Making books...then and now

Lots of intriguing little videos to show that the technology of making books has been evolving for centuries in this post: How a Book is Made: AD 400 vs. 1947 vs. 1961 vs. 2011 on BrainPickings.org.

Reading list with lectures...

I must be having withdrawal symptoms from college (or have lost my mind) because since Academic Earth was highlighted by our library blog I've been toying with the idea of using one of the series of lectures (The American novel since 1945, given by Amy Hungerford of Yale, if you dont mind) as a structured reading list - picking those books I want to read (such as The Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy, Lost in the Funhouse by John Barth and Franny and Zooey by Salinger) and watching their accompanying lectures. Free schoolwork, yay! Image courtesy of Jesscreadsbooks.

Books and bookshelves

Hello, I have some book-related items for your delectation today, pilfered from the English Muse Blog that I've mentioned before. First of all for those of you who like to nose through other people's bookshelves (who doesn't?!) there is a new flickr bookshelf pool where you can unabashedly do so without having to justify your nosiness. Second of all the English Muse also brought to my attention this beautiful series of books from Penguin called Great Ideas. Now, there will be some who object to a  list of books which presumes to limit the world's greatest ideas to one hundred items, chosen by a publishing house - but I would suggest they take it with a pinch of salt. The books are great to look at, unaccompanied by pretext/context, and reasonably priced. Read more about them (and why they made the cut) on the Penguin book blog. I personally would like to buy the series in its entirety but I dont have a thousand pounds spare at the moment. Wouldn't that make a great prize for some sort of competition?! I think I just drooled on my keyboard a little.