Authors, Book Column, Book Talk

Harper Lee Letters up for Auction

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There are 11 of Harper Lee’s letters set to be sold by November 8th. You can get the full details and keep up with the results over on the auction site. I was surprised how unique many of the letters are. There seems to be a personal tone to each of them. Most correspondence we see from author’s these days is a little more formal, a little more template-driven and even a little less polite.

These letters run from the 1960s-1990s. Harper Lee seems to be one of the most curious and sweetest of famous Southern authors. But then I know a lot of our senior ladies down South would probably fit this bill as well. They should all just put pen to paper.

Even if you never get the chance to bid on one of Lee’s letters, it’s worth a couple of clicks and some time to read through the text of each.

Book Column, Book Talk

My Fiction Fast is Over

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I’m reading fiction again. And it feels good. Last year my non-fiction TBR pile was massive. I was so behind on reading stuff for work and other topics, that I imposed a self-inflicted fiction fast for 12 months. It ended earlier this week. It was certainly worth it. I read 32 non-fiction books over the 12 months. All of which add up to make me better at my job and to be generally better informed. I mean, we read not only to escape, but to improve ourselves. Right?

But there’s nothing like burning through some mind candy. I started out with two. I am about 50 pages into Ninni Holmqvist’s The Unit. I’m going to give it to 150 pages, before deciding if it’s recommendable. And I finished reading Brad Meltzer’s The Book of Lies yesterday. It was so-so. But it was easy and fast. Just what I was looking for.

I don’t know if you’ve ever taken the time to think about the benefits of reading fiction, but they are there. It’s something I had never thought about until my fast and it’s something I am going to have to research some more.

Book Covers, Book Design, New Releases

Chip Kidd Video Talking About 1Q84 Book Design

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It’s always interesting hearing boko designers talk about their projects. Even better when it’s Chip Kidd. Here he is  discussing text and cover design for Haruki Murakami’s 1Q84.

Media, On the Web, Technology

Small Demons and Connecting the Dots

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Small Demons launched in beta this week and is trying to help us discover new things by connecting all the dots for us. How vague is that? But seriously that what it does. You can start with a person, book, movie, music, brand or thing. I chose a specific bourbon, Old Grand-Dad. Small Demons was able to list out three books that specifically mention that bourbon and cite the passages.

Want to know a character’s favorite recipe? Small Demons will eventually be the place to go. There is also a “My Library” tab, that is not yet active and I’m not sure how deep the social component will go. I’ve only been in for a day.

The “Books Mentioned in Other Books” is quite a big rabbit hole to start down. It goes on and on and on, but it’s fun to see what books, genres and author share certain things. As fun as it is, Small Demon’s bookshelf is still small, so all of the results feel a little truncated. There are many many books that will be added and indexed.

It’s one of those things that could only happen (and scale) thanks to the internet. It’s on the same track as LibraryThing (one of the most awesome services the internet has birthed). Here’s a quick under-two-minute video they produced to promo the new search/relationship/discovery engine:

Books, Publishing and Birmingham