1850's graphic novel By stbalbach The Comic History of Rome (1852), illustrated by John Leech (1817-64). Image index. The Victorian Web on John Leech. The John Leech sketch archive from Punch (over 600 images). A recent reprint. via the always great BiblioOdyssey.

Though ask yourself, was Dorothy Parker ever really funny? By nuclear_soup Why are women, who have the whole male world at their mercy, not funny? Please do not pretend not to know what I am talking about.

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No Context By escabeche "A fedora hat worn by me without the necessary protective irony would eat through my head and kill me." Goodbye to George W.S. Trow, one of the strangest, wisest, disturbingest writer ever to gape at, marvel at, and love his fellow Americans. His 1980 essay "Within the Context of No Context" (which shared with J.D. Salinger's last published story the distinction of taking up an entire issue of the New Yorker) placed television, irony, and distance at the center of the new United States. He also wrote the less well-known (but equally beautiful) short story collection Bullies, along with a novel and several screenplays, helped found National Lampoon, and was a staff writer at the New Yorker from 1966 until 1994, when he quit in protest of Roseanne Barr's guest-editing stint. He died on November 24, in Naples, at the age of 63. Appreciations from the New York Observer, Slate, and Gawker.

Blog of a Bookslut

Over at The Washington Times, a publication I do not usually read, Kelly Jane Torrance asks why on earth PW named Jane Friedman its Publishing Person of the Year: Remember the O.J. book scandal?...The publishing world seems to have forgotten.... The president and chief executive of HarperCollins was one of those responsible for the O.J. fiasco -- she approved the reported $2 million to $3.5 million paid to Mr. Simpson's representatives for his participation. Instead of being chastised for her misreading of the public mood -- not to mention a shocking lapse of taste -- she's being rewarded by the very industry she tainted. Permalink

