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lalalaboratory:

Look.

Acrylic on found wood.

LOOKs great!

A man in Utah recreates the house from Up, via this NYT story.

A magnificent but unknown website →

Beyond Apollo highlights the space programs that never were — from the lull between the Apollo moon landing in 1969 to the end of the Cold War. It’s all very fascinating stuff!

(Source: itsfullofstars)

Lynda Barry on the "biological function" of art →

A scientist named V.S. Ramachandran has done some astonishing work with neurological problems he’s actually solved with a mirror. He had a patient who had lost his hand, but the patient’s experience was that the hand was still there, and not only there, but it was in a really tight fist — you know, painfully tight. This guy was miserable; he couldn’t get away from that feeling. Ramachandran made a box, tilted the mirror in there, and then he put a hole in the other side. He asked the guy to stick his hand in the hole, the fist that was still there, and look down. So what the guy saw was his fist and then the reflection of it, which was like his other hand. Then, he told him to open his hand, and what he saw was the reflection of his other hand opening, and it solved the problem.

That’s a perfect example of what images do. My feeling is that in the course of life there are certain things for us that are like phantom limb pain, like a horrible, horrible parent who dies before you ever work things out with them. And I think the only way that those things can be worked out is through something that’s akin to that mirror box — except it may be a fairy tale, or it may be a painting, or it may be a song you can remember from when you were 14 and you had to play the same song over and over and over again, like 400 times in a row. Yeah, what are you doing there? You’re opening your fist. You’re looking at a reflection.

The arts, sadly, have kind of become separated from all the tools we use to just take care of ourselves normally. But that’s what they do. Rather than it being this acclaimed creation that you either get a prize for or you don’t, it’s more about blood sugar balancing or temperature balancing of your body.

(Source: austinkleon)

The Books They Carried →

Anglobibliofile examines photographer Jason Travis’ documentation of what Atlantans are carrying in their bags/purses/briefcases/pockets. Not surprisingly, many of them are carrying books. (The set, located on Travis’ Flickr account, is called “Personas.”) It’s a cool look into readers’ private lives.

Read David Foster Wallace's college papers →

Fascinating stuff.

"Finally, one wonders why epigraphs are always at the beginning of the book. Some stories end and make you want to hold the book to your chest and absorb it directly into your very soul. How moving it would be to me to finish a book and turn the page, sad that it’s all over and read an epigraph that reflects on all that’s come before."

Andrew Tutt, writing on epigraphs today in The Millions.

Ethiopian Coffee Ceremony →

An ornate ritual of appreciation, from the bean’s home country:

Ethiopia’s coffee ceremony is an integral part of their social and cultural life. An invitation to attend a coffee ceremony is considered a mark of friendship or respect and is an excellent example of Ethiopian hospitality. Performing the ceremony is almost obligatory in the presence of a visitor, whatever the time of day. Don’t be in a hurry though - this special ceremony can take a few hours. So sit back and enjoy because it is most definitely not instant.

Inspired by Slade Ham’s celebration of the drink in The Nervous Breakdown.

Some half-formed thoughts on one future for bookselling →

Reblogging this from austinkleon, who writes:

The future seems to be splitting in to directions: print-on-demand on the low-end, and book-as-object on the high-end. Interesting.

Not only that — it seems like Doctorow is looking forward to a future of extremely decentralized and deeply personal publishing. Sounds exciting.

The Girlfriend Experience And Why We Are All In Grave Danger →

Andrew Altschul reviews Steven Soderberg’s latest movie, The Girlfriend Experience. Beginning with a critique of the movie’s sordid and pointless plot he soars upwards to a beautiful and damning critique of so-called Realism. I don’t want to spoil the whole thing for you, but here’s just a taste:

In Reality we don’t need Laurence Olivier or Katherine Hepburn, we don’t need talented “elites” to write our scripts and shove complicated ideas about human nature down our throats. The medium is the message, as Marshall McLuhan showed us, and the message of Reality is that we are all actors, all writers, all of our opinions and abilities are as good as everyone else’s. Reality wants us to understand that the performers can’t perform, the writers can’t write, so as to better discredit and discard the function of true art and artists. They aren’t Real people: Olivier wasn’t better than you or me—just luckier; Toni Morrison’s ideas are no more important than David Duke’s.

The essay is eloquent and illuminating, and well worth the few minutes it takes to read it.

Frodo and the Great War →

This is fascinating: a summmary of a paper by John Garth that compares scenes and features from The Lord of the RIngs to aspects of the Great War that would have impressed themselves on the mind of a WWI soldier like J.R.R. Tolkien.

The Best Fiction of the Millennium (So Far) →

The Millions asks 48 writers, editors, and critics to name their favorite works of fiction of the new millennium, so far. I’m a little impressed that I’ve managed to read five of them, without even trying at all:

20: Gilead by Marilynne Robinson
19: American Genius, A Comedy by Lynne Tillman
18: Stranger Things Happen by Kelly Link
17: The Fortress of Solitude by Jonathan Lethem
16: Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides
15: Varieties of Disturbance by Lydia Davis
14: Atonement by Ian McEwan
13: Mortals by Norman Rush
12: Twilight of the Superheroes by Deborah Eisenberg
11: The Brief, Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz
10: Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
9: Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage by Alice Munro
8: Out Stealing Horses by Per Petterson
7: Austerlitz by W.G. Sebald
6: The Road by Cormac McCarthy
5: Pastoralia by George Saunders
4: 2666 by Roberto Bolaño
3: Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell
2: The Known World by Edward P. Jones
1: The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen

The full list has descriptions of each, along with excerpts, links to audio books, and other materials where appropriate. I should note that Stranger Things Happen, number 18 on the list, is available as a free, CC-licensed download.

Iowa Sen. Charles E. Grassley is one connected dude. Blah blah blah blah long NYT article but look at that Kindle DX. Compared to the piles and piles of printed pages surrounding him, I’d say he’s ahead of the curve here.

The Virgin Suicides' Sweet 16 →

Interesting look back on The Virgin Suicides and its author Jeffrey Eugenides, 16 years after the novel’s original publication. I was interested to learn that, outside of a short story based on the first chapter, it was his first published work.

I can’t remember the exact timeline, but I first picked this book up sometime during high school and was absolutely blown away by its tone and themes. It was also one of the first books that I can remember hearing about over the Internet. I’ve lost my original copy since then, but it remains one my favorite novels.