Celebrate Indie Bookstores

Posted on April 21, 2025 by Brian D. Butler

Nearly 1,500 bookstores across the U.S., the most ever, will participate in the 12th annual Independent Bookstore Day, which takes place Saturday, April 26. The stores will celebrate with a variety of creative, welcoming events, merchandise, food & drink, merriment, and more, all reenforcing connections between the stores and their communities.

As American Booksellers Association CEO Allison Hill puts it, “Independent Bookstore Day is one of my favorite days of the year. The collaboration between independent bookstores, the spirit of community with their customers, the support for small businesses, the celebration of books and authors and illustrators–these are the things I love about our industry year round but it’s nice to have a day to celebrate all that the indies represent in the world.”

Courtney Wallace, ABA’s marketing manager and Independent Bookstore Day program director, added, “Independent bookstores continue to elevate their creativity and community engagement, making this twelfth year of Independent Bookstore Day our biggest celebration yet. With many stores expanding their festivities beyond a single day, it’s clear that indie bookstores are vital hubs that bring people together and shape the heart of their communities.”

A map that shows participating bookstores and includes information about bookstore passport programs will appear soon on IndieBound.org.

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O Canada

Posted on April 20, 2025 by Brian D. Butler

 

It seems like an opportune moment to feature some classic Canadian travel posters. Stylish posters along with tourism  brochures were produced by Canadian Pacific for its network of railways, steamships, airlines, and hotels. They were generally well designed—and frequently quite fetching. This should come as no surprise considering the caliber of artists the company employed, although not all of CP’s artists were necessarily widely acclaimed. The company also hired artists who worked in near anonymity at the time, and about whom even less is known today.

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Found in translation

Posted on April 19, 2025 by Brian D. Butler

I am usually ambivalent about literary prizes, although like a good hypocrite I mine the lists for reading suggestions. Somehow I missed the announcement for this year’s International Booker Prize and was surprised to discover that I had read three of the six nominees.

 

Launched in 2005, the International Booker Prize was originally given to an author for their life’s work, but since 2016 has been awarded to a single book translated into English and published in Britain or Ireland. It comes with prize money of £50,000, about $64,000, which the winning author and translator share equally.

The six books include Solvej Balle’s “On the Calculation of Volume: 1” about a bookseller who relives the same day over and over again. “Under the Eye of the Big Bird,” by Hiromi Kawakami, translated from Japanese by Asa Yoneda: a series of interconnected stories set in a dystopian future, in which the only remaining humans are produced in factories. Vincenzo Latronico’s “Perfection,” translated from Italian by Sophie Hughes, about an expatriate couple living in a hip Berlin neighborhood and struggling to engage with life outside their bubble.

Also the three that I haven’t read: “Small Boat” by Vincent Delecroix, translated from French by Helen Stevenson: a fictionalized retelling of the 2021 sinking of a migrant boat that capsized on the journey from France to Britain, leading to 27 deaths. “Heart Lamp” by Banu Mushtaq, translated from Kannada, a language spoken in southern India, by Deepa Bhasthi: a collection of short stories about Muslim women in India and dealing with family and community tensions. And, “A Leopard-Skin Hat” by Anne Serre, translated from French by Mark Hutchinson: a novel about the relationship between an unnamed narrator and an anguished friend.

The judges will announce a winner on May 20 during a ceremony at Tate Modern in London.

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Tout le monde aime la Tour Eiffel

Posted on April 18, 2025 by Brian D. Butler

I’m always chuffed to run across a copy book that I sold many years ago in a random blog post. in this case, the book in question is Les Tours Eiffel de Robert Delaunay : poèmes inédits / [Guillaume] Apollinaire. It was originally printed in an edition of 1,150 in Brussels in 1974. 

This work features artwork created by Robert Delaunay (1885-1941), along with previously unpublished poems by renowned and influential poets of the early 20th century. It includes a preface by Jean Cassou (1897-1986), the first director of the National Museum of Modern Art in Paris, who was also a French art critic and poet.