Charitable giving guide for the end-of-year By noemail@noemail.org (Cory Doctorow) Cory Doctorow: It's time to donate -- the time of year when you have to give your money to charity or turn it over to the gubmint. I've just done a marathon round of end-of-year charitable giving: US Charities Electronic Frontier Foundation: EFF always gets my largest annual donation. No organization works harder, spends smarter and gets more done for your personal long-term technological liberty than EFF. I spent years inside the org and I know for a fact that every dime donated makes a difference. Creative Commons: Just four years after launching CC has turned into a global movement. More than 160,000,000 works have been released under CC licenses. It's good news for creators and audiences -- but it's amazing news for the public interest. The proof that there's more than one kind of rightsholder using technology today has stayed the hand of more than one regulator. CC keeps getting better, smarter and more global. Free Software Foundation/Defective By Design: It's wonderful to see a campaigning group based on fighting DRM. Defective by Design has pulled off a number of audacious and clever actions that have raised public awareness of DRM. The fight starts here. The Internet Archive: What would we do without it? I use it every day. Its mission: Universal access to all human knowledge. What could be more noble? The Gutenberg Project: The world's leading access-to-public-domain project. They have truly created a library from nothing, and oh, what a library. The MetaBrainz Foundation: I'm on the board of this charity, which oversees the MusicBrainz project. MusicBrainz is a free and open alternative to the evil (dis)Gracenote, which took all the metadata about CDs that you and I keyed in and locked it away behind a wall of patents and onerous licensing deals. The org that controls the metadata controls the world -- this needs to be in the public's hands. The Participatory Culture Foundation: I'm on the board of this charity, which produces ass-kicking media software in the public interest. The best-known of these is Democracy Player, an Internet TV program that just works -- add feeds based on YouTube keywords, or published feeds from creators, and new video arrive automagically and just play. Because TV is too important to leave up to Microsoft and Apple. The Clarion Foundation: I'm on the board of this charity, which oversees the world-famous Clarion Writers' Workshop, a bootcamp for sf writers that has produced some of the finest talents in our field, including Octavia Butler, Bruce Sterling, Nalo Hopkinson, Kelly Link, and Lucius Sheppard. I'm a graduate myself, and an instructor (I taught in 2005 and I'll be back in 2007) -- I received a substantial scholarship to the workshop in 1992 and it changed my life. I will pay that debt forward every year. Hospice Net: I make a donation to this charity every year in memory of my dear friend, former Boing Boing guestblogger Pat York. Pat was killed in a car accident, and her family nominated this charity for memorial gifts. ACLU: For the liberties the EFF doesn't cover, here in sticky meatspace, we have the ACLU. Fearless upholders of the Constitution -- an org that knows that you have to stand up for the rights of people you disagree with, or you aren't in a free society. Consumer Project on Technology: CPTech was the first copyright activist group to take the fight to WIPO, the UN agency that makes copyright treaties (you can thank WIPO for the DMCA -- they have the same relationship to bad copyright laws that Sauron has to evil, a kind of origin-node for all the crap that's destroying the infosphere). They marshalled a huge and effective activist opposition there, and are presently turning the agency upside down with a progressive treaty called Access to Knowledge. Public Knowledge: Public Knowledge are the best copyfighters on the Hill, real DC insiders who know the ins and outs of fighting in the halls of administrative agencies like the FCC. We never could have killed the Broadcast Flag without PK, and I'm grateful that someone else is willing to be the person who puts on a suit and explains things in plain language to Congressional staffers. It's a thankless task. These days, they're leading the charge on Net Neutrality, a fight that we have to win if we're going to have any online future to speak of. Canadian Charities Online Rights Canada: ORC (awesome acronym, huh?) is Canada's leading cyber-activist group, a collaboration between EFF and CIPPIC at the University of Ottawa. They really mobilized during the last Canadian federal election and managed to kick out a corrupt politician who took campaign contributions from huge multinational media, software and pharmaceutical companies and then wrote laws in their favour. Youth Challenge International: YCI sends young Canadians abroad to work on sustainable, community initiated development projects. Challengers work in international teams that include Costa Ricans, Guyanese, and Australians. I'm an alumnus, having done a hitch in a Nicaraguan squatter village in rural Costa Rica when I was 21, and it changed my life forever. Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation: My aunt Heather died of breast cancer when she was only 41. My whole family is now involved with the society. I don't live in Toronto and can't join the annual run for the cure there, but at least I can donate to the cause. UK Charities Open Rights Group: Danny O'Brien and I co-founded ORG a couple years ago and I continue to serve on its advisory board. ORG has done stupendous work since its founding, culminating in its aggressive lobbying of the Gowers Commission review of copyright. The Gowers Report is out now, and ORG won -- the Commission has strongly recommended that UK music recording copyrights not be extended to 95 years. This is the first time that I know of that a copyright term extension has been shot down, and it's in no small part thanks to ORG. NO2ID: As the UK sleepwalks into a surveillance state, NO2ID stands as the nation's best, last bulwark against an Orwellian nightmare of universal tracking. NO2ID has won substantial victories against the Blair regime's compulsive move towards a national ID card, keeping it at bay for years. MySociety: Software in the public interest -- it's a damned good idea. MySociety produces software like Pledgebank ("I will risk arrest by refusing to register for a UK ID card if 100,000 other Britons will also do it") and TheyWorkForYou (every word and deed by every Member of Parliament). It's plumbing for activists and community organizers.

Boing Boing

Scherezade meets every fable of every land - comic By noemail@noemail.org (Cory Doctorow) Cory Doctorow: Bill Willingham's Fables is one of the select, wonderful group of long-running graphic novels that I follow religiously. The premise is that all the mythical creatures of our fables have been chased from their homeworlds by the Adversary, a shadowy figure who sends an army of goblin warriors before him to rape and plunder. The Fables have settled on our world, in New York, back in the days when it was New Amsterdam, and they have lived there ever since, hidden in plain sight. A new volume in the series, 1001 Nights of Snowfall, has just been published. It is set outside of the main action of the series, with Snow White visiting Scheherezade's Sultan to beg his help in rallying the Arabian fables to fight the Adversary, who even now marches on their worlds. The Sultan imprisons and threatens to kill Snow White, but she charms him with her life's story -- a retelling of the Snow White myth from the dankest, filthiest Grimm rendition, mixed with enough vivid detail to curl your hair. The Sultan spares her life, but promises to kill her the next night if she doesn't have another story. So the next night she tells the origin stories of two more of the Fables whom we've met through the long-running series, and then again the next night, and the next. I love origins-of comics, Peter Parker and his radioactive spider and all that. But this is absolutely the cleverest frame for an origins story I've ever read, capturing (as all the Fables storylines do) the true feeling of old legends and the odd dissonance of imagining them unfolding today. The wonder of Fables is the treat that comes from the mixing of all the fables together, the great mythic 16-car collision. Willingham wrings genuinely original stories out of these old, old characters. Of course, he's just the latest steward of their storylines, in a centuries-old tradition of storytelling that has every generation reimagining its heroes and villains, fools and tricksters. It's the path that goes from Pygmalion to My Fair Lady to Trading Places. 1001 Nights of Snowfall mixes the artistic styles of several guest illustrators, each a loving tribute to the subject and each different from the ones that preceded it. This is a handsome hardcover gift-book, and it was certainly part of my Christmas present to myself. Link, Link to all Fables collections Update: Jeremy sez, "the first issue of the Fables series is available for free from the Vertigo website."

