Nonsuch Book

wordy diversions

At school, we are frequently looking for ways to enhance student vocabularies, and occasionally looking for diverting activities that pose as rewards but still serve the objectives of the learning day. And very often, the adults get caught up in the fun of learning as well. As it should be.

There are more than a few adults at our school who will willingly play Scrabble with kids. And more than a few that will log on side by side with students to Free Rice where correctly identifying the meaning of words will help to end world hunger. For each correct response, 10 grains of rice will be donated to United Nations humanitarian efforts to feed the needy globally. And the best part? It is adaptive meaning that when you answer a question correctly, the game moves you up a level. Or vice versa. You see your level at the bottom of your screen. Also, if you answer incorrectly, the correct response is supplied to you, and the same question will reappear a few turns later.

Another engaging but deceptively simple word game is Knoword. You play against the clock for points, and you can keep track of your progress should you choose to register and login. The first letter of a word appears in a box with a dictionary definition beneath. You type the word in and it progresses you along to the next question if you are correct. While not adaptive like Free Rice, you will have moments when you slap yourself in the head for not connecting to so simple an answer. An amusing reminder that intuitive approaches to language are all around. One senses what a word means, can decipher it contextually, but if called upon to explicitly state a definition... Well, that may be harder than foreseen.

Fun distractions. Or fun learning. Either way.

the untidy gnome eluded me

I was very good this year. So I decided to test just how good and ask Santa for a 1935 edition of The Untidy Gnome by Stella Gibbons, illustrated by William Townsend. The description from rare book firm Peter Harrington read:

First edition, first impression of a rare children's book by the author of Cold Comfort Farm. Inscribed by the author on the front free endpaper, "Stella Gibbons, Nov. 18 1936". We know of no other copy in private hands, and OCLC locates only 11 in institutions. A lovely copy in the dust jacket.

Apparently Santa took the approximate $1,600 price point to be a gross inflation of my virtue. And the fat man was right of course, but I hope he appreciated my cheek in trying.

Now what I was able to manage this holiday season were copies of all the Vintage Gibbons editions I had been coveting for some time. Four of the titles are pictured above. Even better than just acquiring more books was the time to read The Matchmaker and Westwood during my holiday break. Nightingale Wood left me happy earlier in the year, Cold Comfort Farm is one of my favorite books, and I knew like you know about some authors that I would not be satisfied until I had had them all.

Why? Gibbons voice as a journalist, as a fine and wickedly funny observer of human nature, is never reduced to the sentimental as one might assume from these lovely covers. She survived two world wars, and she writes with and instills in many of her heroines a steely sense of purpose. But she also revels in revealing how inaccurately we can all perceive ourselves and those around us, how we are all works in progress. Things are just as they are - we can trust too much in the regard of others, we can long for hedonistic indulgence in times of want and beyond, and the most worthy and intelligent women around us can be physically unattractive. 

I am not one to make resolutions in the traditional sense on this first day of the year, but I will read as many of the works of Stella Gibbons as I can lay my hands on this year. Because she makes me laugh. Because she is often a needed slap in the face, a reminder to get over one's self. And so smart. Smart like Muriel Spark where keen observation stops the writing from veering off on to the wrong side of bitter.

poster lust: obvious state

Jacket Copy pointed the way to me this morning to what they called "pithy posters for writers." From the Etsy shop of Obvious State, these clever and visually pleasing literary posters delight me. My favorite is Molly Bloom's soliliquy from the end of Ulysses. Print featured above. Evan Robertson's design appealed even more after reading this description of the product:

For anyone that believes that James Joyce wrote Ulysses as an intellectual exercise designed to torture English majors, I appeal to you to re-read the last lines of this incredible story, which in my illustration form the wings of a butterfly emerging from a cocoon. The additional details of the illustration (the body, hindwings and the cocoon below) are formed from the dominant word in the monologue, "yes."

Other favorites include:

pages, dimensions and weight: library thing's new upgrades

Anthony drew my attention today to some time-wasting but fun-filled facts that a LibraryThing subscriber can now access about their collection. My stack is the blue one above which puts me solidly between the Sphinx and the Statue of Liberty if my books were to be stacked one atop the other. So I should be happy, right? But I am not. Because I know how much I still have to catalog here. And the competitive side of my nature is franticly trying to remember where the hand scanner is, and where I left off last time I stopped cataloging. And the librarian in me is blushing that my own collection is treated with a devil-may-care approach that I would never bring to a professional effort.

My books graphed according to number of pages. I should not be so ridiculously interested in this. And there is more. Here are the facts.

