Sisters in arms

One of my friends, along with her sisters, is right this minute living out a true story that is so much stranger, so much more unbelievable, more gut wrenching, more gripping than any fictional novel could be that it makes one stick in one's seat, mind boggling, and think hooley dooley who knows what? is going on behind the scenes in people's lives... 
I came across another true story in The Economist this week - another tale of sisters, equally inspiring. Here's hoping both come to the good and brave ending they deserve.
'When Wayétu Moore fled her home of Monrovia, Liberia with her father and two sisters in the summer of 1989, banished by the outburst of civil war, one of the few things she had was a small notebook. In Lai, the village where they hid for six months, five-year-old Wayétu and her sisters scribbled about the death and mayhem they witnessed around them. Over two decades after they left Liberia, the Moore sisters now lead successful lives in America. Their parents have reunited (their mother was a Fulbright scholar at Columbia University when they had to flee), and two brothers were born in America. But they have never forgotten their war-devastated homeland, and the fact that very few children there — especially girls — are educated, or even literate...'
Wayétu and her sisters have launched One Moore Book - a publishing company that produces books for children living in countries with low literacy rates. Great idea.
You can read the rest of the story here.

Tip of the iceberg...

This could be my house....! Thanks BookshelfPorn.

Guilty sins...

Thanks to my friend the Unsung Heroine for passing this on from the Mamamia website...
A confessional on the trashy reads secretly loved and cherished by bookophiles - What's your book shame?
I not-so-sheepishly put my hand up for the The Thorn Birds too. Read it cover to cover on a three-day flight from Sydney to Durban via Perth, Mauritius, Harare and Johannesburg when I was 13 years old and was so engrossed I barely noticed the dodgy airline food, cramped confines onboard, permanent daylight and lack of air-con (and seats) during a 3-hour transit at Harare, all the way home to Africa.
There have been others, too numerous and cringe-worthy to mention here, but I'd love to know yours!
What's your favourite secret trashy read?

Art + storytelling = relief

A picture is worth a thousand words. 
It's said that the modern use of this phrase originates from an article by an American, Fred R Barnyard, in an advertising trade journal in the early 1920s, promoting the use of images in ads that appeared on the sides of trams. He later used the same phrase in another ad and called it a Chinese proverb - so that 'people would take it seriously'. 
So there you go - Confucius scores again.
Whatever the origins, a cliche is a cliche because it's true, and sometimes a picture finds the words to tell the story that people can't. Proceeds of all sales of this print by artist James White go to Japanese earthquake relief efforts.

The age of etiquette

Good manners are under-rated, which is why this caught my attention during the week - from AbeBooks: Courting to Duelling: Antiquated Etiquette Guides. It takes a look at old school manners manuals in the time of Queen Victoria and Abe Lincoln. 
I love the look of these two by Mrs Humphrey, 'Madge of Truth', written in 1898. In A Word to Women ladies are taught how to run the household efficiently and dress appropriately according to their social status. Manners for Men teaches blokes about huntin' and fishin' and how to pick up girls... 

How to write a novel

From the keyboard of Australian author Max Barry comes....
15 ways to write a novel. 
He's had a few novels of his own published (Syrup, Jennifer Government, Company) so he's obviously doing something right. I like the 'Word Ceiling' - it gives me all the justification I need to only write 500 words per day!
Different strokes for different folks though. As Barry says - if there was a single method of writing a great book, we'd all be doing it.
What method do you reckon would work for you?

World Book Night

Missed it by thiiiis much....! Just read about World Book Night which took place on March 5 throughout Britain and Ireland (maybe they should check a map?) with 'the largest book giveaway ever'. 20,000 volunteers took to the streets and handed out one million free books in a publicity stunt designed to promote reading among the masses. 
Among the patrons, such luminaries as Margaret Atwood, Dave Eggers, Seamus Heaney, Sir Richard Branson and Colin Firth lent their energy to the cause, vaunting a book list of 25 novels - contemporary books and classics - selected by committee. 
If what one reads on the web is to be believed, despite the rash of freebies, sales of those novels have peaked in the weeks since World Book Day took place. You can check out the list of titles here. I'd have stuck my hand out very graciously for a copy of David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas. What would you have chosen?
And here's a novel idea: considering the title of the event, how about we in the Antipodes get a look in next year? 

Hope among the rubble

Twitter has been flooded by photos of libraries across Japan this week, showing scenes of chaos repeated in schools, universities and public libraries shaken by the earthquake. 
Why libraries? 
The New Yorker says: 'These are images of hope, as much as of disaster, and they speak to the idea that the things most fundamental to a culture—in this case, its codified knowledge — have not been lost'.
Top: The library of the Sendai Mediatheque, taken just after the quake by Eishi Katsura. Middle: the same library before the quake. Above: Library Kasama, Ibaraki Prefecture and Central Library, University of Tsukaba.

Freedom falls flat

After finishing Freedom it was pretty much a unanimous decision among my book group last night that we need a cracker read up next to make up for it. 
Not that it was a terrible book.... it was just more of a 'nothing' book to me. 550 pages of....well, not much. I realise that goes against the opinion of (quite) a few million people in the world but hey - you know a book isn't hitting home when a 'Cataclysmic Event' happens towards the end of said 550 pages and you're left stifling a yawn.
So, onwards and upwards! 
Our next pick is The Tiger's Wife, the debut novel by Belgrade-born Tea Obreht. The Economist's books blog Prospero gave it the thumbs up, saying: 
'The Tiger’s Wife considers 50 years of miasmal Balkan history from the 1940s to the 1990s, and it brims with the remixed and fictionalised personal experiences of this inquisitive young author. The resulting story, of a young doctor named Natalia, her family and their homeland, is highly original, funny and frightening, and a welcome addition to writing on the region.
'Natalia, living in the present day, works in an unnamed part of the region where the maps continue to change. She is grappling with the past: her grandfather, also a doctor, has died in mysterious circumstances. The stories he’s told her about their home eventually offer answers about his death. By interlacing Natalia’s experiences with two riveting tales from her grandfather—about a man who cannot die, and a tiger who escapes the zoo and wanders around indiscriminately hungry for his next meal—Ms Obreht deftly spans decades of Balkan history with all the imagination and passion of Gabriel García Márquez and Louis de Bernières.'
Something different - and I'm a little rusty on my Balkan history so bring it on. What are you reading?