Boing Boing

Great list of underappreciated blogs By noemail@noemail.org (Cory Doctorow) Cory Doctorow: Fimoculous's "Best Blogs of 2006 that You (Maybe) Aren't Reading" post has some real gems in it. I picked up a couple of new RSS subscriptions out of it. 27. T-Shirt Critic I've got this theory that the t-shirt is becoming its own legitimate form of media -- informative yet dispensable. Probably the most frequent email query I get is "where do you get all those t-shirt links?" The answer is all over the freaking place -- but this site is one of the best. (See also: Preshrunk & iloveyourtshirt.) 26. Pruned Ostensibly, this is a blog about landscape architecture, but it actually illustrates how any discipline has complexity and hybridity behind it, usually by gathering all sorts of random pieces of visual culture. (See also: BLDG BLOG & Things Magazine.) Link (via Waxy)

Bloglines - Stanislaw Ignacy Witkiewicz

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Stanislaw Ignacy Witkiewicz By Meatbomb Stanislaw Ignacy Witkiewicz , Witkacy for short. Artist, photographer, absurdist playwright, surrealist novelist, philosopher, witness to the Russian revolution, art theoretician and critic, the Great Malinowski's closest friend, drug fiend, and by most accounts a raving maniac and self-involved pain in the ass. His greatest novel was sadly prophetic: fleeing east to escape the invading Nazis, and then hearing the news that the Communists were also on the way, he slit his wrists on September 18, 1939 in the village of Jeziory, a martyr and victim to his obstinate belief in the freedom and independence of man against the bankruptcy of ideology and the coming wave of totalitarianism. Previously here, but this guy's work is just too bizarrely compelling, and his legacy too obscure, to not get a little bit more attention.

Bloglines - Complete Digital Issue

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Fine Books Blog Notes on book collecting from the editors and writers of Fine Books & Collections magazine.

Complete Digital Issue By Scott Brown Today we launched a new feature on our website - a complete sample issue in a cutting-edge digital format. A lot of people want to see a copy of Fine Books & Collections before buying it so we created an online version of our January/February 2006 issue. I think the technology's pretty cool - you can flip through the magazine, click the page when you want to zoom in to read. Click again and you're browsing again. You can even print a low-res version. As an added bonus, all the hyperlinks in the text and the ads are live. Personally, I hate reading an entire magazine like this, and we don't plan to start publishing a digital edition, but for a sample copy, I've never seen anything better. So take a look, and then subscribe. Six issues - nearly 500 pages on book collecting in full color - are just $25 (in the US). It's hard to beat.

Bloglines - Findings fractals in the stock market

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Boing Boing

Findings fractals in the stock market By noemail@noemail.org (David Pescovitz) David Pescovitz: Benoit Mandelbrot, the father of fractals, spoke last week to an audience at MIT gathered by the Molecular Frontiers Club. Mandelbrot focused his remarks on his recent efforts to seek out patterns in the NASDAQ. (Video of a 2001 lecture at MIT, where Mandelbrot touched on this subject, is available here.) The fractal nature of the market is the subject of Mandelbrot's latest popular book co-written with journalist Richard L. Hudson, titled "The (Mis) Behavior of Markets: A Fractal View of Risk, Ruin And Reward." From the MIT News Office: An unusual type of fractal that comes from a simple equation, the Mandelbrot Set (image at right) is popular outside of mathematics because of its aesthetic appeal and its complicated structure. No one has been able to prove the Mandelbrot Set is true, according to Mandelbrot. "But no one has been able to prove it's not true, either," he said, as large pictures of fractals filled the screen behind him. Mandelbrot recently began to apply his knowledge of fractals to explain stock markets. "Markets, like oceans, have turbulence," he said. "Some days the change in markets is very small, and some days it moves in a huge leap. Only fractals can explain this kind of random change." Link to MIT News Office article, Link to buy The (Mis)Behavior of Markets

Bloglines - Day of the Dead remix contest winners

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Boing Boing

Day of the Dead remix contest winners By noemail@noemail.org (Cory Doctorow) Cory Doctorow: FreeCulture USC has announced the winners in its contest to remix the original film, Night of the Living Dead. There are some fantastic entries! Link

Bloglines - Evaluating smut, by the numbers.

