memepool
on the internet, everyone can hear you scream
[ articles posted to Books ] [ recent articles [ Search ] [ archives by Date | Subject | Author ]
Wednesday
Apr 18, 2012
Libraries in the U.S. are slowly being outsourced to private companies. One of the largest is Library Systems and Services. It is currently the fourth largest library system in the U.S. Its method of cleaning house has led to some controversy. Much like privatization of prisons, the outsourcing of libraries sparks a debate as to the role of public government in the running of libraries. Like it or not, though, library outsourcing is here to stay. Understandably, librarians and librarians' associations have their opinions.
to Books by isosceles
Thursday
Aug 30, 2007
Like literature by the volume? Read War and Peace and the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire and still find yourself wanting more? May I recommend the Harvard Classics (5 feet, 85 pounds) or the Penguin Classics (52 miles, 763 pounds).
to Books by fool
Friday
Mar 3, 2006
After 30 years, alternative press/bookseller Loompanics Unlimited is going out of business. On the upside, they're having a big sale on the remaining inventory.
to Books by borges
Tuesday
Mar 15, 2005
Son of a steelworker and cleaning lady, Keith Ferrazzi was born into a blue-collar world of long hours and low wages. How he ended up being the youngest elected partner at Deloitte Consulting and personal friends with some of the most powerful business and political players in the nation was the subject of an Inc. Magazine article, The 10 Secrets of a Master Networker.
To most people, "networking" is a dirty word - summoning images of grubby 'here's-my-card' hustlers who can't remember your name, or recently-downsized professionals desperately pinging friends for job leads. By way of contrast, Ferrazzi's new book Never Eat Alone shares the principles behind building powerful personal and professional relationships; Ferrazzi's blog provides book excerpts and weekly networking tips.
to Books by pjammer
Tuesday
Nov 23, 2004
The world's best flash-animated book report on "How to Kill a Mockingbird". Oddly, I didn't remember it containing quite as many pirates or things on fire.
to Books by riotnrrd
Sunday
May 2, 2004
Good lord. More than you ever needed to know about Victorian fantastic literature.
to Books by riotnrrd
Friday
Oct 24, 2003
"White Rabbit" @, "Moon over Bourbon Street" @, "Veteran of the Psychic Wars" @, "The Battle of Evermore" @, "One" @, "Whiter Shade of Pale" @.... Songs Inspired by Literature. @
to Books by yoyology
Monday
Apr 21, 2003
Just when you thought mankind could sink no lower, Anne Frank fanfic appears and soils us all.
to Books by riotnrrd
Monday
Mar 3, 2003
Duke University's Sallie Bingham Center for Women's History and Culture has a collection of books for girls from the late nineteenth through mid-twentieth century, including titles both admirable and cringeworthy. Meanwhile, San Francisco Public Library has brought together an interesting archive of Lesbian Pulp Fiction from the same era. Though these groups seem dedicated to study and preservation, Ex Libris Anonymous likes to use just the covers to create amusing bound journals. They are fond of other cover images, too.
to Books by yoyology
Thursday
Jan 23, 2003
Since the RIAA attacked Napster and its ilk, a number of individuals (Joey Harrison of Toledo), organizations, and public figures have drawn a comparison between peer-to-peer file sharing and libraries.
to Books by yoyology
Monday
Nov 4, 2002
Russell Wattenberg started The Book Thing as a personal project to distribute used books when he was a bartender. Not every project combining books and bars is quite so noble.
to Books by yoyology
Tuesday
Oct 8, 2002
Are your children smarter than average? Perhaps you want to read them Fairy Tales for the Erudite, featuring great renditions of such classics as The Minikin Incarnadine Cowl-Titivated Gamine (a.k.a. "Little Red Riding Hood"), or The Basilic Paludal Denizen (a.k.a. "The Frog Prince"), or perhaps simply The Elves and the Shoemaker.
to Books by isosceles
Friday
Aug 30, 2002
Clifford Pickover, staff researcher at IBM, fractal connoisseur, and author of dozens of popular science books examining the future of thought has published a new series of science fiction novels that explore the boundaries of reality.