Princess diaries

Haha! Saw this on my very talented friend Jo's blog Coelho Culture, photographed during her latest travels in London.
As the world watches, what kind of story shall unfold? Fairytale, nightmare, rom-com, melodrama, tragedy (I hope not), epic adventure (probably), psychological drama (I'm sure)...
It's a Choose Your Own Adventure in the making. Only this one has three billion people watching their every move. Gulp.
Good luck kids.

Type 3

The last word on typewriters. Something about this pic makes me smile - not sure whether it's the cheerful aqua enamel or the quilted 'grandma' bed spread. Nevertheless, it's by Vancouver artist Tracey Ayton and I found it on UPPERCASE. 
What kind of story would you punch out of this one?

Type 2

This is a typewriter. Deconstructed. No words inside...but plenty of squiggly bits and pieces.
Artist Todd McLellan takes apart old objects and reinvents them as an art form. This piece is from his exhibition series disassembly.
'I've used old items that are no longer used by the masses and often found on the street curbs heading for disposal. All of the items in the photographs were in working order. The interesting part was the fact that they were all so well built, and the parts were most likely put together by hand. I envisioned all the enjoyment these pieces had given many people for many years, all to be replaced by new technology that will be rapidly replaced with half the use.'
No words inside but I recognise my story in the chaos...

Type 1

Ad campaign from Brazil selling the latest incarnation of Penguin Classics. Typewriters sprouting pages of Classic novels were set up among lap tops on display at a number of major techie retail stores. According to Google translate the website says: 
'To disseminate the Penguin classics - Companhia das Letras in POV, we created an action to draw the attention of hipsters and also the new generation. We ended up pleasing everyone.'
Wonder how many books they sold though?

Little Red's makeover

Swedish artist Daniel Egnéus has brought Little Red Riding Hood back to life with an 'ethereal' and 'romantic' 21st Century makeover, in conjunction with a new movie version of the classic story. No doubt fairytale collectors will send this 80-page hard cover, described as an art book-graphic novel hybrid, straight to the pool room.
Egnéus says that in his version of the Brothers Grimm fable the characters are elegant and upper class. 
'Making them more pompous and living in enormous castles allowed me to have more fun. I purposely dressed them in extremely big clothing.'
One image, set in palatial surrounds, shows Red and her mother wearing Pre-Raphaelite-style gowns five metres in length. And in this iteration, the wolf adds 'debonair' to his scary, calculating character. 
'The wolf has the clothing of Casanova,' says Egnéus, who dressed him in an elaborate, floor-length cape and cavalier hat with a plume. 
Run ladies run! We've all come across wolves of that description in the wee small hours of a Sydney Friday night...

If you build it...

...inspiration and a literary masterpiece will come?
Thanks Eva for this little find - something for the escapist in all of us - the havens of famous writers from Roald Dahl (top), to Mark Twain (middle), Dylan Thomas, Henry David Thoreau, Virginia Woolf and others.
George Bernard Shaw (above) gets my vote for best writing hut for his ingenuity.
'Shaw (1856-1950) worked for the last 20 years of his life on his property in St Albans, Hertfordshire. Besides having electricity, a telephone, and a buzzer system, the hut's most notable feature was that it was built on a turntable, which enabled Shaw to push it to follow the sun. This eliminated the need for an artificial light source and created passive indoor solar heating.' 
Shaw named his hut 'London' so his staff wouldn't be lying when they said he'd 'gone to London'.

Curious George

Recognise this face? The gorgeous illustrations? Curious George, the famous storybook monkey who was spirited away from Africa and escaped his captor to lead a life of adventure travelling the globe (moved to America, joined the circus) and beyond (became an astronaut), has delighted kids everywhere with his cheeky exploits.
But his creators' exploits were equally epic and they're being celebrated in an exhibition at the Jewish Museum in New York. Curious George Saves the Day: The Art of Margaret and H.A. Rey uncovers the real life dramas of the artists whose lives played out against the dark historical backdrop of the Holocaust.
English readers may know the little rascal as George but as 'Zozo' - UK publishers changed his name thinking it would be disrespectful to have a mischievous monkey with the same name as the sitting king. 
Pity, I reckon the Royals could do with a little monkey magic.

The book surgeon

Thanks to my good friend the Bandit for sending me this. Amazing! 

American artist Brian Dettmer uses knives, tweezers and surgical tools to carve - one page at a time - the insides of old encyclopaedias, illustrated books and medical journals, reinventing books as an artform.

'My work is a collaboration with the existing material and its past creators and the completed pieces expose new relationships of the book’s internal elements exactly where they have been since their original conception,' he says.
'The book’s intended function has decreased and the form remains linear in a non-linear world. By altering physical forms of information and shifting preconceived functions, new and unexpected roles emerge.'

You can see more of his work here.

I'm assured no books were harmed in the creation of these artworks. They had all passed of natural causes.

Wrapped Up In Books

Today's musical inspiration - Belle and Sebastian - Wrapped Up In Books. Love love! You can read the lyrics here. Thanks to the Blue Mountains Birdie for passing it on.