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Imagine you are sitting someplace with some time to kill, and you would like to read a book. The place might be an airport, but it might also be a place much less likely to have a bookstore, like a train station, a cruise ship or a park. If you have a Kindle you are [...]
Last night the Brain family went to the library. We went for two reasons. First, Leigh wanted to check out a book she had reserved. Second, it lets the kids check out kid books. Think about how utterly fantastic a library is. The government, on behalf of its citizens, builds a building, staffs it and [...]
Meddling Kids Attempt to Thwart Book Trashing
by Robert Lamb | January 20, 2010
At the end of January 2010, Borders will ship unsold books from 200 closed Waldenbooks to a third-party liquidator. Whatever doesn’t wind up on a shelf somewhere goes in the trash, and the company has stated that there won’t be anything left over to donate. Needless to say, this plan has rubbed quite a few people the wrong way.
Fiction and Film: How HowStuffWorks.com Escaped in ’09
by Tracy V. Wilson | December 31, 2009
All in all, I had a pretty good year this year — but I also had plenty of stuff I wanted to escape from. There was the swine flu epidemic, the ongoing recession and my own broken leg. That seems to be how it’s gone for a lot of us, so I took a cue from Stuff You Missed in History Class’ Katie Lambert, who compiled a list of history reading recommendations from the HowStuffWorks.com staff this fall. But I was more interested in fiction: the books and films we turned to so we could go someplace imaginary.
Neil Gaiman, Little Shop of Stories and the (Polite) Persistence of Fans
by Tracy V. Wilson | December 15, 2009
Last night, Neil Gaiman held a reading and book signing in Decatur, Ga. The event was co-hosted by Little Shop of Stories — an independent bookstore in Decatur — and Agnes Scott College. By the end of the evening, I’d met Neil, gotten some books signed and had my picture taken with him.
If you’re a fan of Neil Gaiman, that probably sounds cool, but it doesn’t really sum up what was most awesome about the event. Perhaps more than any other fan event I’ve ever attended, last night’s signing required extraordinary patience and perseverance from pretty much everyone involved. Find out what happened (in all three acts) after the jump.
If you’re not a big fan of “Star Trek: The Next Generation” or of Wil Wheaton, you may not have heard about Wil’s latest book series, “Memories of the Future.” Imagine if Television Without Pity recappers had been writing about TNG back in 1987, only with more swearing, more digressions and more geeky in-jokes, plus behind-the-scenes memories for every episode. That’s what Vol. 1 does for the first half of the first season of TNG, from “Encounter at Farpoint” to “Datalore” — it’s just the thing for people who love TNG and snark. I decided to wait to read the book until the accompanying “Memories of the Futurecast” podcast wrapped up on Monday, which means I got to the last page of my paper copy this morning and confirmed a startling epiphany I had while listening to “Memories of the Futurecast” a few weeks ago.
I love the smell of old books. It’s just one of the reasons they’ll have to drag me kicking and screaming into the world of Kindles, Nooks and BeBooks. So it’s rather amusing that while the forces of technology and science seem intent on carrying out a kind of print holocaust, some scientists are hard at work creating new ways to smell books.
A Different Take on Sex and Vampires: Vampire as Gay Boyfriend
by Tracy V. Wilson | October 15, 2009
A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about the connection between sex and vampires. This morning, I ran across a link to a different take on the topic in Salon’s Broadsheet blog. There, Tracy Clark-Flory writes about an article in Esquire that equates vampires with gay men. “Vampires have overwhelmed pop culture,” says Stephen Marche, “because young straight women want to have sex with gay men.”
Space Music: Desert Island Albums in Orbit
by Robert Lamb | September 10, 2009
I think we all love playing the desert island game with books, movies and albums from time to time. You know the deal: “If you had to spend the rest of your life on a desert island, which three titles would you want with you?” I thought today might be a good opportunity to take a cosmic spin on the idea and imagine ourselves trapped on the International Space Station. Here’s the key stipulation: You can only pick from the books and albums ALREADY in orbit.
The good folks over at GovernmentAttic.org filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request and received an official listing of all the books, movies, TV shows and albums in the ISS library. Hey, astronauts need to unwind too.
Last week, we had a little shindig out on the HowStuffWorks.com deck, and one of the conversations turned to what we’d do if we won the lottery– not surprising since the jackpot was up past $200 million that day. I said I’d had two things at the top of my lottery list for years, and one of them was to call up LeVar Burton and ask him how much money it would take to start making “Reading Rainbow” again. Oh, and then give it to him.
Recent Postings by Category
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