to Books by joshua
Saturday
Apr 27, 2002
When Amazon.com started allowing users to review books, it opened the door to a new type of performance art/humor/corporate sabotage: fake reviews. Following the trail blazed with The Story About Ping and numerous Family Circus books, the best practitioner of this new art form is probably Henry Raddick, who has written hundreds of bizarre, subversive, and hilarious book reviews. Make sure, also, to check out his suggestions for gifts for new in-laws and the list of bands whose keyboards players slept with his ex-girlfriend.
to Books by riotnrrd
Friday
Dec 21, 2001
Mark Anderson sure does read a lot of books. And, he'll generously lend you any of the books in his library (paying postage both ways!).
to Books by crikey
Monday
Dec 10, 2001
Robert Greene (author of The 48 Laws of Power) chronicles the exploits of great seducers as case studies to illustrate timeless principles of human psychology in The Art of Seduction. A skeptical female reporter from Nerve.com contacted Greene in a telephone interview to grill him on his approach - and, much to her surprise, admitted that "Greene charmed my socks off, got me to completely reconsider his approach and advised me regarding flirtation strategies for a party I was a ttending that night (which worked)." In addition to a seductive official website, Art of Seduction has inspired a online discussion forum/community on practical applications of seduction principles.
to Books by pjammer
Thursday
Nov 22, 2001
Among other things, use this day to give thanks that you are not being attacked by space aliens, dinosaurs, or space dinosaurs.
to Books by moltevv
Thursday
Nov 1, 2001
Wildside Press reprints great out-of-print books by such cult SF writers as Barrington Bayley, James Branch Cabell, Avram Davidson, and R.A. Lafferty.
to Books by tinfoil
Tuesday
Oct 30, 2001
Indulge your Borgesian tastes at the the Invisible Library, a catalog of books that only exist inside other books.
to Books by riotnrrd
Friday
Oct 12, 2001
V.S. Naipaul just won the Nobel Prize in Literature. His book, A Bend in the River, is a pessimistically beautiful counterpoint to Things Fall Apart.
to Books by fool
Thursday
Oct 4, 2001
Instead of letting someone else do your homework, why not read the original text yourself? It is bound to be more accurate, plus it is cheaper than the bookstore and easier than the library!
to Books by enigma
Thursday
Aug 2, 2001
Typography is fun, and for all you nonbelievers out there, Roberto de Vicq de Cumptich delivers the goods with ease in form of his childrens book. Psst! All you digi-illiterati, check his excellent flash-site.
to Books by wheezer
Friday
Jun 29, 2001
Michael Swanwick (author of quite a lot) has set himself a microfiction challenge: write one sci-fi short story about each element in the Periodic Table. At the rate of one a week. New entries appear Fridays.
to Books by belford
Tuesday
Jun 5, 2001
Random House just released the top 100 books since 1900. Unfortunately the readers' poll is a casualty of a voting war between the Elron and Ayn Rand cults.
to Books by skallas
Tuesday
May 1, 2001
Good Bed. Good In Bed.
to Books by boneyard
Wednesday
Jan 10, 2001
Are you book happy? Get in touch with like-minded collectors of the weirdest books to have ever crossed a printing press.
to Books by fatherdan
Wednesday
Dec 6, 2000
Baltimore alternative bookstore legend, Atomic Books, is going out of business (and taking their fun web-cam with them).
to Books by riotnrrd
Sunday
Nov 19, 2000
Ever wonder what a theatrical trailer for Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game might be like? The Philotic Web (the official fan site) also has art and music inspired by the Enderverse.
to Books by laurel
Friday
Oct 27, 2000
You're 30,000 feet above sea level in the cabin of Flight 2039 somewhere over the Australian outback. The plane is empty and what you know about piloting a 400-ton commercial airplane can fill a thimble. There's four hours of fuel in the tanks and you are dictating your life story to the aircraft's black box: the only thing that will survive the inevitable crash. You are the last member of the Creedish Suicide cult and protagonist in Chuck Palahniuk's novel Survivor. I know this because Tyler knows this.