Cubic feet
Total cubic feet: 26
Total cubic meters: 0.74
U-Haul book boxes: 28.6
Bathtubs: 1.7

Weight
Total (pounds): 721.3
Total (kg): 327.9
Total (stones): 51.52
Elephants: 0.078
Blue whales: 0.00303
Pounds per cubic foot: 27.73
Kg per cubic meter: 443.05
Value of weight in gold: $11,764,262

Shelf space/stack height
Total shelf width/stack height (feet): 85.8
Total shelf width/stack height (meters): 26.1
IKEA Billy bookcases: 5.63

Pages
If all the pages in all the books were laid end-to-end...
Distance (feet): 89,503
Distance (meters): 27,280
Distance (miles): 16.95
Distance (km): 27.28
Hours to drive: 0.28
Smoots: 16,030
Spaldings: 15,454
Circumference of earth: 0.0681%
To moon: 0.0071%

Two little voices competing inside me. One telling me to make better use of my LibraryThing lifetime membership. The other telling me to get a life. But I know the value in all this. After all, if my books were gold, they would be worth nearly $12 million.

organizing the bookcase

 

Via Publishing Perspectives

hold on to them

Last night my ten year old son came up to me clutching a book inscribed to me from my father on the Christmas I was eleven. Gnomes. I so loved the whimsical silliness of that book. Now that my son has been exposed to the gnomes of Norse mythology through his endless perusal of D'Aulaires' Book of Norse Myths, the title caught his attention on the book shelves. And he was delighted to escape the dark and grumpy denizens of underground mining and metal fashioning present in the Nordic depictions of gnomes to the lightness of cute and rosy gnomes peeing on the side of barns. We crawled into bed and read nearly the whole thing. So remember not to weed the shelves too thoroughly. You never know when an old friend might visit from the ranks of the long neglected.

indiespensable box arrives

This is a pretty cool subscriber program. Steph sold me on the idea and today my first Indiespensable shipment arrived. They promised a signed first edition of Freedom in a slipcase custom designed for Indiespensable, an exclusive printing of part 1 of Paul Murray's novel Skippy Dies, and other special surprises (which turned out to be the bag of Stumptown coffee you above). It all feels like a present! Even though I paid for it. And it is only part 1 of this book I really want to read. And they include a reminder of a special discount if you buy the whole shebang. Doesn't matter. Something really satisfying about this box's contents.

If only it had come a little earlier in the day. You see, it is pouring rain here today in DC and the nice UPS man was running behind. He usually drops my book packages before the husband arrives home but today it was after. It does not really matter I suppose. He can see the volume of books in the house. I do not hide them. And he hears the children openly mocking me on the days I do not receive bookish love - "Oh, poor Mom did not get any books today!" But there is something about actually seeing them arrive. The raised eyebrows. The exasperated "Now what?" So I gave him that fantastic smelling coffee. He seemed appeased. For now.

penguin-centric

   

Via Caustic Cover Critic from yesterday. Designer Amy Fleisher having a little fun revamping classic Penguin covers for the 75th Anniversary. If only this stuff was real. Or could it be? If they thought people would buy it? As I, of course, would.

   

And I might want these plush for some little ones.

 And who would pass up a Frankenstein Penguin USB drive? Click on over to Amy Fleisher's site to see that one. So cute. So playful. Laughed out loud a little.

two nice things on tuesday

 

The mailman brought me a copy of Fireworks by Angela Carter today, a prize from Claire of Paperback Reader as part of her month long celebration of the works of Angela Carter. Just thrilled to have it, to start my Carter journey. Publisher synopsis of this one:

"In the short fiction of Angela Carter, the landmarks of reality disappear and give way to a landscape of riotous and uncensored sensibility. The city of Tokyo turns into a mirrored chamber reflecting the impossible longings of an exiled Englishwoman abandoned by her Japanese lover. An itinerant puppet show becomes a theatre of murderous lust. A walk through the forest ends in a nightmarish encounter with a gun-toting nymph and her hermaphrodite 'aunt'. Not simply a book of tales, Fireworks is a headlong plunge into an alternate universe, the unique creation of one of the most fertile, dark, irreverent, and baroquely beautiful imaginations in contemporary fiction."

Ooo. Just love that. Thank you kind and generous Claire!

And the second nice thing today? The release of The God of the Hive by Laurie King, the next installment in the Mary Russell / Sherlock Holmes relationship. Bit addicted to these. This will be my weekend read this week. My first book after falling off the April chunkster wagon. Very excited.

What books made you happy this week? 

keith richards, librarian

 

Growing up, I remember my grandfather telling me every year that Keith Richards had been decided upon as the celebrity most likely to die that year. Don't know if this was an actual list (who would compile that one?), but I did pay attention whenever I heard Richards' name in the media. Always hoping he was alive.

My grandfather neither liked or disliked the Stones but was fascinated by Richards. Like the iconic guitarist, Buddy (as I called him, as in "you are not my grandfather, you are my buddy") was unique, a rule breaker, but not defiant so much as outside the norms. He was a masterful craftsman and the best storyteller I have ever known. And he loved to read, especially history.

So this week when this story about Richards popped up in my aggregator, I just laughed. Turns out Richards is a voracious reader too - history. And has considered getting training as a librarian in order to better organize his collection. Has also received some monstrously large advance for his autobiography due out this year. Most likely won't read it but may have to sneak a peek while in a book store. Just in case I catch sight of Buddy again via Richards. And just because someone who defines their own path without regard to convention always interests me. And because of this Richards quote:

“When you are growing up there are two institutional places that affect you most powerfully: the church, which belongs to God, and the public library, which belongs to you. The public library is a great equaliser.”