Each year hundreds of words are dropped from the English language.
Old words, wise words, hard-working words. Words that once led meaningful lives but now lie unused, unloved, and unwanted.
If you love words as much as we do, find room for them again in conversation and written communication. Each time you use one of these words, you are keeping it alive in the English language.”
I like traboccant, murklins, and kalotypography so much I just adopted them. What words will you save today?
I love bookshelves in all forms, even if the “shelves” are really just stacks of books next to my couch because there’s no actual shelf space left. I would much rather have a collection of books as the centerpiece of a room than a television. But given that the majority of my books are in boxes 3,000 miles away, I know just how much space plays a part in whether or not books are on display. When I stumbled across stacked paperback wallpaper earlier this week, I couldn’t help but daydream about how neat it would look in a small space. But the wallpaper lacks that handpicked quality that bookshelves have, and that is why I fell head over heels when I saw the Ideal Bookshelf paintings by artist Jane Mount.
I paint ‘ideal bookshelves’: people’s favorites of all time, within a genre or from a particular period in their lives.
As someone who does a lot of design work, I enjoy the process of turning graphics into ‘art’. And I love that a book is something created very personally and then mass-produced in order to affect many other people very personally. I group and paint them to turn them back into something very personal and intimate.”
Mount creates the paintings out of the reader’s choice of 10-20 books. It would be difficult to narrow down, but I know The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Bird by Bird, Interpreter of Maladies, and The Giving Tree would be a few of the ones on my list. What books would you choose?
I am an avid dreamer. Think multiple dreams, usually with intricate details and loads of weirdness, and often remembered. Sometimes I’m an active character, other times I’m watching the dream unfold like a movie where I’m either the director and the audience.
I’ve had repeat dreams where I can control what the outcome will be based on previous knowledge, sort of like a Choose Your Own Adventure novel. I’ve had dreams that were confusing, where I didn’t know how to do something…until I later remembered the dream when it happened in real life and realized I simply hadn’t learned what I needed to know yet.
What this all means is that I’ve wanted to start a dream journal for a long time, but it’s always seemed like too big of an undertaking. I knew it had to be on the list, a written reminder with accountability. When I saw this notebook, I laughed, bought it immediately, and started my first dream journal.
My husband likes to say that my dreams revolve around three themes: water, my hometown, and school. I’ve definitely seen those come up in the first few weeks of recording, but I’m curious to see what other themes surface as time goes on. If my dream-related tweets are any indication, nerdiness also runs rampant.
I dreamt I was Terminator Batman. Yes, it’s as awesome as it sounds.
Sleepy. Dreamt about time travel. In desperate need of coffee. So really, a fairly typical morning.
I’m pretty sure last night was the first time I dreamt of an infographic #nerd
A surprise nap with Silent Hunter 4 in the background results in an inappropriately epic dream soundtrack. http://bit.ly/dyVRDM
Dreamt I was recruited to Hogwarts and had to pose with a broomstick for character trading cards. #notanerd
@petitemolly I’m surprised I never had Buffy induced nightmares. Just a lot of dreams of trying to fight vampires with a pencil.
Dreamt I was at an elite design & writing workshop designing typefaces with @typeis4lovers. Needless to say, it was awesome.
Best 5-minute snooze button dream in a while: a box of genetically engineered kittens with lamé fur.
Last night I dreamt I figured out Lost. It was epic.
I love when design students redesign the covers of classic books to offer new interpretations through beautiful color, typography, and illustration. Here are two projects from recent graduates of the University of the Arts in Philadelphia.
Jules Verne by Jim Tierney
You can read more about Jim’s process on the Faceout Books site, and check out his other work on his portfolio.
D.H. Lawrence by Sara Wood
Head over to Sara’s portfolio for a closer look at these D.H. Lawrence covers, as well as her other book covers, posters, and drawings.
I’ve been thinking more and more lately about the ways people read—partly because of the continuing conversations around e-publishing / e-readers / e-books, and partly because I realized the other day that my husband and I have completely different reading habits.
To be fair, I knew that he was one of those “weird” people who doesn’t re-read books. The only time I consciously don’t re-read a book is when I hated it upon finishing…and even then, I’m likely to give it another try after a handful of years have passed. But he rarely re-reads books, and this boggles my mind. What about all the things you might miss the first time around? What about that chance at a different experience with a book, or a deeper understanding of character motivations? I love seeing what I discover in a second (or third or fourth) reading, but for him, once is enough.
This I knew. But this past weekend we got into a debate about the number of books read at a time. He will choose one book and devote himself to it entirely until he’s read the very last word. I tend to have a few books that I’m reading at one time. Sometimes I’ll read a book from cover to cover in one sitting because it’s just that good. But usually my books fall into categories like my “just before bed” book, or my “read it in snatches of time like when I’m waiting for a coffee date to show up” book. Sometimes I feel like reading a short story and other times I feel like reading a novel. So I pick and choose depending on my mood.
And this is why my husband now considers me one of those “weird” people who doesn’t read one book at a time. His argument is that I am losing out on the experience that comes from a one book commitment, that something is lost in the time I spend fraternizing with other books. I’d never given it much thought before, if there was value in book monogamy. But the back and forth debate got me wondering about the reading habits of others. So please share—how many books do you read at a time? Do you re-read books? What are your reading habits?
When I added “11. Make homemade bread” to the Twenty-five To-dos (Year 28) list, what I meant was that I wanted to make bread that required yeast and lots of kneading. I have made cinnamon rolls and quick breads in the past, but nothing that I thought of as “from scratch”. So a couple weekends ago, I decided to spend an afternoon up to my elbows in flour after being inspired by Megan to try my hand at bagels (she makes everything look easy). I also had recently learned the Japanese equivalent of tahini and was anxious to make hummus again, so I found a recipe for pita bread to try out at the same time.
The bagels required the most attention between rising, kneading, rising again, shaping, rising a third time, boiling, and then finally baking. My dinky micro-oven limited me to baking only two bagels at a time, and since each “batch” took 30 minutes, there was plenty of time to switch gears to pita bread in between. The pitas didn’t turn out quite like expected, in that they were supposed to rise enough to allow for pockets. But since we were going to eat them with hummus, that didn’t matter.
There is truth to the saying that kneading dough is therapeutic. The combination of the smell of the yeast and the repetitive movements was relaxing, and I spent the time lost in creative daydreams, mostly writing related. But the best part was eating the results. I’m a bread lover, and so homemade, freshly baked bread? Heaven. I will definitely be doing this again.
Skateland was the place to be when I was growing up. The local roller rink was where all the cool kids had their birthday parties, where a shy girl could use bad skating skills to justify clinging to her crush’s hand, where florescent orange cheese adorned the best worst nachos that babysitting money could buy. It was also the place where you could play Pac-Man, cheer on your friends as they played Pac-Man, or if you were me, hold the unofficial title of “Worst Pac-Man Player in Town.”
It’s the 30th anniversary of Pac-Man, and Google is celebrating with their first ever interactive logo that lets you play the iconic game.
If you haven’t played it yet, go now. Pretend you can smell those nachos as you evade ghosts atop tightly laced skates, and “Insert Coin” for added fun.
Update: I WON! (Yes, it did take me a bazillion tries. No, I am not ashamed to admit that.)
Put the words down, don’t obsess over them, just effusively spill them down onto the page. Then step away—for an hour, a day, a week, whatever you need. And then edit. Edit like crazy. Be hard on words and yourself and make it better. And when you think you’re finished, edit it one more time.”