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Boing Boing

Evaluating smut, by the numbers. By noemail@noemail.org (Xeni Jardin) Xeni Jardin: Violet Blue writes, WFMU's Beware of the Blog has a post up titled "Christian/Family Values-Oriented Movie Review Database Restores My Faith In Snobbish Film Criticism," which links to this "mathematical" biblical rating system of mainstream films -- wait, I know you're already laughing too hard to see your monitor: Link. Read the review of Sin City and most especially revel in the right-hand column detailing of offenses. I laughed so hard I had to choke a bitch. In the end, the "good Christian" reviewer just gives up: "Sin City is yet another film that tends to remind me of the paintings in which a gaggle of demons dance and prance about a boiling cauldron, shrieking with glee as they toss soul after soul into the cauldron of Hell, cauterizing any veins of escape. I am not going to spend any time summarizing the listing in the Findings/Scoring section in this report. The listing speaks volumes about the content of this film. Nor am I going to provide a list of Scriptures which apply to the sins demonstrated in this film. You probably have a Bible." Link. Reader comment: Stacia says, This site is hillarious to go to after you've seen movies because they pick up on things that didn't register (what? inappropriate spanking in The Incredibles?). I just have a story to relate about a time I emailed the site owner regarding his somewhat arbitrary rating system. If you look closely you'll see that maybe only two films get a perfect score - Mary Poppins being one of them. I wrote under a false email address and told him that I wouldn't show my children this film because obviously Mary Poppins was using witchcraft and unholy powers gained from Satan to carry out her magical acts. He argued that Mary Poppins was a real life angel, getting her divine power from God. How does this differ from Harry Potter? I don't know. Anyway, he's fun to get into arguments with. Give it a try!

Bloglines - New Mark Ryden print

New Mark Ryden print By noemail@noemail.org (Mark Frauenfelder) Mark Frauenfelder: "Regina Gloriae Naturae,” based on Mark Ryden’s painting 'The Creatrix,' is a limited edition, giclée print with gold foil stamping, letterpressed title and embossed chop on archival cotton rag paper." It's limited to 60 prints and costs $3,000. Link Reader comment: Kevin Kelly says: Whenever you see the claim "giclee print" just substitute the word "inkjet." Same thing, but without the $64 dollar fake french accent. A giclee is a nice inkjet print, but inkjet nonetheless. More at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giclee

Bloglines - It's imperative you keep your ass on the phone line.

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It's imperative you keep your ass on the phone line. By Wet Spot How to mess with a telemarketer. (audio)

Bloglines - THE SHAPE OF THINGS TO COME*

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The Elegant Variation A Literary Weblog. A Guardian Top 10 Literary Blog * A Forbes "Best of the Web" Pick * A Los Angeles Magazine Top Los Angeles Blog "Really brave ... or really stupid" - NPR

