House of books

Another Rubyfire-dream-home contender. 

Floor to ceiling wall to wall books. Bliss. I'll add fresh flowers in each room, some lovely people, a roast in the oven. 
And I'll take the pooch too. 

Found it here.

Homer's Odyssey

Check this out - a fragment from a papyrus manuscript of the Odyssey dating from the third to the second century BCE. The Odyssey is the second of Homer's major Greek epics and follows on from the Iliad, both of which were written around the ninth or eight century BCE, telling the story of the ten year siege of Ilium by a coalition of Greek states and the long journey home of Odysseus following the fall of Troy.
It may look like nothing but a scrap of reed to the uninitiated but this is literary gold - Homer's work is fundamental to modern literature, art and music. He was a pretty awesome dude.
This piece has been identified as part of Book 12.384 - 390.
It's one of a collection of treasures held by the Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Columbia University. 
Apparently existing fragments from The Odyssey are far rarer than those still around from The Iliad, being outnumbered four to one.

Ampersand

This one needs to go on my wall. Original art shopping online - arguably one of the 21st century's greatest innovations. 

Thanks Marc Johns, seriously creative.

Evolving English

It's moments like this one needs a Tardis. Keen to see Evolving English: One Language Many Voices at the British Library - an exhibition that traces the social, cultural and historical influences on the English language in an interactive, hands-on, 21st century-cool kind of way. 
So if one happened to be in London right now, one could pop along and check out 'the roots of Old English, slang dictionaries, medieval manuscripts, ads and newspapers from around the world, everyday texts and dialect sound recordings' from all over the place.
It also has an audience-participation section where people can record themselves reading the kid's book Mr Tickle - the text of which apparently evokes a wide range of sounds present in the English language - the idea being that as people participate the exhibition experts compile a living 'voice map' of where we English speakers of the world are today and what we sound like. Go on, record your voice here.
This one, however, happens to be in Sydney right now. So instead I got my word-geek fix at the Gleebooks summer sale. Picked up a copy of Ad Infinitum: A Biography of Latin by Nicholas Ostler and it's bursting with stuff-one-needs-to-know.
Stuff that makes perfect sense in this Y, Z, Whatever Gen world we live in, where kids write essays on iPhones using animated emoticons, words of one syllable or less, no vowels. And some of them have never in their life felt the dewiness of grey finger-printy digits smudging the tablecloth after an hour with a real, hard copy, freshly minted newspaper. 
Stuff like this, from the cluey old Greek dude Horace - who may or may not have realised the weight of his words way back in 70BC - when he wrote: 
'Many words that have fallen will be reborn, and many that are now in honour will fall, if usage wills it, for that holds the judgement, the law, and the standard of speaking.'
I, for one, believe a Renaissance is due for the word 'behoove'. It would behoove us all to remember our words and use them wisely so that our language may flourish.
Which words do you think deserve a newfound appreciation?

Books alive

OK, it's been a YouTube kind of day. This one reminded me of my own 
as-yet-unresolved dilemma...

Modern Wonders

History preserved in this great film clip from 1947 demonstrating how books were made in the days of the copper printing press (...and when fingers/limbs were expendable!)
Got to love a book that's 'strong' and 'good looking'.

A crap load of Harry

At least people are reading.... The entire first chapter of Harry Potter scribbled inside a bathroom stall somewhere in the world. 
Must have been an almighty session.


Photo courtesy of TwitPic

I'm gunna...

Here's one for my Literary Salon-ers...
The Official Catalogue of the Library of Potential Literature, by Ben Segal and Erin Rose Mager. 'A catalogue of textual desire, of wished-for and ideal books, that were dreamt of and desired by 62 writers, critics, and text makers.'
The NY Times says it's 'a flurry of blurbs for non-existent masterpieces, a fierce tear through conceptual imagination'. 
Love it. Our writer's group is full of potential. Bursting! Keep writing keep writing keep writing.
What's your potential blurb for your potential literary gem?

