Library goodness

The world's smallest library.

Some of the saddest photos I've ever seen

More photos by James D. Griffieon

This was the building where Detroit's deeply-troubled public school system once stored its supplies, and then one day walked away from it all, allowing everything to go to waste. The interior has been ravaged by fires and the supplies that haven't burned have been subjected to 20 years of Michigan weather. This city's school district is so impoverished that students are not allowed to take their textbooks home to do homework, and many of its administrators are so corrupt that every few months the newspapers report more of their scandals, sweetheart-deals, and expensive trips made at the expense of a population of children who can no longer rely on a public education to help lift them from the cycle of violence and poverty that has made Detroit the most dangerous city in America. To walk through this ruin, more than any other, I think, is to obliquely experience the real tragedy of this city: not some sentimental tragedy of brick and plaster, but one of people.

Look into my eyes

Amusing images from the Library of Congress.

Dandelion Wine

“Yahoo called me eight weeks ago,” he said, voice rising. “They wanted to put a book of mine on Yahoo! You know what I told them? ‘To hell with you. To hell with you and to hell with the Internet.’ “It’s distracting,” he continued. “It’s meaningless; it’s not real. It’s in the air somewhere.”

Ray Bradbury interview in the NY Times.

Polaroid returns

More here.

If you like this photo, you might find this book interesting.

Book cover reading

It began with a drought . . .













- from The Art of Penguin Science Fiction

12,450 miles

Descend, bold traveler, into the crater of the jokul of Sneffels, which the shadow of Scartaris touches before the calends of July, and you will attain the centre of the earth; I have done this, Arne Saknussemm"

Friends

“The Letter” from Frog and Toad Are Friends, by Arnold Lobel

---

Toad was sitting on his front porch. Frog came along and said, "What is the matter, Toad? You are looking sad."

"Yes, this my sad time of day. It is the time when I wait for the mail to come. It always makes me very unhappy."

"Why is that?"

"Because I never get any mail."

"Not ever?"

"No never. No one has ever sent me a letter. Every day my mailbox is empty. That is why waiting for the mail is a sad time for me."

Frog and Toad sat on the porch, feeling sad together.

"I have to go home now, Toad. There is something that I must do."

Frog hurried home. He found a pencil and a piece of paper. He wrote on the
paper. He put the paper in an envelope. On the envelope he wrote: “A LETTER
FOR TOAD”. Frog ran out of his house. He saw a snail that he knew.

"Snail, please take this letter to Toad’s house and put it in his mailbox."

"Sure, right away."

Then Frog ran back to Toad’s house. Toad was in bed, taking a nap.

"Toad, I think you should get up and wait for the mail some more."

"No, I am tired of waiting for the mail."

Frog looked out of the window at Toad’s mailbox. The snail was not there yet.

"Toad, you never know when someone may send you a letter."

"No, no. I do not think anyone will ever send me a letter."

Frog looked out of the window. The snail was not there yet.

"But, Toad, someone may send you a letter today."

"Don’t be silly. No one has ever sent me a letter before, and no one will send me a
letter today."

Frog looked out of the window. The snail was still not there.

"Frog, why do you keep looking out of the window?"

"Because now I am waiting for the mail."

"But there will not be any."

"Oh, yes there will, because I have sent you a letter."

"You have? What did you write in the letter?"

"I wrote, 'Dear Toad, I am glad that you are my best friend. Your best friend,
Frog'.”

"Oh, that makes a very good letter."

Then Frog and Toad went out onto the front porch to wait for the mail. They sat
there, feeling happy together.

Frog and Toad waited a long time. Four days later the snail got to Toad’s house and gave him the letter from Frog. Toad was very pleased to have it.

The Great American Novel

A tour de force in modern American literature. If you read one novel in your life time, make it this one, because, it's like crazy, man.

More hip cat masterpieces at Flickr.

Words

"When a reader falls in love with a book, it leaves its essence inside him, like radioactive fallout in an arable field, and after that there are certain crops that will no longer grow in him, while other, stranger, more fantastic growths may occasionally be produced. We love relatively few books in our lives, and those books become parts of the way we see our lives; we read our lives through them, and their descriptions of the inner and outer worlds become mixed up with ours — they become ours." Salman Rushdie

Shouldn't someone help her?

From the HarperCollins.com web site:

Read and review tomorrow's books today!
You could receive an advance copy of No One Heard Her Scream by Jordan Dane and many other exciting books!

'An Early ripe Apple and good in taste'

John Tradescant (~1570-1632) and his son, also named John (1608-1662), were gardeners to the nobility and royalty of England and both travelled widely collecting botanical specimens. Between them they introduced a large number of foreign species (including many of the fruits depicted) that remain prevalent in the average English gardens of today. From Bibliodyssey.

If an unwanted book falls into a poorly-maintained storage facility and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound?

Essay about the future of unwanted books. From BldgBlog . . .

I'm reminded of a few lines from The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco, in which the book's narrator and his well-read "master," William of Baskerville, break into a labyrinthine library after dark – a library full of mirrors, unmarked halls, and trick doorways. (While lost in the library, the narrator beautifully remarks: "I proceeded as if in the grip of a fever, nor did I know where I wanted to go.")

The architects of the library were, in fact, quite clever, mixing climate control with acoustic design:

"The library must, of course, have a ventilation system," William said. "Otherwise the atmosphere would be stifling, especially in the summer. Moreover, those slits provide the right amount of humidity, so the parchments will not dry out. But the cleverness of the architects did not stop there. Placing the slits at certain angles, they made sure that on windy nights the gusts penetrating from these openings would encounter other gusts, and swirl inside the sequence of rooms, producing the sounds we have heard. Which, along with the mirrors and the herbs, increase the fear of the foolhardy who come in here, as we have, without knowing the place well. And we ourselves for a moment thought ghosts were breathing on our faces."

"In any case," the book goes on, "we need two things: to know how to get into the library at night, and a lamp."

After all, the narrator then says, "I felt inclined to disobedience and decided to return to the library alone. I myself didn't know what I was looking for. I wanted to explore an unknown place on my own; I was fascinated by the idea of being able to orient myself there without my master's help."

And so he goes, lamp in hand, heading into that unlit space full of books that no one's reading, in a surround-sound of breezes, looking for something he knows he'll never find.

1878 Picture Book of Africa