Here in North America, we are getting almost giddy about the upcoming solar eclipse which will occur on Monday, August 21, 2017. Unfortunately for me, my region of the U.S. will only be in a partial eclipse zone. Way back on August 31, 1932 there was also a total eclipse event in North America. These images from a contemporary travel brochure produced by the New Haven Rail Road encouraged folks to visit the “Vacation Land of New England” to experience the eclipse.
The U.S. Library of Congress has just released the poster for this year’s National Book Festival on September 2, 2017 in Washington DC. If the artwork looks familiar, that’s because it’s by the celebrated New Yorker cartoonist Roz Chast.
If you are a regular reader of TBTP, you are well aware of my obsession with public transit maps. This one is actually amusing and useful. The folks at the Thrillist Washington D.C. website have augmented the city’s already excellent Metro map to make it even more user friendly. As a frequent visitor to DC, and the author of a travel book on the nation’s capital, I can attest that the map upgrade is spot on.
You may remember a post a few years back about the Toronto secondhand bookshop’s Biblio-Mat book vending machine. Well, The Monkey’s Paw is back in the news with an update to the book-o-mat. Bookstore owner Stephen Fowler is now loading the machine with random “vintage’ books from his stock. For $2, the vending machine will randomly deliver a small, medium, or large selection from Fowler’s stock. Seems like a small price to support a community institution.
You may be familiar with the brilliant work of Argentinian filmmaker Fernando Livschitz from his opening credits film for The Late Show with Stephen Colbert or his wild video Buenos Aires Inception Park, but his crazy short Perspective will blow your mind.
As I have probably mentioned a few times, one of my favorite places in Philly is the amazing Philadelphia Museum of Art. In fact, I usually drag every out of town visitor there whether they express any interest in going or not. Most folks are surprised to discover that the PMA is home to one the world’s great art collections and also one of the biggest “scandals” of the 20th century art world—Marcel Duchamp’s readymade work “Fountain”.
This year marks the centennial of the surrealist prankster’s scandalous artwork, a urinal on which the artist inscribed the name “R. Mutt.” To celebrate the work’s 100th anniversary, the Philadelphia Museum of Art unveiled an exhibition called Marcel Duchamp and the Fountain Scandal, which includes photographs and publications from the time, as well as more Duchamp readymades from their collection. As part of the exhibition, artist Richard Gabriele created a replica of the infamous urinal and turned it into a mini golf course outside the museum.
The Marcel Duchamp and the Fountain Scandal show runs until December 1st.
The Bookseller/Diagram Prize For Oddest Book Title of the Year, usually just called the Diagram Prize, is awarded each year to the book that voters think has the most unusual title. This year’s shortlist was recently announced by the British publishing trade magazine The Bookseller. Voting ends on July 21st, and the winner will be announced on July 28th, so cast your vote here. Choose from the wonderful shortlisted titles below:
Nipples on My Knee by Graham & Debra Robertson
An Ape’s View of Evolution by Peter Andrews
Love Your Lady Landscape by Lisa Lister
Renniks Australian Pre-Decimal & Decimal Coin Errors: The Premier Guide for Australian Pre-Decimal & Decimal Coin Errors, edited by Ian McConnelly
The Commuter Pig-Keeper by Michaela Giles
The Winds of Winter, the long awaited next book in George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Fire and Ice series doesn’t seem to be forthcoming, however we loyal fans will have to continue to make do with the HBO TV series Game of Thrones. I’d be fibbing if I said that I wasn’t chuffed that the new season starts this week. It looks like we’ll finally see a monumental collision of all the story lines. Meanwhile,the current issue of Time magazine is featuring an extraordinary photo shoot of some of the primary cast members by photographer Miles Aldridge.
The very popular location-aware travel guide app Detour usually cost $5, but for the rest of this summer it’s absolutely free. With 16 U.S. and international cities currently covered, including NYC, Boston, San Francisco, Rome, Berlin, Barcelona, and Paris, the audio walking tour app offers discrete hour-long guided tours narrated by local experts. Along with more than 150 separate walks, the app also features augmented reality that allows users to reveal historical location data. Check it out for yourself here, but don’t wait because the free offer ends on September 4, 2017.
Travel Between The Pages 