Giants fall

It's been a long while coming and last week it finally happened. Borders / Angus&Robertson went belly up, probably taking with them the hopes of many a publisher for payments due... and devastating for their employees who are always the ones to bear the brunt. The internet is abuzz with the whys and the hows and the what nexts, but it's virtually impossible to feel sorry for the bookchain heavy weights who've apparently mismanaged their way into this mess.
Go you little independent bookstores and second hand sellers - the bedrock of the literary trade.Go you good things! 

Quite.

Truism:
[troo-iz-uhm]
-noun
a self evident, obvious truth.
Dictionary.com


Photo courtesy of Bookshelf Porn.

Yum!

Happy V Day people :) And thank you to a very special someone for cooking me up this delicious surprise... xx

A litte word from John Donne's Epithalamion - 

'...This day more cheerfully than ever shine
This day which might inflame thy selfe old Valentine.'

The first step

I was excited after reading The Poetry Lesson because it meant I got to choose the magnificent Greek Constantine P Cavafy as my Ghost Companion. Andrei Codrescu's method is already working for me - opened up C.P. Cavafy Collected Poems and landed on this one. Aah the synchronicity....

THE FIRST STEP

The young poet Evmenis
complained one day to Theocritos:
“I have been writing for two years now
and I have composed just one idyll.
It’s my only completed work.
I see, sadly, that the ladder of Poetry
is tall, extremely tall;
and from this first step I now stand on
I will never climb any higher.”
Theocritos replied: “Words like that
are improper, blasphemous.
Just to be on the first step
should make you happy and proud.
To have come this far is no small achievement:
what you have done is a glorious thing.
Even this first step
is a long way above the ordinary world.
To stand on this step
you must be in your own right
a member of the city of ideas.
And it is a hard, unusual thing
to be enrolled as a citizen of that city.
Its councils are full of Legislators
no charlatan can fool.
To have come this far is no small achievement:
what you have done already is a glorious thing.” 

Unplugged

Advice for writers' blocked, coming to you from the short story guru and heroine of the ordinary woman, Grace Paley:
'The best training is to read and write, no matter what. Don’t live with a lover or roommate who doesn’t respect your work. Don’t lie, buy time, borrow to buy time. Write what will stop your breath if you don’t write.'
What stops your breath?

The Poetry Lesson

Just finished reading this book and loved it - The Poetry Lesson by Andrei Codrescu. 
I don't do reviews but if you enjoy poetry, have a curious nature and a sense of humour, give it a go. The back cover blurb sums it up beautifully. 'The Poetry Lesson is a must-have manual for poetry monsters; a book of caveats for the peddlers of "creative" snake oil; an archaeo-psychological scan of instantly obsolete technology; the memoir of a professor reluctantly abandoning his sex fantasies; the collected portrait of deluded youth about how to find out something horrific; an affectionate treatise on poetry as a cure for hubris; and a de profundis moan of flesh turning into fortune cookies.'
I'm trying out some of his methods. More on that later but for now how's this little gem:
Did you know that John Keats' grave isn't marked with his name? There's an epitaph, but no name. Alongside him is buried Joseph Severn and Joe's tombstone notes that he is 'the friend of John Keats, the poet buried next to him'. 
Which is a kind of poetry in itself.

Your library needs you!

This means war. 

The Save Our Libraries campaign continues across Britain. And it's reaching fever pitch in some communities - check out these images by Phil Bradley, created from World War II posters.

Snap

This is way cooler than a mobile phone camera. 
Seattle design company Engrained created this retro pinhole camera (top)out of a hollowed out copy of Zane Grey's The Man of the Forest.
Selling it on Etsy, the designer says'This unique camera has a magnetic shutter crafted from wood and leather and is finished off with beautiful ebony and pearl knobs. This book is full of character with the fabric cover torn and tattered to perfection.'
There's a select range crafted from original 'upcycled' hardcovers to choose from, including Elizabeth Metzger Howard's Before The Sun Goes Down, and Marlowe Shakespeare from the 1938 Harvard Classics collection. 

