Category Archives: Books

Rules for Writing

Posted on June 19, 2024 by Brian D. Butler

Kurt Vonnegut’s eight rules of writing: Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted. Give the reader at least one character he or she can root … Continue reading →

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An Alternate Alice Versery

Posted on June 18, 2024 by Brian D. Butler

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 →

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Everything is like something else

Posted on June 16, 2024 by Brian D. Butler

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 →

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Anthropodermic bibliopegy is not cool

Posted on June 15, 2024 by Brian D. Butler

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 →

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Lucifer’s Big Book

Posted on June 14, 2024 by Brian D. Butler

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 →

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Ban This Book book actually banned

Posted on June 13, 2024 by Brian D. Butler

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 →

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Life is stranger than fiction

Posted on June 10, 2024 by Brian D. Butler

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 →

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It’s always nineteen eighty-four somewhere

Posted on June 9, 2024 by Brian D. Butler

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 →

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Stumbling Through Saturday Around the Interwebs

Posted on June 8, 2024 by Brian D. Butler

I am not embarrassed at all to admit that I have spent an inordinate amount of time thinking about things in the Lord of the Rings universe such as : who is in charge of trash collection; and what are … Continue reading →

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A 1000 Suns

Posted on June 7, 2024 by Brian D. Butler

Regular visitors to Travel Between The Pages will be well aware of my proclivity for all things Sci-Fi. My interests in the genre are wide-ranging and include everything from classic space operas to Black Mirroresque streamers. So, I was chuffed … Continue reading →

Posted in Books, Film, movies | Tagged , , | 2 Comments