Some of the poets in this collection are notable for their ties to surrealism. French writers and poets André Breton (1896-1966) and Philippe Soupault (1897-1990) co-founded the Surrealist movement, aiming to explore the unconscious mind and challenge the conventional boundaries of art and literature. Guillaume Apollinaire (1880-1918) is regarded as one of the leading poets of the 20th century and is credited with coining the terms “Surrealism,” “Cubism,” and “Orphism,” showcasing the intersection of visual art and poetry in contemporary movements. Louis Aragon (1897-1982), a French novelist, editor, and poet, was one of France’s prominent voices in the Surrealist movement and was deeply involved in both literature and political activism, often reflecting these themes in his works.

Other notable poets included in this collection are Jean Arp, known for his contributions to both Dada and Surrealism; Blaise Cendrars, whose adventurous spirit and modernist style reshaped poetry; Tristan Tzara, a founder of Dada who sought to disrupt traditional artistic norms; Joseph Delteil, whose work often focused on the themes of nature and humanity; and René Crevel, whose works often depicted existential themes.

Robert Delaunay (1885-1941) was a French artist who co-founded the Orphism art movement, which emphasized the use of color and light to evoke emotion and create a sense of movement. Guillaume Apollinaire noted the musical quality in Delaunay’s work, coining “Orphic Cubism” or “Orphism.” This name draws inspiration from the Greek god Orpheus, renowned for his ability to captivate animals with enchanting music played on the lyre. Delaunay saw the Eiffel as a symbol of modernity and masculinity. He was among the first artists to focus his work on this iconic landmark, portraying it numerous times in his work, including his famous series of paintings that capture its dynamic forms and colors.

via

 

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New York’s Secret Gem

Posted on April 17, 2025 by Brian D. Butler

Today marks the official re-opening of one of New York City’s finest art museums after a nearly five year closure for renovation. While the Frick Collection may not be a secret to the city’s art lovers, most visitors to NYC don’t seem to know that it exists.

Once residence to the robber baron Henry Clay Frick (1849-1919), the museum has been undergoing a $220 million renovation and expansion, inside and out. Frick assembled the core collection over a brief few decades, and gifted it to the public. It also celebrates, like many art museums, the complicated power of private wealth. (Frick’s benevolent populism had serious limits; he is notorious in the annals of American labor as an adamant anti-unionist.)

The Frick is an impressive “house” museum, which is much more accessible than the grand Met. In 1935, when the house opened as a museum, it officially transitioned to a monument, one that has been added to more than once over the years.

The renovation, designed by Selldorf Architects with Beyer Blinder Belle Architects and Planners, which includes a two-level reception hall, a coat check, and cafe, and Special Exhibition galleries, where a three-picture blockbuster titled “Vermeer’s Love Letters” will debut in June.

 

Personally, I always go to the Frick for the Vermeers. Frick’s interest in Vermeer was also unusual for a time when the Golden Age Dutch painter was by no means the trophy artist he is now. Frick collected three pictures by him. The two smaller ones hang in a narrow corridor near the skylit Garden Court (added in the 1930s by the architect John Russell Pope). The largest one, the velvety pollen-gold “Mistress and Maid” (1666-67), is in the West Gallery and was the very last painting that Frick bought.

When asked for advice from New York tourists, I encourage the art lovers to make time for the Frick collection. Now with the newly completed renovations, I think that it should be on everyone’s list.

 

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OK Go Budapest

Posted on April 16, 2025 by Brian D. Butler

I have to admit that I think the LA-based band OK Go’s music is just okay. However, they consistently created clever, quirky music videos that are irresistible. Their newest release was filmed in Budapest’s iconic Keleti Station and is a knockout.

Do yourself a favor and what the video below and then watch the amazing video on how the brilliant film was created. it’s well worth the time and loads of fun.

