Things Librarians Look At.

Eleventh Stack

When I started as a clerk at Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh- East Liberty, I had no idea that being a librarian was a thing. I just needed a job. I didn’t even care about libraries!

It is totally a thing. We do things like this. And there are lists like this. Even Legos!

Here are some funny yet informative things librarians look at (during lunch breaks of course.)

Awful Library Books

Sometimes books need to be thrown away. Sometimes a librarian can’t do it. These are the (often unintentional) hilarious results.

Book Porn

It’s exactly what it sounds like. Sexy pictures of all things book-related. Unlike regular porn, this will lead to DIY projects.

Book Riot

Book review websites can be so pretentious. As a voracious reader who will read anything, I love that Book Riot covers everyone from J.K. Rowling to Dave Eggers to James…

View original post 207 more words

January 17, 2014 0

Money Expressions in James Joyce’s Ulysses

Biblioklept

Ulysses_Money

From Miles L. Hanley’s Word Index to James Joyce’s Ulysses.

View original post

January 17, 2014 0

Ernest Hemingway’s 1977 Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech

Write it Now!

“Ernest Miller Hemingway (July 21, 1899 – July 2, 1961) was an American author and journalist. His economical and understated style had a strong influence on 20th-century fiction, while his life of adventure and his public image influenced later generations. Hemingway produced most of his work between the mid-1920s and the mid-1950s, and won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1954. He published seven novels, six short story collections, and two non-fiction works. Three novels, four collections of short stories, and three non-fiction works were published posthumously. Many of his works are considered classics of American literature. ” For more, (Wikipedia) visit: http://bit.ly/1auRATU

To hear Hemingway give his Nobel Prize acceptance speech, visit: http://bit.ly/1dufWBN

Happy New Year!

View original post

January 4, 2014 0

Johnny Cash: The Life by Robert Hilburn (2013)

Classic Rock Review

From amazon.com

“He is what the land and the country are all about, the heart and soul of it personified…”. Bob Dylan.

“It’s called country music and western music, but the truth is it’s American music. It speaks in story about America in a way that speaks to all of us, north, east, west, and south.” Richard Nixon at a White House concert.

With the holiday gift giving season fast approaching, there’s no surfeit of books on musical artists. Books on Charlie Parker, The Beatles, Duke Ellington, Robert Plant, Jimi Hendrix, and no doubt others will be on the bookshelves. But certainly one of the best is Robert Hilburn’s book on Johnny Cash.

Hilburn began this book in 2009 when Cash’s manager told him “only about twenty percent” of Cash’s life had been told. While previous books on Cash put his life and music in some kind of perspective, Hilburn…

View original post 881 more words

December 28, 2013 0

“Another orange juice, with a little vodka in it this time” (Donald Barthelme)

Biblioklept

SNOW WHITE had another glass of healthy orange juice. “From now on I deny myself to them. These delights. I maintain an esthetic distance. No more do I trip girlishly to their bed in the night, or after lunch, or in the misty mid-morning. Not that I ever did. It was always my whim which governed those gregarious encounters summed up so well by Livy in the phrase, vae victis. I congratulate myself on that score at least. And no more will I chop their onions, boil their fettucini, or marinate their flank steak. No more will I trudge about the house pursuing stain. No more will I fold their lingerie in neat bundles and stuff it away in the highboy. I am not even going to speak to them, now, except through third parties, or if I have something special to announce — a new nuance of my mood…

View original post 170 more words

November 24, 2013 0

“Directions for the Construction of the Text” — Albrecht Dürer

Biblioklept

“Directions for the Construction of the Text” — Albrecht Dürer

(From Of the Just Shaping of Letters).

THE letters which are usually called “text,” or quadrate, it was formerly customary so to write, although they are now imitated by the new art, as presently I shall show below. Although the alphabet begins with the writing of A, yet shall I (not needlessly) in the first place undertake to draw an I; because almost all the other letters are formed after this letter, although always something has to be added to it or taken away.

First make your I of equal squares, of which three are properly set one over the other; and the top of the top one, and the bottom of the bottom one, divide in two points, that is to say, into three equal parts: then set a square equal to the others in an oblique manner…

View original post 2,263 more words

November 18, 2013 0

Quest For Mars Continues

Eleventh Stack

Today in 1971 the Mariner 9 became the first space vehicle to orbit another planet–Mars. With India’s recent pursuit of its own mission to the red planet, the allure of Mars remains a fixed point on humanity’s collective horizon. As you might imagine, plenty of ink has been spilled over Mars exploration. We’ll take a moment on this auspicious day in the history of space exploration to highlight a few items from our own collection.

Red Rover : Inside The Story Of Robotic Space Exploration, From Genesis To The Mars Rover Curiosity by Roger Wiens. As the chance for a manned mission to Mars within the next decade or more grows less and less likely, this book focuses on the history and future of the next best option, robotic proxies. Equipped with state of the art tech that delivers the next best thing to actually being there, robotic…

View original post 302 more words

November 18, 2013 0

BREAKING: A (Not At All) Exclusive Q&A with Anchorman & Literary Legend Ron Burgundy

BookPeople

Let Me Off at the Top: My Classy Life & Other Musings, the riveting new memoir from Anchorman and Literary Legend Ron Burgundy, hits our shelves in a storm of mahogany-scented wonder this Tuesday, November 19. In the most highly anticipated book of the year, Burgundy reveals his most private thoughts, his triumphs and his disappointments. He takes us from his boyhood in a desolate Iowa coal-mining town to his years at Our Lady Queen of Chewbacca High School. Let us tell you – it’s one wild ride.

Pre-order your tickets to the gun show right here and we’ll have one of these puppies waiting for you when they come out of the box Tuesday morning. In the mean time, we’ve landed a not at all exclusive interview with the man behind the book jacket – Ron Burgundy.

What aspects of your childhood or upbringing have endured with you…

View original post 1,445 more words

November 17, 2013 0

The Self-Portraits of Nine Authors

Biblioklept

portraits

View original post

November 5, 2013 0

Changing Face of Book Publishing: Indie Publishers Partner with Amazon

Parallel Universe

We Say We Want a Revolution

There is a revolution going on and it’s changing the world of book publishing. Indie publishers are uniting and uploading their books to the Amazon machine. The days of a half-dozen huge New York book publishers making all the decisions on what the public will read is coming to an end. What has led us to this threshold? Of course technology is part of it, but traditional publishers are partly to blame. Is it a good change or not? Probably both, but like other revolutions, it is a sea change, a wave that cannot be turned back.

Putting Aside Perceptions

The first day I walked into a book publisher as a new employee, I thought that writers (authors after you write a book) would be revered. I would soon know differently as one after another, my beliefs would…

View original post 905 more words

November 5, 2013 0