former high school football heroes and occasionally starving artists (tattoo or otherwise.)I'd already finished my business in the place, my party long gone, as younger folks tend to do her...
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The Zenformation Professional - April 21, 2009 Tags: Undergrads Nightlife Scenesters Literacy Hipsters Snobbery Intellectual Warfare Townie Living The Arts Oxford Fucking Ohio Culture Wars Class Struggles
Os 10 bibliotecários mais gatos do Brasil
Como nós somos defensores da igualdade dos direitos entre homens e mulheres, não seria justo publicar uma lista com as 10 bibliotecárias mais gatas do Brasil, e não fazer o mesmo com os homens.
Eu tive a “ingrata” missão de convocar uma comissão feminina para a eleição e ofereci os caminhos para que elas pudessem escolher livremente seus indicados.
O disclaimer é o mesmo da lista das gatas: em nenhum momento a intenção da lista dos top 10 é colocar tanto mulheres como homens como objetos sexuais, objetos de desejo, ou de qualquer forma que possa denegrir a imagem de quem quer que seja. Muito pelo ...
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Bibliotecários Sem Fronteiras 2.0 - March 18, 2009 Author: Moreno Barros Tags: Bibliotecários Concursos Imagem profissional
Norman Savage’s ‘Junk Sick’: Absorbing and poignant autobiography from a junkie diabetic poet
I’ve had a long continuous fist-fight with death. People were merely pre-lims.
- Norman Savage
Norman Savage’s life starts at 11 when he is diagnosed with diabetes. The whole anatomy of his life involves the disease. “Good diabetic control implies structure, work, planning, and deprivation, food deprivation. If you adhere to some rules and regulations, your odds are better of living a life relatively free of too many problems and complications. My gut instincts are to rebel against such a life.” And so he does, embarking on a 45-year odyssey of drugs, family, women and poetry. He chronicles the...
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TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home - March 14, 2009 Author: Court Merrigan Tags: Court Merrigan E-books and all that book review ebook publishing ebooks Junk Sick Norm Savage Norman Savage