Now, how the sausage was made.

 

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Reading is a means of listening

Posted on April 15, 2025 by Brian D. Butler

Reading is not as passive as hearing or viewing. It’s an act: you do it. You read at your pace, your own speed, not the ceaseless, incoherent, gabbling, shouting rush of the media. You take in what you can and want to take in, not what they shove at you fast and hard and loud in order to overwhelm and control you. Reading a story, you may be told something, but you’re not being sold anything. And though you’re usually alone when you read, you are in communion with another mind. You aren’t being brainwashed or co-opted or used; you’ve joined in an act of the imagination.

I know no reason why our media could not create a similar community of the imagination, as theater has often done in societies of the past, but they’re mostly not doing it. They are so controlled by advertising and profiteering that the best people who work in them, the real artists, if they resist the pressure to sell out, get drowned out by the endless rush for novelty, by the greed of the entrepreneurs.

Much of literature remains free of such co-optation, in part because a lot of books were written by dead people, who by definition are not greedy. And many living poets and novelists, though their publishers may be crawling abjectly after bestsellers, continue to be motivated less by the desire for gain than by the wish to do what they’d probably do for nothing if they could afford it, that is, practice their art—make something well, get something right. Literature remains comparatively, and amazingly, honest and reliable.

Books may not be “books,” of course, they may not be ink on wood pulp but a flicker of electronics in the palm of a hand. Incoherent and commercialised and worm-eaten with porn and hype and blather as it is, electronic publication offers those who read a strong new means of active community. The technology is not what matters. Words are what matter. The sharing of words. The activation of imagination through the reading of words.

The reason literacy is important is that literature is the operating instructions. The best manual we have. The most useful guide to the country we’re visiting, life.

 

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Franz Kafka once called his writing a form of prayer.

Posted on April 14, 2025 by Brian D. Butler

“Not His Best”

by

Joy Williams

from 99 Stories of God

Franz Kafka once called his writing a form of prayer.

He also reprimanded the long-suffering Felice Bauer in a letter: “I did not say that writing ought to make everything clearer, but instead makes everything worse; what I said was that writing makes everything clearer and worse.”

He frequently fretted that he was not a human being and that what he bore on his body was not a human head. Once he dreamt that as he lay in bed, he began to jump out the open window continuously at quarter-hour intervals.

“Then trains came and one after another they ran over my body, outstretched on the tracks, deepening and widening the two cuts in my neck and legs.”

I didn’t give him that one, the Lord said.

NOT HIS BEST

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Sometimes going backwards is good

Posted on April 13, 2025 by Brian D. Butler

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority recently  revealed a revamped map of the city’s subway system that takes its cues from a 1970s throwback that was cheered by design connoisseurs and reviled by many traditionalists. It is the first major overhaul of the subway map to be introduced by the authority in almost 50 years. The current version (above) is serviceable, but takes time to master. The new version (below) is colorful and much easier to read.

“The new map — a brightly colored variation on the current version that sacrifices some geographic detail for clarity — is reminiscent of the 1972 Unimark map, a modernist streamlining of the subways that straightened the curvy contours of the system. The map was short lived, replaced in 1979 by a version resembling the current one.”

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Eggciting Travel News

Posted on April 12, 2025 by Brian D. Butler

Tomorrow marks the opening of the Osaka World Expo, which will run until October 13,2025. The world’s fair, which is being held at Yumeshima Island outside of Osaka, is projected to welcome 28.2 million visitors.

One of Japan’s signature pavilions, Earth Mart, is shaping up to be tasty. Located within the Expo’s Green World zone, Earth Mart will make you rethink and reevaluate the current state of food by exploring new ways of eating through interactive exhibitions and installations. One iconic installation is a chandelier made from 28,000 eggs, a figure that represents the average number of eggs every Japanese person consumes in their lifetime.

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