Packed with the savage apocalyptic intensity of Fight Club, Survivor begins at Chapter 47 and marches relentlessly on a countdown toward zero, telling the tale of a suicide cult's sole survivor, his rise toward fame and free-fall decent to destruction. Stop whatever you're doing and buy/borrow/steal a copy. Now.
to Books by pjammer
Friday
Sep 1, 2000
Archer Daniels Midland (ADM) the international agricultural-products giant, is probably best known to most people by its "Supermarket to the World" ads. More than a multibillion-dollar food producer, ADM was ringleader in a 1995 worldwide price-rigging scheme that resulted in over $70 million of fines. While corporate skullduggery is depressingly common, ADM's case was unusual: a senior ADM executive VP agreed to become a undercover witness, and recorded boardroom deals for the FBI for almost a year before the firm was charged. The Informant, a facinating chronicle of corporate greed and James-Bond antics of ADM's wire-wearing VP, reads more like a high-wire, double-dealing, dirty-tricks spy story than the nonfiction account it is.
to Books by pjammer
Wednesday
Aug 16, 2000
Xlibris, a Random House subsidiary, does on-demand vanity book publishing.
to Books by joshua
Tuesday
Aug 8, 2000
Sadly, Nerve.com panned a passage from William Styron's Sophie's Choice, one of my favorite books both to read and to study.
to Books by djinn
Tuesday
Aug 1, 2000
If you are a fan of the fountain pen, you may be interested in Greg Clark's Ink Sampler, which collects hand painted samples (both heavy and light) of over 200 fountain pen inks, past and present, along with technical data (pH, sun and water resistance) for each.
to Books by goboro
Tuesday
Jul 11, 2000
The Brothers Schlemiel may or may not be the first serialized email novel, but it's certainly the first one about the town of Chelm. While you're there, read some of Mark Binder's other fiction, such as The Mr. Potato Head Murders or his cyber-novella, "How You Destroyed The Entire World (Almost)". Heck, while you're at it, publish some of his stuff.
to Books by dha
Monday
Jun 12, 2000
Angry Young Spaceman is a fun sci-fi novel about a guy who travels to the planet Octavia in order to teach English ("spread the English virus"), pay off his student loans, and buy a jetpack. Author Jim Munroe (formerly editor of Adbusters) is doing some interesting things with the production and distribution of the novel: he's giving away the complete text as freeware, selling copies of it through kagi.com ($14US, $20CAN), and exhorting others to self-publish their own books. As of yesterday, Jim said that only a few copies had sold through kagi.com, through which he pockets about 70% of the cover price. So, if you want to encourage this kind of thing, please order it through kagi, and don't order from Amazon (I won't even provide a link) -- where self-publishers like Jim end up with only about 30% of the cover price in their pockets.
to Books by crikey
Sunday
Jun 11, 2000
I spotted The Extreme Teen Bible at a West Virginia Wal-Mart, and couldn't wait to try a Google Search for "extreme teen" to find out more about Getting Extreme for Jesus.
to Books by obvious
Monday
Jun 5, 2000
In the vein of "Wicked" -- a novel that cleverly recasts the Wicked Witch of the West as a tragic political rebel -- and William Clifford's half-serious examination of the droids-as-slaves politics in "Star Wars", is "The Last Bearer of the Ring", a yet-to-be-translated Polish fantasy novel that retells Tolkien's "Lord of the Rings", showing us that Sauron was just a misunderstood, progress-minded technocrat brought to ruin by the decadent, elitist elves over a dispute about trade routes.
to Books by riotnrrd
Tuesday
May 9, 2000
C.S. Lewis is probably best known for his Chronicles of Narnia, which has inspired dreams as well as faith in many. However, he is also well known and loved for many of his other great works, such as The Screwtape Letters, and my favorite, Till We Have Faces.
to Books by eclipse
Thursday
Apr 27, 2000
Readers who loved Ender's Shadow will be happy to know Orson Scott Card won't make readers wait another decade for more stories from Battle School alumni. Shadow of the Hegemon is scheduled to be released in January 2001 - and, like its predecesor, its first five chapters can be read online. In related news, Jake (Anakin Skywalker) Lloyd has agreed to sign on to a movie adaptation of Ender's Game once the script is greenlighted by a studio.