THE SHAPE OF THINGS TO COME* By TEV on Events Call me TEV.  To begin, I’d like to thank my hosts at the Online Book Fair for inviting me to participate in this exciting event. I’d also like to thank you, the reader, for stopping by here to take a moment and read what I’ve got to say. We’ve all heard the dire reports over the last few years that herald the death of reading in general and the novel in particular. And yet every year, there are more new books released than ever before. Yes, it’s true that book review and short fiction column inches remain under perennial assault from other, emerging media. But the internet has stepped in to fill that void, with online-only magazines like Boldtype and Pindeldyboz offering goods for readers of every stripe. Book festivals (the brick and mortar – or tent and table variety) draw bigger audiences than ever as new ones seem to pop up all over the map. And then there’s the explosive growth in literary blogs. When I started The Elegant Variation three years ago this month, there were a dozen or so literary blogs, four or five of which were firmly established. The literary blogosphere now boasts a glowing firmament of quite literally hundreds of sites, with new voices chiming in every day. Whatever your literary taste, there’s a blog devoted to it, from romance to mysteries to science fiction to experimental fiction to literature in translation. Bloggers have become book reviewers, and book reviewers have become bloggers. There’s even the Litblog Co-op, a consortium of more than twenty literary blogs who make a quarterly book recommendation, and whose new choice is just a few weeks away. (If you’re new to the world of literary blogs, check out the listing to the left of this post. Each of those sites will similarly link to dozens more.) Blogs also allow readers to follow the vagaries of the publishing industry as never before, even inspiring some publishers to set up their own blogs. Because of the unlimited space on websites, the offerings on most blogs are limited only by the author’s laziness. They can offer detailed interviews, lengthy reviews and analysis of publishing trends. There’s no pressure to review the book of the moment, so bloggers can follow their noses or indulge in their passions, which might include creating a repository of author interview podcasts. But what blogs do best, I think, is create a literary sense of community, something very similar to what the Online Book Fair is attempting. At very little expense and at no real inconvenience to readers, we offer a gathering place where ideas are exchanged. Newspapers and magazines are necessarily static, with dialogue limited to the letters page. But blogs and other online forums can foster a real-time conversation which brings in readers from all over the world weighing in on thoughts that matter to them. Anyone who thinks no one is reading any more hasn’t spent much time online. If you’ve come here by way of the Online Book Fair, I hope you’ll check out today’s posts beneath this one, and then poke through the archives here and on those sites I link to. You’ll find a universe of thoughtful literary commentary out there. If you’re a regular TEV reader who hasn’t checked out the Online Book Fair yet, stop over there and see what’s on offer: Hourly giveaways, links to author interviews and readings, book excerpts, and a host of interactive offerings that suggest what the future of the book fair looks like. There are no crowds and you don’t have to pay for parking ... * Finally, I'm going to offer my own giveaway in honor of the Online Book Fair.  I'm going to give away a copy of Kate Atkinson's new novel One Good Turn.  It's a follow up to Case HIstories which was the first Read This! selection of the Litblog Co-op, and it follows the continuing adventures of ex-detective Jackson Brodie.  To win, just drop a line to me, subject line ONLINE BOOK FAIR and include your full name and mailing address.  The first person to do so wins - and feel free to include your thoughts on why you're excited about the convergence of books and the web.  We'll throw in a bonus title for anyone who can identify this post's headline's allusion.  And make sure you check back both here and the Online Book Fair in the days ahead. UPDATE: Congratulations to Jon Butters of Chapel Hill, who identified the headline's source as H.G. Wells. (It was also co-opted for a series of 1970s commercials for the ill-fated Triumph TR-7.)  He wins both the Atkinson and a bonus copy of John Hodgman's wildly popular The Areas of My Expertise.

Bloglines - Peekskill Riots

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Peekskill Riots By Postroad Peekskill Riots The Peekskill Riots were anti-communist riots (with anti-black undertones) in the city of Peekskill, New York in 1949. The catalyst for the rioting was an announced concert by black singer Paul Robeson, who was well known for his strong stand on civil rights and his communist sympathies. The concert, organized as a benefit for the Civil Rights Congress, was scheduled to take place on August 27. Before Robeson arrived, a mob of locals attacked concertgoers...many names you might recall were involved in this blot on American history, and Howard Fast, the novelist, recalled his involvement in his book Being Red (1990), Howard Fast's memoir of his life on the left. Additionally, some later writers recalled the involvement of relatives and/or friends.. Pete Seeger, present during the riot, wrote a song about it Later, gathering some of the rocks tossed at the lefty participants of the concert, he used the "ammo" to build a chimney on the cabin where he lived. The Lefty -sympathizing wonderful actress Judy Holliday was summoned before the congressional committe in charge of rooting out communists during the anti-communist days, and gave a lengthy testimony about herself and many others. And though the riots were sparked in part by local newspapers, editoriallizing against the "visitors" to their serene area, they and the good citizens of Peekskill quickly tried to ignore, forget, or bury lthe disgraceful riots. But the memory lives on for some, and this sad event remains memorialized, a reminder perhaps of what hate, aggression, and just plain nastiness can bring about.

Bloglines - Amerika

Backwards City The semi-official blog of upstart literary journal Backwards City Review.

Amerika By Gerry Canavan Salon presents the taxonomy of torture. Enjoy your stay in the greatest democracy in the world. Via Metafilter, David Corn has some more photos of waterboarding, a favorite tool of the Khmer Rouge, one of the war crimes the Japanese were tried for at the end of World War II, and, yes, now an approved interrogation confession-extracting tactic in the U.S.A. What a country.

