What did world-famous authors read?

The awesome people at Flavorwire & Legacy Libraries have looked at titles on the bookshelves of author's - so here's how you and I get a glimpse into the books read by some Greats.


Well, here's a peek at the books on the bookshelves of Sylvia Plath, Herman Melville (of Moby-Dick fame, to all teens out there), Mark Twain, Fitzgerald and others!

Legacy Libraries is one of the perks of being a LibraryThing member - I personally haven't signed up (YET!) but perhaps if you are a member, you can tell me why its good to join? Goodreads keeps me happy, and I dont want to have yet another time consuming profile/thing-to-monitor.

The wonderful people at Penguin have come up with some interesting innovations around Book Jackets. Finally, a breath of fresh air in this industry! A publisher that seems to be open to ideas, and experiments.
What am I talking about?

This is a CRAZY COOL concept - have an artist design covers around some great books, and relaunch said books (with some extras like new forewords). Penguin Threads is an intriguing concept, and they've certainly picked some crowd-pleaser classics for the launch. Black Beauty, Emma and The Secret Garden, all childhood/teen favorites of mine, and of many others.
Penguin has commissioned Jillian Tamaki to design these covers, and hand-stitch them. We get that you and I can't buy a hand-stitched book jacket, but the mass-produced one still looks to be a gem!
I've never seen these in India yet, book jackets tend to be just for show on shelves. Maybe there should be a campaign around showing off your book jacket via Facebook/social media?

What does your bookcase look like? Here's Mine!

Being installed by the carpenter

The big event of my day is getting bookshelves installed in our apartment.
To answer some of the questions you might have:

• Yes, we had NO bookcases
• Yes, some people do live like that (i.e. my husband)

My books being stacked!

A Close Peek into what I buy

I have a fairly small collection - a lot of books had to be given away when I moved to the US and back again. Got to get some more books to fill these up, right?

I've also turned to my Kindle for newer books.

I've shown you mine, now show me yours!

Link to photos of your books, bookshelves, or write a post about your bookcases and let me know. I will add links at the bottom of this post to you!

The Most Beautiful Public Libraries in the US

Dear World: Thank You For Libraries!

Here are a few of my favorites from a recent Flavorwire list of Top 10 "most-beautiful-from-the-outside public" libraries in the US:

The renovation shown above is so different from anything the government can afford in India!

Chicago Public Library - My one-time haunt while I lived in Chicago..Pure pleasure to see it and its gargoyles! Well-beloved gargoyles standing guard over your books, how reassuring.

This Salt Lake city public library seems super inviting - that wall of windows just draws people in, I'd think.
For all 10 libraries that made the cut, go to Flavorwire
What do you like best?

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Next time, I'll look for gorgeous libraries in Europe and across the world. 
Do you have a picture of your local library? Do share it with me @ deepalipratap@gmail.com - I will feature a post on this if we have enough libraries!

24 Hour Read-a-Thon

The 24 Hour Read-a-thon is Oct 9th, 5:30 PM India time.

This is my first read-a-thon, and I'm excited to hear/take part in this global event. 

Unfortunately, I am sadly under-prepared.

Not only do I not have any food at home, I also am running out of books to read. I'm now planning on starting my reading a little earlier, say around 11 AM, take a break for lunch and books, and then let the enthusiasm of the new library finds carry me through most of the night.

 Weekly Geeks asks some questions that have awakened me to my lack of proper preparation for the Read-a-thon.

1. Do I have a strategy?

(Just making up one now) I'm going to read mostly Fantasy and Detective fiction. If I can find a good graphic novel, I'll read that in the middle to keep my interest up. Oh, and great music, coffee, chocolate cookies are part of the grand plan.

 

2. Do you have a stack of books prepared to read from?

I've saved "Alpha" for today (by accident, really) so that could be fun.

I want to read a book or two on my laptop at least, and the rest on paper for some variety.

If not so good, I'm going to jump to Out of the Dark by David Weber, who is a very reliable space fantasy author.

I'm also half-way through Conan Iggulden's Lord of the Silver bow, and I have no idea if half-books count towards this (maybe if I converted it into pages?)

3. I'm going to go for number of books,but also count pages.

4. If you have others living in your household, do you have to work around their schedules too?

I do have people I need to have to work around, but I can't really tell them that I am unavailable  (*cough* in-laws). I have cleared it with my husband, but the poor soul has no idea how serious the read-a-thon gets!

*update*  I am now back from my library, and here is a picture of what I got:

Teaser Tuesday #11 - Lord Sunday by Garth Nix

Teaser Tuesday is a weekly bookish meme hosted by MizB of Should be Reading.

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Garth Nix is one of my favorite Young Adult writers, mainly cause his books are universal. I could recommend them to any of my friends, or the occasional reader, age no bar.

"A boy – a Piper’s child – stepped through the gap and, without a word of warning, lunged at Arthur with a six-foot- long, three-tined gardening fork, each of the tines red-hot, the air around them blurred from the intense heat they radiated."

Today's Teaser is taken from the end of Chapter 3, the page I am on. The book is Lord Sunday, book 7 in the Keys of the Kingdom.

If you haven't read Garth Nix, a great place to start is with The Old Kingdom series; beginning with Abhorsen. Highly unique.

Amazon link is below:

The walk-inside Bookshelf "The ArK"

The fantastic Scandivanian designers at Rintala Eggertsson Architects have designed this work of very functional art:

The pictures say it all, but this is a two-storey tower that connects the first and second floors of an art gallery. Titled "The Ark", the bookshelf is entirely lined with books, and you can see the titles and book-spines as soon as you enter.
Lambda Literary has a lot more info, more pics and an interview with the creators on their inspiration.

Posted via email from readseverything's posterous