to Books by pjammer
Tuesday
Mar 7, 2000
Feeling uncultured? Here's everything the busy netizen needs to know about The Iliad, The Odyssey Shakespeare's plays, and Pinky and the Brain
to Books by simon
Monday
Feb 28, 2000
It's a bit late for me to post my memorial for the amazing writer Martin Kellman (and sending him mail isn't going to do much), who died this past September, but he deserves it. There isn't much about him on the web; I only found the article for The Motley Fool which got him a citation as an Economics Professor even though he taught English at Bloomfield College...at least the article is amusing.
to Books by djinn
Sunday
Feb 20, 2000
Like BookFinder (formerly mxbf) and Alibris before it, usedbooks.com is yet another way to find the used books one craves. Of particular note, however, is the excellent Illustrated Guide to Used Book Defects in addition to a very readable and complete guide to what they mean by Very Fine and such forth; there is also an archly charming giftshop.
to Books by goboro
Wednesday
Feb 9, 2000
Gates of Heck publishes books and sells art by mainstream/underground artists such as Joe Coleman, Dame Darcy and Art Speigelman.
to Books by riotnrrd
Thursday
Jan 20, 2000
Today's reminder that you have no privacy: a sample chapter from Simson Garfinkel's book Database Nation.
to Books by tregoweth
Wednesday
Jan 19, 2000
Several years ago I read Kevin Kelly's way cool book Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems and the Economic World. For those of you who haven't read it, The Well now has the entire text online.
to Books by kapital
Friday
Dec 31, 1999
While many of us consider author Po Bronson to be the sexiest writer alive, apparently there are plenty of malcontents who disagree.
to Books by pjammer
Monday
Nov 15, 1999
Sci-fi publisher Baen Books is now offering web-based subscriptions to new novels: you get a quarter of four different novels each month, starting four months before their publication.
to Books by riotnrrd
Thursday
Nov 11, 1999
Back when I first was using the web, i'd fill up the boring times by reading Aspects Of Reality, mostly written by Lance Arthur of glassdog fame.
to Books by earmouse
Wednesday
Nov 3, 1999
Before CNN or MTV, Daniel J. Boorstin wrote "The Image - A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America" It is one of the most interesting and insightful books I have read on American culture in the Twentieth Century. He discusses everything from the 24 hour media and the art of government 'leaks,' to our fascination with celebrities. It also includes a somewhat disheartening chapter on the lost art of travel. A brief essay about the work can be found here.
to Books by birgitte
Tuesday
Nov 2, 1999
The Epistolary Novel is a told by letters; correspondence, telegrams, etc. This venerated art form is still practiced here and there.
to Books by goboro
Friday
Oct 29, 1999
The Talented Mr. Ripley is one of the most disturbing yet mesmerizing books I've read. Starring a brilliant sociopath as its protagonist, the story rides the edge of macabre as only a well-told story through the eyes of a human predator can. Apparently, Miramax/Paramount Pictures has been busy shooting the movie version to be released this winter - but fans of psychological thrillers should still read the book before you go to the theater.
to Books by pjammer
Monday
Oct 25, 1999
Michael Lewis, who may be best known for injecting the phrase Big Swinging Dick into the lexicon of business journalism through Liar's Poker (a sardonic report on the rise and fall of Salomon Brothers), has a new book out. The New New Thing is a biographical account of uber-geek Jim Clark and his rocky quest in building SGI, Netscape and Healtheon en route to being the biggest swinging dick in Silicon Valley.
to Books by pjammer
John McPhee has written books about enviornmentalists, oranges, birch bark canoes, the Swiss Militia, and he just won the Pulitzer for his latest ( a table of contents, and a bit of Chapter One).
to Books by goboro
Thursday
Oct 14, 1999
We don't have any books by Heraclitus, nor by Democritus even though the latter's contemporaries and successors noted him as a prolific author. What we know of Aristotle is the lecture notes scribbled down by his students; most of the works he himself carefully prepared for publication have been destroyed. And don't remind me of the lost plays or I'll cry. Many people assume that the last copies of these works were lost in the famous burning of the Library of Alexandria in the time of Cleopatra, but in fact, most of the last copies were probably lost in a disaster both more recent and more obscure, the burning of the city of Constantinople in the course of the Fourth Crusade in the early thirteenth century.