Bloglines - Drew Friedman's Old Jewish Comedians

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Boing Boing

Drew Friedman's Old Jewish Comedians By noemail@noemail.org (David Pescovitz) David Pescovitz: Drew Friedman is my absolute favorite caricaturist and probably my favorite living portrait artist. His insane attention to detail and mastery of stippling gives his portraits a surreal-yet-oddly lifelike quality. Mark F. and I can't stop talking about his latest book, Old Jewish Comedians, published by Fantagraphics as part of their excellent BLAB! Storybook series. (Link to Mark's review at Mad Professor.) Friedman takes on all the greats, from Jack Benny, Don Rickles, and the Marx Brothers to Henny Youngman, Bud Abbott, and Sid Caesar. The portraits not only exude the charisma of these funny men but somehow manage to feel "of the time" too. And as Mark said, Friedman is a master at drawing liver spots. Highly recommended. Link

Bloglines - Book Review: In Defense of Vikram Seth's A Suitable Boy

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Blogcritics Section: Books A sinister cabal of superior bloggers on music, books, film, popular culture, politics, and technology - updated continuously.

Book Review: In Defense of Vikram Seth's A Suitable Boy By Mayank Austen Soofi on Books Ashok Banker, the acclaimed Indian writer of the internationally best-selling six-volume Ramayana series, recently penned a glowing review of author Vikram Chandra's Sacred Games, a recently-released realistic novel on Bombay gangsters. Sacred Games, the much-hyped first edition hardbound is 900 pages long and Mr Banker has inevitably compared it with another thick Indian epic belonging to another Vikram - A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth - a book which he describes as 'a one-volume novel' that 'taxed readers' wrists and sprained brains with its staggering 1359-page bulk'. The somewhat harsh opinions that Mr Banker expressed for A Suitable Boy in his review have left me agitated and outraged. It is amazing that the same book could leave such different impressions on different readers. My Suitable Boy Mr Banker mentioned tackling the novel in short bursts of about 300-400 pages at a time. To him, Vikram Seth's magnum opus 'smelled like the work of an eloquent young Adonis madly in love with his own powdered-and-perfumed self and obsessed with a British hangover'. But my experience was entirely of a different kind. When I read A Suitable Boy for the first time, which was around five years ago, I found myself captivated by its characters, its setting, its various and richly described themes - mostly Jane Austen-ish but at times Dickensian. I believed that the novel did not leave a scope for any improvement. It seemed perfect. Yes, the book did tax my wrists, but no, it did not sprain my brain at any passage. I read the book for the fourth time early this year and did not find any alteration in my opinions. I am still extremely fond of it. Unlike Mr Banker, I am not capable of savoring it in 'short bursts' though. Perfume and Powder While I acknowledge that the author of A Suitable Boy had his upbringing in a sophisticated household (his mother was India's first woman Chief Justice), and was educated at exclusive schools, and that the chief families in his novel belonged to the upper class society of post-independent India whose members lived a British-influenced life, I never imagined the book to be too 'perfumed and powdered'. Literally speaking, perhaps the major characters did regularly perfume and powder themselves after their morning showers, but then they were the privileged English-speaking citizens of a newly-independent country led by an erudite, almost-British statesman called Jawaharlal Nehru, a literature-loving gentleman who had been in love with the obliging wife of Lord Mountbatten, the last British Viceroy of India. To be sure, the suave and urbane families of Mehras and Chatterjees of A Suitabe Boy do not share any values with the unshaven, unsophisticated, undeodorized goons of Vikram Chandra's modern-day Mumbai, a rackety city presently controlled by corrupt politicians and grim gangsters. True, there is nothing common between the worlds of Vikram Seth and Vikram Chandra. But could the refined world of Mr Seth be simply dismissed as 'perfumed and powdered'? Isn't that world also real? Doesn't that high-brow class of people count in the narrative of a society? Did not both Jane Austen and Charles Dickens belong to the same country? Is Dickens superior while Austen merely perfumed and powdered? Was Vikram Seth a Suitable Boy? At one point in his review, Mr Banker suspected the titular character (the suitable boy of A Suitable Boy) to be a thinly veiled alter-ego of Mr Seth himself. Could he be technically wrong in this assumption? If we understand A Suitable Boy as the character that gets the girl, as the fortunate groom who marries the heroine - Lata Mehra - then it had to be Haresh Khanna, a shoe company executive who eventually ends up as the chosen one. But still, Mr Banker is partially right. Mr Seth did sketch a character on himself - a suitor named Amit Chatterjee, an England educated poet of Calcutta in love with Lata, who was was politely rejected by her. Hardly a suitable boy (the titular character) then! Incidentally, the real 'Suitable Boy' - Haresh Khanna - was inspired by Prem Seth, the author's father, while Lata Mehra's character was based on Justice Leila Seth, the author's mother. The Unkindest Cut Regrettably, Mr Banker went on to dismiss A Suitable Boy as a romance 'grotesquely transplanted to post-Independent India'. It was painful to come across such a fiercely disapproving description of a beloved novel. I fear that reading in 'short bursts' did not assist Mr Banker in recognizing the essence of the story - that ordinary people might find flickers of discreet, passionate love during the early part of their young and secret life but finally have to settle with circumstances, due to various reasons often unique to Indian culture, that are quite lustreless. Romance! This is India - The World of Arranged Marriages Mr Banker described A Suitable Boy as a romance, even if it was, according to him, presented grotesquely. But there was no romance in the novel. It did not even have a romantic ending, though there were subtle strands of comedy, tragedy, and despair running throughout the thick novel. Okay, it was true that Lata had a short-lived romantic entanglement with a Muslim boy - Kabir Durrani - but she had to swiftly dissociate herself following her mother's objections. After that, romance fizzled out from Lata's life. Later, the theme centered on the proceedings of formalities and rituals that are countdowns leading to the conclusion of a traditional Indian arranged marriage. As a matter of fact, Lata never even falls in love with Haresh, the winning suitor. He just came across as the most stable and sensible guy to spend the rest of her life with -- hardly the stuff romances are made of! A Landmark Novel Mr Banker also accused Mr Seth of being too sugary and ambitious while writing this epic. These happen to be personal perceptions coming out of a particular reader's instinct and other than expressing disappointment, one cannot argue against it. Really, my heart insists that A Suitable Boy deservedly belongs to that coveted shelf of books which stocks the kind of selected novels that are said to define the literary milestones of modern Indian literature in English. I shall re-read it. Mayank Austen Soofi owns a private library and two blogs: Ruined By Reading and The Delhi Walla.

