blog.rightreading.com

More fun with computer morphing. What did Shakespeare look like? It’s possible one of these computer morphs might provide a clue. The image on the left morphs the Sanders and Chandos portraits. The image on the right morphs in three equal parts the Sanders, Cobb, and Chandos portraits.
For a full discussion of what’s going on [...]

What did Shakespeare look like? I will come to how I created the above image in a moment. First we need to review the existing portraits that are claimed to be of Shakespeare.
All of the three or four likeliest images of him are problematic in one way or another. The three likeliest portraits are the [...]

Today I initiate what I am hoping will become a more or less weekly feature here at blog.rightreading.com — a report on book news from newspapers and journals around the world. (I say “more or less weekly” because I am currently working on a big project that is taking most of my time, and this [...]

Having completed my scriptorium and tabularium and got my books somewhat organized, I found myself with a bunch of duplicates and some other books I no longer needed. So I gave some away and boxed a bunch more up to exchange at a used bookstore.
At the store the buyer rejected most of the books (as [...]

Now that he’s passed away everybody who has ever read a book is writing about him. Enough! I call time out!

When the ancients wrote books they were trying to get at reality and transmit spirit. But all they could convey was a general idea, in order to help lead people to the truth. Much of their spirit, their energy, their words and laughter and actions, could not be captured.
When modern generations write books they ape [...]

I maintain my own daybook, where I have recorded events by date that are significant to me (there is a link near the top of the left sidebar). But my effort pales beside the project called Ordinary Finds, which, if I’m not mistaken, is produced by Bent Sorensen of Aalborg, Denmark (this is hard to [...]

DailyLit is a service that sends excerpts from books that are said to be popular to subscribers via e-mail or RSS. Formerly the service required a paid subscription, but they have recently announced they are switching to a free model supported, they hope, through sponsorships and advertising. I haven’t tried the service; browsing their books [...]

Mark Bromberg of Bellemeade Books writes on the subject of Jonathan Williams, author and publisher of the Jargon Society (we published his The Magpie’s Bagpipe at North Point Press) and generously includes the above scan of a Jargon Society publication, which I take the liberty of sharing.
… I have been a long-time reader and admirer [...]

I touch your mouth, I touch the edge of your mouth with my finger, I am drawing it as if it were something my hand was sketching, as if for the first time your mouth opened a little, and all I have to do is close my eyes to erase it and start all over [...]

I am reading and enjoying Alexander McCall Smith’s No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency. It is my misfortune, I realize, to be so sensitized to colonialist attitudes as to imagine I detect in the book a faint taint of colonialist condescension.
But I am not here today to rant about colonialism but rather to share the following [...]

Pophangover thinks it has the list. But I’m pretty sure we can do much worse. Click the image to check out their bottom ten.

Readers of this blog are probably tired of this topic, but I have been spending a lot of time on this project, so it occupies my attention. I’ll try to restrain myself in the future, I promise (sure I will). This is the first building nearly complete, though still wanting siding. The second building is [...]

Many years ago, as a graduate student in comparative literature at the University of Wisconsin-Madison with a focus in part on the linguistic model in literary criticism, I turned my attention to beyond-the-sentence topicality. Scholars have parsed the sentence since ancient time, but they have paid less attention to the way sentences connect to each [...]

I’m back from my short vacation, which was spent not being a tourist somewhere but rather working on my second library building. Even though I didn’t go away I found the computer did not call to me. I enjoyed working outdoors and not sitting in front of a screen.
Below you can see progress on the [...]

Maurice Bendrix, The Ambitious Host
D. B. Caulfield, The Secret Goldfish
Vivian Darkbloom, My Cue
Nicholas de Selby, Country AlbumGwendolen Erme, Deep Down, Overmastered
Andrew Hibbard, The Chasm of the Mind
Robin Penrose, Domestic Angels and Unfortunate Females: Woman as Sign and Commodity in Victorian Fiction
Boris Alekseyevich Trigorin, Days and Nights
Harriet Vane, Murder By Degrees

Answer after the break . . [...]

Here’s Peter Laufer, three or four of whose books I published at Mercury House, on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart.

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Want to store your library information on the web? Want to be able to computer search some of the content? Entering ISBN numbers too much trouble? Try this tip from Google employee Matt Cutts.

How many of Modern Library’s hundred best novels of the 20th century can you name if you’re given the names of the authors? Fine out here.
I was doing okay until I got to Samuel Butler.
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Copper Canyon has been selected by the NEA be the U.S. publisher for its International Literary Exchange with China. According to Publishers Weekly, “Copper Canyon will receive $117,000 to support the translation, publication and promotion of a bilingual anthology of work by about 35 Chinese poets born after 1945.”
This is an excellent choice. Copper Canyon [...]