to Books by arkuat
Tuesday
Oct 12, 1999
Lately I've been reading a lot of fiction about ancient Rome, and enjoying it. The ne plus ultra of historical fiction is Colleen McCullough's Masters of Rome series, 5 books so far, spanning from Gaius Marius to the ascension of Julius Caesar. Other interesting reads include the adventures of Gordianus the Finder by Steven Saylor, and Lindsay Davis' hard boiled (Roman) dick Marcus Didius Falco. Alert Memepoolistas recommended Margaret Yourcenar's Memories of Hadrian as another entry in the books-about-ancient-Rome category. And, for completeness, I'll mention Robert Graves' fabulous I, Claudius and Allan Massie's not really very fabulous Augustus.
to Books by peterb
Monday
Oct 4, 1999
The prolific sci-fi and fantasy author Jack Vance is re-publishing his entire oeuvre in the sixty volume Jack Vance Integral Edition.
to Books by riotnrrd
Monday
Sep 20, 1999
Real Men don't quote Keats. According to these fellas, you should be brushing up your Lenin, Malcolm X, and LBJ instead. And you'd better know how to talk about poker.
to Books by penth
Friday
Sep 17, 1999
Independent Reader recommends fifty-five grandmas and a llama.
to Books by djinn
Tuesday
Aug 31, 1999
The long-anticipated "parallel" novel to Orson Scott Card's seminal Ender's Game, Ender's Shadow is out - unlike the other overpromoted sci-fi yawner this summer, the story more than lives up to its hype. Go get your copy.. Now.
to Books by pjammer
Sunday
Aug 29, 1999
I suppose that it could just be me, but somehow I'm not convinced that The Merriam-Webster and Garfield Dictionary is really such a good idea.
to Books by keith
Wednesday
Aug 25, 1999
Come out of the water closet and say it loud, "I read in there, and I'm proud!"
to Books by machita
Tuesday
Aug 24, 1999
Just about anybody can learn something significant from the master of information design, retired Yale University professor Edward Tufte. His three books on the subject of information design, Envisioning Information (1990), The Visual Display of Quantitative Information (1983), and Visual Explanations : Images and Quantities, Evidence and Narrative (1997) are all unique books which remind us how important information design is to all of us. Read excellent and informative interviews with Tufte at Salon, Fatbrain and Amazon.
to Books by gen
Wednesday
Aug 4, 1999
Every time I see another "sign up for your free computer" scheme touted in the media, I wonder how long it will be before we're all Nearly Roadkill.
to Books by penth
Tuesday
Jul 20, 1999
Finite games are the familiar contests of everyday life, the games we play in business and politics, in the bedroom and on the battlefield - games with winners and losers, a beginning and an end. Infinite games are more mysterious - and ultimately more rewarding. Anyone who enjoyed the metaphysical/philosophical musings of Cryptonomicon and Snow Crash should definitely check out James Carse's Finite and Infinite Games - one of the most thoughful and original books on understanding the strange theater we call life.
to Books by pjammer
Saturday
Jul 17, 1999
You can never have too much obsessive Michael Moorcock worship on the web. At least, that's what the folks at multiverse.org think.
to Books by peterb
Friday
Jun 25, 1999
Po Bronson's Silicon Valley nonfiction The Nudist on the Late Shift is out. Unlike most high tech writers who focus on the movers and shakers, Bronson introduces us to a cast of vivid unknowns seeking fame and fortune in the last arena of high-octane capitalism. Riddles of Superachieverland, an online excerpt from the book, offers a concentrated dose of Bronson's style and anthropological perspective.
to Books by pjammer
Wednesday
Jun 2, 1999
Tired of pompous self-help books from self-proclaimed gurus parroting the same platitudes? Self-Helpless : The Greatest Self-Help Books You'll Never Read skewers the entire genre of the self-help industry in just 160 pages. And if you got a chuckle out of just the title, do check out the authors' website for uproariously funny samples from the book.
to Books by pjammer
Wednesday
May 19, 1999
Forked Tongue is a biography of Ambrose Bierce, heavily crossreferenced with Bierce's own definitions.
to Books by nyarl
Monday
May 17, 1999
Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon is out. Go read it.
