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Author Archives: Brian D. Butler
Keep Books Alive In Ukraine
A group of writers and booksellers (Carolyn Forche, Mitchell Kaplan, Christopher Merrill, Askold Melnyczuk, and Jane Unrue) have partnered with the Coral Gables Foundation to raise funds for direct support to booksellers, editors, printers, warehouse workers, libraries and librarians, and … Continue reading
Posted in Books, Europe, Libraries, Museums, Writing
Tagged Bookselling, Russia, Ukraine
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a good bookshop is just a genteel Black Hole that knows how to read
“The truth is that even big collections of ordinary books distort space, as can readily be proved by anyone who has been around a really old-fashioned secondhand bookshop, one that looks as though they were designed by M. Escher on … Continue reading
Posted in Books, Bookstore Tourism, Writing
Tagged Paris, secondhand bookshops, Shakespeare and Company, Terry Pratchett
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Christmas In Europe
The Christmas holiday season can be magical throughout Europe. You can experience a flying tour of nine European nations with the video below from the National Geographic. The 45-minute-long episode gives heartwarming glimpses of places like Finnish Lapland, where half a … Continue reading
Posted in Air Travel, Architecture, Art, Europe, Film, Tourism
Tagged Britain, Christmas, Finland, Germany
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Is Santa from Oz
The Life and Adventures Of Santa Claus by author of The Wizard of Oz, L. Frank Baum, with its elaborations and much added detail went a long way to popularizing the legend of Santa Claus in North America. However, in the cover … Continue reading
Posted in Art, Books, Libraries, USA, Writing
Tagged L.Frank Baum, Oz, Santa Claus, The Wizard of Oz
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I am thinking now of grief, and of getting past it;
Starlings in Winter by Mary Oliver Chunky and noisy, but with stars in their black feathers, they spring from the telephone wire and instantly they are acrobats in the freezing wind. And now, in the theater of air, they swing … Continue reading
“It was a dark and stormy night.”
Since 1982 the Bulwer Lytton Fiction Contest has challenged participants to write a truly awful opening sentence to the worst novel never written. The whimsical literary competition honors Sir Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, whose 1830 novel Paul Clifford begins with “It … Continue reading
Your very own globe ornament
Every year John Nelson comes up with a papercraft globe ornament for printing out, cutting and pasting together; this year’s uses Living Atlas world imagery in an orthographic projection. If that’s not enough, Nelson also has links for previous years’ ornaments, … Continue reading
A Ghost Story of Christmas
I HAVE endeavoured in this Ghostly little book, to raise the Ghost of an Idea, which shall not put my readers out of humour with themselves, with each other, with the season, or with me. May it haunt their houses pleasantly, and … Continue reading
Posted in Art, Books, Europe, History, Libraries, Writing
Tagged A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens, Christmas
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