Bloglines - A book-loving bloggers blogs about book blogs

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Cuppa Joad - the Alibris book blog Book reviews and discussions of notable books. Share your passion for literature at Cuppa Joad and drink up a good book.

A book-loving bloggers blogs about book blogs By Lynn on Book News During the last several years (and still gaining momentum), the blogosphere has exploded with incredible richness and variation. Included as a subculture of the World Wide Web are explorations into the bookish experience, from reviews on modern literature to opinions regarding book fairs; from glimpses of exquisite incunabula to discoveries of fine and unusual bindings. These book blogs are a marvelous mix—entertaining, well-written, and encompassing all facets of book-oriented lives. I’ve listed below (in no particular order) five such sites, which I enjoy. As a matter of disclosure, I have corresponded with all save one of the originators of these blogs. They are a mix, but it is obvious to me that the authors of these blogs enjoy their association with books and others in the book world—such joie de vivre, such enthusiasm, such interest. Bibliophile Bullpen: J. Godsey covers a broad spectrum of books and includes personal notes too. The result is an engaging peek into the life of a bookseller and book reader. Book fairs, interviews, discovered books, and book events are all covered. Every day is a sumptuous smorgasbord. StarDotStar Books Blog Space: The originator of this new blog, Bruce Tober, writes principally about books and the Internet book world, and his impressions of them. While never at a loss for an opinion, his writing is engaging and forceful—definitely compelling. I don’t necessarily agree with all his views, but I do find them thought-provoking, and he is willing to back them with examples and documentation. He is across the ocean, but next door in the wonderful wide world of the Web. Grumpy Old Bookman: This blog and the originator, Michael Allen, also hail from across the ocean. He posts nearly every day, on mostly all-things-British, including books, theatre, film, music, authors, events, and other blogs. The Bookman provides a completely different and enchanting perspective of the book world. He is a scholar with a scholar’s command of the English language and a broad understanding of the world around him. Fine Books Blog: Scott Brown, the very fine editor of the magazine Fine Books & Collections, maintains an almost daily blog of interesting book and book-related topics. The writing in this blog is crisp and sharp, much like the magazine. He finds such interesting book topics; it’s almost like reading the magazine on a daily basis, and I like reading the magazine. Cuppa Joad: Although this blog is a relative newcomer, it covers many interesting books and events, and works toward a universal approach toward books. It maintains a light touch while covering such heavyweight topics as the British Library’s marvelous Web inventions. It’s fun and interesting reading, and I usually check daily for items of interest. If you are reading this commentary, you have obviously found this site. Editor’s note: We at Cuppa Joad enjoy Lynn’s frequent posts, which not only give us writing breaks but also make our blog a better place. If you’d also like to blog about books, please join us! If you have discovered other interesting book blogs, I encourage you to drop a line in the comments section of this post (which you’ll find if you click its heading above). Try reading these blogs; they are a blast—a breath of fresh air, so to speak. The book world is quite exciting, and it’s changing all the time. There is nothing quite like watching history being formulated. Comments

