Archipelago Books is giving away 30 e-books (in ePub or PDF format) from their back catalogue. Most are translated works of fiction, though you’ll also find poetry, such as by the Cuban Dulce María Loynaz (tr. James O’Connor), and the hard-to-categorize Novices of Sias by Novalis (tr. Ralph Manheim).
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I don’t imagine that any of us will be traveling to China any time soon, however, wouldn’t the new Capsule Hotel & Bookstore in Qinglongwu, Zhejiang province, China, be the ideal getaway.
I was very fortunate to spend an entire day in the world renowned Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg, Russia a few years ago. It’s almost overwhelming to try and take in the immense institution in one visit. To save our sanity, we carefully planned the visit in advance by mapping out a route through the museum that encompassed just some of the numerous halls. If you haven’t had the chance to visit yet, here’s a great way to visit for free. Using the State Hermitage Museum as a backdrop, director Axinya Gog made a one-take video lasting 5 hours, 19 minutes and 28 seconds using an Apple iPhone 11 Pro Max. Masterpieces hang still, dancers use dramatic choreography to provide a sense of direction and orchestral performances arranged by Russian neoclassical composer Kirill Richter unfold in real-time throughout the museum’s 45 halls. Part artistic virtual tour, part performance piece, “Hermitage” is an excellent diversion in our plague times.
“Herman Melville”
by
W.H. Auden
Towards the end he sailed into an extraordinary mildness,
And anchored in his home and reached his wife
And rode within the harbour of her hand,
And went each morning to an office
As though his occupation were another island.
Goodness existed: that was the new knowledge.
His terror had to blow itself quite out
To let him see it; but it was the gale had blown him
Past the Cape Horn of sensible success
Which cries: “This rock is Eden. Shipwreck here.”
But deafened him with thunder and confused with lightning:
–The maniac hero hunting like a jewel
The rare ambiguous monster that had maimed his sex,
The unexplained survivor breaking off the nightmare–
All that was intricate and false; the truth was simple.
Evil is unspectacular and always human,
And shares our bed and eats at our own table,
And we are introduced to Goodness every day,
Even in drawing-rooms among a crowd of faults;
He has a name like Billy and is almost perfect,
But wears a stammer like a decoration:
And every time they meet the same thing has to happen;
It is the Evil that is helpless like a lover
And has to pick a quarrel and succeeds,
And both are openly destroyed before our eyes.
For now he was awake and knew
No one is ever spared except in dreams;
But there was something else the nightmare had distorted–
Even the punishment was human and a form of love:
The howling storm had been his father’s presence
And all the time he had been carried on his father’s breast.
Who now had set him gently down and left him.
He stood upon the narrow balcony and listened:
And all the stars above him sang as in his childhood
“All, all is vanity,” but it was not the same;
For now the words descended like the calm of mountains–
–Nathaniel had been shy because his love was selfish–
Reborn, he cried in exultation and surrender
“The Godhead is broken like bread. We are the pieces.”
And sat down at his desk and wrote a story.
Antiquarian books – from the bookshelf’s view point..
This book records a Buddhist text given to the Qianlong emperor by a Panchen Lama from Tibet. The calligraphy was written by the court official Liang Guozhi (1723–1774) then engraved into the jade pages and painted gold.
[text source: @metmuseum]
I never thought that I would see the French army guarding the iconic Shakespeare and Company Bookstore in Paris.
Most bibliophiles would be secretly happy to be waiting out the pandemic at the B2 Hotel in Zurich; I would not complain.
Just me staying put and self-isolating as requested.
While millions of people are staying home to reduce the spread of COVID-19, Scribd is making their digital library of ebooks and audiobooks free for everyone: scribd.com/readfree
“Millions of Cats” is a picture book written and illustrated by artist Wanda Gag in 1928. The book won a Newberry award in 1929 and is the oldest American picture book still in print.
I first discovered the ceramic artist and writer Edmund de Waal through his best-selling book The Hare with the Amber Eyes. If you are not familiar with the memoir, it’s a compelling read that encompasses not only de Waal’s family history, but European history, art,religion,philosophy, and much more. But de Waal may be best known for his installations of porcelain vessels.
His newest installation, at London’s British Museum, is titled Library of Exile . The work is made up of two thousand books just like the ones you would find in a bookstore or library, but the walls and shelves are made of porcelain. In the installation, the books themselves are the usual board and paper, but de Waal has instructed visitors to write their names on a label tucked inside each book, and encourages people to talk about books while they are in “The Library.”The artist was inspired to create the installation by the library of his great-grandfather, which was looted by the Nazis in Austria.
The library includes the work of almost 1,500 writers from 58 countries in dozens of languages and is still growing with people encouraged to suggest new titles. After six months at the British Museum the books in the library will be donated to the library of the University of Mosul in Iraq, which is being rebuilt after it was burned to the ground in 2015 by Isis. A million books were lost.
UNA NUOVA INIZIATIVA PER LA DIFFUSIONE DEL LIBRO proclaims the title at the top of the photo, or, in English, A New Initiative for Distributing Books.
The early 1920s bookmobile was actually publisher’s method of selling books to the public, not a library’s program to get books to more citizens. Treves, in the photo’s caption, refers to Emilio Treves (1834-1916), the founder, editor, and publisher of L’Illustrazione Italiana. This publisher/bookseller model for book mobiles seems to have been a mostly Italian phenomenon not found here in North America.
Dutch artist and printmaker Jaco Putker uses both traditional and digital methods to produce his surreal images. He usually works with photopolymer, or solar plate, etching. This allows him to create photo-realistic depictions. His finished pieces are at once amusing and disturbing.
The Hague-based artist avoids any over interpretation of what his images mean. Even the titles provide few clues, as they are basic descriptive statements like The Girl and The Mushrooms or The Boy and The Masks.
I’m interested in the Hermetic Principles of Correspondence (formulated in the axiom ‘As Above, So Below’; the correlation between macro and micro cosmos) and of Vibration (which states that all is in constant motion. Both in a visually perceivable manner as on a (sub)atomic level. Every part of nature is connected to any other part of nature. These seem to be the parameters within which my work takes place. But within these parameters, I try not to think too much about my work. Defining it sort of kills it for me. In hindsight, I see a development and recurring themes and elements. And it strikes me that I seem to be saying the same thing over and over, regardless of style, medium or technique.
Travel Between The Pages 