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Author Archives: Brian D. Butler
An Alternate Alice Versery
I am continually amazed by the seemingly endless variations and spinoffs of Lewis Carroll’s classic Alice in Wonderland. But even I was surprised to discover that beginning in the 1930s, Guinness beer began using Alice in Wonderland and the cast … Continue reading
Posted in Books, Europe, Writing
Tagged Advertising, Alice in Wonderland, Guinness, Lewis Carroll
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“To walk alone in London is the greatest rest.”
It’s surprising to learn that London wasn’t well mapped until the 1500s, but the cartographers, topographers, and historians of the Historical Towns Trust have the decided to remedy the problem by looking back in time to create period maps.. Their … Continue reading
Posted in Architecture, Europe, History, Maps, Tourism
Tagged Cartography, Great Britain, London
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Everything is like something else
NO LONGER VERY CLEAR John Ashbery It is true that I can no longer remember very well the time when we first began to know each other. However, I do remember very well the time we first met. You walked … Continue reading
Anthropodermic bibliopegy is not cool
Harvard University Library has reported that it has removed a volume bound in human skin from its collection. A copy of the 19th-century book Des Destinées de l’Ame — or Destinies of the Soul, a meditation on life after death … Continue reading
Lucifer’s Big Book
The Codex Gigas (or Devil’s Bible) is a large 13th-century manuscript from Bohemia, one of the historical Czech lands. Renowned for its size and its striking full-page rendition of the devil (found on page 577), it contains a number of … Continue reading
Ban This Book book actually banned
Who could have imagined that an award winning children’s book titled Ban This Book would actually be banned and in the state of Florida of all places. The Indian River County School Board voted to remove “Ban This Book” by Alan Gratz from … Continue reading
Posted in Books, Freedom of Speech, Libraries, USA, Writing
Tagged book bans, censorship, Florida
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Data Poetry
Traditional rooftops slope like the backs of resting camels. Forests play fortresses; secrets held in whistling pine needles. Serene valleys echo a painter’s lost blues and greens. Mountains order the sky, no less, wearing casts of gray ruggedness. Although I am a frequent critic of … Continue reading
Posted in apps, Photography, Tech, Writing
Tagged AI, Artificial Intelligence, Poetry
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Every Rejection Stings
In October 1895, a surprising announcement appeared in The Lark, a popular literary magazine then based in San Francisco. It called for submissions for the first-ever edition of Le Petit Journal des Refusées (The Little Journal of Rejects), which advertised … Continue reading
Life is stranger than fiction
Forgive the pun, but in this case life is truly stranger than the fictional book above. A fascinating handwritten manuscript of the French novel L’Étranger translated as The Outsider/The Stranger by Albert Camus has sold for €500,000 ($544,000) at auction in Paris. There is little … Continue reading
Posted in Books, Europe, History, Writing
Tagged Albert Camus, France, novels, The Stranger
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It’s always nineteen eighty-four somewhere
George Orwell’s seminal novel turns seventy-five this week. In Nineteen Eighty-Four, Orwell posed a frightening question: could people be conditioned to actually believe (rather than just pretend to believe) the lies they are told ? Here we are 75 years later … Continue reading
Posted in Books, Europe, Freedom of Speech, History, Writing
Tagged 1984, Airstrip-one, George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four
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Travel Between The Pages 