fade theory

Books: A Memoir by Larry McMurtry seems like a soon-to-be-published book worth reading. I think it might also make an excellent gift for your favorite blogger.

NPR.org Expands Book Coverage:

“We’re building up our book coverage because book content really works for our audience,” NPR senior supervising producer Joe Matazzoni explained. “Books are among the top three topics attracting traffic to the NPR site,” he said.

If we listened to all the experts, we might believe that books aren’t attracting anyone to anywhere.

I’m still figuring out how to Twitter. I really just want to post links to interesting things I find, so maybe Twitter isn’t the best medium for me. We’ll see.

Anyway, have you seen these fab typographic desktop wallpapers? I think they’re grand, and the one shown above is my current wallpaper.

Father Inch sent me this article a little while back about copy editors and their demise: In a Changing World of News, an Elegy for Copy Editors.

Copy editors are the last set of eyes before yours. They are more powerful than proofreaders. They untangle twisted prose. They are surgeons, removing growths of error and irrelevance; they are minimalist chefs, straining fat. Their goal is to make sure that the day’s work of a newspaper staff becomes an object of lasting beauty and excellence once it hits the presses.

And then there were the follow-up letters to the editor. Should I point out that at least one of the letters has a typo?

Lifehacker recently posed a question to their readers: What Books Have Changed Your Life?. Though the Bible was predictably at the top, some of the responses may surprise you. Click here for the list.

Before baby, I didn’t have time for something “extra” like micro-blogging. But now, finding a balance between taking care of Massimo and working (yes, I’m working again) doesn’t leave much time for regular blogging. So, until I get things figured out, micro-blogging it is. Thanks to Stephen Tiano’s prompting, I’ve signed up for Twitter. You can read my mini-posts (I am crawling the web as much as ever, so I have plenty of interesting things to share) in the sidebar of fade theory or via RSS. Enjoy!

P.S. I’ve also started a Littler Inch Twitter.

Why I hate second-hand books:

For me, as a literary experience, they are akin to sloppy seconds, a salad bar in a staff canteen at the end of a hot weekday, or a recently-vacated cubicle in a public toilet. Let’s be clear: I don’t merely have a mild preference for buying brand-new. No, I’m digestively squeamish about used books.

On the face of it, this seems like a perfectly reasonable (though silly) statement. But dig a little bit deeper and it all unravels.

1. No bookworm could make this statement: “Ah yes, libraries: as if having to set foot in one of those sombre buildings full of flatulent, regretful people isn’t trauma enough, having to take a book home from one of them is always a defeating experience.”

2. The author of this piece is also the author of biographies of Paris Hilton and Amy Winehouse. I suppose someone’s got to write those biographies, but does it have to be the same person who blogs in the Guardian’s Books section? Disappointing.

Tasha Tudor, Children’s Book Illustrator, 92:

For 70 years her illustrations elicited wide admiration: The New York Times in 1941 said her pictures “have the same fragile beauty of early spring evenings.”

Her drawings, particularly the early ones, often illustrated the almost equally memorable stories she herself wrote. Some details: Sparrow Post, a postal service for dolls with delivery by birds. Birthday parties featuring flotillas of cakes with lighted candles. Mouse Mills catalogs, for ordering dolls clothes made by mice, who take buttons for pay.

The Catholic Library World said in 1971 that Ms. Tudor shed “a special ray of sunshine” with pictures that carry “the imagination of children into history, into the human heart, into the joys of family life, into love of friendship itself.”

Two of Ms. Tudor’s books were named Caldecott Honor Books: “Mother Goose” (1944) and “1 Is One” (1956). Ms. Tudor was just awarded the Regina Medal by the Catholic Library Association.

But it was her uncompromising immersion in another, less comfortable century that most fascinated people. She wore kerchiefs, hand-knitted sweaters, fitted bodices and flowing skirts, and often went barefoot. She reared her four children in a home without electricity or running water until her youngest turned 5. She raised her own farm animals; turned flax she had grown into clothing; and lived by homespun wisdom: sow root crops on a waning moon, above-ground plants on a waxing one.

Does the sentence have one foot in the grave?Some think so. (via Father Inch)

The Comma Pendant. (via swissmiss)

I could have sworn that I posted something earlier this week, but nope… Oh, well. This was my first week alone with Massimo, so I guess I had other things going on and on my mind.

I have been reading, though. I’ve read two Unbridled Books manuscripts of books that will come out in the Fall, plus I’m reading two other works of fiction (slowly), a book on infant brain development, and a book on infant massage. Considering my reading interests have shifted so dramatically, it’s amazing I’m reading fiction at all!

Eliot Asinof, ‘Eight Men Out’ Author, 88.

John S. Zinsser Jr., 84, Editor of Reader’s Digest Condensed Books.

Alton Kelley, 67, Poster Designer.

Matthew J. Bruccoli, Academia’s Keeper of the Fitzgerald Record, 76.

Thomas A. Johnson, Pioneering Black Journalist, 79.

It’s hard to believe, but it looks like Mark Twain’s house (now a museum) may be forced to close due to a lack of funds.

If anyone happens to have $155,000 sitting around, I wouldn’t mind one of these. (via the NYTimes)

Haruki Murakami talks about book translation, as in the books he’s translated from English to Japanese… (via the Literary Saloon)