Unicode Characters as Named and Numeric HTML Entities →

If you’ve ever wondered, “Hey, I need to know how to encode this Unicode character in HTML,” this is your site — a big honkin’ list of every Unicode entity encoding in both hex and decimal.

Now this is how you sell a book. The NYT has a slideshow of old book ads from the Sixties and Seventies.

You’ve got Gonzo here (with a long, glowing blurb from Vonnegut, which is awesome) plus a bunch of other authors including Tom Wolfe, Alice Walker, Toni Morrison, and Joan Didion.

(Via kottke, of course. Get off my back.)

Pushing Daisies returns on October 1. I cannot wait.

Just Irresistible: Dodie Smith’s I Capture the Castle →

Tor.com’s Jo Walton writes on how much she loves Dodie Smith’s first novel.

I Capture the Castle is one of the best books about how people form relationships I’ve ever read, and it has one of the best first person voices in the history of the universe.

I read I Capture the Castle last fall on Ashley’s advice. It really is a delightful book — and one that everyone should read.

bauldoff:

In awe of The Beatles: Rock Band opening cinematic by the consistently out-of-this-world Passion Pictures.

This is amazing. Watch it in HD at the link above. Watch it now.

"In the evenings I usually watch television or go to the movies. Weekends I often spend on the Gulf Coast. Our neighborhood theater in Gentilly has permanent lettering on the front of the marquee reading: Where Happiness Costs So Little. The fact is I am quite happy in a movie, even a bad movie. Other people, so I have read, treasure memorable moments in their lives: the time one climbed the Parthenon at sunrise, the summer night one met a lonely girl in Central Park and achieved with her a sweet and natural relationship, as they say in books. I too once met a girl in Central Park, but it is not much to remember. What I remember is the time John Wayne killed three men with a carbine as he was falling to the dusty street in Stagecoach, and the time the kitten found Orson Welles in the doorway in The Third Man."

The Moviegoer, natch. “Where Happiness Costs So Little” is such a great line; I’m going to have to use it somewhere. (via The Second Pass)

Neil Gaiman’s bookshelves are full of all kinds of amazing things. Maybe one day I’ll have a library like that myself.

Two different ways to design a bookstore

"If a better book than The Moviegoer has been written, I’ll cut off my little toe."

Ada Liana Bidiuc, as quoted in Oxford American’s Best Southern Novels of All Time.

Strange Light: Photos from the Australian Dust Storm

Derek Powazek put together a fantastic collection of images from the Australian dust storm in just 48 hours. He describes here how the magazine came to be. It’s published by the POD company MagCloud.

Here’s a cool interactive Flash preview of the finished product. The magazine has also been featured on Time’s web site, in an article which points out MagCloud’s shortcomings (no distribution, long wait times to print and ship copies). It’s an interesting look at where media’s headed. (via Jim Judd)

I had the most awesome cake for my birthday.

Terrific cover for a terrific book. A behind-the-scenes look at its creation is here. (via Snarkmarket)

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Flannery O’Connor by Christine Marie Larsen (via walkwhilereading)