Grab A Spine!

Source: 1001bookstoreadbeforeyoudie

visual-poetry:

“a humument” by tom phillips (1970)

A Humument: A treated Victorian novel is an altered book by British artist Tom Phillips, first published in 1970. It is a piece of art created over W H Mallock’s 1892 novel A Human Document whose title results from the partial deletion of the original title: A Human document.
Phillips drew, painted, and collaged over the pages, while leaving some of the original text to show through. The final product was a new story with a new protagonist named Bill Toge, whose name appears only when the word “together” or “altogether” appears in Mallock’s original text (…) (wikipedia)

browse through the book here: http://www.tomphillips.co.uk/humument/index.html

wwnorton:

FIRST LINES FROM NEW BOOKS OUT TODAY: MARCH 12, 2012

“When police entered the home of John Lawrence in September 1998, four hundred years of history had preceded them.”
Flagrant Conduct: The Story of Lawrence v. Texas by Dale Carpenter

“‘It’s going to take a long time to win this war,’ President George W. Bush told a group of Pentagon employees on September 17, 2001, six days after the terrorist attacks that marked a new era in global history. ‘Americans should not expect one battle but a lengthy campaign, unlike any other we have ever seen,’ he said, three days later, at a joint session of Congress.”
Power and Constraint: The Accountable Presidency after 9/11 by Jack Goldsmith

“I have long been fascinated by the lived experience of race in America, especially through my home city of Philadelphia. How do ordinary people in this diverse city interact across and along racial lines?”
The Cosmopolitan Canopy: Race and Civility in Everyday Life by Elijah Anderson

theatlantic:

6 Writing Tips From John Steinbeck

1. Abandon the idea that you are ever going to finish. Lose track of the 400 pages and write just one page for each day, it helps. Then when it gets finished, you are always surprised.

2. Write freely and as rapidly as possible and throw the whole thing on paper. Never correct or rewrite until the whole thing is down. Rewrite in process is usually found to be an excuse for not going on. It also interferes with flow and rhythm which can only come from a kind of unconscious association with the material.

3. Forget your generalized audience. In the first place, the nameless, faceless audience will scare you to death and in the second place, unlike the theater, it doesn’t exist. In writing, your audience is one single reader. I have found that sometimes it helps to pick out one person—a real person you know, or an imagined person and write to that one.

4. If a scene or a section gets the better of you and you still think you want it—bypass it and go on. When you have finished the whole you can come back to it and then you may find that the reason it gave trouble is because it didn’t belong there.

5. Beware of a scene that becomes too dear to you, dearer than the rest. It will usually be found that it is out of drawing.

6. If you are using dialogue—say it aloud as you write it. Only then will it have the sound of speech.

Read more. [Image: AP]

(via poetdreamer)

completehappenstance:

I’ve been swallowing bricks
and hoping
to build you a home
inside my heart.

I told you this
without thinking.

The room was so quiet
I swear you could hear
elephants dancing
in my chest.

The hammers
in my  throat
built something that sounded like
Rome.

You opened up.

I could see inside you.

It looked like home
in the spring time.

Like a cemetery
made out of balloons.

Like even if I popped
every last one,
those hammers would
keep building. 

 

G. E. Lovely 

arsenalvisual:

The grid behind a Penguin book cover.

(via typographie)

nypl:

For today’s Mustache Monday, we present Ivan Turgenev, a Russian novelist whom everyone should read.

But don’t take our word for it — what does William Dean Howells have to say?

I cannot describe the satisfaction his work gave me; I can only impart some sense of it, perhaps, by saying that it was like a happiness I had been waiting for all my life, and now that it had come, I was richly content forever. (From On Turgenev)

Start with the classic Fathers and Sons; NYPL has 171 copies just waiting for you.

writebloody:

The Write Bloody WORD PARTY is coming to Chicago in March! Tell your friends!!