Category Archives: Books

Making sensitivity readers redundant

Posted on July 2, 2024 by Brian D. Butler

 

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Poe’s Summer Vacation

Posted on July 1, 2024 by Brian D. Butler

Ali Fitzgerald, an artist and a writer. Her most recent book is “Drawn to Berlin: Comic Workshops in Refugee Shelters and Other Stories from a New Europe.”

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Staying Awake

Posted on June 30, 2024 by Brian D. Butler

I have been an enormous fan of the work of novelist/poet/essayist Ursula K. Le Guin for many decades. Recently, I stumbled on this quote from her titled “Staying Awake”. “Besides, readers aren’t viewers; they recognize their pleasure as different from … Continue reading →

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The Lottery

Posted on June 27, 2024 by Brian D. Butler

In 1960, five years before her death, Shirley Jackson recorded readings of “The Lottery” and “The Daemon Lover” for an outfit called Folkways Records—the only time we know of that she ever recorded performances of her own work.” Set on … Continue reading →

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Bookstore Tourism: Il mio tipo di posto

Posted on June 23, 2024 by Brian D. Butler

It’s been more than a decade since I’ve visited Florence, so you will have to forgive that I missed the grand opening to the amazing Libreria Giunti Odeon. This fabulous mash-up of a cinema, bookstore and cafe premiered in November … Continue reading →

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London For Free

Posted on June 22, 2024 by Brian D. Butler

Some of the vintage oldtimers who have been following Travel Between The Pages for many eons may recall that during the last century I made a dubious living writing travel guidebooks and newsletters. One of my better selling books was … Continue reading →

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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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