1776 or BUST!

Posted on September 11, 2013 by kara


Dark Ages, Take 2:

Score another WIN for Liberty! Brave patriots from various Kentucky counties have been rescued from the tyranny of public libraries (until today, considered an essential part of having an educated and literate populace).

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On the Nightstand

Posted on September 6, 2013 by kara

 

Sweet Tooth by Ian McEwan

Publication Date: November 13, 2012

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Great Snacks in Literature

Posted on September 6, 2013 by kara

Harriet the Spy’s Tomato Sandwich

When I was a kid, there were exactly three girl sleuths on American bookshelves. Nancy Drew, with her sweater sets and ladies who lunch, Trixie Belden, with her horse and her “Moms”, and Harriet M. Welsch. Harriet M. Welsch was mean, she was obsessive, she saw too much, said too much. She had to see a psychiatrist. And Harriet M. Welsch loved herself, meanness, messy hair and all.

Harriet is a “spy” inasmuch she has a list of people that she needs to keep track of; friends, classmates, random people in the neighborhood , the Upper East Side of Manhattan. She takes copious notes reflecting on other people’s failings, like immaturity, indolence, snobbishness, and generational conflicts. And since the most scintillating stuff isn’t going to happen right out in the open, maybe she has to sneak into people’s houses now and then, maybe up a dumbwaiter every so often. Continue reading →

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Posted on September 4, 2013 by kara

This awesome literary endeavor from my friend Seth Madej is worth reading even if you aren’t a James Bond fanaticbagger. When you’re done, you can read about PONIES.

via sethmad.com

I READ ALL 3000 PAGES OF IAN FLEMING’S GROOVY 007 OEUVRE

by Seth Madej, September 3, 2013

In May of 2012, I finished a five-month stint of watching all the James Bond movies in order. When I was done, I somehow found myself no less unemployed than when I’d started, so I opted to rectify that the only way I knew how: by reading in order all of Ian Fleming’s 007 books – 12 novels and two short-story collections. It took me over a year, a rate of about one book per month.

I’d read two of Fleming’s stories before – Casino Royale 12 or 13 years ago, and Goldfinger when I was a teenager, from which for some reason I’ve always remembered the sentence, “Bond felt the skin-crawling tickle at the groin that dates from one’s first game of hide and seek in the dark.” — long enough ago that I didn’t know what to expect in terms of quality, theme, character, or anything else. Continue reading →

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I Wanted a Pony.

Posted on September 2, 2013 by kara

for Elli – for whom I will buy a pony someday

I wanted a pony so bad. And I didn’t have one. So I compulsively read books about girls who DID have ponies.

There’s no big secret to the “pony book” formula: a girl with no pony desperately wants a pony and through a stroke of galloping good luck, gets a pony, as well as a blue ribbon in the big show. You might not have a pony of your own, but you could live vicariously through a lucky girl who did. I knew I was never going to be lucky enough to be smack dab in the middle of a Nancy Drew style mystery, but a pony….that was a dream I kept well stoked. There simply was nothing more magical than the prospect of owning a pony.

My pony book obsession started with a single flimsy scholastic paperback. Every year, my extended family and I would spend 2 glorious weeks at a summer “resort”  – aka hillbilly housekeeping cottage motel – in the Poconos. Ramshackle particle board “cottages”, shuffleboard court, baseball diamond, unheated swimming pool, fetid fishing hole, and a  makeshift “lending library” – little more than a small shelf  – that housed that one very important book. Continue reading →

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Posted on August 4, 2013 by kara

My two favorite things: books and food.

These tableaue are from an American graphic design student named Dinah Fried, titled  Fictitious Dishes. Dinah Fried has focused her lens on dishes in Oliver Twist, The Catcher in the Rye, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, The Girl with a Dragon Tattoo and Moby Dick, changing the table dressings, condiments, crockery and cutlery, the culinary snapshots are turned into  literary set pieces – from Oliver Twist’s poorhouse gruel and water to the fancy high tea served in Alice in Wonderland. Continue reading →

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On the Nightstand

Posted on July 31, 2013 by kara

Monster Love by Carol Topolski

Fig Tree Publishing, 2008

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Posted on July 25, 2013 by kara

 

Stump the Bookseller

Have you forgotten the title of your favorite children’s book? Stump the Bookseller is a website that helps solve your book mysteries.

 

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On the NIghtstand

Posted on July 25, 2013 by kara

 

The Silver Star by Jeannette Walls

 

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Posted on July 24, 2013 by kara

they aint cheap, but they are beautiful. folio society books

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