Book Review: An Alchemy Of Mind - The Marvel And Mystery Of The Brain by Diane Ackerman

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Book Review: An Alchemy Of Mind - The Marvel And Mystery Of The Brain by Diane Ackerman By Gordon Hauptfleisch on Books Einstein, disguised as Robin Hood With his memories in a trunk Passed this way an hour ago… ---Bob Dylan, "Desolation Row" When Albert Einstein died in 1955 of a ruptured aneurysm of the abdominal aorta, his brain was secreted away by Princeton pathologist Thomas Harvey, who cut it into 240 blocks for study. Nothing in the noggin’ immediately jumped out and sang “I am genius, hear me roar” and so Einstein’s brain -- after being plunked into two mason jars of formaldehyde -- was placed in a Costa Cider cardboard box collecting cobwebs and virtually forgotten about as it sat under a beer cooler in Harvey's office. (The adage about preferring a bottle in front of me over a frontal lobotomy seems somehow apropos here, but I don’t know how.) Eventually, renewed interest among various scientists and neurologists meant Einstein’s gray matter mattered once more and so Harvey took it out of mothballs and passed it around rather casually at times to in-the-know know-it-alls all over. At one point it was tossed into the trunk of a Buick Skylark for a cross-country road trip - which might make for a good buddy movie ("Dude, Where's My Cortex?"). In fits and starts of theory and inquiry, notes Diane Ackerman in the scintillating and enticingly all-embracing An Alchemy Of Mind, the 240 poked-and-prodded blocks went on to endure some flawed studies and unexpected conclusions. Public interest was stirred for a while, notes Ackerman, "with many of us picturing his glia as a sort of golden mucilage, the pith of brilliance.” But the path to Einstein's brilliance, it was ultimately determined, may have stemmed from a missing Sylvian fissure, a fold running through the parietal lobes. Without that division, the consequent ease of connection and communication between neurons corresponded to Einstein’s contention that his mental functions didn’t involve words; he thought in images and took a mathematical approach to problem-solving. With such a unique brain formation, Ackerman suggests, no wonder Einstein “symbolizes genius” -- though his affability gives it "a farouche human face surrounded by electric hair.” From such a summing-up most stopping points are made. But Ackerman not only goes the extra meditative mile to concisely yet incisively ponder such potential imponderables as the consequences of anatomical mistakes, evolutionary flukes and even “the zeitgeist of the era” - she gives free rein to her non-academic imagination. She muses about the incidentals that usually fall through the scholarly cracks. Between beers, for example, did the self-styled keeper and curator of the great scientist’s brain “sometimes peer into the jars and turn them gently like snow globes, talk to the brain, commune with it?” Did Harvey “entertain dreams of glory, of solving its mysteries?” As may be indicated here, Ackerman has the gift of stylistic gab and poetic resonance with which to better precision-toss the substance of her insights. With such a word-perfect emphasis and almost playful sense of language, it is no wonder that Alchemy’s epigraph consists of an e.e. cummings poem that evokes the book's mingling of cold hard fact with the gradation and shade of allusion-rich expression. my mind is a big hunk of irrevocable nothing which touch and taste and smell and hearing and sight keep hitting and chipping with sharp fatal tools in an agony of sensual chisels I perform squirms of chrome and execute strides of cobalt… Alchemy's seven sections hit such topics as the evolution of the brain, its physical structure, memory, the self, emotions, language, and consciousness. Meanwhile, some of the more intriguing discussions in the book's 34 chapters chip away at absentmindedness and multitasking, Alzheimer’s and the aging brain, the role of dreams in memory, artistic and mathematical minds, the spiritual brain, animal minds, and “How Shakespeare’s mind was different.” So, like slings and arrows or, to quote cummings again, “sharp fatal tools” and “sensual chisels,” Ackerman -- in the same way others use charts and graphs and tables -- benefits from the gentle nudging of determined and determining words to unravel the marvel and mystery of the brain. Gordon Hauptfleisch is a free-lance writer who has managed record stores and bookstores while barely managing to retain a thread of decorum and dignity. When not lollygagging his way to an early grave, he edits for Blogcritics, writes book reviews for the San Diego Union-Tribune and is currently writing a San Diego local history book of the decidedly off-kilter variety. He will have you know that beneath his flabby exterior lies an enormous lack of character.