Last I heard, books didn’t have a ratings system. Last I heard, despite the movie ratings system, kids got their hands on R-rated movies anyway. Last I heard, Wendy Day hadn’t laughed once since the late ’80’s. (via The Millions)
Ian Rankin is interviewed by the Inverness Courier. Apparently, Inspector Rebus has a run-in with George W. Bush in the penultimate Rebus novel, The Naming of the Dead.
At MetaxuCafe, Damon Garr wants to know how much you read. If I had to peg down a number, I spend perhaps at least three to four hours a day reading something, much of that during my commute time. I generally try to get in a lengthy reading session on the weekend. There’s often nothing more satisfying than five or six uninterrupted hours immersed in a book. I read constantly on planes, which is why I enjoy traveling. (I was able to finish two and a half books on my last flight.) I still manage to have some semblance of a life, despite all this. And of course, like any addict, I constantly crave more, which, now that I think about it, probably makes me more obsessive about books than I realized.
Also at MetaxuCafe, Bud Parr takes a look at James Meek’s The People’s Act of Love. I haven’t read this yet, but I’ve received somewhere around seven copies of this book in the mail. Really, seven copies? Do you take me for a caffeinated hydra?
Another reason to like Hardy: he wrote love poems to his wife at 72. It’s too bad he didn’t have any Viagra. He really could have shown Emma a good time, particularly if he thrusted in time with the meter. (via Kenyon Review)
Robert Redford has demanded an apology for Iraq. Yeah, Redford, that’ll show ’em. I hereby demand an apology from Redford for all the meetings he’s shown up hours late for and all the people he’s expected to deify him over the years.
Seven copies of The People’s Act of Love? Surely you intend to hold some sort of contest that I can win so you can mail me one. Right?
The used-bookstores-go-horribly-wrong link (which concerns a private residence converted into an utterly chaotic “store”) brings to mind two stores which were similarly disheveled. One was Zimmerman’s Used Books in Louisville, which closed around 1983. The place, in business nearly a century, was almost impassable in its last couple of decades. But perhaps understandably so, since its owner was still running the place when he died at age 101 in 1976, and his son, who succeeded him until entering a nursing home when the store closed, was already suffering from Alzheimer’s when his dad was living. The advantage to the disorder, though, was that if one saw a book one wanted in there, it would still be there three years later – even a first edition of Beckett’s “Stories & Texts For Nothing” for $7. Another such example was a bookstore in downtown San Francisco – I forget the name – which I used to visit in the 1990s. It was as disorganized as the store described in the link, but instead of being in a house it was in a building that seemingly was the size of a 747 hangar.
Seven copies of The People’s Act of Love? Surely you intend to hold some sort of contest that I can win so you can mail me one. Right?
The used-bookstores-go-horribly-wrong link (which concerns a private residence converted into an utterly chaotic “store”) brings to mind two stores which were similarly disheveled. One was Zimmerman’s Used Books in Louisville, which closed around 1983. The place, in business nearly a century, was almost impassable in its last couple of decades. But perhaps understandably so, since its owner was still running the place when he died at age 101 in 1976, and his son, who succeeded him until entering a nursing home when the store closed, was already suffering from Alzheimer’s when his dad was living. The advantage to the disorder, though, was that if one saw a book one wanted in there, it would still be there three years later – even a first edition of Beckett’s “Stories & Texts For Nothing” for $7. Another such example was a bookstore in downtown San Francisco – I forget the name – which I used to visit in the 1990s. It was as disorganized as the store described in the link, but instead of being in a house it was in a building that seemingly was the size of a 747 hangar.