to Books by joshua
Wednesday
May 5, 1999
Readers who loved Ender's Game will be happy to know that Orson Scott Card has been busy: Current projects includes completing a screenplay(!) for the movie version of Ender's Game, as well as a "parallel" novel told through the eyes of Bean entitled "Ender's Shadow," whose first chapter you can read online at the Official Orson Scott Card Website.
to Books by pjammer
Tuesday
May 4, 1999
In violation of lord-knows-how-many copyright laws, someone has put a bunch of Edward Gorey illustrated books on their webpage. Enjoy them while they last.
to Books by riotnrrd
Tuesday
Mar 30, 1999
Read an excerpt from Cryptonomicon, Neal Stephenson's new book. His in-depth commentary on the operating system wars presents an new point of view, as well.
to Books by joshua
Tuesday
Mar 9, 1999
Po Bronson is author of the grim and blisteringly hilarious Wall Street satire Bombardiers, as well a Silicon Valley novel whimsically titled The First $20 Million Is Always the Hardest. Between novels, he writes side-splitting commentaries on finance, technology, and the best online essay on the dynamics of the venture capital industry.
to Books by pjammer
Monday
Mar 8, 1999
There's more going for Southern writing than Flannery O'Connor and William Faulkner.
to Books by machita
Sunday
Feb 28, 1999
Amazon.com readers review Bill Keane's latest Family Circus anthology, Daddy's Cap Is on Backwards. "Keane has proven that a self-aware dialectic of the absurd can rekindle the original existential realization that inspired Kierkegaard and his adherents."
to Books by faisal
Tuesday
Dec 22, 1998
Jane Jacobs has spent most of her life investigating the difficult question of why some cities stagnate while other cities thrive.
to Books by arkuat
Jared Diamond went to New Guinea to study bird evolution and wound up having a conversation with a native politician, who ended up asking him "Why did Europeans develop so much cargo and bring it here, while we people of New Guinea developed so little of our own?" Twenty-five years later, he presented his first attempt at an answer in a book called Guns, Germs, and Steel. The answer, before it was done, had blown up into a history of the last thirteen millennia of this planet.
to Books by arkuat
Saturday
Dec 19, 1998
For those that have read Infinite Jest but were confused, there is help. For those that did not read Infinite Jest, there is also help.
to Books by joshua
Wednesday
Dec 16, 1998
Careful with that massage oil, Eugene.
to Books by magus
In search of a good read? Project Gutenberg has copyright-free books online and for no charge. The perfect alternative to hours and hours of solitaire on those slow days at the office.
to Books by jacquez
Friday
Dec 11, 1998
How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World is back in print. Written in the heady hippie days of 1972 by a guy who went on to make a living teaching people how to get rich off the Federal Reserve's demolition of the US dollar in the 1970s, this book stands head and shoulders above its cohorts in the self-help genre.
to Books by arkuat
Monday
Sep 28, 1998
In The Unix Philosophy Mike Gancarz succintly describes not the hows but the whys of unix: the History, the Way, and the Attitudes of software engineering in Unix boil down to a handful of tenets. This book sits on my shelf between Steve McConnell's Rapid Development and Peter Salus's A Quarter Century of Unix.
to Books by freeside
Monday
Sep 21, 1998
The bleakest face in current horror is that of Thomas Ligotti. A successor to Poe and Lovecraft, Ligotti internalizes the horror. Read his work and realize your own insignificance.
to Books by nyarl
Friday
Sep 18, 1998
Linda Nagata is one of the most promising new science-fiction novelists of the 1990s.
to Books by arkuat
East Meets West: The Times reviews former Governor Patten's reflections on Hong Kong.
to Books by faisal
Thursday
Sep 17, 1998
Show off a Cecil Adams-like knowlege of the origins of practically everything after memorizing Charles Panati's book Extraordinary Origins of Everyday Things.
to Books by joshua
copyright © 1998 - 200666666 memepool.com - all rights reserved. for entertainment purposes only. all content is provided as is, with no warranty stated or implied regarding the quality or accuracy of any content on or off the memepool.com website. all trademarks, servicemarks, and copyrights are property of their respective owners.
To find out how to become a regular contributor, contact contrib@memepool.com
To tell us about a link or two, contact link@memepool.com
Questions and comments should go to comments@memepool.com
Memepool is run by Joshua Schachter and Jeff Smith