Reading Copy Book Blog

Congratulations to Sheila Turner, who recently won BC Transit’s Transit Hero contest and earned a big pile of British Columbia-themed books (donated by AbeBooks) for her efforts. Sheila wrote a very interesting essay about her bus reading club where a small group of like-minded bibliophiles talk books on the morning commute.

Our bus has a reading club. Not a book club, but definitely a reading club. There are five members in this club, although the number of participants varies from day to day. I don’t know their names or where they live or what they do, but all are a part of my work day routine.

Vintage seed catalogues are important historical documentation of our agricultural heritage. They remain an invaluable record of seed varietals and plants of the time, when crops and species evolve season over season. And fortunately for us all, many are also exquisitely beautiful as art and design.

Children are a blessing but authors have a habit of creating horrific fictional children that not even a mother could love. Few things have as unsettling effect on the psyche of a reader than a plotline that includes the shattering of innocence.

From We Need to Talk About Kevin to Lord of the Flies, there are numerous utterly evil children in literature, and we’ve put together a selection whose crimes are far worse than lying, stealing or most other childhood misdemeanors. Be warned.

An illuminated manuscript is any manuscript whose text is accompanied by decoration. It originally referred only to silver or gilt adornments, but came to be acceptable terminology for any manuscript with drawings, paintings or decorations such as ornate initials, borders, floral accoutrements and the like. Often the illuminations would depict a historical or rural/pastoral scene.

In the case of these amazing, fantastic, I-can’t-stop-raving-about-them examples, there is also flour and sugar, presumably. Yes, a creative genius whose friend I would very much like to be, over at the luminarium blog, made a batch of illumination cookies for his friend. He chose historiated initials from a variety of manuscripts and created what looks to be 24 letters of the alphabet (not sure whether Y and Z are just missing from the photo for symmetry, or they did not get created) using edible paper attached to square cookies, and then piped on edible gold edging. I really think the result is so gorgeous. I wonder if they were tasty, too.

I love when people combine food and literature. It’s like the world gets brighter, just for a moment. *happy sigh*

Read our illuminated manuscript feature to learn more about illuminations, historiated initials, and medieval books of hours.

via BoingBoing.

There are truly some fantastic vintage book gems out there, in some unexpected places. What about self-defence (or self-defense, depending which side of the pond you call home)? People have, sadly, always attacked one another like big creeps, and there have been books written for ages on how to protect yourself from those creeps. But differences in design and style between yesterday and today have made these books, which are probably just as valuable a resource today, an absolute dream for collectors. One is an original 1963 book by Bruce Lee (yes, that Bruce Lee), and there are many other gorgeous vintage self-defense books:

But the greatest has to be the one by Honor Blackman. If you don’t know who Honor Blackman is, she’s a remarkable woman. She was Cathy Gale in The Avengers in the early 1960s and she was one of the greatest of all Bond girls as Pussy Galore in Goldfinger in 1964. Blackman was an icon of the 1960s and, like most folks who become famous, she brought out a book at the height of her celebrity.

In 1965, Andre Deutsch published Honor Blackman’s Book of Self-Defence and it’s a remarkable piece of 1960s girl power. See Honor slam some villain into the hay, see Honor deal with some creep in stripey Speedos on the beach, see Honor bust the arm of some bloke who touches her up on a park bench, see Honor dish out some old school violence to a drunk in the Dog and Duck.

Ladies – you don’t need pepper spray, you need this book, which is filled with useful judo techniques and self defence moves. Honor was no fraud and developed her judo skills at London’s Budokwai dojo for her TV and movie roles. All that attention to fitness served her well, Honor Blackman is still acting today – not bad for a lady born in 1925. And Honor Blackman’s Book of Self-Defence has become a cult classic and rather scarce.

Enjoy my colleague Richard’s review of The Blind Side and Moneyball, both by Michael Lewis – the writing is interesting enough to keep even a non-sports fan interested.

The image on the left is from an 1802 book called Histoire naturelle generale et particulière des Mollusques by Denys Montfort. The image on the right is one I came across today, from 2004, listed as original children’s book art by Tom Leonard, and called Mysterious Giant Squid.

The Kraken hasn’t changed much in 202 years. Which version do you prefer?

The Nebula Awards have been recognizing and rewarding greatness in science fiction writing since 1965. Nebulas are handed out by the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America and their annual event celebrates the books of the previous year. The 2011 winners have just been announced:

Novel Winner: Among Others by Jo Walton

Novella Winner: The Man Who Bridged the Mist by Kij Johnson (Asimov’s Science Fiction, October/November 2011)

Novelette Winner: What We Found by Geoff Ryman (The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, September/October 2011)

Short Story Winner: The Paper Menagerie by Ken Liu (The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, March/April 2011)

Ray Bradbury Award for Outstanding Dramatic Presentation Winner: Doctor Who: The Doctor’s Wife by Neil Gaiman (writer), Richard Clark (director)

Andre Norton Award for Young Adult Science Fiction and Fantasy Book Winner: The Freedom Maze by Delia Sherman

Here, this beautiful bouquet (book-et?) is for you. I picked all dozen flowers myself.

This is a cool little post from Flavorwire, musing over what would be found in the musical collections of fictional characters. They even went so far as to put together a hypothetical playlist for Eli and Charlie Sisters, the two cowboy assassin brothers from Patrick DeWitt’s novel The Sisters Brothers. Here are the selections they came up with:

“Don’t Play No Game That I Can’t Win” — Beastie Boys (feat. Santigold)

We think any couple of rough and tumble boys with a sense of humor would have at least one Beastie Boys song on their iPod, and these two, who strike fear into the hearts of scoundrels and good men alike, definitely don’t play any games they don’t win.

“I Wish” — Skee-Lo

Charlie might roll his eyes every time this track comes on, but we think Eli would insist — after all, if he’s the kind of cowboy who goes on a diet to please the imagined wishes of a lady, he’d be the kind of guy to lament his physical shortcomings in old school rap.

“Zero Dark Thirty” — Aesop Rock

Something about this song just sounds like the traveler’s life out in the American West to us, with all its rough insanity. Not that “zero friends minotaur fugly stepchild devote lunch jumped over” would make any sense to either Charlie or Eli, but we bet they’d be faking it.

“Gold Guns Girls” — Metric

This was probably meant to be a love song, but for the Sisters brothers, it would become Eli’s plea to Charlie — is it ever going to be enough?

“Power” — Kanye West

The Sisters brothers are Kanye fans if we’ve ever met them.

“Moonlight Mile” — The Rolling Stones

Charlie and Eli never had a problem with snow (at least not in this novel), but this is still one of the best songs we can think of for riding your horse quietly into the night, across the great plains of America.

“(Don’t Fear) The Reaper” — Blue Oyster Cult

Whether this song would psych Charlie up for killing or assuage Eli’s feelings (or both), we’re not sure, but we have an inkling they’d be into it.

“Psycho Killer” — Talking Heads

We can just picture Eli giggling softly to himself while listening to this song, with cranky old Charlie rolling his eyes and telling him he’d better take their life’s work a little more seriously.

“Hey Joe” — Jimi Hendrix

Who better to soundtrack a hot night than Hendrix? And if this song can be believed, he knows a little something about killing, whether he wants to or not.

“Wanted Dead or Alive” — Bon Jovi

Well, we just couldn’t help ourselves. Cowboy brothers on a death errand!