And yes, they actually work! 

Each camera is designed to take 35mm film, comes with its own set of instructions and has a magnetic shutter made from leather.

Read

When love bites... 

Read. A simple mantra and one of the best. Love the artwork but am wincing at the pain of destroying a book. Found it on BookshelfPorn.

As lovely as ABC

From the 'I-never-knew-I-needed-this-until-I-saw-it' files: 

How beautiful is this alphabet by Canadian designer Nathalie Nahas! Spotted it on Bloesem. My writing room is crying out for it...

Flower(dale) Power

A wonderful story at the Sydney Festival keynote event last week has stuck in my mind. JB Rowley from Storytelling Guild Victoria had the audience at Hope 2011: Stories That Must Be Told hanging onto her every word, relating the story of the Flowerdale Tattoo.
In the aftermath of the Victorian bushfires in 2008, Guild members offered their services to the Black Saturday communities, hosting storytelling dinners in towns in the Murrindindi Shire to give people an opportunity to find healing in sharing their stories.
It was at one of these dinners that Rowley discovered the story of the Flowerdale Tattoo. It began as one woman's personal story of hope - a simple tattoo she had imprinted on her forearm to remind her that out of the ashes new life emerges - and it has grown to be a symbol of hope and courage for the entire town. Now over 80 people bear the Flowerdale Tattoo on various parts of their anatomy, from teenagers to octogenarians.
Rowley is a gifted storyteller and this is a poignant story which will move even the hardest of hearts. Listen to it here.

To the lighthouse

Spectacular summer's day on the harbour in Sydney - a harbour full of lighthouses - including this one at Grotto Point, Middle Harbour. 
Grotto Point? Surely, stood in such becoming surrounds, someone in a rush of inspiration could have come up with a more inspiring name than that.  
Reminds me of a line from Virginia Woolf in her collection of autobiographical essays, Moments of Being:
'One day walking around Tavistock Square I made up, as I sometimes make up my books, To The Lighthouse, in a great, apparently involuntary rush.'
A whole entire book? I wish it were that easy!

Nabokov's butterflies

Two butterflies today... 
One courtesy of actor John Cusack who posted this image (top) on Twitter of an artwork he created. (Relevance - Cusack starred in the classic flick High Fidelity, adapted for the screen from the novel by Nick Hornby. Which also means he qualifies as a RubyfireWrites literary crush.)
The other, courtesy of Vladimir Nabokov, whose butterfly theory has been proven 65 years after he first posited it. Besides being a writer (Lolita, Pale Fire) Nabokov was a self-taught butterfly expert and curator of lepidoptera at Harvard University's Museum of Comparative Zoology. So he'd be pretty pleased to know that three decades after his death critics have conceded that his theory on the evolution of Polyomattus blues is valid.
It's all rather technical, so perhaps you'd prefer this anecdote:
Once during a butterfly hunt, Nabokov met a man making his way down a trail in the Rocky Mountains. He asked the man if he'd seen any butterflies up there. No, said the man, no butterflies. Nabokov continued hiking up the same trail and found the mountain to be positively aflutter with butterflies. 
Conclusion: you see what you look for.

Hunter S Thompson

Cracker letter! Hunter S Thompson's cover letter applying for a job at the Vancouver Sun in 1958.
Read it here.
Whether it worked or not, it was a stepping stone in Thompson's legend as reporter, author (Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Hells Angels) and founder of 'Gonzo journalism' - a subjective style of journalism whereby the writer insinuates himself into the story.
The letter was sent to the editor, Jack Scott, who was famous for spectacular stunts in the newsroom - sending the women's page editor to Cuba to cover the revolution and the sports guy to Formosa to interview the leader of the Republic of China. 
Perhaps unsurprisingly, Scott had a brief but formidable reign...would love to have seen his response to Thompson's letter.