Musings of a Modern Day Cyberneticist
By now we've all heard of Marie Kondo, the Japanese home-organization guru whose book The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up became an international bestseller in 2011.
Having minimized many of the things in my life, I’ll say that getting rid of books was something I just couldn’t bring myself to do either.
Jeremy Keith (adactio.com)
Outside of a dog, a book is a man’s best friend. Inside of a dog, it’s too dark to read.
—Groucho Marx
Newley Purnell (newley.com)Here’s the best of what I read in 2018. As in previous round-ups, some of these titles came out this year, while others were published in years past.
Years later, many adults still pine for the days their school libraries, auditoriums, and gyms transformed into pop-up bookstores.
A backlog at the printing presses, plus a surging demand for popular hardcover titles, has hurt publishers at peak sales season, with popular titles out of stock in some stores.
Writing in Wired, Craig Mod expertly dissects both the e-book revolution that never happened and the quieter one that actually d
Book publishing is a business and increasingly a technical one, but at its heart it is an art, writes Peter J. Dougherty in this opinion piece. He is the editor-at-large at Princeton University Press,
A nice little essay here.
There were two Jewish shape-shifters in my Faerie and Zion reading this month. The first is the protagonist of Metunshemet (Owled), an Israeli novel for younger readers. Noga is a sixth grader in Kfar Sava. But she also has a second, secret identity: each night she turns into an owl. She has an owl friend named Vermeer and some acquaintances among the neighborhood fruit bats, but finds all of her nocturnal relationships far less challenging than the ones with her parents, her younger brother, and the other kids at school.
I’ve been randomly thinking about other were-animals lately, so it was interesting to see this pop up serendipitous-ly.
Jay’s deft illusions flout reality, and he rejects the notion that his magic is a suitable entertainment for children.
A great set of stories about Ricky Jay.
I once asked Mamet whether Jay had ever shared with him details of his childhood.Mamet replied, “I can’t remember.”I said, “You can’t remember whether you discussed it or you can’t remember the details?”He said, “I can’t remember whether or not I know a better way to dissuade you from your reiteration of that question without seeming impolite.” ❧
November 29, 2018 at 12:44PM
Magic is about working hard to discover a secret and making something out of it. You start with some small principle and you build a theatrical presentation out of it. You do something that’s technically artistic that creates a small drama. ❧
November 29, 2018 at 12:48PM
Jean Prévost’s “La Première Partie des Subtiles et Plaisantes Inventions,” the earliest known important conjuring book, printed in Lyons in 1584. ❧
November 29, 2018 at 01:15PM
The main thing that dissuaded him, he says, is that “I wouldn’t want to sell a book to a philistine, which is what every bookseller has to do.” ❧
November 29, 2018 at 01:18PM
Two automatons stood on the table. One, called “The Singing Lesson,” was the creation of Jean-Eugène Robert-Houdin, the nineteenth-century watchmaker-turned-conjurer, who is considered the father of modern magic. The other was a Chinese cups-and-balls conjurer built by Robert-Houdin’s father-in-law, Jacques Houdin. ❧
November 29, 2018 at 01:34PM
Two automatons stood on the table. One, called “The Singing Lesson,” was the creation of Jean-Eugène Robert-Houdin, the nineteenth-century watchmaker-turned-conjurer, who is considered the father of modern magic. The other was a Chinese cups-and-balls conjurer built by Robert-Houdin’s father-in-law, Jacques Houdin. ❧
November 29, 2018 at 01:34PM
Searching for books with a corresponding Renaissance Accelerated Reader 360® quiz is easy with Accelerated Reader Bookfinder®. Students, teachers, parents, and librarians can search in English or Spanish using criteria such as ATOS book level or a Lexile™ measure, interest level, title, author, fiction/nonfiction, subject, award-winners, state lists, CCSS Exemplars, and more
An interesting site with a wealth of information and details for children’s books.
Most of us own books we’ve read and books we haven’t. Kevin Mims considers the importance of owning books we’ll never get around to finishing.
I had hoped for more here, but it’s just a recap of things I’ve read in either their original incarnations or via other resources.
Bookstores have become cultural Rorschach tests. After the past decade or so, you’ve either been traumatized by watching your favorite store go dark, or you’re fine with the coffee and craft cocktails now served alongside exquisitely curated books.
This fall begins a new era, or maybe a retro one, marked by the reemergence of national bookstore chains and two prototype stores opening next month. In New York, Shakespeare & Co. is growing to three locations, laying the groundwork for its national expansion, while Indigo, Canada’s largest bookstore chain, is opening its first U.S. store in New Jersey, staking its claim before growing west. Both believe there’s big potential in general bookstore chains despite wildly different ideas about how we buy books.
When the reading brain skims texts, we don’t have time to grasp complexity, to understand another’s feelings or to perceive beauty. We need a new literacy for the digital age writes Maryanne Wolf, author of Reader, Come Home
Glenn Dixon (glenn.thedixons.net)Here are the steps I took in order to get all of my GoodReads books/reviews over into my IndieWeb-ified Wordpress: Prerequisites: A GoodReads account with a decent amount of books reviewed and/or starred A self-hosted WordPress site Twenty Seventeen theme (could work with others) Advanced Custom Fie...
Chris Adami (Spherical Harmonics)That's right folks, this is not a science post. After 45 posts about information, quanta, intelligence, and what not, a how-to guide? Well I only have one blog, and I didn't know where to put this stuff, that I think could be helpful to others, because I've done this several times and I learned a bunch. So now you get to read about how to move your library of precious books from one house to another.
I like your method and did much the same myself this past September. The smallest “book box” one can find is certainly the key.
One thing you’re missing, at least in several of the photographs, that would help for both general shelf wear as well as for packing/moving is to have all of your dust jackets covered with book jacket covers. This will help protect your dust jackets from wear and tear and help increase their long term value, particularly for rarer first editions.
I notice that some of your collection likely already has these, à la the Heinlein, though it’s obvious in that case that a book seller likely jacketed it far too late to protect the pristine original. At least it’s protected from further future wear. If you think it’s worth the time and protection, it may be a worthwhile thing to do when you’re unpacking and reshelving them on the other end.
Brodart is one of the larger sellers of dust jacket covers and they make a huge variety of shapes, sizes, and types. I’ve found that their Advantage I covers are pretty solid and versatile for most of the book sizes you’ve got. Though fair warning: you can go down the rabbit hole and lose a few hours researching dust cover materials and archival types. In the end you want to look for something that covers the jacket, but doesn’t stick to it. This will allow you to replace the jacket cover with a new one if necessary without causing damage to the dust jacket itself.
